1

DR. TUTTLE took a break halfway through his pork chop. It was awfully tough.

“Glad to be out of the salt mines for a few days, boys?” he asked, setting his fork down.

“Yeah,” said John Henry.

Tim just nodded, afraid his father was about to bring up first-term report cards. It was the Friday before Christmas.

“What did you do all day, sing carols?” Dr. Tuttle asked.

“We sang ‘Jingle Bells’ in assembly,” Tim said.

“We had a scrimmage this afternoon,” John Henry said. “Last one of the season. It was cool.”

“It must have been,” said Mrs. Tuttle. “The high for the day was ten degrees.”

“Aw, you don’t notice that when you’re playing, Mom. Do you, Timmy?”

Tim grunted. His fingers had been numb the whole scrimmage, but it hadn’t really mattered, since he’d never gotten near the ball—even though John Henry had thrown over and over to the boy he was meant to be covering. “Trying to make your kid brother look good?” the coach had said when he finally took Tim out. Tim was in seventh grade at Burlington Middle School, John Henry in sixth.

“Me and Spider … I mean, Spider and I connected for four TDs,” John Henry said. “Should have been five. The last one hit him right in the breadbasket and he dropped it—didn’t he, Timmy?”

Tim mumbled unintelligibly, his mouth being full of roll.

“You missed it? Yeah, I guess you were on your butt.” John Henry grinned at his mother. “Spider faked him out of his shorts.”

“Shorts, on a day like this?” she said. “That seems awfully spartan.”

“It’s just an expression, Mom. It means he made Tim look like a dork.”

The rolls were on the stale side, but Tim had lubricated his with enough butter to get it down. “The field was icy,” he muttered. “And my glasses fogged up.”

Luckily, ice reminded Mrs. Tuttle of a pipe that had burst that morning in the storage room of the Burlington Art Museum, where she volunteered as a tour guide.

“Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys got soaked,” she said.

“How ignominious,” said Dr. Tuttle. “They outfox the British army for the whole Revolutionary War, only to be laid low by a burst pipe.”

“I imagine they’ll survive,” Mrs. Tuttle said. “They’re in bronze.”

“Ah, a sculpture. I was thinking you meant the painting.”

“No such luck. That’s up in the main gallery. Every time I have to call it ‘a masterpiece of American historical painting,’ the words stick in my throat.”

“Is it as bad as one of Aunt Winnie’s Views?” John Henry asked, smirking.

“Aunt Winnie’s paintings are beautiful!” Tim cried.

“It’s not a fair comparison,” said Mrs. Tuttle. “Winifred doesn’t pretend to be a real painter.”

“But she is a real painter,” Tim said.

“I’m very fond of her Views,” said Dr. Tuttle.

For Christmas and his birthday Dr. Tuttle always received one of his aunt’s small oil paintings of the view of the Green Mountains from her house. Winifred wasn’t his real aunt, only his aunt by marriage. Long ago, during World War II, she’d married his uncle, but soon afterward his uncle had been shot down in the Pacific, leaving her a widow. Mrs. Tuttle considered her paintings “amateurish,” so Dr. Tuttle always took them to hang in his lab at the university.

“Don’t you like the chop, Trev?” Mrs. Tuttle asked.

“Very flavorful,” Dr. Tuttle said, preparing for a second assault.

But John Henry rescued him by slipping an envelope from his back pocket and sliding it toward him. Tim felt the opposite of rescued as he watched his father set down his knife and fork and pull out John Henry’s report card.

“Uh-oh,” Dr. Tuttle said.

“What is it, dear?” said Mrs. Tuttle.

“Somebody we know got an A minus in arithmetic.” He spoke gravely. “What do you suppose could have happened?”

“I missed a quiz the week you took us to Baltimore for your conference!” John Henry cried. “It still counts as straight As, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does, lambie,” Mrs. Tuttle said. “Your father’s just pulling your leg. Where’s yours, Tim?”

“You always say bringing reading material to the dinner table isn’t polite,” Tim said.

“Report cards are an exception, dear.”

