The next day, at the store, I found Afi leaning over Ofelia’s shoulder and studying the screen of her laptop. Ofelia had a laptop? And Afi — a guy who still used an old-fashioned register and didn’t even have cable, never mind Internet — was looking on?

“Hey, guys. What’s up?” I asked.

“Airfares,” Afi said. “Can you believe eleven hundred dollars to fly to Iceland?”

Afi was checking out airfares? “Yowza,” I said.

“If it’s the best you can do,” he said with a shrug. “You said you needed my credit card.”

Whoa, there. “Wait. What? Does Mom know about this?”

“Why should she? She’s in no condition to fly,” Afi said.

“Not to go with you. To say it’s OK. You know how she likes to give her stamp of approval.” Uh-oh. I just told a soon-to-be seventy-year-old man that he needed a permission slip — from his daughter. Afi was a sweet old guy, but nobody likes to be treated like a kindergartner, not even kindergartners.

“I don’t need anyone’s approval,” Afi said.

“But when? For how long? And what about the store?” I asked.

“Ofelia here will cover for me. I fly out on March thirtieth.”

“Why don’t I call Mom real quick?” I said, thinking fast. “She knows all the best websites for cheap tickets.”

Ofelia lowered the screen to her computer. “There’re quite a few open seats on this flight. No harm trying to find a better deal.”

As much as Ofelia still wasn’t my favorite, I was grateful she was playing along. I snapped open my cell phone and went into the storage room to give my mom an earful of what was happening here. My mom sounded worried about Afi. She, like me, had assumed his homesickness was due to his upcoming seven-oh celebration. She sighed and said that she had enough to worry about without her aging father roaming around Iceland on his own, particularly as he seemed frail and sickly since the blizzard. The blizzard. Ugh. The catalyst for so much that was happening right now.

“So what do you want me to do?” I asked my mom.

“Let me speak to him,” she said. “Maybe I can talk him into waiting until summer, until after the baby’s born.”

I walked to the front of the store and handed the phone to Afi. I had been dying for my daily fix, a Caramel Macchiato, ever since Physics had been a lecture so boring it could put the theory of perpetual motion to rest. I bundled up and popped over to Starbucks.

When I got back, Afi and Ofelia were once again leaning over her laptop.

“Your mom says to call her,” Afi said, handing me back my cell phone. “And she wonders if your passport is still valid.”

“My passport? What do I need my passport for?”

“For spring break,” Afi said. “For Iceland.”

Somehow those two phrases were about as complementary as Nike and taffeta. My mind quickly connected the dots of what had possibly transpired, conspired even, in my absence. I quickly punched in the speed dial to command central.

“Hello?”

“Mom,” I said, “what’s going on?”

She exhaled in a slurry release of air. “Has Afi mentioned the trip?”

“Yeah. Kind of. But you’re not serious.”

“Maybe it’s a good idea.”

“Spring break in Iceland is a good idea?”

“You don’t have other plans.”

True. Technically. I did, however, plan to rest and relax in celebration that, by then, The Snow Queen production, and the ice fairy dance solo, in particular, would be history. And I hardly thought that flying to a climate where spring arrived at the beginning of July and hanging with a bunch of seal-cloaked, moonlight-dancing Icelanders sounded better than the plans I didn’t currently have.

“Shouldn’t I have some say in this?” I asked.

“Of course,” my mom said. “I’m asking you to accompany your grandfather on a short trip. One week. I’d feel a lot better about it if I knew he had someone with him. To keep an eye on him.”

She did have a point. Even I got nervous every time he headed out the front door for the short walk home, noticing more than once he set out in the wrong direction.

“I guess it’s cool,” I said. “To see where Afi and Amma were from. But I still think it’d make a better summer trip.”

“I know, but for some reason it’s important for him to be in Iceland for the festival.”

After a long pause, I said, “It’s valid.”

“What is?”

“My passport.”

Next, I called Jack to let him know of my own travel plans. Though it looked like he’d already be safely installed in Greenland by the time I routed through Keflavik, Iceland’s international airport, it was still kind of neat to think our itineraries were so similar. He was surprised and excited and then claimed to be a little jealous of my trip.

“You’re jealous?” It definitely needed clarification.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m stoked about the research opportunity, but I’ll be logging numbers into charts and graphs, and staying in military-style barracks, while you’re at a festival, sightseeing, eating at restaurants, and enjoying the comforts of home.”

“When you put it that way.”

“And Brigid has warned us the food is awful.”

It was my turn to feel jealous. Even the most casual of Brigid mentions made my toenails shrivel.

“Yeah, well, they pickle or smoke their fish, and hang their meat in Iceland,” I said. “And you don’t want to know what slátur is. Or hákarl.”

“I’ve heard of both of them. But the Inuits in Greenland still eat seal blubber.”

“It’s a draw,” I said. “Am I gonna see you later?”

“I’m going to try.”

Which I knew meant no promises. One of my favorite Jackisms had always been his rock-solid commitment to things, but that had been when I was one of those things. Lately, all work and no play was making Jack a dull boy, and me impatient. I was in the mood to tell him so, but he hung up on me, claiming to have numbers coming in via fax.

As Ofelia and Afi had the store well in hand, especially given we were the only three in the place, I grabbed my backpack and warmest parka and headed out the back door.

I hardly ever used the back door. It was mostly for deliveries. And behind our side of Main Street lay the abandoned railroad tracks, now overgrown and pulled up in sections and used mostly by joggers and dog walkers. I was neither, but I picked my way along the patchy snow-covered rails. Something had briefly flashed through my mind when I had treated Afi like a kid. Not even a kindergartner likes to be treated like one.

A few minutes later, I found the Paul-Bunyan-size log I was looking for. It lay on its side like a fallen giant, three feet thick and worn smooth as marble. It ran along the tracks with the forest, its likely home, at its back and had presumably watched the busy trains bustle past, clickety-clack, for many, many decades. I laughed at myself. I was beginning to think like a Thomas character. Not too many girls in those books, and the few there were had subordinate roles: passenger coaches pushed and pulled by the bossy engines.

I took a seat on the log and stretched my legs out in front of me. It was very cold. I shivered, though my jacket was designed for modern-day explorers and adventurers. I pulled from my backpack the Thomas book and held it up as a teacher would to her class. I then set it on my lap, opening to a random page.

“You choose this time,” I said out loud, my breath curling like a ghostly ringlet in the chill air.

Nothing. So what was I doing wrong? The right bait. No more pink walls. Asking him to pick. And then it hit me. Child Psych 101. I was asking him to pick. Julia had described him as headstrong, even contrary at times.

“Whatever you do,” I said, “do not pick a story from this book.”

I sat back, bracing myself with arms fully extended to both sides. Even through my fleece-lined mittens, the trunk of the old tree nipped at me with its icy bite. I wasn’t sure how long I would last in this weather. Even Mother Goose had to have flown south for the winter. Then a wind blew from the east, rifling the pages of the book, the last two turning almost languidly until they settled on a story.

A huff was trapped in my throat. I didn’t dare move. I looked down to find the pages flipped to the very back of the thick book and a story entitled “Ghost Train.” Of course, I thought, mentally smacking my forehead. Something scary.

I grasped the edges of the hardcover and began: “‘And every year on the date of the accident, it runs again, plunging into the gap, shrieking like a lost soul.’ ‘Percy, what are you talking about?’ ‘The Ghost Train. Driver saw it last night.’”

When the story came to an end, I whispered, “Nice choice, Jacob,” and closed the book.