The boy’s name was Ben Jamison. His parents were divorced, and he had been living with his mother in Duluth, but now his mother was remarried and had just gone on a delayed honeymoon to Niagara Falls.
“I don’t know why,” Ben said. “They’ve been married for six months, and besides, she’s seen Niagara Falls before.”
“Are you going to live with your dad all the time now, or go back to Duluth when your mom comes home?”
They were crouched, the three of them, around the fire built just outside the cave. Megan, using a stick, poked at the hot dogs on the grill, rolling them over. The skins were beginning to blister, and the aroma made her mouth water. If it weren’t for the stranger, she could have enjoyed their first meal on the island, which she stubbornly continued to think of as hers.
Ben scratched at a mosquito bite on one bare ankle. “I don’t know. I don’t think either one of them wants me.”
Sandy gave him a shocked look, pausing in the act of taking buns out of their plastic wrapper. “Your own parents don’t want you? Why not?”
“I guess I’m a nuisance,” Ben said.
Sandy took out the buns and arranged them on the edge of the grill to get warm. “How come?”
Ben thought about that so long that Megan, who had been trying to ignore him, finally had to look at him. “I get in trouble at school sometimes,” he said at last. “And they call Mom in for conferences. Lawrence says I’ve got to shape up, because they don’t have time to deal with all my crap. Lawrence is her new husband.”
“What kind of trouble?” Sandy wanted to know. “What do you do?”
Ben shrugged. “Different things. I don’t like school. I don’t like Lawrence. Sometimes . . .” Again he hesitated to consider his reply. “Sometimes I don’t even like Mom very much. She’s a lot more interested in Lawrence than she is in me.”
The hot dogs sizzled and split, dripping juice onto the fire. Megan poked a stick into the nearest one, holding it out toward the boys. “Get a bun for this,” she instructed, and Sandy took it and passed it along to their guest.
Sandy fixed his own hot dog with mustard and catsup and chewed before he spoke again. “What about your dad, then?”
Ben devoured half the hot dog and wiped mustard on the back of his hand. “These are good. Well, I used to want to go live with my dad, after he moved out and they filed for divorce. We got along great when we were all together. Only now he doesn’t seem to like me much better than Lawrence does. He wants it quiet so he can write, and he was mad when I got here because he doesn’t want anybody to bother him when he has a deadline. I guess Mom wrote him all about how big a pain I was, and I hardly got off the bus from Duluth before he was telling me I’d better not pull any of my crap—same word Lawrence used—on him, or he’d settle me down in a hurry.”
Sandy’s blue eyes were big and round. “You mean . . . beat you?”
Ben looked sheepish. “Oh, I don’t think he’d do that. He never did before, anyway. But when he jumped me over some little thing, and I talked back—I was only trying to explain my side of it, see—he grabbed me and slammed me against the wall. It’s easy to tell he doesn’t want me here. I don’t want to be here, either, but I got nowhere else to go.” He finished off his hot dog and reached for another one.
“Gee,” Sandy muttered. He gave Megan a look that said, He’s as bad off as we are.
Megan wasn’t in the mood to feel sorry for the boy, however. If he made everyone annoyed with him, what could he expect?
They ate in silence after that, finishing off the entire dozen wieners and buns, washing them down with canned pop. As soon as they’d finished, Ben was on his feet.
“Let’s go look at that building site, okay? I think we could make a platform between those two trees—see the tall ones?—and then put up a roof over it. We could get it all closed in, so we could even sleep over here if we wanted to.”
“I don’t know if Grandpa will let us do that,” Sandy said, but he was on his feet, too, following the leader.
Megan smothered her resentment and rose to bring up the rear. First Ben horned in on their island, and now he was making all the plans. Who made him the boss, anyway?
She could see why he would get on his parents’ nerves. He didn’t ask other people’s opinions, assuming his own ideas were great. He acted as if he’d just been elected president.
Sandy didn’t seem to mind. When Megan muttered her dissatisfaction while Ben was up in one of the trees for a closer look, Sandy was astonished.
“Well, he’s got some good ideas, Megan! And he’s got the lumber and tools to build a real tree house!”
“I was perfectly satisfied with the cave,” Megan stated.
“Well, sure, I like it, too, but Ben’s got some neat plans, Megan. And he’s somebody to do things with while we’re here.”
Why did everything have to remind her that they were here, not at home, away from all their friends, uncertain about where they would go next, and when?
“See?” Ben called. “We could build a platform supported on these branches, between the two trees, and put a ladder up that trunk. We can use your boat, and get the stuff out of my dad’s garage to start with.”
“Will he let you use the lumber, too?”
“If it gets rid of me, he’ll probably let me do anything,” Ben said wryly. “Hey, the view up here is great! I can see to both ends of the lake, and there’s something on that little bitty island over there we ought to investigate.”
“That’s my island, and I put a flag on it,” Sandy told him. “Come on, Megan, let’s climb up and see, too.”
Megan declined, however. She had no desire to balance on a tree limb next to Ben Jamison. Still, unless she wanted to be left entirely alone, she was going to have to join the boys in whatever they decided to do.
In the end, they took both the canoe and the boat up the lake to the Jamisons’ log cabin. They sorted out what they wanted of the tools from the garage, which looked as if it had been used to store junk for years; there was no room in it for the black Porsche parked in the yard.