“I dropped it on the bus and somebody stepped on it. I think it got smudged.”

“Well, we’ll do our best to decipher it.”

“To tell you the truth, Mom, I’m not sure where I left it.”

“I think you went straight up to your room when we got home,” John Henry said helpfully.

“Shall I come up and help you look?” Mrs. Tuttle offered.

“Um … no, that’s okay,” Tim said, pushing his chair back slowly from the dinner table.

He trudged upstairs to his room and groped under his mattress, where he’d stashed his report card in hopes that one of his great-aunt Winifred’s sayings—”Out of sight, out of mind”—would hold true. In his opinion it was a nasty trick to hand out report cards right before Christmas, which was supposed to be the season of joy and glad tidings and ho, ho, hos.

He walked back downstairs in slow motion, hoping his peas might at least get cold enough for him to use that as an excuse for not eating them.

“Let’s see it, sweetie,” Mrs. Tuttle said as he shuffled into the dining room.

He was nearer his father’s end of the table, however, and handed the report card to him. Dr. Tuttle was in charge of a team of scientists who did genetic research at the University of Vermont Medical Center. He believed that grades were the result of genes.

Unfortunately, he soon passed the report card on to Mrs. Tuttle, who believed grades had more to do with studying.

“Really, Tim,” she said with a sigh. “If you spent half as much time on your homework as you do eating Winifred’s chocolate-chip cookies, you wouldn’t have all these Cs.”

“Or that gut,” John Henry murmured, loud enough for only Tim to hear.

“Now, Alison,” Dr. Tuttle said gently, trying to get down another bite of leathery pork. He’d actually been wishing Mrs. Tuttle spent her time in a different way, though he would never have dared say so. When she wasn’t volunteering at the art museum, she was putting in time at the Women’s Shelter or working for the local chapter of the Campaign for Women’s Rights. “Aunt Winnie’s a good old soul,” he said. “I’m sure she’s not a bad influence.”

“She’s fat and weird,” John Henry said.

“She is not,” Tim said.

“Living up on that hill all by herself. She’s so out of touch, she’s—”

“Now, John Henry,” said Mrs. Tuttle, “it’s not nice to say mean things about poor old Winnie.”

“She’s not poor,” Tim said.

“Don’t you be touchy, dear. And don’t forget your peas.”

“But Mom, they got cold.”

“Shall I heat them up for you?”

Tim shook his head with a sigh. In fact, peas were just as bad hot as cold. “I finished my meat,” he pointed out.

“But vegetables help you grow, dear. And they’re good for your eyesight.”

She didn’t say “Look at John Henry.” She didn’t have to. John Henry, who didn’t have to wear glasses, had cleaned every pea off his plate.

Tim was used to suffering in comparison with his brother, but that night it bothered him more than usual. He actually lay awake in bed brooding about how he was a year and two months older than John Henry and still worse at just about everything. But if nothing else, the miserable scrimmage had worn him out, so he didn’t lie awake too long. And when he woke up, it was bright and sunny and—best of all— Saturday. Saturdays were wonderful—particularly winter Saturdays. This time of year it got dark too early for visiting Great-aunt Winifred’s hilltop after school, so he had to wait till Saturday to see her.

Saturday was Mrs. Tuttle’s day at the Women’s Shelter, and since Tim had slept kind of late, she was gone by the time he got down to the kitchen. But his father was still there, making rings on the front page of the paper with his coffee mug, and John Henry was poring over the sports section.

“I could take you boys Christmas shopping,” Dr. Tuttle offered.

“I was thinking I’d hit the mall Monday,” said John Henry. “I’m helping Mr. Cooley clean his milking machines today. He’s giving me three bucks an hour.”

“How magnanimous,” said Dr. Tuttle. “What about you, Tim? Do you have something in mind for your mother yet?”

“Maybe I’ll shop Monday, too,” Tim said.

Dr. Tuttle didn’t press the point. The truth was, he hated taking days off from the lab, even on weekends. Once he was gone, John Henry grabbed his parka and a pair of galoshes and took off. After a couple of extra pieces of toast smeared with raspberry jam, Tim donned his parka and hiking boots and set off as well.

