The Great Unexpected

by Sharon Creech

  I thought Nula might keel over. “I will?”

  “But he’s still a wretch, you’ll see.”

  CHAPTER 52

  THE GREAT UNEXPECTED

  For the reading of Sybil Kavanagh’s will, Mr. Dingle assembled us in the parlor. I thought it nice of him to let me and Lizzie join Nula, Pilpenny, the cook, and the gardener, and I hoped there would be surprises in the will. Maybe Mrs. Kavanagh would leave everything to the cook or the gardener, or maybe even to her rook.

  First Mr. Dingle read through a few boring bits about Mrs. Kavanagh being in her right mind when she made the will. I wondered what a wrong mind would be. Was I in my right mind or my wrong mind?

  Then he said, “It’s very simple, really. Shall I proceed?” He didn’t wait for an answer.

  To Dora Capolini, my loyal cook, I leave the silver tea service, the silver candelabra and—

  “—the contents of this bank account in your name,” Mr. Dingle said, handing Dora an envelope, which she quickly opened.

  “Oh!” Dora exclaimed, fanning herself. “Heavens above! Now I can visit me sister! She’s in Amurica, yer know.”

  Mr. Dingle continued:

  To Michael Canner, my loyal gardener, I leave the gold hall clock, the gold pocket watch that belonged to my beloved Albert, and—

  “—the contents of this bank account in your name,” Mr. Dingle said, handing Michael an envelope.

  Shyly, Michael opened it. “Erm. Is ert real?” he said. When Mr. Dingle assured him it was, Michael-the-gardener jumped up and embraced Mr. Dingle and then the cook and then Pilpenny and Nula and me and Lizzie. “Is real! Yes?” He sat down. He leaped up again. “I bring me brother over! He’s in Amurica, isn’t he, now? Yes!”

  Mr. Dingle then asked Dora and Michael to leave the room.

  “To Nula and to Pilpenny, in equal measure,” he said, “Sybil bequeaths bank accounts with—ahem—tidy sums.” He passed a piece of paper to each of them.

  Pilpenny merely glanced at her paper; she seemed to have already known what it contained.

  A flush rose to Nula’s face. “Am I dreaming? Am I awake?” She covered her face with her hands. Pilpenny patted Nula’s back.

  “There’s more,” Mr. Dingle said. “Sybil is very specific here. This is how she phrases it.” He then read from the will:

  To Pilpenny, my trusted companion, and to Nula, my sister from whom I have been estranged, I bequeath the right to live in this house at Rooks Orchard and to enjoy the beauty and bounty of its lands, for so long as they shall live. I ask for one condition only: that Nula agree to be buried beside me in Rooks Orchard, and that Pilpenny look after Rook.

  “I’m not sure I completely understand,” Nula said.

  “It will become clearer shortly,” Mr. Dingle said. “First, Sybil wanted you to have this.” He passed a small white box to Nula.

  We all leaned forward, straining to see. Inside was an elegant gold bracelet with a single charm attached.

  “Is it—is it—ah, I know!” Nula said. “It’s a rook, isn’t it? So, that’s who sent me those crows—those black birds—those rooks.”

  “She kept track of you,” Mr. Dingle said.

  “Well, I never! Did I so completely misjudge my sister?”

  Mr. Dingle said, “May I continue?” and again he did not wait for an answer but read directly from the will:

  I regret the long years of estrangement from my sister Nula, all because of a wretched boy and our own foolishness.

  Nula stared at the will from which Mr. Dingle was reading. “Me, too,” she said. “I regret it, too, Sybil.”

  “There is more,” Mr. Dingle said.

  Over the years, I have developed special sympathies for young girls like we were: so full of promise but with so few opportunities.

  Mr. Dingle paused here, sipping from a glass of water on the side table before he continued.

  It is my intention to offer a better start to two young women who might most benefit: to Naomi Deane and to Lizzie Scatterding I leave this house and the entire estate of Rooks Orchard to enjoy for as long as they both shall live, with the proviso that Nula and Pilpenny be given residence, as stated above, and be treated with kindness and compassion.

  Lizzie and I stared at each other. Real or not real?

