All her whole life, Megan thought, she would remember this hour. She would remember the warmth of the boards of the porch steps, and the chirping of some small bird in a nearby birch, and the sound of Mom’s voice, telling her these impossible things. The things that hurt so much by themselves, and were made worse by the fact that the mother she had always thought so perfect had lied to her.
She would remember the shine of tears in her mother’s eyes as Karen Collier leaned toward her, as if she wanted to reach out and touch Megan but no longer felt she had a right to do so.
“Surely you can understand why I didn’t try to explain anything to you at first,” she begged. “You were too little to understand, only babies! And then the time never came when it seemed right to tell you. . . . It’s very hard to say to a child, ‘Your father is a criminal, he’s in jail,’ and what good would it have done? It would only have been hurtful.”
Did she think it wasn’t hurtful now? Megan wondered dully. What would the other kids think, if they knew? Would they say cruel things and avoid her, as if it were her fault? Would anyone, even Annie, still like her? At the moment, Megan didn’t like herself. She didn’t want to be Megan Collier, or Margaret Anne Kauffman, either.
Was that how her mother had felt? That she didn’t want to be the wife of a man who had held up a bank and shot someone?
The thought pricked at her like a sharp sliver, and Megan pushed it aside.
“Is he still there?” she asked, sounding muffled. “Is Da—my father, is he still in prison?”
It hurt so terribly, to say the words. Even worse than hearing her mother admit that she had told lies. How could these things be true about the laughing redheaded man who had tossed her into the air and caught her, the man she was almost sure she really remembered, not just imagined?
Her mother wiped impatiently at the tears that spilled over, with the back of her hand, as if she were a child. “No,” Mrs. Collier said quietly. “He died there, just a few months ago. Not violently, nothing like that. He just got sick and died.”
So the dreams had ended, once and for all, and Megan could never think of her father again as a loving man who would have been like Annie’s dad, if he’d lived.
“I thought it was all over, then,” Mrs. Collier said, sighing. “That maybe, somehow, we could stop running. That I could stop watching the papers for his name, being afraid that he’d been paroled, that he’d robbed another bank or something.”
She glanced at her father. “I don’t know how many times, over the years, I thought Daniel Kauffman was about to catch up with us. For over a year we didn’t even see Grandpa and Grandma Davis, and I wrote to them at a post office box, under an assumed name, to make it harder for anyone to trace us. By the end of that year, they had moved to another town, too, and I thought it was safe for a while. Then I saw a man I thought was watching our house, and I spooked and ran again. Grandpa Davis thought I imagined some of the things that made me think Daniel Kauffman was still looking for us. Maybe I did, I don’t know, but I couldn’t take the chance. This whole last year nothing had happened, and then I read that tiny piece in the paper about your father’s death, and I thought it was all over. I didn’t have to worry anymore.”
She sipped at her coffee, which must have cooled off by this time. “That lasted until I saw the picture on TV, the picture that still looked like you two, even though it was taken so long ago. And I realized Daniel Kauffman was looking for you again, or still. That Danny’s death didn’t mean it was all over, only that his father would never have his son back, so he wanted his grandchildren. Not that he ever gave up wanting you, I suppose, but now he was going to really try hard to find you. I took it for granted that if he were doing that, he’d use his money and his influence to try to take custody away from me, the same as he tried before.”
Sandy cleared his throat. “Don’t we have anything to say about what happens? Doesn’t it matter who we want to be with?”
Mrs. Collier reached out and hugged him. “Of course it does! Only he can offer you so much, and I . . . I haven’t done very well in what I’ve been able to give you, have I? I guess I’ve always been afraid that you’d want to go with him, to that big house and all that money. . . .”
Her voice broke, and for a few seconds she and Sandy clung together.
“We’d never want to leave you, Mom,” he said, sounding gruff with emotion.
Mrs. Collier managed a teary smile, speaking over the top of his head. “Can you try to understand, Megan? I thought I was protecting you. And now Daniel’s detective has caught up with us. Though he doesn’t know we’re here right this minute, does he? We could still follow through on my plan, go to a new town, take the new job, and hope he doesn’t find us again. . . .”
“Karo,” Grandpa Davis said gently. “All Daniel has said is that he wants to talk to you. According to this Mr. Picard, he doesn’t want to take the kids away from you, he only wants to see them. Wants to make them part of his life. You can’t blame him too much for that. You’ve proved that you can take care of the kids, that you’re a good mother. Even his money can’t argue against that. He probably couldn’t get custody of Megan and Sandy now if he did take the matter to court, and he’s sworn he won’t do that.”
