Aunt Rosie swatted at the smoke detector with a broom until it stopped howling and then pulled Lucy into a tight hug while Cannoli, their pillow-sized tortoiseshell cat, brushed herself against Lucy’s ankle. Aunt Rosie smelled like flour and Rose Milk, and Lucy was grateful she’d grown tall enough that her face no longer pressed into Aunt Rosie’s rather large bosom.
“We’ll get you fixed right up!” Aunt Rosie declared, as though Lucy were a broken coffee mug. “Gia!”
For a long time, years and years, Gia and Lucy had been pen pals. Five years older than Lucy, Gia had sent school pictures that Lucy kept in a scrapbook with all Gia’s letters and recipes, magazine cutouts and drawings. Gia had come to visit each summer, having been close to Dad, who used to babysit her when he was in high school, and Lucy would in turn visit Uncle G and Aunt Rosie. Gia was like an older sister, which was why her secret protest at Travis Air Force Base had felt like such a betrayal.
Because they had entwined over the years, the way the trunks of trees will if planted too close together, Gia knew everything about Lucy. She knew Lucy was terrified of the wigs propped on their Styrofoam heads in her mother’s closet, but would cup a spider in her hand, and that while Lucy had never believed in Santa Claus, she had admitted to believing in the Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs bird and Lucky Charms leprechaun when she was in the first grade. And Lucy knew everything about Gia, her obsession with palomino horses and how she was saving all her money for a white fringed vest so she could be a rodeo star, which then turned into an obsession with being a Pan Am stewardess. Gia had written those facts into her letters a couple of times a month for years. Then they trickled down to once per month, and then once every couple of months, and then stopped altogether when Lucy and Mom moved out from Chicago. At seventeen and in high school now, Gia sometimes talked to Lucy the way she talked to the other babies in the family, as though she were still a kid. Lucy’s cousin was gone, and a Prell commercial model had taken her place.
“Hey, cuz,” Gia said, and gave Lucy a pat on the head. She took the canvas bag from Uncle G. “C’mon.”
“Come right back! We made pigs in a blanket!” Aunt Rosie called from the stove, and Gia sniffed with irritation.
Gia led Lucy toward the downstairs bedrooms. “We’re going to be pigs in a blanket if we keep eating like that,” she whispered.
“Well, I, for one, love pigs in a blanket.” Lucy sniffed right back.
Gia led her down the hallway, turned right—past her room—and kept going, straight into Uncle G’s office at the end of the hall. There, a pullout sofa had been heaped with pillows across from Uncle G’s cluttered desk. Cannoli leapt into the middle of the pillows, blending with all the fluff, and promptly rolled onto her back, as usual, expecting a tummy rub. Cannoli was the only cat Lucy had ever known who was so trusting, and she wondered, not for the first time, if she hadn’t been given the proper amount of cat marbles.
“Mom thought you might like your own space.”
Lucy took in her surroundings and figured it would be best that she stayed out of Gia’s room anyway, because Gia had hung her protest signs on her wall. LOVE NOT WAR and THEY CAN’T KILL US ALL! Lucy didn’t want to see them, afraid that in a moment of anger, she might just rip them to shreds. Not that she was prone to hysterical anger, but she did have fifty percent Rossi bones after all, even if she couldn’t feel them mostly, and she couldn’t be too careful.
“Mom cleaned out a drawer so you can keep some extra clothes,” Gia said, twisting her hair around one finger. She’d taken to wearing Easter-egg-colored lipsticks, today powder blue.
“Girls!” Aunt Rosie shouted from the kitchen.
“Are you ready to tell me why you’re so mad at me?” Gia said.
“No.”
“Well, I made you this anyway,” Gia said, and tied a braided piece of cobalt-blue yarn around her wrist. “Peace?”
Lucy scratched Cannoli on her tummy. There was a piece of cobalt yarn tied around her collar.
“Yes, even you, Cannoli,” Gia said as she rubbed her tummy, too.
“I’ll think about it,” Lucy said. She knew she needed to talk to her cousin. Probably should have already, but she’d had enough to worry about without adding Gia to the list.
Gia flicked one of Lucy’s braids. “Coming, Ma!”
As Lucy helped Aunt Rosie and Uncle G clean the kitchen, Gia played James Taylor on her record player at an obnoxious volume. During the short ten minutes it took to clean, three of Gia’s giddy-goose friends came through the door, one by one, without knocking, and made a beeline for Gia’s room.
Why did Gia have to have so many friends, anyway?
And then Josh showed up.
“Hey, Lucy,” he said, and pulled her right braid, like he did every time he saw her.
Lucy’s face was warm, as though she were sitting in a beam of sunlight.
Because although she had tried repeatedly not to be in love with her cousin’s boyfriend, it was hopeless. Joshua Giovanioli made Lucy’s heart swell up into her throat so that she was about to choke all the time. It was a miracle she had survived the last six months at all. He was tall, at least six feet, skinny as a reed, so that Aunt Rosie was constantly chasing him with cacciatore chicken legs and such, and had dimples on his cheeks that gave Lucy the urge to poke her finger right into the middle of one.
