The Penderwicks at Point Mouette

by Jeanne Birdsall

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at

  www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89898-3

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Quinn

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  ONE Going, Going

  TWO Gone

  THREE The End of the List

  FOUR A New Song

  FIVE An Accident

  SIX Pancakes

  SEVEN Another Accident

  EIGHT Moose

  NINE Burning Wishes

  TEN Seals, and a Kiss

  ELEVEN Haircuts

  TWELVE The Thunderstorm

  THIRTEEN Questions

  FOURTEEN Answers, and More Questions

  FIFTEEN An Unwelcome Visitor

  SIXTEEN Batty’s First Concert

  SEVENTEEN And Back Again

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Going, Going …

  THE PENDERWICK FAMILY was being torn apart. The tearing wouldn’t last long—only two weeks—but still it was uncomfortable. Mr. Penderwick was the first to go, flying off to England with his new wife, Iantha, for scientific conferences and a bit of a honeymoon. With them went Ben, Iantha’s son, who was too small to be without his mother, honeymoon or not.

  That had been two days earlier, and now the remaining Penderwicks—four sisters named Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty—were about to tear apart even more. Early the next morning, three of them would leave for Maine with the sisters’ favorite relative, Aunt Claire, while the fourth headed to New Jersey with her best friend. The girls had never been apart for an entire two weeks, and though all of them were nervous about it, the one going off on her own was the most nervous. This was the oldest, thirteen-year-old Rosalind, and she was having a terrible time accepting that her sisters could survive without her.

  Right now she was waiting in her bedroom for them to arrive. She didn’t want to be in her bedroom—she wanted to be with five-year-old Batty, getting her ready for bed just like she always did. But tonight Skye and Jane, the two middle sisters, were helping Batty with her bath and pajamas. Practice, Aunt Claire called it, or a dry run. She’d thought it would calm Rosalind to see that indeed she wasn’t absolutely needed when it came to Batty. And Rosalind would have been calm, except that the others were supposed to come to her room as soon as they were finished, and that should have been at least ten minutes ago. How could a simple bath take so long? They knew she wanted to have one last MOPS—that is, Meeting of Penderwick Sisters—before Batty had to go to sleep. One last MOPS before they were all separated for two weeks.

  “Two whole weeks,” groaned Rosalind, then looked up hopefully, because she heard footsteps in the hall. They were here.

  But it was only one of them—twelve-year-old Skye, the second sister—and she didn’t have the look of someone who’d just conducted a successful bath. Her blond hair was hanging in damp clumps, and there were wet spots on her T-shirt.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” she said. “Batty’s fine. She didn’t drown or anything.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Hound got into the tub with her.”

  That explained why Skye was so wet. The Penderwicks’ large black dog was clumsy and enthusiastic—getting him out of a bathtub would make anyone wet. But it didn’t explain why he’d been in the bathroom in the first place.

  “Hound always tries to get into the tub,” said Rosalind. “That’s why he’s not allowed near Batty at bath time. Didn’t you know that?”

  “Nope, and neither did Jane. But we know it now, and we’ll clean up the bathroom later. I promise.”

  A dry run! The irony wasn’t lost on Rosalind. She was determined not to scold, though, not this very last night. “Where are the others?”

  “Jane is helping Batty with her pajamas. They’ll be here soon.” Skye shook her head violently, tossing droplets of water across the room. “Where’s your Latin dictionary? I need to look up revenge.”

  “On my bookshelf, though I wish you wouldn’t.” Rosalind knew why Skye was thinking about revenge, and that she’d been thinking of little else for the last twenty-four hours. Which was absolutely not the best way to prepare for the next two weeks. With Rosalind off in New Jersey, Skye would be the OAP—Oldest Available Penderwick—and she needed to concentrate on taking care of her two younger sisters, not on carrying out revenge. “Daddy says the best revenge is to be better than your enemy.”

  “I’m doing that, too. Almost anyone could,” said Skye, leafing through the dictionary. “Here it is. Revenge: ultio or vindicta. Then it says: to take revenge on is se vindicare in. Se vindicare in Jeffrey’s loathsome mother. How do I say ‘Jeffrey’s loathsome mother’ in Latin?”

  Skye’s desire for revenge was justified—Rosalind knew that. Jeffrey was Jeffrey Tifton, a boy the Penderwicks had met the previous summer while renting a cottage at his mother’s estate, called Arundel. By the time that vacation was over, Jeffrey was their excellent friend and honorary brother, and since then the sisters had seen him as often as they could, which was nowhere near often enough. He was always too far away—either at Arundel, a couple of hours west of the Penderwicks’ home in Cameron, Massachusetts, or at his Boston boarding school, a couple of hours east of Cameron. It had been natural, then, for the younger three sisters to want Jeffrey in Maine with them, and with great hope they’d invited him.

  After much dillydallying and back-and-forthing by his mother, permission had finally been granted, spirits raised, ecstatic phone calls exchanged—until suddenly, just that morning, a mere twenty-four hours before departure for Maine, the permission had been withdrawn. Jeffrey’s mother had decided that he wasn’t going with the Penderwicks. No reason had been given. He simply wasn’t going anywhere. He was stuck at Arundel for the whole summer.