Dr. and Mrs. Tuttle both worked in Burlington—Vermont’s biggest city—and both Tim and John Henry went to Burlington Middle School, but they lived out in the country, three miles east of the city limits, next to the Cooleys’ dairy farm. Their mailing address was Williston, which was just a village—”no bigger than a gnat’s eye,” according to Great-aunt Winifred. But Great-aunt Winifred didn’t even live in Williston. Her hilltop was a couple of miles farther east, not in any village at all.

As Tim walked down the road past the Cooleys’ farm, his eyes kept returning to their barn—not because John Henry was in there cleaning the milking machines but because of the way the steam was coiling out of the cupola. With all the cows inside, the barn got as hot as it did smelly, and in the sunlight the escaping steam was strangely beautiful, twisting across the glinting tin roof and spiraling up into the powder-blue sky.

After the Cooleys’ house came Cooley’s Curve, and a quarter mile past that, a dirt road merged into the main road on the right, marked by a solitary mailbox with W. V. TUTTLE stenciled on the side. Tim opened it and pulled out a bill from the electric company and a copy of the Burlington Free Press and headed up the dirt road. Cut through pines and hemlocks, it was shady and noticeably colder than the main road, but Tim felt warmer with every step. He snapped mental photos as he climbed: of a squirrel who hadn’t hibernated yet, his showy tail the same ruddy gray as a dawn sky; of a four-point buck who managed to look graceful even while gnawing bark off a tree trunk; of a slinky creature that darted under a fallen log before Tim could tell if it was a mink or a weasel. He paid less attention to the noises—a chainsaw wailing in the distance, crows cawing irritably in the creaky old trees—till he rounded the last switchback and heard a tinkling sound.

He passed a big clump of yew and walked around his great-aunt’s garage—an old two-tone Chevy was pulled up to it—and headed for the house. It was white clapboard with shutters the exact same dark green as the yew and wisps of smoke slipping out of the fieldstone chimney. The tinkling came from an assortment of wind chimes hanging from the eaves of the front porch, but Tim walked around to the back door. As soon as he stepped into the mudroom, he smelled something scrumptious. Molasses cookies, he was pretty sure. He shut the door softly behind him, dumped his parka and gloves and hat and scarf on the woodpile, kicked off his boots, opened the inner door, and stepped into the glorious warmth of the kitchen. Definitely molasses cookies, he thought, sniffing at the wood stove.

He propped the mail against the rolling pin on the counter and padded through the dining room and front hall to the threshold of the living room. Greataunt Winifred was sitting at her easel in the picture window with her back to him, her hair a fuzzy white aureole in the slanting-in sunlight. Poor old Ben Franklin wasn’t around anymore—he’d made it to twelve, which was eighty-four in dog years—so Tim could easily have crept up and surprised her. But he didn’t. Great-aunt Winifred was eighty-four in people years, an age when sudden shocks might be dangerous.

Tim bristled whenever John Henry called Greataunt Winifred fat, but in fact she was a bit overweight. It took her a couple of seconds to swivel around in her paint-speckled Windsor chair when he cleared his throat. Her glasses were thicker than his, with gold rims instead of black, but even as the sun glinted off the lenses, half blinding her, a smile lit up her round face.

“Timmy!” she said, blinking at him.

“Hope it’s okay I didn’t call first.”

She laughed at this absurdity. He walked across the faded Persian carpet onto the drop cloth and gave her a hug.

“Lands, child, you’re cold as a codfish!”

She set her brush on the edge of her palette—it was on a candle stand by her easel—and pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her dress to wipe his drippy nose. After rocking back in her chair, she heaved herself to her feet.

“Hot cocoa or hot cider?” she asked. “The cider Jeb brought’s as fresh as tomorrow morning.”

Jeb Grimsley, the grocer’s son, delivered her groceries in his Jeep once or twice a week.

