He did not seem to notice Martha. She climbed the stairs and closed her door behind her. She did not want to think about her mother. She did not want to think about that boy. Book the Fifth was there on the bed, but a certain disagreeable-looking child was calling to her, drowning out the voices of the Baudelaires. She opened The Secret Garden at page one.
Hours passed before the tap on her door. Doug this time, on his own. He had a small wrapped gift in his hand. A small gift wrapped in silver embossed paper and tied with thick shining ribbon. Martha scrambled up to sit on the bed, her insides melting into mush as she did so. She took the package from Doug and looked up at him, waiting for him to go. He sat down beside her.
She began to untie the ribbon, taking care, as her mother always did, and buying time, as she needed to at this moment. She didn’t want to cry in front of Doug. Putting the ribbon aside, she started on the paper. Doug shifted beside her.
“You don’t have to stay,” she said, surprised at how normal her voice sounded.
“I want to,” he replied. “Your dad asked me to tell you something about it once you’ve opened it.
It was a camera. A small pale green camera. It could shoot video too. And it was gorgeous. Martha felt a small rush of the old familiar Christmas excitement. Mixed with relief. They loved her. They had thought of her. They had got something special just for her.
She started working away at the cellophane wrapping on the box.
“Your dad said that you could bring it to the hospital when the baby’s born. You can be the family photographer!” Doug said.
The box sat on her lap, and her hands grasped it lightly. The baby. Even this gift that had found its way to her in another kid’s bedroom in a strange house was all about the baby. The familiar rush of warm fuzzy feelings—they all evaporated. The scratchy rock was back.
“Thanks, Doug,” she said. “I’m going to read a bit more now, if that’s okay.” She pasted on a bright smile. “I love the book Angie gave me!”
Doug stayed seated for a moment. “All right,” he said. “I could help you get that camera working this afternoon, if you like.”
“Sure,” Martha said, hoping he could tell that she was just being polite.
And he was gone.
This time, neither Mary Lennox nor the Baudelaire children had anything to offer her. She pushed the camera box onto the floor, turned over and curled up on her side, pulling her knees up to her chin, and stared at the wall.
And stared at the wall some more.
The problem was that when she did that her mind filled right up. There was her mother, in a hospital bed. She shoved the image away. There was Martha in the hospital snapping photo after photo of a perfect little baby wrapped all in pink. She replaced it with an image of Louise gumming her food. That helped a bit. There was her dad telling Doug where to find the stocking and the parcel. And that brought her scrambling up, back against the wall. Her chest heaved and she was sobbing. Sobbing right out loud.
They hadn’t called. It was the middle of the afternoon, and they still hadn’t called. Something was wrong. It had to be.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Martha scrubbed at her face with her hands and slid off the bed. Someone tapped on her door, and she opened it a crack. Just a crack. And peered out. She snatched the phone from the hand, barely even noticing whose hand it was, and pushed the door shut.
“Dad?” she said into the receiver, eager, breathless, frightened—no—terrified.
“Sweetheart, it’s me!” a voice said. “Merry Christmas!”
For the longest moment, Martha had no idea who was speaking to her.
“You’ll never guess where I am,” the voice went on. “Maui!”
Linda. It was Linda. Martha held the phone away and looked at it, trying to understand. The voice kept right on coming at her, even across the space. She put the phone back to her ear.
“Brad surprised me yesterday. He had the tickets. We flew down here last night. Your dad gave me the number to call to reach you. And guess what? We’re getting married today. Today!”
A pause. At last Linda seemed to notice Martha’s silence. “Martha, are you there?”
“Merry Christmas, Linda,” Martha said numbly, “and congratulations.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to wear. I mean, I did bring a dress, but it’s not really a wedding dress. And it’s so warm here. Do you think I should go shopping?”
“Sure,” Martha said. What do I care? she thought.
“You know, now that we’re going to be married, Brad wants to start a family right away—” Linda broke off, and Martha heard her suck in a big breath. “Oh, honey, your dad told me Denise is in the hospital. I’m so sorry. Is she going to be all right? And the baby—”
It was wrong. It was just wrong, and Martha wasn’t going to allow it anymore. Not for one more second.
“My mom,” she said. “She’s my mom. Not Denise. I have to go now. Have a nice wedding.” And with no assistance from her, Martha’s finger reached out and pressed the Off button. She put the receiver back to her ear.
Dial tone. Martha remembered the bag with Linda’s gift back at the house. Oh, well.
CHAPTER 12
Crows at Sunset
She didn’t even have time to sit back down on the bed before the phone rang again. She stared at it, grasped in her hand. What would she say? How would she explain hanging up like that?
She pressed the Talk button. “Hello,” she said.
“Hi there,” Dad said.
Tears just flew out of her eyes. “Hi,” she replied, hoping that her voice didn’t sound too wobbly.
“Merry Christmas, sweetheart. I’m so sorry that you have to be there all by yourself.”
The tears settled down right away to a steady flow. “Merry Christmas, Dad,” Martha replied. “It’s okay. How…how’s Mom?”
