Rose sat on Grace’s window seat feeling bad.
Mr. Duffy had scolded her for going to Wonderland.
He had never scolded her before.
Of course, she had never done anything like going to Wonderland before.
Riding her bike across that highway that she wasn’t even allowed to go near.
And going inside that racetrack where her uncle AJ went, making her mother so aggravated with him.
She had hoped maybe Mr. Duffy would think she was brave and adventurous, like Mavis.
But instead, he had said she had given trouble a chair to sit on.
Rose lay down on the window seat and rested her head on the heart-shaped pillow that Grace had made in home economics class in high school. It still had the faint scent of that lavender talcum powder Grace loved so much.
Rose wished Mr. Duffy wouldn’t talk about being an old geezer.
And that he wouldn’t say his heart was a thumping gizzard.
She wished Mavis’s plan had worked.
That Mr. Duffy would adopt Henry.
And be happy again.
And not fall asleep in the gatehouse or let magazine salespeople into Magnolia Estates.
But Mavis’s plan had not worked.
Rose hoped more than anything that Mavis really was good at coming up with plan B.