“You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“Of course not. But I had to tell him Field was ours.”
“What did he say?”
“He got all moody, the way he gets, and you kind of know he’s somewhere else in his head. He never said anything about him being ours, just that his tongue was black and that means he’s part Chow, and he needed food. That was all.”
California knelt and wrapped her arms around Field’s neck. “So, he knows about Field. And it’s okay. That’s good, Annie. I’m glad.” The shiny-sparkly smile was back. “And I’m glad you didn’t get hit by that bullet.”
“Your grandfather said you were sick. What was wrong?”
“Puh. Egg salad.”
“Egg salad?”
“Yeah, the ladies at the hospital always give me lunch. They feel sorry for me, having to traipse all over the city with Grandfather every week. They gave me egg salad. I have a rule: never eat egg salad unless I make it myself. I started puking before we even got home.”
“From the train fumes?”
“Huh?”
“Your grandfather said the train fumes make you sick. Was that it? Or the egg salad?”
She swiped at the air with her hand and scowled. “Does it matter? I was sick.”
I let it go. But something dark settled over me. Something I knew I’d have to think about later.
California handed me a sandwich and unwrapped hers—plain jam, made from the last of the raspberries. She took one bite, then pulled off a piece for Field.
“How was Piper?”
“Fine. Still wouldn’t come here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Whatever.”
“So we still have the attic and your grandfather’s room to go through, right?”
“You know, sometimes this all feels pointless. Maybe we should quit.”
“We can’t let it go now.”
California sprang from the ground. “Don’t you see? There’s nothing that’s going to help me get her home. It’s a waste of time. Obviously something else happened after she left this magical-fairyland existence, something really bad that’s kept her away. Grandfather tried to find her, he tried to bring her home, and she didn’t come. I was thinking when we were in New York, he’s never once asked her to come back. I’m the only one who cares, and I’m the only one who doesn’t know why. What does he know that makes him not ask her?”
She stood in front of me with her fists pressed into her hips, her nostrils flaring and eyes wet.
“Okay, calm down. Let’s think on this a little before deciding to quit. We should keep looking for the ponies until we figure something else out.”
She turned away, her head down and one hand on Field as he walked beside her. She’d work off a little steam, and things would right themselves again, like they always did. I followed her deep into a cramped, dark part of the woods we hadn’t explored before when my foot got stuck in a twisted vine.
“Wait up. I’m all tangled in something.”
“Hurry,” she mumbled. “My head is killing me.”
I bent down to unravel the woody vine, and right there, right in front of me, was a pile of something that looked suspiciously like horse manure.
“Hey, what’s this?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Aren’t you done yet?”
“Look!”
She followed the direction of my finger. It took a few seconds before she saw it, before all that energy she’d been using to be upset shot her forward like a racehorse bolting out of a starting gate.
“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod, they were here!” She ran to the pile, her face lit up, and big, fat tears rolled down her cheeks. “Peaches and Cream—they’re real, Annie. They’re still here. We’re going to find them. We really are!”
California danced around on her tiptoes, pointing at the ground, laughing, and crying, and laughing even more from someplace way deep inside her. I’d seen California happy—most of the time she was happy. But this—this kind of happiness I’d never seen from anyone, anywhere, anytime. Never.
She pressed her hands, one on top of the other, against her heart. “Now she’ll come home for sure.”
Something whacked the back of my brain, hard.
Guilt.
Shame.
Until that second, when every bit of hope she’d been holding inside bubbled out of her and spilled like sunshine on the dark earth, I’d never really believed we would find those ponies. I never thought for sure they were still alive. And I’d never understood how desperately California believed that by finding them, her mother would come home. I never really knew how much she hurt.
My friendship with California was all about me—the adventures, the farm, the freedom it gave me from Mom—the kind of summer I’d only dreamed about. I’d gone along with all her crazy ideas because it meant I got to climb trees and swim in a river, heal a sick dog and hold a baby chick, and feel what it was like to grow up on a real farm, the way I’d always wanted. She took me away from spreadsheets, and from choking. She was healing me. It was all about me. It had never been for her.