Was that a pause? Did Dad’s voice just sound worried? Or was he scared too?
“Well, Martha. It looks like your sister is going to be born right on Christmas Day! Your mom’s going in for a Caesarean in an hour.”
“A Caesarean?”
“It’s a special procedure to take the baby out.”
Martha couldn’t quite absorb what he was telling her. And she didn’t like the word procedure! Then her father shocked her.
“She’s right here, and she wants to say hello.”
For the tiniest second, Martha thought he meant the baby!
And then a different voice was speaking to her.
“Merry Christmas, Martha,” Mom said.
For a long moment Martha couldn’t speak, she was crying so hard. She drew in a breath and heard sniffling through the phone. Mom was crying too.
Why was Mom crying?
“Are you…Are you going to be okay?” Martha said and wanted to bite back the words.
“I’m going to be fine, Martha. Just fine.”
Dad’s voice replaced Mom’s, and Martha sucked back her tears. Nothing about this conversation felt “just fine.”
“Honey, is Doug there, or Angie?” Dad said.
Martha made her way downstairs to the kitchen and put the phone into Doug’s hand. She did not stay to listen to what was said.
In the living room, the lights sparkled on the tree, and her golden ball and Chance’s silver one spun when she touched them. The smell of roasting turkey filled the house. Martha wasn’t sure if that smell was comforting or not. She wandered to the window and pulled aside the curtain, which was already drawn at four in the afternoon.
She stood, the curtain still in her hand, and stared. The sky was brilliant orange, almost the color of a Christmas mandarin, and the river below the house was deep in mist.
She looked around the room. Empty. Doug and Angie were in the kitchen. She could hear the murmur of Doug’s voice, still talking into the phone. Louise must be napping. And the boys just weren’t there.
Martha walked—bold, daring—straight to the front door, grabbed he
r coat from the hook, shoved her feet in her shoes and left the house. She knew that if she asked anyone, they would tell her that she couldn’t go down to the river alone. They would keep her at home or offer to come with her. “You know the rules,” Doug had said. “Stay with the group.”
Well, Martha was tired of rules. She did not want to be with any group, not now, not them. The mist was calling her to the river. The mist and the stillness. And the orange bits of sky.
As she came to the path along the river’s edge, she gazed out into the mist and saw lumps floating everywhere. Lumps that became sleeping ducks when she looked a second time. She set off along the trail. People who passed her looked about for her adult, but Martha didn’t care. She was old enough and big enough and confident enough that no one said a word. She walked on. She had planned to explore the quay, but a mist-shrouded couple was already there, so she kept to the shore.
The mist had cleared a bit close by, or perhaps she had walked out of it, for she saw a pale blue canoe tied up to a log below the quay, and she saw the water now, dead calm, like glass, like a mirror. Its orange surface drove her gaze upward to the sky, which was a place in itself, all clouds and color. Then she heard the cawing. She looked higher still.
Crows. A murder of them. She loved that they were called that, a murder. She had learned it after her encounter with the hungry crow at the Discovery Center. They were crossing the river, high, high in the sky, passing right over her head. They were going home, back to the woods near Boundary Road. That was what Doug had told her that day. They were coastal crows, and they used to live way far west near the beaches. Now they lived right in between Vancouver and Burnaby. Thousands and thousands of them. As she watched, the crows above her flew on, at least a hundred of them. She looked back the way they had come. And saw more. Many, many more. All coming from the same place. All flying in the same direction, streaming for their roosts.
She fixed her gaze on the far side of the river behind the last of the crows. Moments passed. Then black specks appeared, as if someone had sprinkled pepper on the sky. The specks turned into more crows, approaching across the water. She watched. Another forty specks. Then another.
“What are you watching?”
Martha turned, startled and angry all in an instant. It was Doug.
“Crows,” she said.
He looked blank.
She sighed. “There,” she said, pointing at the bank of clouds on the far side of the river. “Watch.”
Moments later, they gasped together.
“At sunset,” Doug said, “the crows go home to roost.”
Martha ignored him.
She was determined to see them all, every last one.
He didn’t seem to mind.
During a time when the sky was empty, she gazed sideways at her unwelcome companion. “See the ducks?” she said.
He looked where they floated, heads tucked, far from shore, in the middle of the sunset. The river blazed as orange as the sky.
“The river is so calm,” he said. “They feel safe out there.”
“Maybe they like the mist,” Martha said.
“Maybe they do.”
Man and girl looked back to the sky. Empty.
“Time to go home,” Doug said. “Angie is worried. And so is Chance.”
Martha scoffed. She had never really known what scoff meant until that moment. Now she did. It meant the way her whole face and body contracted against what Doug was saying.
Chance was not worried. Maybe…maybe Angie was. But not Chance.
He was out in the street, waiting for them as they climbed the hill.
“You can’t just go off like that!” he shouted as they approached.
Martha strode right past him, trying to hide her heavy breathing. It was a very steep hill. Doug huffed and puffed behind her. Chance followed Martha up the steps and into the house.
“You can’t! You know you can’t.”