  Even through their agonized disappointment, the sisters weren’t all that surprised. Jeffrey’s mother was capable of endless awfulness—the real surprise was that she had a son as wonderful as Jeffrey. The Penderwicks’ only explanation was that Jeffrey had inherited his good qualities from his father, but this was guesswork, since Jeffrey had never met him, nor did he know his name, or even if he was alive or dead. Which was all sad and terrible enough, but in the last year he’d also been saddled with a stepfather, the selfish and stupid Dexter Dupree.

  “Loathsome. Here it is: foedus,” said Skye. “Jeffrey’s foedus mother, Mrs. Tifton-Dupree, known to us as foedus Mrs. T-D. I like it.”

  “You need to use the feminine accusative form of the adjective,” said Rosalind, momentarily in the spirit of things.

  “An unimportant detail.” Skye wouldn’t study Latin until she started seventh grade in the fall. “Maybe I should include Dexter. Hel
p me translate this: To take revenge on Dexter and foedus Mrs. T-D, I consign them to a life of guilt-racked agony, like a serpent in their entrails.”

  “Guilt-racked agony! Did you write that?”

  “No, Jane did, after you shot down her idea about voodoo dolls.”

  “As well I should have. And I think we can skip the serpent in their entrails, too.” Rosalind shut the Latin dictionary and slid it back onto the bookshelf.

  “But we have to do something, Rosy—it’s Jeffrey!”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Skye stomped around the room. “I suppose I have to be a good example and all that while you’re gone.”

  “Yes. And please stop stomping. Thank you,” said Rosalind. “Now let’s think. Have I told you everything you need to know about Batty? Like brushing her hair?”

  “You’ve told me about Batty’s hair a hundred times,” said Skye with great dignity. “And I do know how to brush hair.”

  Of course she did, thought Rosalind. It was just that Skye’s own blond, straight hair was so easy to take care of, and Batty’s dark hair—just like Rosalind’s and Jane’s—was thick and curly, and needed serious attention. Especially now that it was getting long, which was Rosalind’s own fault, because she was growing her own hair long, and Jane, then Batty, had decided to follow suit. And Batty seemed to get knots in hers even when standing still, and then she hated having the knots brushed out, so much that sometimes she even cried.

  “Oh, Skye, you will be careful with her in Maine, won’t you? You won’t ignore her while you think about math or stars or whatever it is you think about? And you won’t get frustrated or lose your temper when she cries?”

  “I’ve been working on my temper, and I promise to be careful with Batty.” Skye’s dignity was even greater now. “If you’d like, I’ll get my Swiss army knife and take a blood oath.”

  “No blood, but thanks.” Rosalind did trust Skye to do the best she could. And of course Aunt Claire, that most wonderful of aunts, would be there, too. Though since Aunt Claire had never had children of her own, her practical experience was limited. While no one had actually expired under her care, when the girls were small, Aunt Claire had once brushed Rosalind’s teeth with shampoo and dabbed Skye’s scraped knee with toothpaste. And she had never quite gotten the hang of putting on other people’s shoes—the right and left were often mixed. Oh! Rosalind had a terrifying image of Batty limping around Maine, shampoo foaming from her mouth.

  The bedroom door opened again, and again it was only one sister—this time, Jane. She was even wetter than Skye, her dark curls wild, and she was carrying a pile of books.

  “Where’s Batty?” asked Rosalind sharply.

  “Right here.” Jane looked behind her, but the hall was empty of five-year-olds. “Oh, now I remember. She said she needed to go to her room first. Rosalind, do you think Iantha would mind if I borrowed some of her books to take to Point Mouette?”

  Rosalind looked through the books. They were barely suitable for her, let alone for Jane, who was only eleven.

  “You’re not old enough for any of these. Besides, why would you even want to read”—Rosalind picked a particularly odd title—“Bilgewater?”

  “It’s about love. They all are,” answered Jane, as though that explained it perfectly.

  “She’s doing research for a new Sabrina Starr book,” said Skye, her hand over her heart like a fainting heroine in an old-time movie. “She thinks it’s time for Sabrina to fall in love.”

  Sabrina Starr was the heroine of many books Jane had written. Rosalind had never thought of her as the falling-in-love type. She’d always been too busy rescuing anyone who needed it, from a groundhog to an archaeologist. And Rosalind thought that Sabrina should continue the rescuing for a while longer. She didn’t want Jane doing research on love while in Maine. She wanted her being a good backup OAP.

  “Yes, I think Iantha would mind you borrowing these books. Wouldn’t Sabrina be better off rescuing a moose or something?” She took the books from Jane and put them on her desk. It was time—past time—for the MOPS, and the littlest sister was still missing.

  “I’ll get Batty,” Rosalind said. “Nobody wander off.”