I had never really believed.
I hadn’t been a real friend.
She pushed the brown lumps around with a stick. “This is no more than a week old, Annie. The ponies could be right around the corner, or down that hill.”
She took off, snapping twigs under her feet and swiping at branches. I followed close behind, not because I thought the ponies really would be right around the next bend, but because of what that tiny bit of hope did for her. And because I knew for sure there was something she wasn’t telling me. Something that made bringing Piper home so much more important for her than I could imagine.
TWENTY-FIVE
I’d barely gotten inside the house when the Radcliffes’ car pulled in the driveway. Mrs. Radcliffe burst through the door behind me.
“Oh, hello, Annabel. Here now, be a love, take this to your dad, would you?”
She thrust a giant basket of fruit into my arms, then disappeared into the kitchen with two bottles of clear alcohol and her Bartender’s Guide book. A colorful Get Well mylar balloon bopped me in the face.
Tommy pushed the balloon aside and smiled. “Hey.” No sign of Sam-from-Savannah.
“Hey,” I said. We stood awkwardly in the entryway like a couple of idiots until the Gordons and the Maxwells came through the doorway.
“Hello, Annabel! Hello, Tommy!” Mrs. Gordon said in her cheery British accent. Mr. Gordon liked to tell how he imported a good English woman to marry him so he could listen to her talk for the rest of his life. As much practice as he got, I wasn’t sure if he still thought it was a wise choice. “It’s so good to see you, darlings, so good. Oh, my goodness, there’s your mum slaving away in the kitchen, I’ll go help her. Hello, Vicky . . .”
Mr. Maxwell handed Tommy a platter of sandwiches, and Mrs. Maxwell came up behind him with a vase of red tulips in her arms.
“Hello, hello, how the heck are you?”
No one waited for me to answer before heading to the kitchen. Tommy followed them, and I took the basket to Dad, who was still propped up on the couch.
“Hey, Pumpkin! We’re having company. Did we tell you that?”
“No.”
“Oh, well, a little get-together. Mom said it’s for me, but you and I know it’s really for her, right? I think Tommy’s coming.”
“He’s here.” I sat down next to him. “Do I have to stay?”
“I’d like for you to,” he said. “I don’t see enough of you these days. Everything going okay?”
I nodded again and rested my head on his shoulder.
“Good to know. California okay?”
I shrugged because, really, I wasn’t sure. Dad squeezed my hand.
“Hey, go help Mom, okay? She’s got that whole crowd in there with her. Give her a hand.”
“Do I have to? She loves that attention. She doesn’t need me.”
“It would mak
e her happy, Pumpkin. Would you do it, for me?”
“Okay.” I sighed. “But only because you’re broken.”
Right as I got up, all the guests filtered into the living room, making their way straight for Dad. I made a speedy exit. Mom was alone in the kitchen putting glasses on a tray.
“Annie, there you are. We have company,” she said. As if I couldn’t tell. “Take these to the bar for Mr. Radcliffe. Oh, and Tommy’s here.” She reached for my face, started to say something, but stopped herself and frowned instead.
“No one told me you were having a party. You could have said something.”
“I didn’t know we were supposed to ask your permission,” she said. “You may not have noticed, but the world doesn’t revolve around you all the time.”
The truth behind her words stung. I picked up the tray and went into the living room in time to hear Dad telling everyone about his fall, and something that included my name that made everyone laugh.
“Hey, Pumpkin, I was just saying how lucky you are that you don’t have to play tennis with me now.” He winked and motioned to his foot. Every one of them, including Tommy, turned to stare at me.
“I heard you.”
They all converged on me at once, hovering a breath away, saying things like “Oh, Annabel, it’s good to see you. You look terrific,” and “The beach isn’t the same without you there every day,” and “Where have you been all summer?”
