“Hmm,” Grandma Sperling said. “You’re a mouthy one, aren’t you?”
Just because I want her to call me what everyone else calls me, I’m “mouthy”?
“Let’s go get your bags,” Suzanne said, quickly leading us all toward baggage claim.
It took forever to get their bags. They had five of them. Five bags for two people. There wasn’t room for that much luggage in Suzanne’s trunk. Not with all the stuff we’d bought at the mall, too.
“Maybe we can unclip the garment bag and open it up and lay it across the top,” Grandma Sperling suggested as she reached for the clips on the bag that was folded over.
Ah. So that was a garment bag.
Suzanne laid it across the other big suitcases in the trunk, but the carry-on bags and the packages from the mall had to go in the car with us. Grandma Sperling took one of the bags into the front seat with her; everything else ended up in the backseat with Sam, Grandpa Sperling, and me.
“So, tell us about yourself, Sarah,” Grandma Sperling ordered once we were on the way back to Clearwater.
At first I wasn’t going to answer any question that was directed at “Sarah.” That wasn’t my name. But Grandma Sperling actually turned around in her seat and waited for me to answer.
Make them think I raised you right, Joe had told me.
“I don’t know what you want to know,” I said, looking down at my feet.
“Are you a good student?”
“Yes.”
“How good?”
“I get mostly A’s.”
“Really?” Sam asked.
I shrugged. It wasn’t that hard to get A’s.
I don’t think Grandma Sperling was as impressed as Sam was. She moved on to her next question. “What’s your favorite subject?”
“Science.”
“Are you in any after-school activities?”
“I’m in band.”
“What do you play?”
“The tuba.”
That got Grandpa Sperling’s attention. “Is that right? I used to play the tuba. Many years ago in high school and college.”
“Cool,” I said.
“Why in the world would a young girl want to play the tuba?” Grandma Sperling asked.
Because Gram wanted me to play in band and the tuba was the only instrument the school had that they could let me borrow for free. But I wasn’t going to tell her that. “I just like it,” I said. And I did. Sort of.
“Let’s not interrogate T.J., Mother,” Suzanne said as she changed lanes. At least she called me T.J. “We’ll have plenty of time to get to know her over the next few days.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Grandma Sperling said, turning back around. “We’ve got a wedding to get ready for. Is everything in order?” Now all the attention was on Suzanne. Grandma Sperling wanted to know if Suzanne had checked in with the minister. Had she talked to the florist? Was she sure she wanted roses? Roses were so “commonplace.” And if she and Suzanne went in tomorrow maybe the florist could still do something different?
“We can’t change the order the day before the wedding, Mother,” Suzanne said. “Besides, I like roses.”
While Grandma Sperling and Suzanne continued to argue about flowers in the front seat, Grandpa Sperling showed Sam and me a bunch of magic tricks. They were pretty lame. Any idiot could see he had a fake deck. And obviously he stuck the little chicken in Sam’s purse when she wasn’t looking; he didn’t just make it appear there out of the blue. But I had no idea how he put the eight torn-up dollar bill pieces that were closed in my fist back together while they were still in my fist. That one was pretty cool.
“I don’t suppose you’d show me how you did that?” I said, turning the dollar bill all around.
He smiled. “A magician never reveals his secrets. But since we’re related, maybe I’ll share just this one with you before I go back home.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me.”
We were supposed to go over to The Fiance’s mother’s house for dinner, but Grandma Sperling wanted to stop back at Suzanne’s first to freshen up and drop off their things. Fine with me. That way I could let Sherlock outside before we left.
Suzanne parked in the driveway and popped the trunk.
I grabbed my dress and my new shoes and headed for the front door while everyone else helped with Grandma and Grandpa Sperling’s bags. Suzanne unlocked the door and Sherlock stood there barking and wagging his tail in greeting.
“Good heavens!” Grandma Sperling stopped short in the doorway. “When did you get a dog?” She held her bag like a shield between her and Sherlock.
