He started on the fiddly work: the cleaning of washers and bearings, dials and pins. Then he moved on. He seamlessly welded metal mechanisms. Tightened screws. Banged his hammer.
At last, he blotted his brow with a kerchief and assessed his progress.
Not so far away in a cozy little cottage,
Jessica had made up her mind on a whim.
She would pay Cobbleton an early visit.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Back at Nesbitt Cottage, Jessica folded the letter from Jeronicus in the dark of her bedroom.
It was Christmas Eve, and she felt unexplainably compelled to pay him an early visit, to see if maybe, just maybe, he’d changed. She caught her travel cloak and feathered hat in the mirror of her boudoir, and exhaled, then made her way to her front door, where she cut the lights, enveloping her cottage in darkness. She stepped out into the chill night air, suitcase clutched shakily in her gloved hand.
Moments later, she sat back in the omnibus that was jostling over the snowy countryside, and she re-read Jeronicus’s letter. It stated that he hoped they could make it work again, even if it wouldn’t be easy. Her father had never really seen her after her mother died. He’d shut her out for good, consumed with his inventions and with trying to keep his reputation as the greatest inventor from slipping through his fingers like snow, as she faded away. Staring out the window, she hoped this time would be different. Suitcase in hand, she exited the omnibus into Cobbleton.
Shopkeepers closed their doors and drew their blinds. Patrons left the Sisson Arms pub. Men loaded up wagons with heavy sacks. People shoveled snow and warmed hands over little coal fires. Newspapers were stacked on the street corner. She caught the headline: GUSTAFSON REVEALS A DISASTER. Carriages jostled by. Street workers swept. Vendors closed their trolleys and gathered around a fire as a blacksmith hammered at a horseshoe. Jessica emerged into the town square. It hadn’t changed from when she was last there as a young woman. Like her father said in his letter, she hoped they could make it work again, too.
She took a breath and entered the shop.
After looking everywhere, Jeronicus was in the very last place she had thought to check.
“Daddy.” Jessica stepped foot into his workshop.
He froze, then turned from his worktable and looked at her standing in the doorway. They regarded one another, after so long. “Jessica,” he breathed in awe.
Jessica was shocked to find him there, of all places—and with a full scraggly beard! Thirty years had added a bit of weight, and a hunch, yet he seemed the exact same to her. She clasped her hands diplomatically. “I thought I’d come get Journey early. I hope she hasn’t been too much of a bother. It was nice of you to even want to spend time with her at all.”
“Actually, I never . . .” He took a breath, stopping himself from correcting her—that he’d not actually been the one to send the letter. “Never could have imagined she’d be such a delight.” A warm, familiar smile washed over his face. “And— And she’s quite the inventor!” he added with pride.
“She must’ve gotten that from you.” Jessica averted her eyes.
He pointed wanly at her. “Or you.”
Despite his decency, she kept her guard up. “We should leave now if we’re to make it by morning.” She turned through the doorway.
“Jessica, I’m sorry.” He reached his arms out toward her. He’d realized that she’d reminded him of the loss of his wife, so he had unwittingly pushed her away, and for that, he was truly sorry. No one deserved that kind of neglect—especially not a child, and one so very special.
She slowly faced him. “For what?” She advanced across the protesting floorboards. “For giving up? For making me feel like it was my fault that things turned out the way they did?” Her expression exposed all the pain and suffering she’d been secretly carrying. “Do you know how many times I went to my mailbox, hoping for . . . something to let me know you still cared? That— That you even thought about me at all?” Her eyes misted with devastated tears.
“I thought about you every day,” he confessed softly. “Every day.” He crossed to a cabinet, wrenched open the door, and stepped aside as an avalanche of envelopes poured out and formed a colorful pile at his feet.
She eyed them, but did not move.
He reached down and scooped up a handful. “Given everything that happened, I wasn’t sure that you wanted to hear from me, so I didn’t send these letters,” he confessed.
She hesitantly took one and opened it with trembling fingers. “‘Dear Jessica, I wish I could make up for all my faults as a parent. I wanted you to have the world,’” she read aloud. “‘Reach into the heavens, pull down the stars, just so they could shine on you.’” She choked up, but kept reading. “‘Not just read about a happily ever after; I wanted to be the one to give it to you. Jeronicus Jangle, the greatest inventor of all, who only wishes he were . . .’” Her eyes welled with gladness. She looked up at him.
“‘The greatest father of all,’” Jeronicus finished gently.
She blinked back the tears and returned her gaze to the letter.
“Journey reminds me so much of you and your mother,” Jeronicus shared. “I want to be there for her like I should have been there for you.”
She regarded him, and was moved. He had done the impossible. He had changed.
He tilted her chin up and grinned. “Seeing you has made me smile.”
She gave a small smile in turn.
“I’m sorry. I love you so much,” he professed.
“I love you too, Daddy,” she revealed.
They embraced. They had made it work again. There was hope.
Jessica let her tears fall, and Jeronicus let his sleeve soak them up.
Finally, they parted.
Jeronicus handed his kerchief to her. “I’m gonna go wake up Journey, if you don’t mind. Say our so-longs and goodbyes.” He walked to the door.
