“Alec taught me the blues on the way home.” Wrapped tight in a Rosalind hug, she wailed through several bluesy lines. “I can explain the blues to you, Rosy, if you want.”
Rosalind held her at arm’s length and marveled. “You’re glowing, honey.”
“I’m a musician now.” Batty went back to her harmonica.
“Oh, yeah, that’s another thing, Rosalind,” said Skye. “Batty needs a piano. Another long story.”
“A piano!”
Before she could try to absorb that shock, Jeffrey was giving her a hug. When he stood back, she saw that he looked taller, too, and more grown-up somehow, and again Rosalind had that curious sense that she’d been apart from these people for much longer than two weeks. But the most noticeable thing about Jeffrey was his luminous joy. What had happened in Maine? Whatever had happened?
Standing next to Jeffrey was the man who’d been driving.
“Rosy, this is Alec McGrath,” said Jeffrey. “Alec, this is Rosalind.”
“Hello,” he said. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
There was nothing special about the words he’d used, but there was something special in his tone that made Rosalind look more closely at this Alec. He seemed familiar, but not in a way she could describe.
“Have we met before?” she asked. “Is that why Skye says you’re a long story?”
“I told you she was smart, Alec,” said Jeffrey gleefully.
“Jeffrey also told me that I wouldn’t be absolutely accepted without your approval.” Alec dipped his head in teasing supplication.
Several people giggled and Rosalind gazed wonderingly around at her family. They were all watching her, waiting for something from her, something important. All the watching and waiting seemed to do with this man, Alec, so she turned her attention back to him. She liked his face and she liked the way he was smiling at her—I’m already your friend, he seemed to be saying—with his hands in his pockets and his head tipped a bit to one side. Jeffrey was smiling the same way, she noticed, and had his hands in his pockets, and his head—why, his head was tipped just the same way. How strange. How very …
“Jeffrey, I’m having the most peculiar idea,” she said.
“What is your idea?” he asked, smiling more than ever.
“I’m thinking that he—that Alec—oh, Jeffrey,” she breathed. “Have you found your father?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, Rosy, I most certainly have.”
It was very unfair, and only a girl as strong as Rosalind could have waited as long as she did to have her curiosity satisfied. A father for Jeffrey! Let alone a mysterious piano, new haircuts, and Aunt Claire’s sprained ankle. But before any stories could be told, Alec, Jeffrey, and Hoover had to be sent on their way to Arundel, with many hugs and promises to see each other as soon as possible, preferably for a weekend stay at Alec’s apartment in Boston. Then Aunt Claire needed to be put on a couch to rest, because driving across New England with a sprained ankle is tiring, and then the car needed to be unpacked, and then Hound had to be fed and Asimov had to be fed all over again.
But at last, Rosalind ordered her sisters upstairs to her room, because she couldn’t stand the suspense anymore.
“I want to hear everything,” she said, wrapping her arms around Batty and the new lobster—already named Lola—and how good it felt to have her littlest sister right back where she belonged.
“I need a piano,” said Batty.
“All right. Start with the piano.”
“It’s hard to explain the piano without explaining Alec and Jeffrey,” said Skye, “and Hoover.”
“And we have to tell how Dominic made us get haircuts,” said Batty.
“He didn’t make us,” put in Jane. “It was all my fault. Or the Firegod’s.”
“Oh, definitely, let’s pin everything on the Firegod,” said Skye.
Rosalind waved her arms at them. “You’re getting nowhere. Firegods! Good grief.”
“Maybe we should just start at the beginning,” said Jane.
“Yes, please.”
So Skye, Jane, and Batty started at the beginning and, with lots of interweaving, overlapping, and interrupting, told Rosalind the tale of Point Mouette. Rosalind, holding fast to Batty, listened, and exclaimed, and absorbed. The piano went down more easily than Skye had feared it would, maybe because Rosalind had more memories than the others did of their mother’s love of music. Hoover she was rather glad to have avoided spending too much time with, and Dominic she was very glad to have missed altogether. But from what her sisters told her, she hoped to meet Turron in the future, and Mercedes, too. Naturally, though, Rosalind was most touched by how Jeffrey had finally found his long-lost father.
“And Mrs. T-D won’t try to keep them apart?” she asked.
“She can’t,” answered Jane. “They’re bonded now, father and son.”
“Besides, she’s got no legal grounds for doing it,” added Skye. “Turron asked a lawyer.”
Rosalind sighed happily. “This is a wonderful story. All the stories are wonderful, except maybe the ones about Dominic.”
Jane nervously cleared her throat. “I haven’t yet told you the last one of those.”
“Oh, no,” said Skye. “You didn’t go to French Park and kiss him again, did you?”
“I did not go to French Park, and of course I didn’t kiss him again. He has proved himself unworthy of me. It’s just that he stopped by yesterday to give me this.” Jane pulled a grubby and much-folded piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to Rosalind.
“It looks like the beginning of a poem,” Rosalind said after carefully unfolding it. “May I read it out loud, Jane?”
“I guess so.”
“Here goes,” said Rosalind.
“I’m glad I met Jane.
She isn’t plain.
She’s a slick
Penderwick.”
Skye let out a groan that could have been heard all the way back to Maine, but Rosalind was laughing, so Skye couldn’t help but laugh, too, and although Jane tried hard to be fair and kind about Dominic, she ended up feeding the poem to Hound, who appreciated it much more than she had.
“And now that we’re through all that,” said Skye, “I’m officially handing back the reins of OAP-dom to Rosalind. Long may she live. Amen.”
“You were a good OAP, though, Skye,” said Jane.
“Yes, you were,” added Rosalind. “Thank you.”
“I did okay,” said Skye. “At least Batty didn’t blow up.”
“Why would—?”
Rosalind was interrupted by Hound suddenly charging the window, barking ecstatically and crashing his big nose against the screen. Everyone knew what that meant, and their hearts soared.
“They’re home! They’re home!” cried Batty.
She rushed from the room, and Hound followed, and charging after him went Jane and Skye. Rosalind held back for a moment, still puzzled about people blowing up. But then she heard car doors slamming, sisters shrieking, Iantha and Aunt Claire laughing, Ben shouting, and—above all that and better than anything in the world—her father’s deep voice asking for Rosalind, where is Rosalind, and thoughts of blowing up were gone, never to return. She flew downstairs, and the Penderwick family was back together again.
The Penderwicks was Jeanne Birdsall’s first novel, and it won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. It was also a New York Times bestseller, as was her second novel, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street. When it was time to write her third book about the Penderwick family—and decide where they’d go for summer vacation—Jeanne visited Maine for research, fell in love with the place, and keeps going back, though the Penderwicks have headed home to Gardam Street.
Jeanne lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her husband, two cats, and an overeager Boston terrier named Cagney. You can find out more about Jeanne (and her animal friends) at her website at jeannebirdsall.com.
/> Jeanne Birdsall, The Penderwicks at Point Mouette
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