Separated

by Shane Peacock

  I moved quickly down the street and got out of the commercial area in no time and then onto the waterfront street to the hotel. It couldn’t have taken me more than ten or fifteen minutes. I was surprised at the short distance I’d walked. Earlier, it had seemed like I’d been going forever, deep into the city’s center.

  The hotel appeared even more imposing than it had before, big and sophisticated and kind of glowering, very…Swedish. But I imagined the whole building was DJ and walked right through the front doors, moving so fast and intently that the doorman didn’t even have time to turn to grab me.

  Then DJ was at the front desk. I made for it. The same guy was standing there, blond and large and beginning to frown as he caught sight of me. I didn’t care. I needed the puck. I was going to smack him and take it from him!

  “Look,” I said and was a little shocked to hear that my voice was shaky, “I’m staying here, okay? And you can’t send me away. I’M STAYING WITH MY GRANDFATHER, DAVID McLEAN!”

  The guy started to open his mouth but no sound came out—at least, not from him. It came from across the lobby.

  “Adam?”

  I turned around, and the guy behind the desk and I looked in the same direction, out toward an armchair. Someone was sitting in it, a newspaper in hand, assuming the color of the wall, watching what was going on around him, calm like James Bond. He got up and turned to us.

  It was Grandpa.

  “Adam! Where the heck have you been? I’ve been searching all over for you.” He started walking toward me, arms outstretched. “When I came back to our seats at the rink, you’d gone, my boy!” He clasped me in a warm hug. Man, did it feel good. I just snuggled into him…and tried not to cry.

  “Why,” I stammered, “why aren’t you out in the streets looking for me?”

  “I figured you’d gotten someone, maybe a policeman, to take you back here, so I came back as fast as I could. It’s only been about an hour or so. I was getting a little worried though.”

  “An hour or so?” It hadn’t seemed like that, and when I looked up at the big clock behind the desk, I could see that it had been a bit longer than that, closer to two hours. Man, he seemed relaxed about it all.

  “I knew you could handle yourself. And Stockholm’s a pretty safe place.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I said quickly. “It’s full of crime and shady people and trouble.”

  He laughed. “Adam, have you been reading my crime novels?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean you actually had, my boy, but you’ve got your imagination going overtime. I guess that’s just your way. Sweden is a lovely place, and Stockholm is as safe as any city in the world—much, much safer than Buffalo. The police are very helpful. Any citizen too. I’m sure you asked for help…didn’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s with the torn pants and the dirty shirt?”

  I was glad his sense of smell was almost gone. War wound, probably.

  “Uh, I just slipped. Can we go to our room?”

  “Sure. I’ll order up some food, some hot chocolate and maybe some popcorn and drinks for later. How about a movie? James Bond?”

  NINETEEN

  The flight home was horrible. Oh, it was as smooth as sitting on a pillow, no turbulence. That wasn’t the problem. It was me. I kept thinking about us plummeting to the ocean far below, our faces distorted as we dropped at gut-wrenching speed, our tragedy a huge story on the news. When was I going to get over this sensitivity thing? It really ticked me off.

  The mighty David McLean noticed my unease. I know he did. But he didn’t say anything. He just sat there as calm as a monk, reading crime novels and news stories in a series of papers.

  “Grandpa, what do you really do on these trips?”

  He raised an eye. “Really do? What do you mean by that?”

  “All that time you spent away from me in the morning, what were you doing? You never once told me anything about it, no details.”

  He laughed. “Adam, you are twelve years old. What do you think I should do, give you my business itinerary? You know I love to travel, always have, and luckily, I have friends everywhere. I’m blessed. I still like to fly, I like to see old acquaintances, and I still do a few deals.” He gave me a wry smile.

  “Deals?”

  “Business deals. There’s still some fight in the old fart, you know.” Grandpa was like that, a little salty-mouthed sometimes. Mom had had to rein him in around the cousins more than once, but we all loved it. He was pretty cool.

  “You, uh, you seemed awfully calm about me getting lost.” That had actually bothered me, even though I hadn’t said anything. I wished he’d run up to me and slapped me or something when I turned up at the hotel. Instead, he was just calm and together David McLean, as usual. As I thought more about it, I kind of wanted to scream at him.

