Mary Anne and the Secret in the Attic

  Now the social worker looked incredibly confused. “Perhaps I could come back another time,” she said. “It seems as if you’re busy right now. I’ll call for an appointment with your father.”

  By then I was sure we were in trouble, but I tried to hide my panic. “That’ll be fine,” I said. “He’ll be glad to talk to you. He has nothing to hide.”

  With another funny look, the woman said good-bye, and walked off carrying her clipboard. I sat down on the porch. I started to cry as soon as she was out of sight.

  Logan slipped outside and sat next to me. He was wearing one of my father’s shirts. Dawn must have gotten it for him. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Oh, Logan,” I sobbed. He put his arm around my shoulders and listened while the whole story came pouring out. “And now she’s going to file a report with the authorities,” I finished, still sobbing, “and I’m going to be sent off to Maynard, Iowa!”

  “What’s this about Iowa?” asked Stacey, who had joined us on the porch.

  I didn’t have the energy to tell the whole story again, so Logan repeated it for everyone. By then we were all clustered on the porch, and my friends were looking stunned.

  “Mary Anne,” said Jessi. “Don’t you think you should talk to your father?”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Dawn. “She just has to confront him about it. He’s got some explaining to do.”

  “I can’t!” I wailed. “I can’t do it. What if he tells me something I don’t want to know?” He’d given me up. Maybe he’d never really wanted me — even though he did fight to get me back. Maybe if I started causing trouble he’d give up on me and send me away.

  “At least think about it,” said Logan. He gave me a squeeze. “I hate to see you so unhappy. Now, how about if we go inside and clean up?”

  Charlotte gripped my hand tightly as we walked toward the picnic tables, which were surrounded by people. “I’m glad you came with me, Mary Anne,” she whispered, looking up at me. “Look how many people are here.”

  “I know,” I replied. “I feel a little shy, don’t you?” I was sure she did, and I knew it would help if I admitted that I did, too.

  We were at the parent-child picnic, which was being held on the grounds of the Historical Society. It was a beautiful day, with puffy white clouds sailing through a blue sky. I was planning to concentrate on making sure Charlotte had a good time; that way, I figured, I could forget about my own troubles for awhile. “Look at the stream, Charlotte. Isn’t it pretty?” I pointed to a tumbling brook edged by weeping willow trees. “Maybe we can go wading later.”

  By then we’d reached the picnic tables, which were spread with red-and-white-checked tablecloths and loaded with huge bowls and platters of food. “Wow!” I said. “There’s enough food here to feed an army.”

  “I’m not really hungry,” said Charlotte in a small voice. She was looking around at all the kids and adults who were gathered near us. Every child seemed to be with a parent: a mother, a father, or both. I realized that Charlotte was feeling strange because her own parents weren’t there.

  “Let’s see if we can find someone we know,” I said to her. “Look, there’s Becca Ramsey.” Becca, Jessi’s eight-year-old sister, is one of Charlotte’s best friends. She and her mother were inspecting the potato salad. “Hi, Becca,” I said. “Hi, Mrs. Ramsey.”

  “Well, hello, Mary Anne,” said Mrs. Ramsey. “How nice to see you here.”

  She and I talked for a minute, and then I looked around for Charlotte. She’d apparently gotten over her shyness; she and Becca were loading their plates with piles of food. “Hey!” I called to her. “Don’t take more than you can eat, okay?”

  “But we want to try everything,” said Charlotte. “See, Becca is getting a spoonful from every other bowl, and I’m getting the ones in between. That way we won’t miss anything.”

  “Good planning, girls,” said Mrs. Ramsey, laughing.

  I loaded up a plate of my own. By the time I’d finished, Charlotte had found two more friends, and they’d all taken their plates of food down to the stream. The other girls, Corrie Addison and Haley Braddock, were at the picnic with their mothers. Soon a large group of us was sitting by the stream. I felt a little uncomfortable, since I was the only person who wasn’t either a little girl or a mother, so I just concentrated on my three-bean salad.