They couldn’t leave it there. Mrs. Radcliffe got all up in my face, smiling really wide, a dot of red lipstick smeared on her front tooth.
“Annabel, tell us about Jody McMurtry’s granddaughter. What’s she like?”
Of course, Mrs. Radcliffe said it right as Mom stepped into the room holding a little china dish of sliced lemons. Her eyes practically popped out of her face, and she took a sharp breath like I’d stabbed her in the heart.
“Who?”
She didn’t say it like a normal person would say who, but like someone on the verge of hysteria. Mom’s disapproval of the McMurtrys was no secret. This was not the way I wanted her to find out about California.
But Mrs. Radcliffe couldn’t leave it alone. “Jody McMurtry’s granddaughter’s been here all summer. You must have known, Vicky. Annabel’s there all the time!”
Mom leaned against the wall, her face crimson. She stared at Dad, who could only shrug his shoulders in response to her silent question. Did you know? Everyone stared, but no one spoke. No one came to my rescue. The tray shook in my hands. The glasses clinked against each other. My knees felt weak. My throat tightened, but I couldn’t move out of the center of that crowd.
“I feel sick,” I said.
Mr. Radcliffe grabbed the tray. Mrs. Radcliffe helped me sit down, and Mrs. Gordon brought a cold washcloth. Someone handed me a glass of water. All the while I thought of Piper having a fight with her mother, and her mother dying in front of her, in front of Mr. McMurtry, maybe even dying right in front of these same people standing in our living room.
I didn’t want Mom to die. I wanted room to breathe. I wanted to make my own decisions, pick my own passions, study when I chose, and not clean my room if I didn’t feel like it. I wanted to decide by myself what I would be when I grew up. I wanted to think for myself, pick my own clothes, pick my own friends. But I never wanted to do anything that would make her die.
“I’m okay, Mom. Really. I think I forgot to eat or something.”
She didn’t move. She stayed propped against the wall, her mouth slightly open, eyeing me like I was an unwelcome stranger.
“Drop in blood sugar will do that, hon,” Mrs. Radcliffe cooed, the sleeve of her electric-blue muumuu flapping in my face. “Get her an orange or some peanut butter, Vicky. She’ll be fine.” She fanned me with a magazine. Mom didn’t move.
“Hey, Pumpkin,” Dad said. “You okay?” He knew I wasn’t. With Mom hearing this way about a secret we’d had all summer and her finding out because apparently everyone else already knew, no, I was not okay. I pulled my T-shirt away from my throat.
“I need to lie down,” I mumbled. “I’m going upstairs.”
Mom turned away and disappeared into the kitchen.
Mrs. Radcliffe said to Dad, “Annabel’s okay, Richard. Her skin is already all pink again, see?”
A fire under my feet couldn’t have made me run any faster up those stairs and into my room. I locked the door behind me, but I knew the second the last guest left, it was all over. Mom would never let me be associated with a member of Mr. McMurtry’s family, especially one with a renegade mother and sperm donor father. And she would never forgive Dad or me for keeping it a secret.
But she never came. I waited, watching the evening light change the same way it always did as if nothing was wrong with the world. Shadows fell across the wall and darkened the collection of rustic, wood-framed wildflowers Dad and I had pressed when I was seven. The light slowly changed from yellow to indigo, finally settling at black. I sat alone in the dark listening for sounds that would tell me the guests had gone and Mom would be coming to do battle. She never did.
The next morning I crept downstairs and peeked into the living room. Dad was asleep sitting up on the couch, his chin dropped to his chest. The noise coming from him this time was more of a quick snort-snort-purrrr kind of thing. Every time he got to the purrrr part, he startled. One of his arms was draped protectively over Mom, who lay curled on her side, her face pressed against the back of the couch. Her clothes were rumpled, and her Ferragamo sandals had been flung carelessly under the coffee table.
I touched Dad’s arm. He opened one eye and put a finger to his lips, pointing at Mom. I motioned to the door, and he waved me away.