  “There are a few more provisions,” Mr. Dingle said. “For each of you girls, there are also bank accounts, each with matching tidy sums, to be used responsibly. These accounts will be overseen by the executor of the estate, Mr. C. Dingle, ahem, that is, me.” He read:

  … the intention being that Naomi and Lizzie have the opportunity of education and travel and the ability to assist others in need of opportunity.

  “There is one proviso,” Mr. Dingle added, before continuing:

  My last request of Naomi and Lizzie is that they care for my two dogs, who have been my trusted and loyal companions. I ask that the dogs be given the best of care and the loyalty and love that they deserve and that they give so freely.

  Mr. Dingle concluded: “Sybil also leaves a sum for me as executor of the estate and a healthy bank account to provide for the maintenance of the property, the salaries of the cook and gardener, et cetera.”

  He smiled at each of us. “This, then, constitutes Sybil’s revenge.”

  “Revenge?” Nula said. “How so?”

  It was Pilpenny who answered. “Sybil felt that, first of all, you and she were betrayed by Finn, that he took advantage of your soft hearts and your poor living conditions, stole your trust and your wages, and drove a wedge between you.”

  “Aye,” Nula said. “That he did.”

  “And secondly,” Pilpenny continued, “she never forgave the wretched elderly Master Kavanagh for his treatment of her and of his son, Albert. Master Kavanagh made it clear that women had no rights of any sort and were not worth the dirt on his boots. It is, therefore, Sybil’s revenge on the wretched Master Kavanagh and on the wretched Finn that women and girls will be running the estate and inheriting it.”

  “Revenge?” Nula said. “What a curious sort of revenge.”

  “You mean this is real?” Lizzie said. “I’m not crazy out of my mind?”

  “Naomi?” Mr. Dingle leaned toward me. “You look, how shall I say? Perplexed?”

  One word leaked out of my mouth: “Dogs?”

  CHAPTER 53

  ONE MORE TRUNK

  Maybe sudden change of any kind—even unexpected good fortune—jolts your world. The whole planet had tilted in an instant, and I was wobbling along at a slant, trying to regain my balance.

  Nula moved about in a daze. When I asked her how she felt about Sybil’s will, she said, “I misjudged my sister, I did. I’m sorry about that, and I’m sorry I didn’t see her before she died. What she has done for us, Naomi, and for Lizzie, too—”

  “But what if you wanted to go back to Blackbird Tree?”

  “Why would I want to do that?” she said. “I’ve got you and Joe with me”—she patted her pocket—“and a bag of Blackbird Tree dirt up in my suitcase.” She stood on the terrace overlooking the wide lawn and lavender borders. “I’ve come home, haven’t I?”

  Lizzie was back to her talkative self. “Naomi, I don’t understand why this happened to us. Us! We are just two nobody girls.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly say ‘nobody,’ Lizzie.”

  “You know what it’s like? It’s like out of the sky comes this thing, this great, unexpected thing, and it doesn’t know where to land, so it lands on us, two nobody girls—”

  “I wish you’d quit saying ‘nobody’—”

  “We won’t be without a home and we won’t be without food and we can have new shoes on our feet and we can have a coat that fits and we can have dogs, oh, Naomi, I hope you will be okay with the dogs because if you aren’t, we have to give all this up, and I have always wanted a dog, and they are so sweet, have you ever looked at their faces? Have you?”

  I was worried about the dogs. I didn’t know if I could do wh
at was being asked of me. It seemed, on the surface, such a simple request, and yet when I’d close my eyes, I’d see them lunging at me. Not real. Not real. But the fear was real and I did not want to admit it to anyone.

  Lizzie carried on: “And there is all this green lawn and green trees and a river and a bridge and an orchard with all those good plums and pears and things, and we can go to college and be educated people, and we can help the unfortunates and—”

  One afternoon I discovered that I could climb up on the roof from the balcony at the end of the upstairs hall. Up there, unexpectedly, in the wide-open air, I cried and cried, and I didn’t stop to wonder why. And when the crying stopped, it felt as if someone had pulled me and Lizzie and Nula up a tall, tall ladder, and stretching out before us was all the world to see and know. I thought about the kindness of strangers. I thought about the dogs and about the great unexpected.

