The next morning, Mom is all business prepping me for the doctor visit.

“Did you know doctors still make house calls?” she says as she jams the edges of the blanket underneath me. “Are you warm enough?”

“Mom, stooooppppp.”

“How’s your head? Does it hurt? Do you think you hit it on the way down? Or on the floor when you fainted?”

“Can you pass me my phone?”

Mom frowns down at my locked screen, my last message to Miles invisible to her.

“You need to give your eyes a rest,” she says, pocketing the phone.

“Mom—”

“For a little while. Find something else to do.”

“Something that doesn’t use my eyes?”

She purses her lips.

“Mom, I really don’t think I fell hard. It was more of a collapse. I can’t even feel my head.”

“Wait, like you can’t feel it in a bad way?”

“Maybe I don’t need the doctor,” I try, but it’s no use.

“She’s already on her way,” she says, and that’s the final word.

The best I can hope for is some sneaky phone time later, and maybe, if I’m lucky, Miles will have responded by then. Because as great as it was to have a ghost-free night after the closet incident, that won’t save me tonight. Or the next night or the night after that.

The doctor makes her house call as promised, except she isn’t a doctor.

“I’m a vet,” she clarifies, tugging my eyebrow up while she shines a light into my pupil.

“Like a . . . ?” I ask, hoping she means a veteran who helped injured soldiers or something.

“Veterinarian,” she finishes.

“Got it,” I say.

“Hard to find a doctor who does house calls anymore these days,” she says.

“Ricki, um, mentioned that,” Mom says sheepishly from the bedroom doorway, then mouths “sorry” to me.

“Yes, I’ve been seeing Ricki’s pug for practically his whole life,” says the vet. “He seems to have an abnormal number of gastrointestinal maladies for his breed, and that’s saying something. Pugs are quite gastro-sensitive.”

 

“I have a few theories,” Mom mumbles.

“What’s that?” asks the vet, switching to my other eye.

“I’m so sorry; I’ve forgotten your name, Dr. . . . ?” she asks.

“Quackers.”

No. It couldn’t be that perfect.

“Dr. . . . Quackers,” Mom says quietly.

“Yes?” asks the vet, moving her finger in front of my face as I track it.

“Is, uh, everything okay?”

Quackers places her light in her bag and gives me a scratch behind the ear. “Sorry, habit.”

“No worries,” I say. “Feels kinda good, actually.”

“Mrs. Greenburg, Gus will be fine. You did the right thing calling me. Be on the lookout for unusual behaviors: sudden dizziness, nausea, confusion—”

“Hairballs,” I add.

Dr. Quackers blinks at me. “Humans don’t typically suffer from hairballs.”

Is this lady for real?

“Thank you so much for your time, Doctor,” Mom says.

“Hey, no concussion, that’s great news! Can I have my phone back?” I ask the second Mom shuts the door.

She hands it over reluctantly. “I still want you taking it easy the rest of the day.”

I slink off to the couch and do my best to act casual as I frantically pull up my messages.

 

 

I can’t tell them how disappointed I am. They’ve both done so much for me, more than I believed anyone would do for me.

“Is it your head?” Mom asks me from across the table.

“Huh? Oh, no. Quackers cleared me, remember?”

Mom grins. Our spoons clink.

“The chili? Too spicy?”

“Chili’s great, Mom.”

Clink, clink.

“You know, if you ever want to talk to me about girls—”

“I absolutely do not.”

I know she’s trying to get to the bottom of this awkward dinner silence, but after staying awake the entire night, I don’t have the energy to come up with a good enough lie.

I’m so close to telling her everything out of pure exhaustion when a chime we’ve never heard rings throughout the entire first floor of the manor, rattling the fancy chandelier above the foyer.

“What the—”

“I think it’s the doorbell,” Mom says, awestruck.

“We have a doorbell?”

Mom looks like she wants to ask me a follow-up question, but she gets up to answer the door instead. Before I know it, I hear Toby’s voice echoing from the entrance.

“Greetings!” he says. “I come bearing gifts!”

“Well, by all means, come in,” Mom says, welcoming him in with a flourish.

Toby wears not a windbreaker or flannel like most islanders but a dew-flecked wool jacket, tailored to fit him perfectly. And a top hat, which he removes once inside.

Because that’s the polite thing to do? I feel like we should be exchanging bows or something. Never mind he’s wearing wool in summer.

It takes all of us a minute to realize what Mom’s just done. I think it’s when Toby is silently staring at the missing staircase that it finally dawns on Mom.

“I shouldn’t have let you see this,” she says quietly. “I . . . wasn’t thinking.” Then she turns to Toby, her face practically in pieces. “I suppose I instinctively trust you. Or maybe I figured you’d already guessed how bad it was. Oh, Toby, you can’t tell anyone the manor is so—”

Toby takes my mom’s hands into his and holds them. “My dear, I haven’t seen a thing.”

Mom’s lips form a shaky smile, and she takes a deep breath to gather herself. “To what do we owe the unexpected pleasure, Toby?”