“He’s not ours,” Suzanne said as she moved to the middle of the living room. “He’s T.J.’s.”
I dropped my bag of shoes on the floor, laid my dress over the back of the couch, and went to pick up my dog.
“You brought your dog?” Grandma Sperling wrinkled her nose when Sherlock licked my face.
I ignored the wrinkly nose. “Yes.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I felt like it.”
“It’s fine, Mother,” Suzanne said as she adjusted her grip on one of Grandma Sperling’s suitcases. “We don’t mind.”
Grandpa Sperling set one suitcase down, then slowly bent to scratch Sherlock’s back. “He looks like a nice little dog.”
Grandma Sperling pressed her lips together. “Do you always do whatever you feel like doing, Sarah?” she asked me.
“T.J.,” I corrected her again. “And yeah, pretty much.” Man. What was her problem?
“Guess what her dog’s name is,” Sam said, worming her way in next to her grandma.
Grandma Sperling didn’t even try to guess.
“It’s Sherlock,” Sam said cheerfully. “Just like our cat. Isn’t that cool?”
“I suppose,” Grandma Sperling agreed.
“It’s because T.J. and I are twins. We have a psychic connection,” Sam said.
Again with the psychic stuff? I hardly knew the girl.
“Come on, Mother,” Suzanne said, heading through the kitchen. “I know you hate climbing stairs so I set up the air mattress for you and Dad in the family room.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I can sleep on an air mattress,” Grandma Sperling muttered as she and Grandpa Sperling followed Suzanne.
“I need to get something upstairs before we go,” Sam told me. She raced up the stairs two at a time.
That left me and my dog alone.
I couldn’t help but notice that with the cat locked up, there were no broken lamps or overturned garbage cans in the house this time.
“Come on, boy,” I said, setting Sherlock down. “Let’s go outside.”
He scampered through the kitchen and waited for me at the back door. As I walked past the phone, I wondered if I dared grab it and try to make a quick call before we left for the picnic? I wanted to call Joe and see how he was doing, but even more I wanted to ask him about the sister he’d never told me about. Which meant this wasn’t likely to be a quick call. It would be better to call later, when I had more time.
I went out into the backyard with Sherlock and watched as he ran around the yard, sniffing for the perfect spot to go. A slight breeze rippled through the trees. As I strolled past the open family room window, I heard Grandma Sperling’s voice. “—not quite what we expected, is she?”
Excuse me? I moved closer to the window so I could hear better.
“I didn’t have any expectations,” Suzanne replied.
“Well, considering where she’s been the last ten years, it was probably wise not to expect much.”
“I didn’t say—”
“She has no manners, no sense of style, and that hair! She looks like a boy.”
The screen door slammed behind me and I turned. “Hey,” Sam said as she stepped out into the yard.
“Hey,” I said, walking quickly toward her. I didn’t want her to hear her grandma bad-mouthing me.
> “In case you hadn’t noticed, Grandma Sperling is a little uptight,” Sam said.
“Oh, I noticed,” I said.
“And Mom gets a little uptight whenever she’s around.”
“Noticed that, too,” I said, and we both smiled.
“So,” Sam said as we followed Sherlock around the yard. “What can you tell me about Katie?”
I groaned to myself. I should have known Sam would ask me that. “Not much.”
The back door opened then and Suzanne poked her head out. “Time to go, girls.”
Whew. Saved by Suzanne. I shrugged helplessly at Sam.
“Tell me later,” she said. “After the barbecue.”
“Sure,” I said.
Maybe in the next couple of hours I’d suddenly remember Joe mentioning something—anything—about a person named Katie.
Chapter Eleven
I knew The Fiancé had a pretty big family, but I had no idea it was this big. I shook hands with Bob’s brother Dan, Dan’s wife Becky, and their kids Brenna (age 5) and Austin (age 7). Bob’s sister Caryn introduced herself, her husband Josh, and their son, Cody (age 6). Bob’s brother Rick, who wasn’t married, had a 6-year-old son named David … not to be confused with Bob’s brother David, who was next in line. Then there was David’s wife Jenna and their three kids—Katherine (age 7), Karsten (age 5), and Caleb (age 1). And after them Bob’s sister Lynne, her husband Tim, and their kids Connor (age 8), Elizabeth (age 6), and Max (age 3). I was never going to remember all of these people.