  Everyone was talking about Heritage Day. Charlotte explained her family tree project, and Corrie told us about her oral history project. She was interviewing elderly people at Stoneybrook Manor, and putting together a book of their reminiscences about the “good old days” in Stoneybrook. “This one man remembers when Stoneybrook was just a little tiny town, with a general store and a post office and not much else,” she said. “Can you imagine?”

  The talk went on, but my attention drifted. I looked around at the other clusters of people. There were kids with fathers, and kids with grandparents. There were even three girls with their aunt; the Craine girls, who go everywhere with their beloved Aunt Bud. But most of the kids had come with their mothers. I’d never gone anywhere with my mother. We’d never gone to a picnic, or a family reunion, or even on a walk around town. I just couldn’t seem to escape the fact that I didn’t have a mother; that I was different. I’d thought being at the picnic with Charlotte would be a distraction, but instead I ended up dwelling on my problems again.

  After we’d eaten, there were three-legged races and watermelon-seed-spitting contests and other old-fashioned games. The Historical Society had planned the picnic well. Everyone had a great time, including Charlotte, who didn’t seem to miss her parents too much once she found some friends. But somehow I couldn’t shake the feeling of sadness that had fallen over me.

  I brought Charlotte home that afternoon, and she ran to tell her mother about the picnic. Dr. Johanssen thanked me for taking Charlotte and tried to pay me for my sitting time, but I wouldn’t take the money. “I was glad to take her,” I said. I knew how bad Charlotte’s parents must have felt about not being able to go.

  I walked home slowly, thinking hard. I was getting tired of feeling sad and confused about my past. Maybe it was finally time for me to confront my father and learn the truth — even if it was painful. I decided I felt so bad already that nothing I found out could make me feel much worse.

  When I got home, I walked through the house looking for my dad, but he didn’t seem to be around. In fact, the house was empty. Sharon and Dawn were out at the mall, I knew that. I headed out the back door, feeling depressed and wishing for my dad. This would be the perfect time to talk to him, when we could be alone. I sat down for a minute on the back steps, holding Tigger. “Oh, Tigger,” I said, stroking him. “I know you understand. You probably don’t remember your mother, either.” Tigger looked at me and purred.

  Then I heard a clicking noise, and I glanced up to see my dad standing by the hedge that runs along our property. He was holding a pair of clippers in his hand. “Dad!” I said, surprised. “I didn’t think you were home.” My heart started to pound. Now that he was here, I knew I had to take the plunge.

  He smiled at me, put down the shears, and sat beside me. “How was the picnic?” he asked.

  “Oh, fine,” I said. I was thinking fast. How could I start this discussion? “Dad, there’s something I want to ask you,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “Um,” I said, “would you — would you like some lemonade? You must be thirsty.”

  “That would be great,” he said. He leaned back. “I have been working for awhile.”

  I went inside for the lemonade. I was mad at myself for stalling, but glad to have another minute to think things out. I poured two glasses and brought them outside.

  “Thanks,” said Dad. He took a big gulp. “Ah, this tastes great.” Then he looked me in the eye. “Now, what did you want to ask me? I know it wasn’t about lemonade. You look too serious for that.”

  My father is pretty sensitive sometimes. “You?
??re right,” I said. “It was something else. It was about — well, it was about my mother. You know, I was at that picnic, and most of the kids there were with their moms. It made me feel sad.”

  “Oh, honey,” he said. He reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “That must have been hard.”

  “It was,” I said. “But it wasn’t the picnic that made me upset.” I took a deep breath and went on. “It was something I found out. About my past. About my grandparents.”

  My dad looked up, surprised. “Your grandparents?” he asked. “What about them?”

  “I found out that I lived with them for awhile, and that they wanted me to stay with them forever. I read some letters,” I rushed on. “I know I shouldn’t have been snooping, but I was so curious. And I also overheard that phone call you had with my grandmother.” There. It was all out.