Toby wastes no time ignoring all the things that are wrong with Rotham Manor and presents Mom with a faded yellow box of soaps and lotions.

“All from a small village near the Côte d’Azur that specializes in oils and essences.”

“Oh, thank you,” Mom exclaims.

Mom wouldn’t know an oil from an essence if it slapped her on the back, but a gift is a gift, and Mom’s polite. Toby has more gifts too.

“Another treasure I thought you might both find interesting,” he says, and winks at me.

Toby produces a small tarnished frame, no bigger than my phone. It takes me no time at all to recognize the people in the picture and especially none to recognize the manor in the background. Before I can get a closer look, Toby removes the picture from its frame and shows me the back. There are four names written, faded but still legible: Karl, Gretchen, Peter, and . . .

“Felix,” I whisper.

When he turns the picture back over, I can see it all.

Next to Peter is a glare the camera’s flash has overexposed to a blob of white. To the other side of that blob . . . is a dog.

This can’t be.

“Felix was a dog?” I ask. I can barely get the words out.

A dog.

“Oh,” Mom says. “I’ve never seen that one before. Toby, you’ve found a different angle of the house! The veranda used to wrap around the side.”

Toby smiles at us.

“And look at all the juniper trees,” Toby says. “Thickets of them around the manor, see? Right off the cemetery over there!” He traces his finger along the side and back of the graveyard. “Well, I must go now,” Toby says, repositioning the top hat on his head. If he notices that I never thanked him, he’s being pretty cool about it.

“We’ve got chili,” Mom says, pointing to the slow cooker. “And fresh cornbread.”

Toby gazes longingly at the cornbread but shakes his head. “I’m afraid Ms. Ricki is cooking for me tonight.”

“Oh, no,” Mom says with genuine concern, but Toby shakes his head and smiles.

“Let’s say that over the years, I’ve, ah, lavished so much praise on Ricki’s, er, more traditional dishes that she sticks to macaroni and potatoes when it comes to feeding me. She leaves her experiments to the more adventurous eaters.”

“Ahh,” Mom says. She lifts the box of soaps. “Thank you again.”

Toby leaves. Mom then fixes her gaze at me.

“Fry, are you sure you’re okay?” she asks. Somehow, we’ve both sat back down at the table, right where we were before Toby’s visit.

I’ve been holding the same spoonful of chili for what must be a hundred years. My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s a group text to Miles and me from Tavi.

I sigh. I know it’s dramatic, but I can’t help myself.

“Fry, no phones during dinner,” Mom says.

Before I can put it away, Miles replies.

 

 

My thumbs deliver the somber news.

“Fry,” Mom warns.

“Okay, okay.”

But the texts are flying faster than before, and I just can’t look away.

 

“Fry!” Mom scolds.

 

 

“Gus, if you don’t—”

“Mom, I have to go to Seattle tomorrow!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s super important, and it’s just for the day,” I blurt.

Mom blinks fast. I did this all wrong, spitting it out like that without a good reason.

“Gus, it’s your first day of school on Monday,” she says. “You need to prepare.”

“Prepare how? What am I going to do? Practice being awkward?”

I’m starting to sound desperate, but maybe that’s because I’m EXTREMELY DESPERATE. If Tavi can’t bring the answer home and needs us to meet her in Seattle, whatever she’s found has to be good. Better than the news Toby just delivered, and frankly, anything other than Felix-is-a-dog news is better right about now.

“Honestly, Gus, do you think I would let you wander the streets of Seattle by yourself?”

“Miles will be with me!” I protest.

Mom rolls her eyes. “All right, then, do you really think I would let you wander the streets of Seattle with Miles?”

“You can come with!” I say, grasping for ideas. “We could go see the Space Needle?”

“Since when have you wanted to see the Space Needle?” Mom asks.

“Well, it would be cool.”

“There’s going to be construction up and down I-5 all weekend. Traffic will be a nightmare. Besides, I’ve got things to do in Tacoma tomorrow. I have to meet with the arborist about those dead trees and then visit the lumber yard.”

“The ferry?” I try. “I could go with you into Tacoma and take a ferry to Seattle.”

“It isn’t that simple,” Mom says, exasperated.

“If you don’t get off that phone in three seconds, it’s mine for the next three months,” Mom says.

I set my phone aside, both of us pretending not to notice it vibrating every second as we wordlessly clink our spoons against our bowls.

Eventually, Mom gives. “Do you want to meet up with your friends on Rhodi tomorrow?” It’s a pity compromise, and we both know it, but it gives me an idea. Not one I’m proud of but one I think could work.

“Yeah, okay,” I say, trying not to sound too enthused.

If I were a better person, I’d feel bad that I’m getting good at lying to Mom. Maybe if she knew what was at stake, she’d understand. Probably not.

Mom perks up a little. I pretend to do the same.

“Good,” she smiles.

It’s not good; it’s perfect. If Miles has the same idea I do, tomorrow’s Seattle plan is on.