AT ABOUT ONE p.m., Bando started yipping excitedly.
“That’d better be her!” said Lamont. It was long past the time when Maddy should have returned from her scooter run, and Lamont was both angry and anxious. He had just returned from searching the neighborhood with no results. Margo had been pacing around the warehouse the whole time. Between stretches of worry, she pondered suitable punishments.
“We should saw that damned scooter in half!” she said.
Bando’s nose was practically touching the door when it flew open. Maddy burst in, her clothes wet and soiled with brown slime.
“Maddy!” shouted Lamont.
Margo ran to greet her but was stopped short by the smell. She rocked back, her hands over her nose and mouth.
“My word!” she said. “Did you fall into a sewer?”
“Kind of,” said Maddy.
“What the hell happened?” asked Lamont. He tried to sound angry, but he was really just happy to see her alive.
At that moment, Lamont and Margo both noticed the slight figure behind Maddy. She was dressed in mustard yellow, splotched with the same ugly slime.
“Jessica!” yelled Lamont as she stepped into the room beside her granddaughter. Lamont wrapped his arms around both of them. Jessica looked down at Bando, who was circling happily, tail wagging.
“Bando!” said Jessica. “I thought the bastards killed you!”
“He’s faster than he looks,” said Lamont.
Jessica unwound herself from Lamont’s hug and walked over to where Margo was standing.
“My God,” Jessica said softly, “it’s you.”
“You must be Jessica,” said Margo. Margo held both of Jessica’s hands and smiled. For a few moments they just stared at each other. Margo was feeling something that she couldn’t really understand, something buried deep.
Everything she felt from Maddy, and maybe more.
Jessica turned to Maddy, tears in her eyes.
“You weren’t going to tell me?”
“I wanted you to be surprised,” said Maddy.
Jessica turned back to Margo.
“How did…?”
“Lamont and Maddy found me,” said Margo. “They brought me back.”
Jessica couldn’t stop staring at Margo’s face.
“Margo,” she said, “can I hug you? Would that be okay?”
In spite of the slime, Margo said yes.