I wasn’t likely to forget Bob’s mother, though. She was the last person I met, and she didn’t shake my hand. She grabbed me and hugged me. For some reason I didn’t mind her hug as much as I minded Suzanne’s.
“I’m so glad to meet you, T.J.,” she said, holding onto my hands.
She was? I wondered what she’d been told about me.
“Now, you can call me Pauline or you can call me Mrs. Hager or you can call me Grandma or Nana. Whatever you want is fine.” She leaned closer to me and whispered just loud enough for me and Sam to hear her: “You can even call me ‘Bob’s mother’ if you want. That’s what Sam calls me.”
Sam’s face turned bright red.
I grinned. “Okay,” I said. I liked the idea of calling her “Bob’s mother.”
Sam and I inched over toward the couch so Suzanne could introduce Grandma and Grandpa Sperling to Bob’s mother. I noticed Sam looked kind of stiff and uncomfortable around these people, which surprised me. She wasn’t meeting them for the first time today like I was. And they seemed all right to me. At least they weren’t all concerned about my hair, my manners, or my “sense of style.”
“We’ve got hamburgers and hot dogs in the kitchen,” Bob’s mother announced, clasping her hands together. “T.J.? Sam? Are you hungry? Please, go get something to eat.”
I didn’t need to be told twice; I headed for the kitchen. Sam followed me.
Whoa. Plates of hamburgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, and chicken covered one counter, along with buns, ketchup, mustard, mayo, and a whole bunch of other sauces. Bowl after bowl of pasta and other salads lined the opposite counter. There was even a watermelon that was cut open all fancy and filled with balls of fruit. And the kitchen table was crowded with desserts. I’d never seen so much food in one place before. I grabbed a paper plate and started to help myself to a little bit of everything.
Sam snorted behind me. “You can come back for seconds, you know,” she said.
“I might have to,” I said, dumping a scoop of pasta and pepperoni on my plate. I was running out of room on my plate already.
Sam shrugged. “Whatever. One thing I can say for these people, they do know how to cook.”
Yeah. I sort of got that.
We grabbed napkins, plastic forks, and bottles of pop, then we took all our stuff out through the sliding glass door. There was a big picnic table in the middle of the deck, but Sam and I headed for a couple of chairs at the far end.
“Can you believe all these people?” I asked as I stuck my wad of chewed gum on the edge of my plate. I’d only seen family gatherings like this one on TV. “I wonder what it’s like around here at Christmastime.”
“Loud,” Sam replied.
“You’ve been here for Christmas?”
“Unfortunately, yes. It’s pretty crazy. Everyone opens all their presents at once, so in a matter of seconds the whole living room is covered with wrapping paper and empty boxes. Then, while the parents are cooking dinner, all the kids fight over their new toys and everyone starts crying.”
It actually sounded kind of nice to me. Except for the everyone-starts-crying part. My Christmases with Joe were always pretty quiet. There were never enough presents to cover a living room chair, much less a floor. And before we moved in with Gram, we never cooked Christmas dinner. We always found a church that had free food and we ate there. It was never very good, though. The turkey was always dry, the potatoes runny, and the green beans mushy. I bet they never had dry turkey around here.
“They seem like a really close family,” I said. I watched through the glass door as moms and dads dished up food for all those little kids.
“Yeah, I guess,” Sam said, stirring the pasta around on her plate.
“What?” I asked. “Do you feel weird around them because you’re kind of the outsider?”
“No. That’s not it.”
A bunch of dads and kids came outside with plates of food. They all spread out in small groups around the picnic table, on the deck stairs, and under trees out in the yard.