“Do you want to go to the beach with Gia and her friends?” Aunt Rosie said.
Lucy couldn’t imagine anything worse than sitting for an entire day in the baking sun with a bunch of giddy-goose girls, even if Josh would be there.
“That’s okay, Aunt Rosie. I’ll just work in my garden for a little while.”
But Uncle G had other ideas. After they finished cleaning, Uncle G motioned for her to follow him into the garage. “You can help me pack up my tools for the day.”
Uncle G loaded her arms with as much as she could carry out to the truck. “Why did you tell that Milo kid he could go digging around in my garden?” Lucy said as she stacked it all in the back of the truck.
“What garden?” Uncle G said with a wink.
“It’s a garden!”
Uncle G laughed his deep belly laugh. “He asked if he could put in some plants to attract the dragonflies. He explained that the creek pools there, so it was the only place that would work. Dragonflies like the calm water.”
“Why’s he so obsessed with dragonflies?”
Uncle G took his tool belt off the work table and handed it to Lucy. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“I don’t know where he lives.”
“That’s Glenna Bartolo’s grandson. He’s visiting for the summer from North Carolina.”
Glenna Bartolo was a nice lady who lived a couple of blocks over. Lucy had delivered meatballs from Papo Angelo’s deli a few times when she’d been earning postage money.
“Maybe I have enough things to worry about.”
“He could use a friend, Lucy.” Uncle G slammed the tailgate shut. “And so could you.”
Lucy rubbed the toe of her sandal into a rust stain on the cement driveway. She could feel her nose turning pink. “I don’t have time for friends.”
“What, you’re so busy?”
She had been. But Mom and Dad had taken that away from her.
Uncle G scratched his short beard. “I know you want to help your dad. But sometimes, staying out of someone’s hair is the best way to help.”
“Are you saying I’m being a pain?”
“I’m saying you are in your dad’s hair. He needs to figure out his own hair.”
Lucy humphed.
“Milo told me you guys found some artifacts buried next to the creek. Why don’t you figure out who they might belong to?”
“How are we supposed to do that?”
“You’re the one with the brains,” Uncle G said. “Besides, what else are you going to do? You going to sit around all day and watch Aunt Rosie make doilies?”
It was true. They were everywhere: under fruit bowls, on every bed pillow, lying over the backs of chairs. Aunt Rosie said they made people happy.
“Listen, how about I drop you off at Mrs. Bartolo’s? You can see if Milo is busy. And I may have a place for you to start your search for the owner of that helmet. What do you say?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Lucy glanced across the side yard toward her own house just as Fitz pulled up to the curb in a beat-up-looking Ford. He got out and waved as he walked up the front path for his twice-per-week visit. Lucy was jealous because Dad let Fitz help him with the prosthetic arm while Lucy wasn’t even allowed in the room. She supposed it was Fitz’s job after all, to make sure the prosthetic fit perfectly, to train Dad on how to use the arm and how to care for his stump. But the facts didn’t make her feel any better.
“How do you know Fitz?” Lucy said. “And why did you send him? Doesn’t the army take care of stuff like that?”
“I know lots of people. Fitz is a specialist, and no, the army doesn’t take care of specialists like Fitz.”
“How do we know he’s qualified? Where did he go to school? What is his—”
“Listen, Lucy. I know you’re worried. But this is one small thing you don’t have to think about. He is well qualified and comes highly recommended from a couple of vets I know and have worked with. Good men who are helping their fellow vets however they can.”
Lucy stared as her front door opened and Fitz disappeared inside.
Uncle G came up beside her, followed her gaze.
“Do you know what serendipity means?”
“Isn’t that what Gia puts in her hair when she wants to make it straight?”
“No. It’s the idea that you might find something truly wonderful, maybe even necessary, while looking for something else.”
“Sounds like something Great-Aunt Lilliana would say.”
Uncle G laughed his deep-down belly laugh and turned them both toward the truck. His hands were thick, and she felt the calluses on his palm rub the top of her arm. The opposite of Dad’s hands, which were long-fingered and smooth. Perfect surgeon’s hands.
“Are you telling me that by trying to figure out one mystery, I might discover ways to help Dad?” Lucy said.
Uncle G opened the door for Lucy, and she climbed in. He looked at her long and hard.
“I’m saying that you never know where the answers will come from. Sometimes you even discover you’re asking the wrong questions.”
Lucy wasn’t in the mood for a philosophical discussion. But she did recognize that she was at a dead end. Dad acted as though he didn’t need her around, so it was up to her to find a way to convince him he was wrong. That she wasn’t just a child who couldn’t handle things. And maybe, just maybe, the answer was out there somewhere, and she would find it while doing something else.
Serendipity. She liked the sound of that, even if it did sound slightly superstitious.