“And you think I should talk to him.” Mrs. Collier sounded subdued.
Grandpa hesitated. “Yes, since you’ve asked me, that’s what I think. In the meantime, until you decide, we’ll just pretend the kids aren’t here, if Picard comes back. So where’s the risk? Daniel isn’t going to give up looking, if you disappear again, so you’d eventually have to go through all of this another time. And think how it would feel to stop running and hiding.”
Ben, who had listened to all this without speaking, suddenly moved from where he was leaning against the post at the top of the steps. “Uh, I guess I better go on home and see if Dad found my note. I’ll see you later, guys.”
Megan leaped up, too. “I’ll walk partway with you,” she offered. She didn’t want to sit there any longer and hear more things that would frighten her, make her heart ache. She didn’t want to look at her mother’s face.
Megan bounded down the steps, not looking back, and Ben trotted at her side. Neither of them said anything until they were on the beach, heading toward his house.
“I almost wish I didn’t know the truth about my father,” Megan blurted. “Who’s going to like me, if they know?” She couldn’t even think of him as Daddy anymore; he was a stranger, a horrid stranger who had done terrible things.
“Kids aren’t going to dislike you because of your father,” Ben said halfheartedly. And then, when she flashed him an angry glare, he shrugged and admitted, “Well, maybe some of them will. They’re the stupid ones, though. The ones worth having as friends will like you for yourself.”
“Kids can be cruel,” Megan said. “They make fun of people who are different—someone who limps, or has to wear glasses, or can’t talk plain. Or someone whose mother is fat, or whose father is in prison.”
Ben jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, looking at the sand rather than at her. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Some kids are real jerks. But they aren’t the ones you’d want to be friends with anyway. I wouldn’t stop being friends with somebody because their dad’s a bank robber.” He considered that, before adding, “Maybe my mother would. I mean, she might not want me to associate with a bank robber’s kids. But I’d do it anyhow.”
“You’re different,” Megan said, and knew it was true, and that she didn’t resent Ben any more. He’d already proved he was a friend.
Ben laughed, though not in a way that suggested he really thought it was funny. “You’re right there. I’ve been kicked out of three schools because I’m different. My stepfather can’t stand me, my mom thinks I’m a nuisance, and my dad’s too busy to notice me except when I do something that makes him mad. Listen, just because you know about your dad now doesn’t mean you have to have a bumper sticker made about it or wear a sign on your forehead. Just say he’s dead, that’s the truth, and let it go at that.”
Megan supposed he was right. Ben was usually right, or thought he was. He knew how to solve everybody’s problems—except, she suddenly realized, his own.
Megan made a small, strangled sound. Her mom did care about her, for all that she’d kept so many things secret, and so did Grandpa Davis . . . and maybe this new grandfather would, too, though he’d been so mean before that she didn’t know if she believed that. “I guess I’ll live,” she said finally.
“Yeah. Me, too,” Ben said. “Listen, we don’t have to go back to the island to hide, so why don’t we go swimming after a while? After you get through talking to your mom and everything.”
“Sure,” Megan said. She didn’t really feel like doing anything, but sitting around thinking wasn’t going to make things any better.
“Well, there you are, Ben. I wondered if I’d ever see you again.”
They had walked right up on Mr. Jamison without Megan noticing. He was sitting on the beach, and the Irish setter lay panting beside him.
He was a very good looking man, Megan thought, for a moment remembering the image she’d had of her own father, of the kind of man she’d thought him to be. Mr. Jamison looked nice, too.
“This must be Megan,” Ben’s father said, getting to his feet and brushing sand off his slacks. “Is there something going on I don’t know about?”
Ben looked at Megan. “Well, yeah. I guess. I’ll tell you later. I’m going to have something to eat, and then after a while we’re going swimming.”
“Good. I’ve got a pot roast cooking for supper, be ready pretty quick now. You want to stay for supper, Megan?” Mr. Jamison invited, smiling.
Ben was astonished. “How come you’re cooking? How come I can have company for supper?”
