Sophie loves to explore, so we’ve been poking around and even got rid of Brian long enough to row over to Wood Island. When we were in an abandoned house, she wanted to pick up every little thing she saw, as if every little piece of rubbish was a treasure or a clue. “Who do you think owned this?” she said, and “Why do you think they left?”
She poked at the walls and said, “I could live here. If I had to.”
Later, when we were exploring the middle of the island, I felt as if ghosts were hovering around us. The woman ghost and the baby ghost were following us through the woods, and I kept asking Sophie if she saw them, but she didn’t.
She said, “I don’t believe in ghosts. I think they’re all in your mind.”
On we went along the mossy path. I got brave. “Sophie,” I said, “can I ask you something about your parents?”
“Sure,” she said.
“What really happened to them?”
She didn’t stop, didn’t hesitate, didn’t even skip a beat. It was as if she and Uncle Dock had rehearsed the same answer. She said, “Nothing happened to them. They’re back in Kentucky—”
“Not them,” I said. “Your other—”
“My parents are back in Kentucky,” she said. “You want to race to that rock up there?” and she took off running.
What is up with her?
When we got to the other side of the rock, she started talking about this little kid she knows. She said this little kid had lived a lot of places.
“How many?” I said.
“A lot, a lot, a lot. Some not-so-nice places.”
“Where were the little kid’s parents?”
“Somewhere else. So the little kid had to live with other people. They didn’t really want the little kid. The little kid was always in the way. You want to race all the way over there? To that scrabbly tree?”
When we got back my father was having a humongous fit about how irresponsible we’d been and how we could have been dragged out into the ocean and all that jazz. He doesn’t give me credit for beans. I was getting really ticked, but then Sophie tugged at my arm and whispered, “At least he was worried about you.”
“He sure has a funny way of showing it,” I said. “All that yelling and all.”
And Brian asked me about a million questions. He wanted to know where we went and how we got there and what we saw and why we didn’t tell him we were going and were we scared coming back and what if we’d gotten lost and about a thousand other questions like that.
I almost felt bad that we hadn’t invited him, but then he said that he was going to make up lists of what each person was doing each day so that someone would know each person’s whereabouts.
“And why would we want to know that?” I asked him.
“Because!” he said. “Because we ought to know where everybody is, don’t you think? In case someone got lost or hurt or something. Then if they didn’t come back, somebody would know they were missing and somebody would know where they were supposed to be and somebody—”
“You’re such a worrier,” I said.
“But he’s got a point,” Sophie said. She turned to Brian. “It’s a good idea, Brian.”
Brian turned about seventeen shades of red and shambled off looking mighty pleased with himself.
“Geez, Sophie,” I said. “You think that nerd-brain had a good idea?”
“If he wants to know where everybody is, then he must care what happens to everybody. We must matter to him.” And then she turned around and went over to the railing and stared out at the water, and I felt about as sad as I’ve ever felt in my whole life.