  “Lean forward,” he said to me in a quiet voice. He looked awfully serious. I moved my ear right up to his mouth. “I had my people following you,” he whispered. “They were right on your trail the whole time, and there was nothing to be worried about.”

  I knew it! I hadn’t imagined that I was being followed! I pulled back and stared at him. He motioned for me to lean in again.

  “And if you believe that, I’ve got an elephant in my luggage, a real live one, which I caught on Sveavägen when he escaped from a circus, and I’m bringing him home for you to ride up and down the streets of Buffalo and then bring into school for show-and-tell.” He turned back and started reading his novel again

  I felt like an idiot. Well, not a total idiot, because it was my grandpa who’d just put me on and he never made me feel like I was anything but wonderful. All my cousins felt that way around him too. Who else would take us on a trip like he’d just treated me to? But I did feel a bit silly. And I still wasn’t happy about him being so calm about losing me. It was still ticking me off.

  “But you were awfully calm, Grandpa… it kind of…kind of upset me.”

  He stopped reading and looked at me, a big grin on his face. “Good for you,” he said. “Give me a shot.”

  “What?”

  “Give me a shot right on the shoulder, your best shot. I deserve it.”

  My grandfather was asking me to punch him.

  “Go ahead.”

  I let him have one, though I held back a little. After all, he’s really old. He took it well, didn’t utter a sound, though I think he felt it a bit. He grinned again.

  “I was actually pretty upset, Adam—very upset. I looked all over for you in the arena and had the police searching for you and let everyone at the Globe know where we were staying and came rushing back to the hotel and gave them a description of you and started searching around the Grand and out into Stockholm. I was so—what’s the word you use?—freaked-out that I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”

  “The guy at the desk didn’t seem to get the message.”

  “Well, I don’t think he was looking for a kid with grime on his face and a bloody knee and smelling of alcohol and, uh, poop. That wasn’t exactly the description I gave them.”

  “But you were calm when you finally saw me!”

  “I had just been outside, coming back from searching, and was thinking about putting out an alert for you in the city…when I saw you walking back into the hotel, looking kind of dazed, talking to yourself, actually. I sneaked into the lobby behind you and pretended to be reading the newspaper.”

  “You did? How come you didn’t tell me that until now?”

  “Tell you all this before? Where is the fun in that?”

  I stared at him for a second and then we both broke into a laugh.

  “All’s well that ends well,” he said, quoting somebody, and he gave me a big hug.

  We crossed the Atlantic and landed in Buffalo. Mom and Dad were there to meet me, and neither Grandpa nor I said a word about what had happened. It was our secret.

  But I had an even bigger secret, one that even D
avid McLean didn’t know about—a girl named Greta, real or not.

  * * *

  Before we parted the next day at our house, Grandpa and I had a farewell hug.

  “You really had me going back there in Sweden,” I said. “I really thought you hadn’t cared that much about me getting lost.”

  “Well, I did. But in the end, it was good for you. Remember what I told you about growing up. It’s time for you to do that. Some troubles aren’t a bad thing, even some big troubles, even being in danger and being really afraid. You’ll experience it all in life, and how you react to it will determine the kind of man you will become.” Then he paused for a second, just before he walked away. “In fact,” he said, “it wouldn’t have been such a bad thing if I’d abandoned you on purpose for a while. Someday, you know, Adam, I’ll be gone.”

  He gave me a very strange grin, clapped me on the back and walked away.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks go to all the good folks at Orca Book Publishers, who enthusiastically supported the idea, development and creation of Seven (the series) and the Seven Sequels and now our Seven Prequels. It has been quite a ride. First among those at Orca to thank is the boss himself, Andrew Wooldridge, whose dedication this time extends to the brave task of editing all seven novels. Dayle Sutherland and Jen Cameron have also been great allies, instrumental in spreading the word about our wonderful projects. Working with the extraordinarily talented Gang of Seven—Norah McClintock, Sigmund Brouwer, Richard Scrimger, Ted Staunton, Eric Walters and John Wilson—has been not only an adventure but also educational, both onstage and at the computer! It is great when respected colleagues are also good friends. And final thanks to Sweden, a land much like our own and metaphorically like David McLean—full of secrets.