  She went down the hall to Batty’s room, hoping to see Batty there, neatly pajamaed and ready for a MOPS. Here is what she saw instead: an open suitcase on the floor, empty except for Asimov—the Penderwicks’ orange cat—who had curled up inside and fallen asleep. The clothes that just hours ago had been folded into the suitcase were now in untidy heaps on the bed. Also on the bed was a still-wet Hound, happily chewing on the new hairbrush that Iantha had bought specially for Batty to take to Maine.

  And Rosalind saw one more thing—the door to the closet seemed to be trying to shut itself.

  “I know you’re in there, Batty,” she said.

  There was a long silence, then: “How do you know?”

  “I just do. Batty, it’s time for the MOPS. Skye and Jane are waiting for us.”

  “I don’t need to go to the MOPS, because I’m not going to Maine.”

  Rosalind picked up a red-striped bathing suit from the floor, refolded it, and put it back into the suitcase next to Asimov. “Is it because of the bath Skye and Jane just gave you?”

  “No, that was fun. Hound jumped into the tub.”

  “I heard.” Next into the suitcase went a half dozen shirts. “And you’re not upset about Asimov again, are you? Because we’ve gone over that. He has to stay home, and Tommy’s going to take very good care of him. You trust Tommy, right?”

  Tommy Geiger was Rosalind’s boyfriend, who lived across the street, and though sometimes he could drive her crazy, he was quite good with Asimov.

  “Yes.”

  “And I know you’re disappointed about Jeffrey not going to Maine.” That blow had fallen hard on Batty, already devastated at being separated from Ben. She’d been the youngest in the family for so long—even Hound was a year older than she was—that the addition of a little brother had come as a delightful relief. “And I could understand you wanting to stay home if Ben were here—”

  “And Daddy and Iantha.”

  “—but they’re in England and won’t be back until you’re home again from Maine.”

  Rosalind took hold of the hairbrush Hound was chewing and tugged until he let go. The damage was minimal, so she wiped it down and put it into the suitcase, too. This woke up Asimov, who leaped gracefully out and onto the bed—steering clear of the wet dog—where he immediately fell asleep again. The space he’d left behind was just the right size for a pile of shorts, two sweatshirts, and another bathing suit.

  “Rosalind, are you still there?”

  “I’m still here.” Socks, underwear, an extra pair of pajamas, more T-shirts, and the suitcase was once again full. “Why don’t you come see me?”

  The closet door opened itself back up, and out crept Batty, well scrubbed and pajamaed, yes, though Rosalind noticed with a pang that the shirt was inside out.

  “You’re packing my stuff again,” said Batty, her forehead scrunched with concern.

  “Listen to me.” Rosalind knelt beside her on the floor. “I’m so sorry that I’m not going to Maine with you. I promised Anna to go to New Jersey with her, and then it was too late to change the plans. You know all that, right? I know this is the longest you and I will have ever been apart, and I’ve told you over and over how much I’ll miss you, so you must know that. Tell me you know how much I’ll miss you.”

  “I do know.”

  “Here, let me fix your pajamas.” With a minimum of wriggling, the shirt was turned right side out so that the dolphin showed. “Now you look better. Do you think you’re ready for the MOPS now? Good girl. Go tell Skye and Jane I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Batty left, with Hound trailing along after her. Asimov stayed behind, waking up in time to see Rosalind tuck a yellow sunhat in with the rest of Batty’s clothes, then pull down the lid of the suitcase and shut it tight.r />
  “Meow,” he said.

  “I am not crying,” she answered. “Come on, let’s go to the MOPS.”

  Back in her room, Rosalind found the others seated in a circle on the floor. She sat down with them, pulled Batty onto her lap, and waited politely while Asimov gave Hound a friendly swat on the nose, then stretched out beside him.

  “MOPS come to order,” she said.

  Skye seconded the motion, Jane and Batty thirded and fourthed it, and Rosalind went on. “All swear to keep secret what is said here.… Actually, we can skip the bit about secrets. This isn’t that kind of a MOPS.”

  “So we don’t need to swear?” asked Batty, who liked that part.

  “No swearing.” Rosalind now took a moment to gather herself. She’d been thinking about this MOPS for days and wanted it to go just right. She had a list of rules to go through, and some cheering thoughts, and she’d end with a brief statement about how much she trusted Skye. “As you all know, early tomorrow morning I’ll be handing over my OAP responsibilities to Skye. Before that happens, I want to give you some rules to follow in Maine. Rule One is …”

  She stopped, and it seemed to the others as though she’d gone a little green.

  “What is it?” asked Skye.

  “I’ve warned you about the rocks, right? How Maine has huge rocks along the coast, and in some places people have built seawalls to keep the ocean away from the land, and if anyone falls off a seawall, they would smash onto the rocks.”

  “You have indeed warned us about the rocks,” said Skye.

  “And the seawalls,” added Jane. “By the way, you’re squashing Batty.”

  “Sorry.” Rosalind relaxed her grip on Batty, who started breathing again. “I’ve mentioned drowning, of course. Maybe I should start with the next-to-last rule.”

  “How many rules are there?” asked Skye.

  “Six.” Rosalind reached under her bed and pulled out a bright orange life preserver. “Rule Five: Batty wears this whenever she’s near the ocean.”