  My father looked very surprised. “Why, Mary Anne,” he said. “It’s not like you to —”

  “I know it’s not, and I’m sorry,” I said. “But you know what? I think you owe me an apology, too.”

  My father raised his eyebrows. “An apology?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Why did you let me think I didn’t have any relatives? Why didn’t you ever tell me about the time I spent in Iowa? And why did you send me there in the first place?” Suddenly I was angry. “And also, what are you going to do when the social worker tells my grandmother you’re an unfit parent? She wants custody again anyway, and now she’ll have no problem getting it.”

  “Social worker?” my dad asked. “Custody? Oh, honey, nothing like that is going to happen. That’s in the past. Where did you get the idea a social worker was involved?”

  I told him about the woman who had knocked on the door, and about everything she’d seen and heard: Logan with his shirt off, the music blasting, the broken eggs.

  My dad’s frown became a smile. “Oh, Mary Anne,” he said. “You’ve gotten all upset about nothing. That woman was a census taker. She just wanted to know how many people live in our house, that’s all.”

  I heaved a huge sigh of relief. Maybe I wasn’t going to be shipped off to Maynard, Iowa, after all. “But what about that phone call from my grandmother?” I asked. “She said she wants me back.”

  “For a visit, honey, for a visit. She just wants to see you before it’s too late.” My father took my hand. “Look, here’s the whole story. When your mother died, I was devastated. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to take care of you the way I should. Not at first, anyway. So I asked Verna and Bill to look after you for awhile. They loved having you, and they even tried to convince me that you should stay with them forever. But once I got back on my feet, I wanted you with me. After all, I am your father. I loved you then, I love you now, and I’ll always love you.” He had tears in his eyes. “There was a custody fight,” he said, “but it was resolved without much fuss or bitterness. Verna and Bill realized that you belonged with me. But after that, we didn’t have much to do with each other. They thought that seeing you would be too painful for them, and I agreed. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Too painful?” I said. “Why?” I could guess, but I wanted to hear him say it.

  “Because you look and behave so much like your mother,” he said, after a moment. “It used to be painful for me, too — but now it’s a comfort.” He reached out to hug me.

  I hugged him back — hard — and there were tears in my eyes now, too. “I love you, Daddy,” I said. “I’m glad you fought to get me back.”

  “Me, too,” he said into my shoulder. “Me, too.”

  I went to bed that night totally exhausted, but calmer than I’d felt in days. At last I knew the truth. But I was starting to think about something else: Now I knew that I had a grandmother, and she wanted to see me. What was I going to do about that?

  Kristy was thinking a lot about families that day. It was the day of the parent-child picnic — the day I ended up having that great talk with my dad. Kristy was at home, sitting for David Michael, Emily Michelle, Karen, and Andrew.

  Kristy’s friend Shannon Kilbourne, who’s an associate member of our club, was visiting that afternoon. She’d been telling Kristy and the kids about the family reunion she’d just gone to.

  “It was great,” she said. “Everybody wore these T-shirts that said ‘Kilbourne Family Reunion,’ and name tags that said who we were. Like, mine said, ‘Shannon, daughter of Ted and Kathy.’ I met all these cousins I didn’t even know I had, and we played volleyball and horseshoes and stuff.”

  “That sounds cool,” said Kristy. “Did you meet any really old people who knew about the history of the Kilbournes?” Kristy had been thinking a lot about history because of the Heritage Day activities.

  “Yeah, that was neat,” said Shannon. “In the afternoon, after we’d had the picnic, all the old people got together and talked about things they’d done long ago. My uncle videotaped it and he’s going to make everyone a copy.”

  “Let’s play family reunion,” said Karen. “I’ll be the great-great-grandmother!” She picked up a stick and started to hobble around, using it as a cane.

  Kristy thought for a minute. “Boy, if my family had a reunion, it would be pretty complicated. I mean, I have these cousins? Ashley and Berk? What would their relationship be to Karen and Andrew? I guess they’d be step-cousins.”