  Below were green lawns and winding paths, roses and lavender. It seemed that everything and anything was possible. I saw a million ladders dropping down from the sky.

  When I came down from the roof, Nula was standing on the balcony. “Naomi,” she said. “It’s okay to accept good fortune.”

  Later that day, Pilpenny asked if Lizzie and I would help her with “a little project.” There was a trunk, she said, out in the wee cottage that needed “some investigating.”

  “Surely, we can help,” Lizzie said. “We are good at trunks.”

  Lizzie and Pilpenny seemed both amused and intrigued by each other. Lizzie told me, “Auntie Pilpenny isn’t crazy at all. She reminds me so much of my mother that it’s a little spooky.” In turn, Pilpenny, watching Lizzie run and skip and twirl across the lawn, said, “So much like my sister—her mother. So much.”

  Out at the wee cottage, Pilpenny said, “Technically, the contents of this cottage now belong to you girls, but Sybil suggested that I look through this trunk first. You girls know about Paddy—who was also called Finn—yes?”

  “We know a little,” I said.

  “The trunk belonged to his son, Finnbarr.”

  “The dead boy?” Lizzie said. “The one that fell out of the tree?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Pilpenny said that many years ago Finnbarr worked in the orchards and stayed in the wee cottage, and when he died, his things were stored in that trunk.

  When Pilpenny unlocked the door to the wee cottage and pushed it open, spiders dropped down from the top of the frame.

  “Eww,” Lizzie said. “I’m not so fond of spidery places.”

  I stepped back when I saw tall shelves filled with rooks staring at us.

  “Eww!” Lizzie said. “That is so overly creepy!”

  Pilpenny said that the Kavanaghs used to give them to guests as mementos. “After the Master died, Sybil sent a pair to Nula—”

  “Why didn’t she include a note so that Nula would know who they were from?”

  “That’s Sybil for you. She liked mystery. I have to confess that I, too, sent a pair—without a note, a little mystery—to my sister, Margaret. That was when she was working at the hospital in Ravensworth.”

  “Ohhh. So you sent them to Lizzie’s mother and she gave them to Mary-Mary.”

  Lizzie was confused. “How do you know that?”

  And so I told them about the note I’d seen at Mr. Farley’s, the one addressed to Mary and signed by Margaret S.:

  I do not know who sent them to me … Crows! Knowing how much you love birds … I thought you might like to have them.

  “Are all those rooks ours now, Auntie Pilpenny?” Lizzie asked. “I don’t mean to be piggy, but do we own all this stuff now?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But before you make big changes, you will need to consult with Mr. Dingle.”

  “Sure,” Lizzie said. “We’ll do that, won’t we, Naomi?”

  I still hadn’t decided if this was real, so I was ready to agree to anything. “Sure. Sure, we will.”

  “There is a story,” Pilpenny said, “about Finnbarr that—oh, no, I shouldn’t tell—”

  “Tell! I want to know everything!” Lizzie said.

  I realized that was one difference between me and Lizzie. I didn’t want to know everything that was already known; I wanted to leave room for possibilities.

  Pilpenny was making her way across the room, pushing chairs and boxes out of the way. “All right, I will tell you. It’s only a tale, you know. Finnbarr—we called him Finn, like most everyone else did—had been working in the orchard for several summers. My sister, Margaret—your mother, Lizzie—and I thought he had been dropped down from heaven for us to adore and—later—quarrel over.”

  Pilpenny pressed her hand against her chest, and when she made that simple gesture, it reminded me of Lizzie, and it also made me wonder if Pilpenny, too, had had her own heart wounded by a boy named Finn. Was that the fate of all girls, to have their hearts broken? Surely boys had their hearts trampled on, too, didn’t they? I saw a parade in my mind: of Nula and Joe, of Sybil, of Mr. Canner and one-armed Farley, of Crazy Cora and Witch Wiggins, of Mrs. Broadley and Mrs. Mudkin. Was everyone walking around with old or current wounds?

  “One day,” Pilpenny continued, “Finn tells Margaret that he had been digging in the fairy ring. Oh, that upset your mother, Lizzie, didn’t it now, because everyone knows you do not mess about with a fairy ring.”