“Are you sure?” I whispered. “Do you need me to bring you anything before I go?”
“Nope, I’m okay.” He settled against the sofa again and smoothed Mom’s hair with his hand.
“Dad?”
“Hmmm?”
“How well did you know California’s mother?”
“She was younger than me, but the family was active at the lake when they weren’t off at horse shows. She had show ponies. She moved away right after her mother died.”
“Do you know why she never came home?”
He stroked Mom’s forehead with the back of his hand. “No, I don’t. We never really heard where she’d gone, and her father shut himself away. No one that I know of ever knew anything about her. Until now. Where do they live?”
“Oregon. On a tree farm.”
“Wow, that’s a long way away.”
“How did Mrs. Radcliffe know about me being friends with California?”
“She told Mom she’d seen you there a few times when she drove to town.”
“How’d Mom take that?”
Mom groaned and turned on her back. Dad whispered, “It’s not as bad as you think. Go on about your day. Just be home early. We’ll talk tonight.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice.
TWENTY-SIX
I worried the whole way to the farm. What if Mom woke up all crazy and decided to drive to Mr. McMurtry’s to make a big scene and drag me home? Dad wouldn’t be able to stop her since he was broken. The last thing I wanted was to add more drama to California’s and Mr. McMurtry’s lives. They’d had enough. So had I.
I found them both behind the house. Mr. McMurtry puttered around in those big, black boots that used to scare me. Now, after spending so many weeks of the summer around him, I loved those boots. They always had bits of earth from the herb garden or slivers of corn silk stuck to the heels. Mom would scoff at those boots if she saw them, like she scoffed at the unsightly cedar tree.
Field lay sprawled in front of the doghouse Mr. McMurtry had built, lapping water from a bowl. The only thing left from his injury was a limp Mr. McMurtry said would probably be permanent. California came out of the chicken coop with a basket over one arm. Her hair was braided into two thick chunks, her cheeks pink again, and when she saw me trotting down the d
riveway, she held up the basket to show me two white and two pale-brown eggs on the bottom.
“Grandfather, can Annie have breakfast with us?”
Mr. McMurtry stopped and bowed his head. “Good morning, Annabel. Of course, Catherine. If Annabel can stomach my pancakes, she is more than welcome.”
He took the basket and disappeared inside the kitchen. Their cheerfulness put me at ease. Surely, Mom couldn’t complain about a friendship with people this nice.
“Catherine, Annabel, ugh.” California smacked her forehead. “I guess we have to pick and choose our battles, right? He isn’t ever going to call us by our real names. We should make something up for him, something funny, that only we’ll understand.”
I clicked my heels and saluted. “How about the Captain?”
California tilted her face toward the sun and laughed. Lacy flew from the coop and perched on top of a post, ruffling her new feathers. Field wandered over and sniffed my hand, asking for treats. The smell of bacon and coffee drifted from the kitchen. How could anything bad have ever happened on that farm?
“He’s going to buy fencing supplies this morning,” she whispered before we went in. “As soon as he leaves, we’ll check out the attic and his room. I feel positive we’re going to find something important today. I know it, Annie. Don’t you?”
Inside, Mr. McMurtry ladled batter onto a griddle with one hand and lifted thick slices of bacon from a pan with the other. Butter sizzled in a cast-iron skillet on the back burner. A jar of periwinkle wildflowers rested on the windowsill, and every few minutes he stuck his nose in them. Something was different, something I couldn’t see, only feel. The entire room vibrated with happy. I cleared a chair and sat down.
“Grandfather, can you make Annie one with the funny face?”
“Do we have berries?” He flipped a pancake and drizzled bacon grease around the edge.
She handed him a clear bowl piled high with blueberries. “Here you go, Captain.” She patted his shoulder lightly, then went to the fridge and poured us each a glass of orange juice, picked a handful of forks and knives out of a basket on the counter, and laid them on the table along with three plates.
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