Tim picked cider, and while she went after it, he pulled a chair up beside hers and studied her painting. It had progressed since last Sunday. Now you could tell that the snowy summit of Mt. Mansfield, which poked up over the treetops out the window, was shaped like a man’s profile. She never seemed to get it quite right—this time the nose on her mountain was considerably more bulbous than the nose on the real one—but he couldn’t have cared less.

She brought him a mug of steaming cider with a stick of cinnamon in it and sat back down. Once, last winter, he’d used the cinnamon stick as a straw and scalded his tongue, so he pushed it aside and blew on the surface before taking a birdlike sip.

“Mm, good.” He set the mug on the windowsill. “Your painting’s good, too. Almost done.”

“It better be—it’s your folks’ Christmas present. Are they okay? Trev sounded a little squirrelly when he called on Wednesday.”

“He had a cold he couldn’t shake.”

“I can imagine. He’s wise as a treeful of owls—but he doesn’t have enough sense to stay home when he’s sick.”

“He hates not going into the lab.”

“And how’s your mother? Running around to beat the band, I suppose.” Great-aunt Winifred laughed fondly. “That woman’s busier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers! She called me from that funny thingamajig last week, but I couldn’t understand a word she said.”

“Her cell phone.”

“That’s something I’ll never understand. As if telephones aren’t bothersome enough at home—now people want to carry them around in their pockets! And how’s John Henry?”

Tim sighed.

“What’s the matter, dear heart?”

“Nothing.”

“He’s not sick, is he?”

“Nope. He got straight As again.”

Great-aunt Winifred chuckled, which made her whole body jiggle. “He’s sharp as my aunt Tilly’s sewing shears, that boy.”

“Yeah.”

She gave him a close look. Her eyes, slightly magnified by her glasses, were the same faded blue as the sky over Mt. Mansfield. “You don’t seem quite yourself today, child. What’s the matter?”

“Oh, I got mostly Cs again. And I stink at football.” He found himself leaning to the left, so that his head fell against her soft shoulder. It smelled like molasses cookies. “I’m more than a year older than he is, Aunt Winnie, but he’s an inch taller.”

“John Henry?”

“Yeah. And he can shinny to the top of our flagpole in ten seconds flat. I can’t even get halfway up. And if we race home from the bus, he’s at the front door before I’m at the mailbox.”

“Mm, he’s quick as a rabbit downwind of a fox.”

“Yeah, and he can toss the football right over the Cooleys’ barn. A perfect spiral. I can’t even get it to the roof. And when we play Space Invaders in the video arcade on Church Street, he wins every time. Same with Minesweeper.”

“Minesweeper?”

“On the computer. He’s even better at shoveling snow than me. And mowing the lawn.”

“He’s something, all right. But what difference does it make to you?”

“Just … he’s better at everything.”

The Windsor chair squeaked as Great-aunt Winifred pivoted around and put an arm around Tim’s shoulders. “You two may be as different as chalk and cheese—but think how boring it would be if you were just alike. And you’re the sweetest boy I know.”

“I am not. And even if I was, that’s not being better at something.”

“Land o’ Goshen, child. Don’t you know how silly it is to compare yourself to others? It’s useless as two tails on a dog.”

“But when people see me and John Henry, they always feel sorry for me. I can tell.”

“So what? People feel sorry for me, too. They look at their neighbors, and look at me, and they say, ‘Poor old thing, living up there all by herself.’ But does it do them any good? Or me any harm? I may be a poor old thing, but I’m a happy one.” She kissed the top of Tim’s head. “And you know what makes me happiest in the whole world?”

“What?”

“Seeing you.”

The warmth of the house had been bringing the blood back to the surface of Tim’s skin, making his cheeks tingle, but now the tingling spread through his whole body, chasing out all the depressed feelings he’d had since dinner last night. When his great-aunt rocked backward to get ready to stand up, he clutched her arm, keeping her in her chair.

“What is it, Timmy?” she said, laughing.

“I like you here.”

“Well, I like being here. But if I don’t get to the stove in the next minute and a half, the cookies I’ve got in the oven’ll be black as a tinker’s pot.”

Tim pondered this for a few moments and then let her go.