  Lizzie turned to me. “I told you, Naomi.”

  “But worse yet, Finn tells her he dug up a sack of gold, and she got so mad at him, she hit him with a flour sack and the flour went all over the place so’s they both looked like ghosts, and she told him to put that gold back in the fairy ring, and don’t you know, it was the next day he died.” Again, she pressed her hand to her chest.

  “Did he put the gold back?”

  “I don’t think there was any gold in the first place, but even if there was and even if he did put it back, it was too late, wasn’t it?”

  Lizzie said, “That is entirely too creepy, and I wish you’d not told us that.”

  We found the trunk, and with the help of the key and a screwdriver, it opened. A burst of lavender rose out of the trunk, so strong you’d have thought someone had just picked a fresh bunch of it and tossed it inside. Near the top were an old coat and scarf and a faded quilt.

  “Nothing very remarkable here,” Lizzie said.

  I pulled out a pair of leather boots, scuffed and worn; a pair of woolen gloves; and a heavy woolen shirt. There were a few more articles of clothing and a tin box containing a mirror, a comb, two keys, a few loose buttons, and what looked like an identity card of some sort, creased as if it might have been carried in a pocket or wallet. At the bottom of the box was a small latch.

  I fiddled with the latch until it came loose, revealing another compartment in the bottom of the box. In that compartment was a sack, and when I lifted it, it jingled as if it held coins.

  “Uh-oh,” I said, dropping the sack on the floor.

  CHAPTER 54

  ACROSS THE OCEAN: THE MAIL

  It was a sunny, calm day in Blackbird Tree as the mailman made his rounds.

  Down at the church, Mrs. Mudkin examined the check in her hand and then reread the attached note: From an anonymous donor. Please use these funds to help the unfortunate souls. She looked again at the check, holding it up to the light. “Is this real?”

  Up the road a ways, Mrs. Cupwright opened an envelope and called to her husband. “Come here and look at what came in the mail.”

  Mr. Cupwright was lying on the sofa, the newspaper over his face. “None of my business,” he said.

  Mrs. Cupwright smiled. “Okeydoke then.” She slipped the check into her purse.

  Crazy Cora was sitting on her porch with her grown son, watching the workers repair her damaged roof, when the mailman handed her an envelope.

  “Well, lookee here, a letter from Dora. She’s coming to visit.”

  “All the way from Ireland?”

  “Yep. Guess I’d better wa
sh the windows.”

  Mr. Thomas Canner held an envelope in his hand, turning it over and over, and holding it up to the window. He returned to his favorite chair and read the letter from his brother. Once. Twice. Three times. He slipped the letter inside Tales of Ireland and pressed the book to his chest.

  I’m going to Ireland, he thought. At last I am going to Ireland.

  Later that day, two boys stood amid the remains of Joe and Nula’s barn. The taller boy, Bo, scuffed ashes with his boot. “Might find some stuff in here.”

  “It’s pretty much picked over,” the other boy said.

  Near where they stood, a ring of mushrooms had sprouted overnight.

  “I still don’t get it. Somebody’s giving us the property? Why would they do that? And what about that girl Naomi and the old lady? What will happen to them?”

  “They’ll be okay.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Just a feeling, that’s all.”

  CHAPTER 55

  MARY-MARY AND THE GOLD

  In the sack that we’d found in Finnbarr’s trunk were six golden coins.

  “Ach,” said Pilpenny, backing away. “The fairy gold?”

  “Don’t touch it!” Lizzie said.

  In the next morning mail—or “post,” as Pilpenny called it—came an envelope addressed to me, and inside was a piece of blue paper. On it, in a child’s printing, was a poem—or a story—or something in between:

  Sometimes I think the cloud in the sky is a baby waiting for life

  At dawn, I climb to my rooftop and watch the baby unfold

  Sometimes I think the cloud in the sky is a bird in a nest

  At dawn, I climb to my rooftop and watch the bird fly

  Sometimes I think the cloud in the sky is a story waiting to be read

  At dawn, I climb to my rooftop and read that story

  The story about me, the cloud, and the rooftop.

  —Naomi Deane, age 8

  On the back, written in pencil:

  Dear Mr. Farley,