Tuesday and Serendipity sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, which Denis had swept clean of a half-finished game of Scrabble and several incomplete crossword puzzles. Both, he insisted, involved writing of a kind. Along with Tuesday’s small and relatively new typewriter, Denis had confiscated Serendipity’s big antique one, and he’d collected up all the notebooks, exercise books, ballpoint and felt-tipped pens, and colored pencils that he could find throughout the house.
Denis was whistling as he cooked pancakes, as if a cheerful enough whistle could somehow counteract the disconsolate moods of his wife and daughter, who couldn’t take their eyes off the newspaper that lay on the table between them. He slid a pancake onto Serendipity’s plate and then—before she could crack pepper all over it—whipped the grinder out of her hand and replaced it with a bottle of maple syrup. The next pancake went to Tuesday, and the third to Baxterr, who polished it off with his usual gusto, even though—if pushed—he would have had to admit that it was not up to Denis’s usual lofty standard.
Absentmindedly, Serendipity pulled a pencil from behind her ear and began doodling in the margin of the newspaper. But before she could make more than a few curly lines, Denis snatched the pencil out of her grasp.
“No writing,” Denis said, gesturing at her with the pencil.
Serendipity and Tuesday gave a simultaneous sigh. Denis put Serendipity’s pencil into the bin, which was already full of writing implements he’d emptied from various pots and jars throughout the kitchen. He broke the cord that tied a whiteboard marker to the fridge.
“Absolutely no writing. Promise me?”
Denis glared at his wife, then at his daughter. “What if … what if you went there and ended up in Antarctica, and you froze before anyone could help you? Or roasted to a crisp in Death Valley? I’m serious. What if you landed in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? No writing, my loves. It’s not safe. Please?”
“You realize, of course,” said Serendipity, “that it may not be that simple.”
“What do you mean?” Denis asked.
“I mean, think of Sleeping Beauty!” said Serendipity. “Her parents banned spindles from the entire kingdom, but that didn’t stop her from pricking her finger, did it?”
Serendipity waved her hands at the seven faces staring up at her from the newspaper.
“Stories don’t happen only when you have a pen in your hand or a typewriter under your fingers. They can sneak up on you in the shower or when you’re climbing the stairs. They can come to you in dreams, and they can arrive while you’re hanging out the laundry. Remember that time when I was stirring the soup? Completely ruined that pot! If you hadn’t come home and found it, the house might have burned down.”
Denis’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, but actually sitting down to write makes it more likely to happen, hmm? Sitting and staring out windows increases the chances, doesn’t it? It isn’t a perfect solution, but it’s the best we can do until we find out what’s happening. Yes?”
“Denis—” began Serendipity.
“No, no, no. I won’t hear a peep of protest. No writing. Not a word. From either of you. I want you to promise. Serendipity?”
“Oh, all right then.”
“Tuesday?”
Before Tuesday could say a word, Baxterr let out a growl that was not especially unfriendly, but meant that something was happening on his turf. Baxterr usually growled in this particular way about thirty seconds before the McGillycuddys’ doorbell rang. This time there was no doorbell. Instead there was a sharp rap at the kitchen window, and they were all surprised to see Miss Digby, Serendipity’s long-serving assistant, peering in at them across the hydrangea bushes with the morning paper rolled into a tight scroll in her hand and a panicked look upon her face.
* * *
Miss Digby was neither old nor young. She was neither fair nor dark. She wasn’t tall, but neither was she short. Her nose wasn’t big or small. Her eyes weren’t blue or green, and neither would you have said they were gray. Miss Digby had a way of dressing that made her almost entirely forgettable. She was a very mild woman who spoke precisely, who was never flustered or in a rush, and who, if you got close enough, always smelled of dried flowers. Today, as usual, Miss Digby was wearing clothes in shades so colorless they didn’t really even have names. Her shoes were flat, with laces, and her hair was caught back in the sort of arrangement that stayed neat yet showed no clips or pins.