Mark was setting the dining table.
“Come on, Chance. Let up on her,” Mark said. “Hey, Martha, what were you doing out there? Mom and Dad were really worried.”
Martha was already marching up the stairs. “Your mother and father do not have to worry about me,” she said. The next minute, she had closed her (Chance’s) door behind her and was stretching out on the narrow bed, letting herself drift. Crows and ducks. An orange sky.
She started awake. How much time had passed? Would her mother be having that “procedure,” whatever it was called, right now? Right this minute?
Crows. Crows and ducks. An orange sky.
What were the crows saying to each other, high above her? Maybe she could get someone to take her to see those crows roosting one night. Then, in her mind, something big moved beneath the water. Something old. A sturgeon. A sturgeon swam beneath those sleeping ducks without waking a single one. She remembered the diving bird. It had seen the sturgeon. She was sure of it. She could almost feel the fish as it swam by, smooth and cool and wet against her skin. She shivered.
And jumped as a sharp knock sounded on her door.
Angie and Doug had come together. Martha had to sit up straight on the bed and face them. Did no one around here wait to be invited in?
In her mind, the sturgeon sank back into the mud. The crows settled into faraway trees. The ducks pulled their heads from beneath their wings and paddled off to find a more peaceful sleeping spot.
With them gone, her mother and her “procedure” pushed their way in.
Martha gave her head a shake, trying to draw comfort from the heavy shift of her hair. She knew why Angie and Doug were there, and she knew what she was supposed to say.
“I shouldn’t have gone off like that.” She raised her eyes and opened them wide, trying to look really, really sorry. She liked the idea of Doug and Angie gazing into her eyes and marvelling at the depth of her regret.
“You’re right, Martha. You shouldn’t. We know you’re worried about your mother and the baby.”
Martha shook her head at them hard. Don’t talk about Mom. Don’t talk about Mom.
“But that doesn’t mean that you can do dangerous things. You’re only nine years old. We’re responsible for you. And you didn’t even tell us you were going. If Doug hadn’t seen you at the bottom of the hill, we might have called the police.”
Martha stared. The police? Were they crazy?
“All right,” Doug said. “That’s enough for now. I smell turkey!”
The rest of Christmas all fit into one small moment for Martha. It came while she was choking down a tiny serving of that delicious-smelling turkey.
The phone rang. Her fork clattered onto the table, and her chair almost tipped right over as she jumped up. This time they let her answer the phone herself.
“Dad?” she said.
“Ten fingers. Ten toes.” He oozed joy into the phone. The huge ball of fear inside Martha cracked open.
“Mom?”
“Your mom’s fine, honey. Just fine. They’re both sleeping now.”
Martha held the receiver in both hands. It turned out that balls of fear were full of salty water, and all that water had to come out. She didn’t have any words. All she had were tears. Maybe a million tears.
“I’m coming to get you on my way home,” Dad said. “And we’ll visit them together in the morning.” He paused. “Okay?”
Martha could manage that. “Okay,” she said, while the tears kept right on coming.
CHAPTER 13
New Baby
Martha knew that she should be excited. She had been last night, when Dad came to get her. She had lain awake for a long time, happy to be in her own bed, excited about seeing her mom. Surely now everything would be all right.
But in the morning, at breakfast, it all changed.
“Adrienne has the biggest eyes,” Dad said. “I’m sure she stared right at me yesterday, even though they say babies can’t see that far.”
“Mmhmm,” Martha said. She tried to imagine this
tiny new baby with her big eyes.
Adrienne?
“You named her?”
“It’s was my mother’s name. Your grandmother’s.”
Martha had never met any of her grandparents. They had all died before she was born. “Who was I named after?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.
Dad looked at her. “Linda chose your name, Martha. You know that.”
Why did you let her? Martha thought. Why did she get to name me?
Dad got up and carried their bowls to the sink. “I love your name, Martha,” he said. “And you’re named after your aunt Serena too. Also a beautiful name! Now let’s get a move on. Your mom can’t wait to see you!”
Martha was wondering why Serena was her middle name, not her first, when he added, “Do you have your camera?”
She swallowed hard and went to get it. She had brought the camera home still in the box, but Dad had asked for it right away and set it up for her, chattering the whole time about photographing that baby sister of hers.
All the way to the hospital, Dad went right on chattering. He described Adrienne. He said that Mom could come home in a day or two and Adrienne might be ready to come home in a week or ten days. She was in a special room and a special bed called an isolette because she had been born early. She needed to be in a place where she couldn’t catch any diseases, and she needed a little bit of help with her breathing.
Help with breathing? That caught Martha’s attention. It sounded scary.
“Will I be allowed to hold her?” Martha asked, though she was not at all sure she wanted to.
“Not right away, honey,” Dad said. “Like I said, she’s in a special room. And no children under twelve can go in. There is a window out to the hallway. You can see her through that.”
So Martha would not be allowed near the baby sister that she had never wanted. The car was a quiet place for a while, with Dad looking at her over his shoulder every minute or so. Then he took a breath and started talking about how much help Mom was going to need.
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