“Because I finished my book, and now I can be a human being until I start the next one. Oh, I still have to do the revision, but that’s the easiest part. No doubt Megan has heard that I’m the Jamison dragon, breathing smoke and fire. Don’t believe it, Megan. I only do that when I’m working hard to meet a deadline, and the younger dragon in the family is inconsiderate about the demands he makes on me. Like wanting meals on time, cooked meals. Anybody who’s twelve should be able to shift for himself in that department, shouldn’t he?”
Megan didn’t know what to say. Mr. Jamison didn’t seem disagreeable. “Thank you, but I have to go home. My mom’s here, and I don’t know how long she’ll stay. We have sort of a . . . a crisis, I guess, right now.”
Mr. Jamison nodded. “I know all about crises. If I don’t have one of my own, my son creates one for me. We thrive on crises, don’t we, Ben?”
He rested one hand on Ben’s shoulder. Ben’s face had lighted up, which made him look quite different from the way he usually did.
“Does this mean I can talk to you tonight?”
“You can talk,” his father agreed. “We’ll see you again, Megan.”
She walked home thoughtfully. She hoped Ben and his father worked it out, that maybe Ben could stay with him and go to school instead of having to return to Duluth and the stepfather who didn’t like him and the mother who thought he was a nuisance. Knowing about Mr. Jamison only from Ben’s viewpoint had made her not like the man very well, but he’d seemed okay just now. It made her suddenly wonder if her view of her mother was distorted, too. She felt peculiar and uneasy about that.
She plodded slowly home over the sandy beach. She didn’t want to really talk to her mother again until her own emotions were sorted out.
When they were getting ready for bed that night, Megan stood stiffly as Mrs. Collier hugged her.
“You haven’t forgiven me, have you?” her mom asked quietly.
“I don’t know. I guess you did what you thought was right,” Megan responded. “I’m just all mixed up. Everything I believed about Daddy—about my father—wasn’t true. I’m not even the person I thought I was.”
“Honey, your name doesn’t make you a different person. You’re still you.”
“I don’t feel like me,” Megan said sadly.
This time when her mother’s arms came around her, however, she accepted the hug, though she didn’t hug back.
Later, lying in the bed while her mother slept beside her, Megan watched the shadows move across the window as the moon rose over the lake. She heard the loons with their mournful cries, and something else.
Suddenly she was wide awake, heart racing.
A car coming in off the main road?
Swiftly Megan slid out of bed, making her way by moonlight through the house, sliding back the bolt so she could open the kitchen door onto the side porch.
Yes, there was a car, a car that sounded as if it needed a tune-up, because it rattled and spluttered as the ignition was turned off, not far away.
Not Mr. Jamison. His sleek black Porsche hummed like a contented cat. Mom’s car, and Grandpa’s, stood in the yard, so it wasn’t one of theirs.
Who, then?
She jumped when Wolf pressed his wet nose into her hand. “Shh!” she told him, listening intently. Why would anyone come so near and not go on to either of the places on this road where anyone was living?
She heard nothing more. No voices. Though she stood for some time in the doorway, no one appeared in the clearing in the moonlight. After a while Megan closed and relocked the door and went back to bed. She heard Wolf’s toenails clicking on the linoleum-covered floor as he returned to Sandy’s room.
He hadn’t barked. She thought he’d have barked if anyone had come close to the house.
It wasn’t until she had crawled in beside her mother that the thought struck her.
Grandpa had talked to the detective from Illinois, but what about the two men in the blue car with Minnesota plates? They had come while no one was home, had snooped around trying doors and looking in windows, and driven away again. Where did they fit into the picture? Surely the man named Daniel Kauffman hadn’t sent two sets of detectives to find them.
Who were they, then? Why had they come, and would they be back? Were they in that car that had stopped out there in the darkness and not yet driven away?
Megan did not fall asleep for what seemed a long time, and she never did hear the car leave.
In the morning she told everybody about the car.
Her mother looked rested, more relaxed, this morning. She put an arm around Megan and hugged her.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, honey. Chances are you just heard someone parking in what they thought was a private place, to talk, maybe. Or a young couple, courting.”
“But what about the two men? They acted just like the detective. They didn’t know we were watching them from the island, and they tried the doors and looked in the windows.”
“Looking for something to steal, maybe,” Grandpa said. “I don’t suppose they saw much worth breaking in for in this place. Here, who wants the first pancake?”
They weren’t taking it seriously, Megan thought. Maybe they were right.
Yet her uneasiness remained.