Miss Digby was not married, had no children, and had been Serendipity’s assistant for as long as Tuesday could remember. Tuesday could not imagine Miss Digby as a girl, or what she might have done before she came into their lives. She was both as familiar and unknown to Tuesday as the moon. But one thing Tuesday did know was that Miss Digby never, ever came to their house on Brown Street, and that was because Miss Digby was just about the only person, other than Denis, Tuesday, and Serendipity, who knew the truth about Serendipity’s double life.
As Miss Digby was so often seen with the public Serendipity Smith—the famous writer who had long red hair and wore outlandish glasses, velvet coats, and knee-high boots—it was very risky for her to be seen with the private Serendipity, the one who had short dark hair, wore comfortable black clothes, and allowed people to think that her name was Sarah McGillycuddy. Tuesday knew that if anyone should put two and two together, it would ruin everything. If fame followed Serendipity to Brown Street, her family would never be able to go anywhere or do anything normal ever again.
This is why Tuesday scowled, just a little, at the sight of Miss Digby at the kitchen window. But Denis, being famously hospitable, leapt up to let Miss Digby in through the back door. For a moment she stood with her hands clutched together in front of her chest, as if she were about to sing. Instead she spoke at what was, for Miss Digby, an unusually fast pace.
“I am so very sorry to intrude this way, and believe me, I did very carefully weigh the potential risks against the likely benefits of coming here to your home and, after careful consideration, decided that it was imperative we discuss the present state of emergency, especially after I heard the news about Dame Elizabeth Coventry. Hence my use of the rear entrance.”
Serendipity’s mouth fell open.
“No! Not poor, dear Elizabeth?”
Tuesday pictured the dame: a majestic woman with a large, square jaw and hair dyed the color of an Irish setter’s fur.
“I’m afraid so,” Miss Digby said, nodding earnestly.
“She’s more than eighty years old!” Serendipity protested.
“And Flynn McMurtry, found nearly dead in the Mekong Delta, a million miles from where he lives. He’s not regained consciousness yet,” Miss Digby said. Tuesday’s thoughts rushed to her friend, Blake Luckhurst, also a writer of adventure stories and almost as famous as Flynn McMurtry, though half his age. She would have to call Blake as soon as Miss Digby was gone.
Denis invited Miss Digby to breakfast, which, she protested, must surely be lunch at this hour: it was one o’clock. Since the pancake mixture had been used up, he made for their guest his famous toasted ham-on-cheese-on-more-cheese sandwiches, and Miss Digby ate them with a knife and fork, cutting each mouthful into a perfect square before raising her fork delicately to her mouth. Tuesday had never seen anyone eat a toasted sandwich with a knife and fork, and she found it hard not to stare.
“I think we must thank our lucky stars that it hasn’t happened to you already,” Miss Digby said to Serendipity.
“Perhaps it’s because I’ve been on holiday,” suggested Serendipity.
“You were expecting, were you not, on Monday to resume your usual schedule?” Miss Digby asked.
“I was thinking I might stay home,” said Serendipity.
“But reporters will be all over the hotel trying to get interviews. How will I explain your absence if they’re expecting you back? I simply won’t be able to reassure them that you’re not caught up in any of this unless they actually see you in person.”
“Hmmm,” said Serendipity.
“Well, perhaps you could go to the hotel, but no writing,” said Denis, eyeing his wife sternly.
“Yes, Denis has made me promise not to write,” said Serendipity.
“Probably wise,” said Miss Digby.
Denis and Serendipity exchanged a glance.
Although Serendipity knew that Miss Digby must have observed some strange things over the years, working so closely with a writer, she was certain Miss Digby did not know about there. Miss Digby, being entirely practical and pragmatic, would never have imagined, not even in her dreams, that while she sat in the McGillycuddys’ kitchen, there was—in another place entirely—Vivienne Small, the world-famous heroine of the Serendipity Smith books, hurrying along a narrow path through the Peppermint Forest, her mind on the business of finding Tuesday McGillycuddy and her dog, Baxterr.