  SHANE PEACOCK is a biographer, journalist, screenwriter and the author of more than a dozen books for young readers, including The Boy Sherlock Holmes series, The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim and The Artist and Me. His work has won many honors, including the Geoffrey Bilson Award, the Libris Award and two Arthur Ellis Awards for Crime Fiction. His novel Becoming Holmes was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. Shane and his wife live with their three children on a small farm near Cobourg, Ontario, where he continues to search for and imagine larger-than-life characters. Separated is the prequel to Last Message, Shane’s novel in Seven (the series).

  SEE WHERE ADAM GOES NEXT IN AN EXCERPT FROM LAST MESSAGE FROM SEVEN (THE SERIES).

  MATTERS OF CONSEQUENCE

  “He’ll never amount to much.”

  That’s what he said. In fact, it was the last thing he said about me.

  I tried not to resent him as I sat with my mother and father in the gloomy, wood-paneled room in his lawyer’s office in Toronto, Canada, fifty floors up in the clouds. It wasn’t the appropriate time to resent him, not at all. I very much doubted that anyone else in the room had even remotely similar feelings. He was dead, after all, freshly flown off on his final adventure into the skies, so fit and “with it” that we were all shocked to hear of his death…at age ninety-two.

  My aunts, one uncle and five cousins—most of the McLean family, in fact—were gathered around too, restless in big leather chairs. I assumed they were thinking about how great he had been. They were right. I held my bottom lip tightly, though I think it was quivering a little. All three of my aunts had Kleenex in hand, and their faces were pretty red. My Uncle Jerry sat stoically, his mouth in a straight line, and my cousins, all boys, were looking down at the floor or up at the ceiling, not making eye contact with anyone, likely deathly afraid they might start to cry. Even DJ, the oldest grandson (actually only a few minutes older than his twin Steve, but much more mature) who liked to think of himself as kind of the leader of our generation, seemed a little shaky. I think Canadians are a bit wimpy anyway, despite what they can do on the ice.

  Mom and Dad looked different. They’re really strong people, just like Grandpa, and it showed in their faces. We were the American branch of the family, maybe that was why. We had converted Mom, who was born up here. She was her father’s favorite; everyone knew that, so you’d think she’d be the most upset. But you wouldn’t know it if you saw her today. She was holding herself together, looking as calm as I’m sure Grandpa was (Canadian, but no wimp) when he flew one of his missions over France, or as Dad looked the day he landed his American Airlines Airbus at Kennedy Airport on one engine, with three hundred passengers on board.

  The blinds were drawn in the room, keeping the bright Canadian morning out. Other than the odd sniffle, no one was saying anything. An old, upright clock ticked loudly in a corner.

  It wasn’t that I wasn’t sad. I was. And it wasn’t that I didn’t love my grandfather. I definitely did. I knew I would miss him hugely, we all would. You’d have to be a robot not to. But I just wished he hadn’t said that about me. And I wished it wasn’t the last thing I heard out of his mouth. I had enough issues without that…though I think I’ve hidden them pretty well.

  The McLean family was used to getting together for much happier occasions. Grandpa was always the center of things, even when he was really old… just like today, when you think of it. He never shut up and he never stopped moving. He had a story for and about everything and anything, and they were always well told. But then again, he had a lot to work with—if you wanted to know about being shot at over Nazi-occupied France, sky-high adventures in Iceland, or flying dangerous sorties in Eastern Africa, he was your guy.

  I remember the last time we were all in one place, just last summer up near his cottage in the Muskoka Lakes district in the province of Ontario, where lots of movie stars had huge holiday homes. I heard Tom Cruise had property up that way, and (of course) loads of hockey stars summered in those parts too. The cottage was a special McLean place, and we’d had all kinds of fun there over the years. But the highlight for just about everyone but me was the day a few years back when we met in a field near the lake so Grandpa could fly his airplane in and take his grandsons up for a ride. It was one of the last times he flew—one of the final missions in his incredible career. I, uh, remember it all too well.