“If she’s asleep, we could stay, and maybe take a morning bus,” Jessica offered.
His eyebrows rose in bemusement.
“Maybe we could spend Christmas here?” she said. “If it’s all right with you.” It would be Christmas in a few short hours, and she was no longer in a rush to return to Nesbitt Cottage.
He beamed. “That would be very all right with me.”
She nodded as another happy tear rolled down her cheek, and she blotted it with his kerchief. Her eyes settled on the Buddy 3000 lying on the worktable, and she let out a little laugh. “Is that . . . ?” She walked toward the robot, amazed her father had actually made an invention she’d dreamed up as a girl. She never fathomed there’d come a day she’d meet Buddy.
“The Buddy 3000,” Jeronicus said. “Or what’s left of him.”
“You did it!” she said.
He joined her side. “I was hoping to put it back together for Journey. She’s taken quite a liking to him.”
“If we start now, maybe . . .” Jessica computed the timeline in her head. “Maybe we could put it together by morning.” She gazed up at her father from the robot’s broken heart.
Jeronicus nodded. It was more than he could ever have wished for—inventing again with his daughter by his side. He eyed his workstation, not sure where to begin.
Jessica lifted tiny cogs off the table and lightly pressed them into his palm.
He stared at her. He’d missed that. She was who had been missing all these years.
Jessica regarded her leather-bound book of inventions lying open beside the robot, grazing her fingers across the eccentric designs with nostalgia. Then she examined the robot.
“Symmetry brings synchronicity,” Jeronicus said.
“Which is the stability of it all,” Jessica added.
“You’ve been reading my notes,” he remarked.
“I think you’ve been reading my notes,”
she corrected genially.
They laughed, and began to work on fixing and mending all that had been broken.
* * *
Gradually, Christmas-morning sun streamed into the workshop, along with the festive sounds of the square full of jolly people below as Jeronicus and Jessica put the finishing touches on Buddy, who stood on the table, gleaming as if he were brand new. The emergency surgery had worked!
Jessica used a tool to blow pressurized air into the glass cube, then aimed the nozzle at her father and let out a tiny spurt of air at his face. She chuckled. They’d had fun not sleeping a wink, but it’d made them both a bit loopy.
Journey charged into the workshop in her nightgown. “Grandpa J, I—” She stopped in her tracks when she saw her mother seated beside him. “Mommy!” And there was Buddy, better than ever. “Grandpa J, you did it!” she cheered. She raced over and wrapped him a warm hug.
“Had a little help,” he admitted.
“Mommy!” Journey hugged Jessica, inhaling her chamomile scent. She’d missed that.
“Hello, baby,” Jessica replied.
“Had a lot of help,” Jeronicus amended. “From both of you.” He grinned.
Journey admired Buddy with eager eyes. “Now all you have to do is press the on button.”
Jeronicus regarded the robot with uncertainty. Jessica rested a solacing hand on him, and he took a deep breath and stood, Journey watching as he slotted the cube into Buddy.
Jeronicus closed his eyes. “I believe. Just believe.”
Pinpricks of light sparkled in Buddy’s otherwise dark eyes.
Journey beamed up at her grandfather. He was doing it!
The gears began to turn.
Buddy’s eyes widened at him.
Jeronicus raised his eyebrows. “Buddy?”
He was no longer dormant, but adoring, and very much awake.
“You’re alive,” Jeronicus breathed, exchanging a cheery smile with Journey. “Glad to see you, Buddy,” he told the robot. “Glad you’re here.” After so long, the Jangles were all together.
Even Joanne, whose presence he felt stronger than ever.
Just then, a voice rang out from the ground floor.
“Jeronicus Jangle! Present yourself immediately!”
The Jangles weren’t about to be
duped by Gustafson. Not again.
And especially not on Christmas.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Gustafson.” Downstairs, Journey had found him standing at Jeronicus’s desk.
He spun around and removed his top hat. “Well hello, young lady.”
Jeronicus and Jessica emerged on the landing. “What is the meaning of this?” he asked.
Two constables moved to detain him.
“The robot that you stole from me,” Gustafson accused coldly.
“To the dungeon with him!” Don Juan said from where he stood on the desk. “Yes. You.”
“I demand that you arrest him at once, right now!” Gustafson ordered the constables, who struggled to keep their holds on Jeronicus’s wriggling wrists.
“For what?” Jessica demanded. She would not allow her father to be wrongfully policed.
Journey advanced on him. “You’re the real thief.”
“A thief couldn’t have these.” Gustafson slipped a page out from his cloak. He unfolded it and showed the sketches to the constables. “The designs for the robot that I slaved over.”
“Restless days and sleepless nights,” Don Juan piped in, for effect.
“I wanted to give up so many times, but I didn’t. I—”
“We,” Don Juan corrected him.
“Persevered,” Gustafson continued. “Knowing that one day, I—”
“We,” Don Juan corrected again.
Gustafson shot daggers at him. “Would realize my dream.” His voice had a put-on sadness to it, and he pulled the large page taut, showcasing it. “Proof! In black and white.”
