Cousin Caroline set up a cot for me in the basement, and I made up the thin pad with sheets and blankets. My heart felt wrung out like a washcloth.
When I went back upstairs, Cousin Caroline got me on the phone with Mom. It wasn’t a good connection, but I heard, “Oh, honey,” and “Thank Caroline for me, okay” and “Grandpa and Grandma miss you.”
“How is Grandpa feeling?” I asked. I wanted to say, “And Isabella,” but I was nervous to hear if Isabella was still mad at me.
“Itchy to get out of the hospital,” Mom said.
“Really? You’re not just saying that?”
“Nope.” She laughed. “He’s studying hiking maps.”
How I wanted to be in Colorado listening to that old moose story he always told! My brain made a perfect picture of Jericho with chopsticks in her hair, sitting in a tent with Grandpa and Grandma and Mom and Dad singing “Happy birthday to you.”
After we said good-bye, I went to join Morgan, who had a big book open at the oak table. “What subject is your worst?” Cousin Caroline asked.
“Math,” I said. “My best is science. Did you know salamanders can regrow limbs?”
Cousin Caroline lifted a math book from the pile. “See if you can figure out where you are.”
She went into the kitchen. I started to flip pages.
I had to admit to Jericho in my brain that I didn’t even really have a plan. When I tried to come up with one, all I could think of was this.
1. Hang on.
2. Be miserable.
3. See if missing us would bring Dad back to his old self.
I flipped more pages. My brain kept asking, “Where are Mom and Dad and Isabella and Midnight H. Cat?” Like the day the wildfires came into the city. One minute people were getting haircuts and going to the dentist, and the next minute the roads were clogged with cars and exploded schedules.
Morgan took out notecards. “Here’s a good idea,” she said to her mom. “Maybe B should be a king who died boringly in his bed, surrounded by his loving wife and children.”
“What about beheaded?” Cousin Caroline was mixing bread dough at the connecting window.
“H is already heads of queens.”
“What are you doing?” I tried to see.
“Alphabet book of death for my kings and queens unit.” Morgan bent over her paper, blocking me. “Don’t look until I’m done.”
“Do you have any other gruesome ancestor stories?” I asked her. Silence. “Is there any way to prepare for feral hog attacks?” I asked Cousin Caroline.
She held her finger to her lips to say shh.
I did one fractions problem. I folded a piece of my notebook paper into a teeny envelope.
Boom-boom. That eerie sound. “Hey.” I flipped the envelope at Morgan. “You never showed me the interesting thing.”
That did it. The story tumbled out as if I were watching a play.
Morgan: “I told Mom if we were going to move to the farm, I wanted animals.”
Cousin Caroline: “I said, ‘We need animals we can sell.’”
Morgan: “I said, ‘What about cows?’”
Cousin Caroline: “Farm families name their cows. Do you have any idea how cute a calf is? I don’t know who cried harder when the cows had to be sold—me or Grandpa.”
Morgan: “I wanted a horse.”
Cousin Caroline: “Horses get into your heart. Buy a horse, it has a home forever.”
Morgan slumped on her elbows. “I really wanted a horse.”
Cousin Caroline plopped the dough in the bowl. “I said we needed something so ugly only its mother would love it. Want to see what we found?”
She started for the door. Bob-Silver and TJ scrambled up, barking. Morgan and I followed. “I saw an ostrich in a movie at school,” Morgan said.
Cousin Caroline herded everyone outside. “I researched ostriches. They’re fragile. I refused to use my savings to buy expensive birds that would fall over dead.”
We headed in the opposite direction from the barn and over a rise. This was what Morgan meant by “our part of the farm.”
“How far—” I said, but Morgan pointed, and I saw the fenced-in area. Blobs of gray and brown with long necks. “What is that?” I asked. As we got closer, the blobs turned into huge birds that ran away on flapping legs. One arched its neck and opened its triangle mouth in astonishment.
So this was the interesting thing!
Morgan tugged my whistle playfully. “Ask us if they spit. That’s what people asked at the rest stops when we were driving them here.”
“Do they spit!” Cousin Caroline and Morgan started laughing. The birds bobbed back to check us out. Their bodies were round and feathery.
“Um . . .” I grinned. “I don’t think they spit.”
“Correct.” Morgan fisted the air. “An emu is a bird, not a llama.”
“Wait.” I picked up a feather. “You didn’t get ostriches, but you did get emus?”
“Correct,” Cousin Caroline said. “Ostriches look for a reason to die. Emus look for a reason to live. This is the big-kid pen.”
Who said Cousin Caroline didn’t have the sense God gave geese? “They’re perfect,” I said.
“I hope you’re right.” She gave me a thin look. “I’d hate to lose this land.”
The land that her bones missed? That would be terrible. “You don’t have to pay me for being a hired hand,” I said.
She smiled. “Thanks, Anna. I’m hanging on by my fingernails.” She sounded all desperate and jolly and determined.
Morgan pulled me through a shed to long, narrow pens with one big emu in each. “The adult females make that booming sound whenever they spot something that makes them uneasy, like a coyote.” She glanced at me. “Or I guess like a feral hog.”
These emus didn’t even need a whistle.
We talked all the way back to the house. Cousin Caroline had used her savings and bought two breeder pairs. “Raising them is easy,” she said. “Making money hasn’t been. Yet. But everything they produce is healthy, and wait until you see how gorgeous the eggs are.”
Morgan grinned. “Wait until you see a big kid emu give a karate kick with both feet.”
I was changing my plan.
1. Help Cousin Caroline not lose the farm.
2. See if Dad could grow back his old self—like a salamander limb.
3. Have a great time. It served Dad right.
At least there were three of us now—not counting the great-aunts and emus and chickens and dogs.