  “Yeah, and if your cousins had kids, they’d be step-cousins once removed!” said Shannon. “Or something like that.”

  “What if they had stepkids?” asked Kristy. She was beginning to feel a little dizzy. “They’d be step-step-cousins.”

  “Tep! Tep!” said Emily Michelle, grinning.

  “That’s right, Emily,” said Kristy. “You got adopted into a big family.”

  “One of the things they had at the family reunion was this huge chart,” said Shannon. “It listed all the members of the family and showed how we’re related. That helped a lot.”

  “We could make one of those,” said Karen. She threw down her “cane” and ran to get paper and Magic Markers. Then she sprawled on the floor and started to write. “Karen Brewer,” she said out loud as she wrote her name.

  “That’s a good start,” said Kristy. “Now, put your parents’ names over yours, with a line connecting them to you.”

  Karen added those names, and then looked at the chart, confused. “Where do I put my stepmother?” she asked.

  “Draw a line next to your dad’s name, and put my mother’s name there,” said Kristy. “Then you can draw a line down from them and put in me and Charlie and Sam and David Michael and Emily Michelle.”

  Karen was concentrating so hard her tongue was sticking out as she wrote the names in their proper places. “What about Nannie?” she asked.

  “Nannie goes over my mom’s name,” said Kristy. “And then you have to put in my aunts’ names over there,” she pointed. “Aunt Colleen and Aunt Theo.”

  “Where do I go?” asked Andrew. He’d put down the G.I. Joe he’d been playing with, and was looking over Karen’s shoulder.

  “Right next to me,” said Karen. “Then I have to put in all of our aunts and uncles and cousins.”

  “Cousins!” Kristy said. “That’s right. You have to put in all of my cousins, too. Ashley and Berk and Grace and Peter go under Aunt Colleen’s name, and Luke and Emma and Beth go under Aunt Theo’s. And I don’t even know where my dad’s brothers and sisters and their kids would go.”

  Shannon shook her head. “Boy, your family is complicated,” she said. “If you ever had a family reunion, you’d have to rent a baseball stadium or something.”

  “That would be cool,” said David Michael. “Maybe our family could make a team and play against the Mets.”

  Shannon and Kristy laughed. “I like my big family, though,” said Kristy, after she’d thought for a moment. “I’m connected to so many people in different ways. I love being a stepsister to Karen and Andrew, and I love being a granddaughter to Nannie. It’s like all these people help you k
now who you are in the world.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Shannon. “I love to hear my aunts talk about the day I was born, and what I was like as a baby.”

  This made Kristy think. Relatives weren’t the only ones who could remember things that happened in the past. Friends could, too. And her mom had been friends with my mom and dad, back before I was born. Kristy decided then and there that as soon as her mom came home that day, she’d ask her more about what had happened when my mother died.

  When Karen’s chart was finished, it looked like a road map. There were lines going every which way, and names scrawled everywhere. Kristy helped her hang it up, and then joined in a game of “family reunion” for the rest of the afternoon.

  When her mom got home, Kristy cornered her in the kitchen. “I want to ask you something,” she said.

  “Why don’t you help me put the groceries away, and then we can talk,” said her mom.

  Kristy thought while she stacked cans of tuna fish and tomato sauce. She didn’t want to put her mom on the spot, but she was very curious.

  “Come sit down,” her mother said, when the grocery bags were empty. She patted the seat beside her at the kitchen table. “Now, what did you want to talk about?”

  “About Mary Anne,” said Kristy. “I mean, about when Mary Anne was young. What happened when her mother died?”

  “Oh,” said Kristy’s mom. She shook her head. “Oh, it was so sad. We all knew that Alma was sick, but none of us expected her to go so quickly. We weren’t that close — your father and I had only just moved into the neighborhood — but she was a lovely person. I remember how welcoming she was when we moved in. She brought us an applesauce cake, and offered to help me unpack.”

  “But what about afterwards?” asked Kristy. “What happened then?”