The Dutch Door

 

BY THE TIME they finally drove the Coach off the ferry,  Rex had exhausted himself. He slept in a tight little ball on the back bed, Paul curled up beside him.

Everyone else was exhausted too. It was completely unfair. Odette knew that her brother would awake from his nap refreshed and happy, as if his fury had pressed an invisible reset button. But the rest of them—Mom, Dad, Odette—would be drained for the remainder of the day. Odette’s eyes would feel swollen and tired, as if she’d been the one who’d had the terrible tantrum. Her parents would get all quiet and soft, and even though they rarely drank alcohol, they’d both want a glass of wine later, after Rex had gone to sleep for the night.

After a fury, there was no way to tell how long the reset would last. Rex could have another fury the next day, or it could be weeks. Maybe that was the worst part, worse than the fury itself—the anticipation, the not-knowing.

 

THE SKY WAS bright with sunset as Mom drove the Coach away from the dock and toward Grandma Sissy’s house. Odette focused on being right there, on that road, seeing everything and thinking about nothing else. She had only been to Orcas Island once before in her life, when her mom was pregnant with Rex. Odette had been four years old and her only memories of Orcas Island were the warm, tangy smell of the bread Grandma Sissy baked each morning in her shop and the leathery black-and-white of an orca itself, though she might be merging another memory, from Sea World, now that she thought about it. The bread, maybe, was all she had left.

Usually Grandma Sissy was the one to visit them. “One plane ticket rather than four” was what Dad said about it. But a couple of years ago, when Grandma Sissy had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had to have surgery, Mom had gone up alone to take care of her.

Since then, after she recovered, Grandma Sissy had visited them twice, and they talked on the phone every few weeks, but it had been a year since Odette had seen her at all.

Odette had expected that returning to Orcas Island would feel like walking through a dream, that she’d see things she hadn’t exactly remembered but that felt familiar. As they drove from the ferry dock into Eastsound Village, though, she recognized nothing. Not the high-roofed shingled buildings, not the inviting white front porches, not the near-empty streets, the missing stoplights. None of it.

At last Mom pulled the Coach over to the side of the road, thrusting the gearshift into park. She raised her chin at a building on the corner. “There.” She looked over her shoulder at Odette. “Now, Detters, remember, Grandma Sissy has been sick . . .”

Odette barely heard her. She was staring out the window at Grandma Sissy’s bakery. A hand-lettered red and white sign read SISSY’S BREADS AND SWEETS. The lights on the bottom floor were out, but upstairs—where Grandma Sissy lived—every room glowed brightly.

Odette didn’t wait for her parents to wake up Rex. She didn’t take Georgie with her, even though the dog must have really, really needed to pee after the ferry ride. She just banged through the Coach’s door and raced across the sidewalk, overwhelmed suddenly with excitement at the thought of being in a real house again, with doors and full-size toilets.

“Grandma Sissy!” she called up at the open, glowing window. “We’re here!”

“I can see that,” came Grandma Sissy’s voice—and that was familiar. “I’ll be right down.”

Odette heard her family coming out of the Coach to join her, she heard Dad reprimand her—“Odette, your poor dog practically wet herself”—she heard the clinking of Mom’s keys. But she didn’t look at any of them. She looked at the bakery’s friendly door—a gray-blue Dutch door, shut now, and a tiny spark of memory recalled it, how the top could swing loose while the bottom stayed shut, the cheery jingle of the bell fastened to its handle inside.

It jingled just then, exactly as Odette suddenly anticipated it would. And then the door swung open. And there, on its other side, with Grandma Sissy’s smile, stood a stranger.