Megan felt numb, empty inside. She had never wanted to move away from one town where she had made friends to another place where she had to start all over again. But she had trusted her mother, had accepted the idea that the moves were necessary. Though theirs was a single-parent family, it was a family. And she had felt secure and safe within it.
Now she didn’t feel safe or secure at all. She’d heard of kids who were abandoned by a parent, and she didn’t think Mom would ever do that. She still believed her mother was really concerned about her and Sandy. But something was wrong, and there was no doubt that Karen Collier had been less than honest with her kids about any number of things.
How could that be, when Mom had always preached honesty? Oh, Mom had explained that one hundred percent honesty wasn’t always the best policy. It was permissible to tell someone her new hat looked great on her, even when you thought it was horrible. You didn’t have to be truthful when you ate a neighbor’s gift of a pie with a crust that couldn’t be cut with a knife, let alone a fork. You didn’t have to tell people they looked awful, even if they did, because that only made them feel awful, too. It might be a kindness to say you had another engagement when you just didn’t want to do something with someone but hated to tell him that.
Megan knew about little white lies. Everybody told them, Mom had admitted, at one time or another. It could be okay when it was intended to protect someone else’s feelings, though not when it was to protect yourself from the consequences of a guilty action.
Which category did Mom’s lies fall into, Megan wondered as she loaded her small bag into the boat. If what she suspected was true, there was more involved here than little lies.
Wolf was jumping around, barking, ready for another ride. It didn’t matter to him that jumping around in a boat had already dumped him into the water twice. In his eagerness to go, he nearly knocked Sandy down, and made him drop a thermos jug into the lake.
“Sit! Darn it, Wolf, stay!” Sandy howled. And the dog did sink onto his haunches.
Ben had returned, carrying a big flashlight and a flight bag that bulged with mysterious contents. He scowled. “We’re not going to take him, are we? What if he starts barking like an idiot while we’re out there, and the guy who’s looking for you is here? He’ll get a boat and check the islands.”
Grandpa had come out with the box of supplies, which he handed over to Sandy. “He may have a point. Maybe the dog had better stay here with me. He might bark and give me a little warning if anybody comes snooping around again.”
Sandy looked disappointed. “His name’s Wolf,” he reminded Grandpa. “He won’t like it if we leave him here.”
“I’ll take him inside and give him something to eat,” Grandpa offered. “Now, you kids be careful. I’ll string a clothesline as soon as you’re out of sight, and hang a few things on it. I’ve got a bright red towel. If that’s hanging up, don’t come in to shore. Chances are if that fellow is seriously looking for you, he’ll be back tomorrow. Then we’ll know where we stand.”
Ben, who seemed to be enjoying all this intrigue, said, “Come on, are we ready? Let’s shove off.”
Grandpa reached down to take Wolf’s collar. “Come on, fella, let’s go inside.”
Wolf, however, knew perfectly well that he was being left behind. He barked more loudly than ever, trying to pull away.
Sandy’s face was glum. “He doesn’t understand why he can’t come.” He pushed off, then settled himself in the stern as Ben took up the oars.
Megan was in the bow, facing shore as they headed out across the water. Her mind was in a turmoil. The small bag she had packed was resting against her feet, and in it, she could not forget, was a birth certificate for someone named Margaret Anne Kauffman, who had the same birthday as her own. It couldn’t just be coincidence, could it?
Her first thought was that it was her own birth certificate, that she’d been named Margaret Anne, and then her parents had adopted her and renamed her Megan. It made her feel strange, half sick and frightened. Lots of kids were adopted, of course, but their parents told them so, right from the beginning. Why shouldn’t they? It was okay to know that your parents had chosen you to be their child.
Once, when they’d lived briefly in Milwaukee, Megan had gone to school with a girl named Shirley who had learned, at the age of ten, that she was adopted. She’d been very upset when she overheard two aunts discussing the matter. It had taken her some time to settle down, even after her parents told her they’d intended to tell her when she was grown up. Why, Shirley had asked, did they have to wait until then? Was there something shameful about being adopted?
Megan hadn’t known Shirley very well, but she’d been sympathetic and curious, as well. She’d talked to her mother about it. Megan still remembered that Saturday afternoon when she and Mom had discussed adoption while they shared milk and warm oatmeal-raisin cookies in their sunny kitchen.
It wouldn’t bother her to know she’d been adopted, Megan had thought, not if her mother was honest with her. After all, it meant her parents had wanted her, even if she hadn’t been born to them in the first place.
Grandpa had dragged the protesting Wolf into the cottage. Megan watched them go without conscious thought, her mind on more important things.
No, it wasn’t a question of adoption, she decided. She and Sandy looked so much alike that even strangers knew they were brother and sister. And her father had had red hair. There were no pictures of him. She’d often wished for one, and she’d asked about that once. Mom had said they’d been lost during one of their moves, she guessed.
