In the night the winds grow worse. We can hear small branches falling on the roof. The sheep lie down happily. George sleeps on an extra mattress on the floor in Theo’s room. I can hear them talking when I get up for a drink of water.
George comes out of Theo’s bedroom and sees me on the top stair.
“George?” I whisper, tapping his shoulder.
“Yes?” he says, tapping my shoulder back.
“You told Eliasi about kissing me, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and you kissing me back,” he adds.
“And what did he say?”
“He nodded the way he nods when I tell him I’ll mow the lawn.”
“Maybe he didn’t hear you.”
“He heard me.”
“I told Boots you kissed me,” I say.
“And what did Boots say?”
“She said ‘of course he did.’ ”
“That’s the same thing as my father nodding at me,” says George.
“I suppose so,” I say.
“I know so,” says George, sounding a lot like Boots.
We can hear Jake downstairs talking soothingly to the sheep, though the sheep seem peaceful.
I touch George’s shoulder. “Good night,” I say.
George touches my shoulder back. “Good night, Louisiana.”
All night long the wind blows hard. I sleep and wake, sleep and wake. When it is morning the storm is still fierce and I hear the bleating of the sheep downstairs. George is sitting at the kitchen table watching Jake cook breakfast.
The sheep have been given bowls of breakfast too.
“The sheep love apples,” says George, watching me come down the stairs.
“Is Theo still sleeping?” I ask.
“He is. I woke up in the middle of the night several times and Theo was sitting up in bed, thinking.”
“Yes. Theo is thinking about how to figure out the rest of his life.”
“Aren’t we all,” says Jake, bringing three plates of poached eggs on toast to the table.
He looks at us. “Aren’t we all?”
George and I look sideways at each other, George raising a questioning eyebrow at me.
I shake my head. No, Boots had not told Jake we kissed. Boots keeps secrets. My mind goes back to the first time I met George, in the garage, by the beautiful black car. Jake had known my thoughts about George then. Maybe he knew our secret now. Sometimes I think the worse Jake’s eyes become, the more things he knows. Like paying attention to things only Jake sees in his head. Once he told me what Helen Keller said about blindness—“the only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”
Bitty and Flossie begin bleating again as the wind blows and the rain pounds against the windows.
The storm goes on, hail pellets beginning to hit the windows now.
“Jake?” says George.
“What?”
“Teach me?”
“Teach you what?”
“How to make your poached eggs.”
Jake smiles. “My pleasure. Louisa is right. You are turning into me. It’s an art of butter and timing.”
“And it is my pleasure being you,” says George.
I shake my head. “Soon I’ll be outnumbered,” I say.
“No,” says Boots at the kitchen door. “You’ve got me.”
“I do!”
Theo comes down the stairs. “Who have I got?” he asks.
“Us,” says George. “And Jake’s great poached eggs. And what do you have as well?” adds George. “You have a library of books with words you will carry with you all of your life.”
Everyone looks at George. He is amused at our looks.
“That was very intelligent, wasn’t it?” he says.
“Yep,” says Jake, handing George the box of eggs. “You are me.”
“Then who am I?” says Theo, his voice rising.
All of the sheep—Bitty and Flossie and Flip—look at Theo and begin to bleat loudly. “Baa, Baa. BAA.”
We all laugh.
The kitchen is filled with the noise of people and sheep.
George cooks four poached eggs on toast and gives the sheep more apple slices. He tosses crisp toast to Tess. Then Theo and Jake shovel out the old hay into buckets, put on their rain gear and boots to get fresh hay and check the barn and trees.
Boots watches them out the window.
“This is a long storm,” she says. “It’s still rough out there. I haven’t opened the freezer so we’ll have food for days.”
I sit down at the table. “I kind of like it,” I say.
“I do too,” says Boots. “We all get to take care of each other inside, even the girls.”
I smile that she calls the sheep “girls.”
“I heard that. I heard they are ‘passing through,’ ” says Boots. “It’s not yet the end of summer.”
“I’m going to tell you a secret,” I say.
“Okay.”
“Theo doesn’t want to go home. He told George. He told me. He loves it here.”
“I know that,” says Boots.
“I forgot . . .,” I begin.
“That I know everything,” finishes Boots. She shrugs. “Something will happen,” she says.
“That’s what Theo is waiting for.”
“It will happen,” says Boots. “I know that because . . .” She waves her hand.
“You know everything.”
That night, when everyone has gone to bed, the sheep sleeping peacefully in their new hay, Jake and I go up the stairs together.
“Jake?” I whisper.
I seemed to be whispering in the dark these nights.
Jake turns to me. As always, Theo’s lamp by his library shelves is on.
“Did Boots tell you anything about George and me?”
Jake smiles. “No. I know lots of things about you and George, but not from Boots. And all the things I know are good.”
I nod.
Jake puts his arm around me.
“My pal,” he says.
And we go to bed, waiting for the storm to end.