Journey snatched it. “And blue!”
“¿Azul?” Don Juan inquired.
She crossed to the lamp and flicked it on. As she held the designs under the bulb, radiant blue words began to materialize across the page in a scrolling, looping handwriting, like ribbons.
Property of Jeronicus Jangle
One of the constables read it aloud.
Journey held the page up high.
The other constable regarded it and looked to Gustafson. “Explain this at once!”
Gustafson stammered. “It’s— It’s . . .”
“I can explain.” Journey boldly approached him. “After I ran into Mr. Gustafson, I was afraid he would try to steal the Buddy 3000.”
Gustafson held his pointer finger up to his mouth in an effort to silence her.
“So,” she continued, “I marked the design. For proof.”
The constables freed Jeronicus, who looked proudly at his brilliant Journey.
Gustafson’s face hardened. He’d been found out at long last. “Uh-oh. Just arrest Mr. Jangle!”
“You told me those were your inventions!” Don Juan accused, lying. “Did you lie? Are you a thief? Yes. You.” Don Juan then ran across the desk. “Jeronicus, save me!” he cried.
“I’ll take the matador,” Jeronicus said. “It’s my invention, after all.”
“I am home! Mi rey,” Don Juan said with relief. “I’ve missed you!” he said to Jeronicus with feigned affection. “I like your hair. Did you do that yourself?”
Jeronicus lifted him. “Finally, children everywhere will be able to love you.”
“I am extremely lovable,” he said arrogantly from Jeronicus’s hand. “Puppy dog eyes! Baby kitten eyes!”
“After I reprogram you,” Jeronicus concluded.
“Reprogram? Reprogram what?! I am and forever will be one and only one of a k—!”
Jeronicus opened a panel in Don Juan’s back and disconnected him, then set him down on the desk and stared at Gustafson as the constables stomped over to him.
“What are you doing?” Gustafson asked them.
The constables roughly grabbed him.
“This doesn’t make any sense!” Gustafson argued, wrestling against them. “You’re taking the word of a ten-year-old child! I am a respected member of the community! Are you kidding? I mean, look at that child! Look at that girl! There’s evil in her eyes!”
The constables steered him down the mahogany staircase and toward the front doors.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Jeronicus said, chasing after them. “I have something for him.” He walked to a desk by the entranceway and pulled out the decrepit bottom drawer.
The constables halted in the doorway, holding Gustafson still, and everyone watched Jeronicus, who produced a rectangular box wrapped in paper and tied with a length of green silk ribbon.
“I had it to give it to you that night.” He approached Gustafson. “But then you were gone.” He handed the present to Gustafson, a gift thirty years in the making.
Gustafson untied the ribbon and opened the gift. It was a simple wooden box. He flipped the lid to find a small metal contraption nestled inside. He teared up. “A gyroscopic stabilizer.”
Jeronicus looked kindly back at him. “For your Twirling Whirly.”
Gustafson gritted his teeth to hold back his tears. Jeronicus was as generous as he had always been, while Gustafson’s heart had only grown colder. He had waited all his youth for a token of Jeronicus’s time, and when he finally got it, he felt unworthy of such a gracious gesture.
“I would have shown you everything, if only you’d waited,” Jeronicus added.
As Gustafson looked up at Jeronicus, he felt like a child again. He had waited for no tomorrows, but tomorrow had been worth waiting for, in the end. Now it was too late. Eyes misting with tears, he grappled with what to say, b
ut “thank you” hadn’t quite been introduced to his vocabulary yet.
The constables guided him from the shop and into the police carriage on the street.
Gustafson glanced back at Jeronicus one last time.
The inventor, old and grayed, cast his eyes down.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” came a voice, and Jeronicus looked up to see Mr. Delacroix strolling toward him through the shop’s front doors, walking with a harried gait.
“Mr. Delacroix,” Jeronicus greeted him.
“Merry Christmas, old friend.” Mr. Delacroix shook his hand, then removed his hat and tipped it at Jessica and Journey. “Ladies.” He came face-to-face with Jeronicus, and his good cheer soured. “I’m sorry it’s come to this, but—”
A trilling from the upper-level landing siphoned his attention away.
There was Buddy, levitating over the bannister and gliding down toward them.
Mr. Delacroix cowered behind Jeronicus. “What in heaven’s . . . ?” Then he stepped out and rested a hand on Jeronicus’s shoulder as the robot hovered serenely over the cash register.
“It’s something sensational,” Jeronicus said proudly.
Mr. Delacroix moved toward the robot. “Yes, it’s—”
“Something spectacular.” Jeronicus followed on his heels.
“More than that, it’s—”
“Something revolutionary,” they said in unison.
Jeronicus gestured. “It’s the Buddy 3000!”
“The Bud— The what?” Mr. Delacroix asked, perplexed.
“It’s a robot,” Jessica asserted.
Flabbergasted, he wheeled on them, brows furrowed. “I beg your pardon?”
“A flying robot!” Journey added with a merry nod.
Jingle Jangle: The Invention of Jeronicus Jangle Page 9