Now Megan wondered if that was a lie, too, though she couldn’t think why it should have been. But there were pictures of her, and of Sandy, and some of Mom, too, including snapshots taken with Grandpa and Grandma Davis when Mom was real little. Why would only the ones of Daddy have been lost?
And what about the names? Her own initials were the same as those of the girl on the birth certificate. She had been “born to Caroline and Daniel Kauffman.”
Ben was saying something, but she paid no attention. Mom’s name was Karen, and Daddy’s name had been Dan. Dan was short for Daniel, and that was the name of the mysterious, unknown grandfather in Chicago. And Grandpa Davis never called Mom Karen, he called her Karo. Which sounded the same as the first part of Caroline. And while Collier started with a C, and Kauffman started with a K, both sounded the same when spoken aloud.
Megan knew she was jumping to conclusions, but they seemed so logical she was convinced her suspicions were true.
The birth certificate was her own. Only her name wasn’t really Collier, but Kauffman. It made her feel stranger than ever, sort of sick to her stomach.
Everything she had taken for granted, all her life, was turned upside down. If she wasn’t really Megan Collier, but someone named Margaret Anne Kauffman, it was scary. If Mom had told as big a lie as that, what else that Megan had believed in was false?
Why hadn’t she asked Grandpa, before they left, if her grandfather’s name was Daniel Kauffman? If he had refused to answer, she thought she might have read the truth in his face.
Whatever it was, Grandpa knew, she thought. Though Grandpa might not have told the lies, he had kept silent about the truth. Did that mean Mom had very good reasons for what she had done? Or only that both the adults in Megan’s life had deceived her for reasons of their own?
She thought about the new grandfather. Why should Mom be hiding her and Sandy from him? Was he an evil man in some way? He must be quite terrible if Mom felt she had to run and hide, then run again, for eight years. If he had hired a detective to search for them, what did he mean to do when he found them?
There were no answers, of course. Only more speculations.
“Hey! Megan, we’re here,” Ben said.
Megan came to with a start. They had arrived at the island.
“You carry that stuff,” Ben said, “and Sandy can get that box. I’ll manage the rest.” He was giving orders, as usual. For once Megan didn’t care. She wasn’t thinking about Ben at all, only about herself and Sandy, and wondering what was going to happen next.
Twilight fell slowly across the island. Sandy and Ben set out the checkerboard after Megan declined to play a game of Clue. She knew she’d never be able to concentrate on any game. Instead she decided to go for a walk by herself, so she could think.
“Remember you don’t want to be seen from the mainland, in case that guy comes back tonight instead of tomorrow,” Ben warned.
Megan didn’t bother to answer. She was already walking away. She sort of wished the island were bigger, now, though before she’d liked it the size it was. It was a relief just to get away from the boys, to be able to stop worrying about how she looked, or if she cried, or what Ben thought about her being scared.
“You’re safe out here,” he had pointed out to her only a few minutes ago.
There was a lot Ben didn’t know, and she couldn’t pretend to be interested in some stupid game while she was thinking about all of it.
For a long time Megan sat on the little beach in the cove, listening to the call of a loon, seeing an occasional fish jump. Thinking didn’t seem to help anything, and after a while she simply let herself drift, not trying to figure it out, not trying to think of a solution. Solving the problem was out of the question anyway, until she knew what the source of the problem was. Mostly what she hoped was that her mother had a good explanation for what she had said and done, one that would prove she was the kind of person Megan had always felt her to be.
It was nearly dark when she finally made her way back to the tree house. The boys were just putting away the checkerboard.
“Have a cookie,” Ben said, and even that sounded like an order.
Megan was hungry. She hadn’t eaten much of Grandpa’s chicken and salads. She took a cookie from the package Sandy offered.
“It got too dark to see,” Ben told her through a mouthful of chocolate chip crumbs. “I didn’t think we should light the lantern. Even if it sits on the floor, they might be able to see the glow of it on shore. We’re going to go to bed and tell ghost stories, okay? And just in case of an emergency, we’re going to sleep in our clothes.”
“In case we have to move fast,” Sandy supplemented, putting the game box on one of the shelves.
Megan didn’t participate in the ghost-story telling. In fact, she didn’t really listen to them. She hoped that Grandpa Davis was right in thinking he could handle that man if he came back.
Sandy and Ben were still giggling when she fell asleep. She woke later, feeling chilly, and zipped up her sleeping bag, then slept until the sun was well up in the sky.
While Megan fixed sandwiches for breakfast—they’d already decided not to risk being detected by building a fire that would send up a column of smoke—Ben looked over to the shore with his binoculars.
Just as Megan handed him a sandwich and juice in a cardboard carton, Ben yelped.
“He’s back,” he said. “The guy in the white car, with the Illinois plates—he’s back!”