“Hey, nice car,” Sandy said.
“Yeah. Dad makes good money writing books. Only he got pretty upset over the divorce, I guess, and writing hasn’t been so easy for him on this one. Here, take this saw. Megan, you take the nails and the hammer.”
That was the way Ben was. Do this, do that. As if they were his servants.
Sandy didn’t seem to mind. He was too impressed by the way Ben rattled off what they were going to do, and how. Megan smoldered, thinking up things to say to him when he gave her one order too many. Which was going to be very soon, she decided.
It took them two days to ferry the basic materials to the island. After that Ben began the actual building; he took it for granted that Megan and Sandy would run errands, hand things up to him, and in general wait on him.
Once, when he barked a demand for more nails, Megan tossed him the bag and said gruffly, “No wonder people think you’re obnoxious. Did you ever hear of ‘please’ and ‘thank-you?’ ”
To her surprise, Ben grinned. It made his face much more pleasant. “Yeah. Please get me those two-by-fours, and thank-you.”
She didn’t know what to say back, so she brought the lumber from the pile on the ground. By the end of the second day of building, even Megan had to admit that the tree house was going to be better than the cave, which was open on the front and both sides except for some pine boughs.
The tree-house platform was big enough so they could spread out three sleeping bags if they wanted to. There was a window on each side, enabling them to see in all directions, though they had no glass for them. There was a shelf to keep food supplies on, and they even salvaged an old end table with a shelf under it for their dishes. They didn’t have a way to cook, but Ben thought they would be just as well off using the grill at the mouth of the cave.
“It’s not very far to walk, and it’ll be safer than trying to have a stove in the hut. Especially when we don’t have a stove,” Ben announced.
“Oh, by all means, then,” Megan said dryly, “let’s do it that way if you think so.”
Ben looked at Sandy. “What’s the matter with her?”
Sandy shrugged. “You know how girls are.”
Megan felt annoyance stirring again. Before she could think of a suitable comment, though, Ben asked, “Did your uncle find you?”
In the stillness a crow’s cry sounded from the tall pines on the edge of the lake, and from far up the lake they heard an outboard motor, suggesting that new neighbors had arrived.
“Our uncle?” Sandy asked stupidly.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “When my dad was in town this morning he said he met this guy asking about two redheaded kids in the general store. I hadn’t told him about you until then—my dad, I mean—because he’s been too busy to talk to me until he gets this difficult chapter written; but when he mentioned it, I figured it had to be you. There aren’t that many redheads around, usually. The guy that runs the store didn’t know you, but he suggested your uncle try asking at the post office.”
Megan’s mouth felt dry. “That’s really strange. Because we don’t have an uncle.”
“No kidding? Well, I guess there must be some more redheads, then. Here, Sandy, grab the other end of this, and we’ll get the roofing on. Then we won’t have to worry that our stuff will get wet when it rains.”
Sandy appeared to give the matter no further thought, but Megan’s stomach was churning.
Who was the man who had claimed to be the “uncle” of two redheaded kids?
And if the man was really looking for Megan and Sandy, what did he want?
It wouldn’t have frightened her if she hadn’t known her mother was running away from something—or someone.
She didn’t get a chance for a private conversation with Sandy until they got home, and Grandpa asked them to walk out to the main road and check the mailbox. “I need to keep an eye on supper so it won’t scorch,” he said. “Come right back, though, because this’ll be ready in about twenty minutes.”
As soon as they were out of earshot, Megan spoke. “I don’t like the idea of some guy who says he’s our uncle asking for us in town.”
“We don’t have an uncle, so he must be looking for somebody else,” Sandy said, trotting to keep up with her.
“Or he’s looking for us and he’s lying about being our uncle because he thinks that will make people more willing to tell him where we are. We haven’t been to town yet, so probably nobody knows we’re here. But how many redheaded kids are there likely to be that the grocery man wouldn’t know?”
“You think he really is looking for us?” Sandy had sobered. “What for?”
“Who knows? If he has to lie to find us, though, it’s kind of suspicious, isn’t it?”
“How would he know we’re here? Unless Mom told him.”
“If she told him, she’d have told him we were with Grandpa. And it didn’t sound as if he mentioned our names, even. Just said he was looking for redheads. Our last name’s not the same as Grandpa’s, so probably the postmaster wouldn’t know where we were, either. Not unless Grandpa told him we were coming, and he wasn’t expecting us for another week or so.”
Megan had to slow down because her furious pace had caused her to get a stitch in her side. “It makes me nervous, after the other things that have happened,” she said.
“Are we going to tell Grandpa about it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll think about it,” Megan said uneasily.
They had reached the main road, and Sandy pulled open the door of the mailbox. “Two bills, and an ad for the general store in town, and . . . hey! You got a letter from Annie!”
Megan snatched the letter out of his hand. A letter from Annie! Annie hadn’t been so mad at her that she refused to write back! She tore it open, but before she could empty the envelope, Sandy tugged at her arm.
“Come on, you can read it after we get home. It’s too long to read in a minute or two, and I’m starved. Gramps said to come right home.”
Megan hesitated, then folded the letter and put it into the pocket of her jeans. “Okay. I want to read it slowly and enjoy it longer, anyway,” she said.
It never occurred to her that the letter would leave her even more scared than she already was.