Since we weren’t alone anymore, Sam leaned over and whispered, “It’s like I said at the pizza place yesterday. Mom just keeps pushing all these people on me. She thinks it’s so great that we’re getting this whole extended family, and now she wants to do everything with them. That’s fine for her, but I hardly know these people. I just don’t feel what she feels.”
“I … can understand that,” I said. I wondered if it ever occurred to Sam that that might be exactly how I felt about her and her mom?
“So, how did they meet, anyway?” I asked as I popped the last bite of my hamburger into my mouth.
Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “My mom and Bob? You don’t know?”
Why did she think I knew all this stuff about her family?
She leaned toward me again. “They met when you … disappeared. Bob was the cop who came to our house and told us you’d … fallen into the quarry.”
I stopped chewing. They met because of me?
“They didn’t start going out right away,” she went on. “I don’t remember when they started dating. But that’s how they met.”
“Hey!” one of the dads shouted at us from the middle of the yard. Dan, I think his name was. “You two want to play ball?” He held up a fat, red plastic bat. All the dads and kids watched us expectantly.
“No thanks,” Sam said right away.
“Oh, come on,” one of the other dads said. “We’re outnumbered out here. We could use a couple more players on our team.”
“No way!” The tallest of the kids spoke up. He held a white plastic ball in his hand. “It’s kids against the grownups. They’re kids, so they’re on our team.”
“Yeah! They’re on our team.” A girl with a long blond ponytail stomped her foot.
“I don’t know,” one of the dads said. “I think they should be on our team. If they play.”
“Let’s play,” I said to Sam.
She looked at me like I was crazy. “Why?”
I shrugged. “Why not?” We were basically done eating. What else was there to do?
“We’re like twice as old as all those other kids,” Sam whispered.
“So?” I set my napkin and empty Coke bottle on my plate. “You don’t have to play if you don’t want to, but I’m going to.” I clomped down the deck stairs.
“Yay!” the kids cheered. “She’s playing!”
A second and a half later Sam followed me, and the kids cheered even
louder.
“Will you be on our team?” A little girl in a yellow dress looked up at me with big brown eyes. “I think you should because you’re not all growed up yet.”
“Yeah,” I said, resisting the urge to ruffle her hair. “We’ll be on your team.” I thought Dan and the other dads needed some competition.
Sam and I went to join the kids behind home plate. Apparently kids bat first around here. “The deck stairs are first base,” Dan told everyone. “The maple tree is second. The post with the two bird feeders is third base. And home is right over there.” He pointed to a Frisbee someone had placed on the lawn. “Got it?”
“Sure,” I said. I hoped third base didn’t get knocked over.
The game started and I quickly found out this wasn’t the cutthroat kids-against-parents thing that I expected. Those dads weren’t even trying! They sort of baby-stepped along behind their giggly kids when the kids were running bases. They missed throws on purpose. Even when Sam and I were up to bat, none of them made any real effort to get the ball. It was insulting.
Bob’s brother Rick was the worst. The ball I hit went right to him. He held out his hands to catch it … and the ball dropped right between his open hands and rolled a few feet behind him. “Oops,” he said, looking around and pretending he didn’t know where the ball was.
“Oh, come on,” I said as I stood there at home plate. “Why are you letting us win?” Joe never let me win just because I was a kid. I remember when I was little and Joe always beat me whenever we played Horse. If I got upset, he’d ask, Do you really want me to let you win, T. J.? I’d say yes, but it didn’t matter. He never slacked off just so I could win.
All of a sudden Rick picked up that ball and slammed it over to Bob’s brother Tim, who was on first base.
“Looks like you’re out, T.J.,” Tim said with a grin.
“See? We’re not letting you win,” Rick put in.
Oh, what? Now they were playing for real? But we should’ve had about twenty-three outs by then, so it was hard to get too mad.
After that they were a little tougher on Sam and me, but they let their kids get away with murder! It was still sort of fun, though. How cool to be in a family where there were actually enough people for a baseball game.
Yes, I Know the Monkey Man Page 9