Magic Nation Thing (16 page)

From the moment the Cable Car began to move, skimming smoothly up high above the snowy mountainside, Abby’s premonition that it was going to be an extraordinary day got stronger and more certain. And sure enough, one surprise seemed to follow another. One of the first ones was when Daphne announced that she and Sher would go to the beginner’s slope to help the boys, instead of sending Abby and Paige to do it—which meant that Abby and Paige could go to the rink immediately. And once out on the ice, Abby was again surprised at how well she was able not only to get around the rink without falling, but also to swoop and glide, almost as if she’d done it all her life.

When noon came, there was a great lunch at a table where you could see all the way down to Lake Tahoe, and afterward the whole family went out to the slopes again. Having their parents watching and admiring them made Woody and Sky do a lot more skiing and a lot less arguing. And later, when they all moved to a steeper slope, Paige and Abby got to show how much they’d improved. The skiing was fantastic, and all during the day everybody did a lot of talking. Not just about skiing and skating, but also about things that had happened at school and at work, and even on the tennis court. A lot of important things got said, but for some reason, not a word about what had happened just the night before did, which made Abby wonder uneasily if what was being put off for the future was a serious discussion about who was to blame for losing Sky.

But Paige didn’t seem to be worried at all. In fact she kept saying how it was an absolutely insane day. And then, just as they were about to leave, something happened that made it seem even more so. At least right at first.

Abby and all five of the Bordens were waiting for the next Cable Car down to the valley floor when Abby noticed a big bunch of snowboarders ahead of them in the line. Because of their helmets, it wasn’t easy to tell one snowboarder from another, but before long, Abby recognized two of them: Alex by his lanky height and sharp outfit, and Pablo by the way he tossed his head back when he laughed.

Abby saw them first, but when she poked Paige and pointed, it was Paige who yelled and waved. “Hey, Alex,” she shouted. “Hi, Pablo.”

They came over then, both of them, and said hi to everyone, especially to Sky. At first Sky looked embarrassed, almost resentful. But when the guys kept talking to him, he began to loosen up.

“Hey, dude. Good to see you,” Pablo said. “We sure were glad when your mom called this morning and said they’d found you.”

“Yeah, right,” Alex said. “We heard you decided to take a little trip to Truckee. Nice going, bro.”

“No.” Sky shook his head firmly. “I didn’t
decide
to. I was kidnapped. Only they changed their minds and brought me back.” When everyone laughed, Sky’s wobbly grin made it clear that he’d expected them to.

Having a chance to talk to Alex and Pablo was a plus for more reasons than one. For one thing, it seemed to make it possible again for everybody to talk about Sky’s disappearance in a way that didn’t make anyone wonder who was going to get blamed for letting it happen.

But then came a big minus. When the line began to move, Alex and Pablo said good-bye and went back to their snowboard friends, some of whom you could tell, if you looked closely, were girls. Teenage girls, like Abby and Paige were just about to be, but probably a couple of years more mature. And all of whom seemed to be very friendly with Alex and Pablo.

On the Cable Car and then in the SUV Paige was unusually quiet. Abby was pretty sure she knew why, and she wished there was something she could say that would cheer Paige up. But there wasn’t much that could be said. The problem was, Abby thought, it looked as if she’d been right about Alex and Pablo being interested in older women. She wished she hadn’t been right, but it looked as if it were true.

They were almost home when Abby leaned across to Paige and whispered, “We’ll probably see them again next year, and by then we’ll be teenagers too.”

But Paige only gave her a blank stare and said, “What are you talking about? I don’t care what those dudes do. I’ve got more important things on my mind.”

And Abby said, “Oh. Well, that’s good then. I’m… I’m glad.”

And she was glad, at least for the moment. It wasn’t until later that she began to wonder just what important things Paige was referring to. But that night on the window seat, when she came right out and asked, Paige would only say she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

On the trip home to San Francisco, things went a little bit better than they had on the way up. Woody tried the rubber spider thing again. But a rubber spider only works once, and when Abby started treating it like an old friend, he quickly lost interest. Woody and Sky still quarreled about the dividing line between their private spaces, but their arguments weren’t as loud and ferocious, as if they were just doing it for old times’ sake.

For once the roads were clear all the way down the mountain, they had lunch at Paige’s favorite restaurant, and they arrived in the Bay Area a little earlier than usual. And then Abby was running up the front steps of the O’Malley Detective Agency, where, as she was about to discover, there had been another change. A big one.

R
IGHT AT FIRST EVERYTHING
at the agency seemed the same as always. The same cluttered office overflowed from the ex-parlor into the ex-dining room, where, at about five-thirty on a Sunday afternoon, no one was there to welcome her home. No big surprise. Private eyes worked when they found a clue—weekend or not. It wasn’t until she’d dumped her duffel bag in the hall and gone into the kitchen that she found Dorcas was at home after all. Sitting at the kitchen table, Dorcas and Abby’s dad were drinking coffee and listening to old-fashioned music on the radio.

“Abby. You’re early.” Dorcas jumped up and ran to hug Abby and kiss her on both cheeks. “We didn’t hear you come in. Are the Bordens still here?”

“No, they went on home,” Abby told her. “Sher was in a hurry to get some stuff ready for the office tomorrow. Daphne said she’ll call you in a little while.”

Abby’s dad hugged her too and pulled her down to sit beside him. “Well, how did it go, kid?” he asked. “Heard you had quite a snowstorm up there.”

So Abby began to tell them about Squaw, and even included an only slightly censored version of what had happened to Sky—of how he had run off because he’d felt he was being ignored and wound up sleeping in someone else’s car while they drove all the way to Truckee. To her surprise, her dad and Dorcas seemed to think it was an awfully funny story. And after watching them look at each other and laugh some more, she found it was easier to forget the bad parts, such as the long hours of wondering if Sky was still alive, and how awful it felt to think it was mostly her own fault.

While they were all laughing about Sky asking the Bakers if he was kidnapped, it occurred to Abby that both of them were in an especially good mood, and when she asked, “Hey, what’s up? Is something special going on?” the truth about the big change began to come out.

“See?” her mom said to her dad. “What did I tell you about Abby’s psychic powers? I told you she’d know immediately.”

And before Abby had time to start being resentful about the “powers” thing, her dad put his hand over Dorcas’s and said, “I’m sure you’re right. But I don’t think it would take much psychic power to tell that we’re feeling pretty good at the moment.” And then to Abby he said, “We were planning to wait until tomorrow to tell you, but since you seem to have guessed—your mom and I are thinking about giving it another try.”

And before he had time to go on, without needing to use a bit of psychic power, Abby knew exactly what he would say. They were going to get married again—to each other. Without meaning or planning to, Abby let out a delighted shriek and hugged them both, one at a time and then both at once. The questions came later, but not a lot of them. Nothing like “What made you change your minds?” in case remembering the things they used to fight about might not be a good idea right at the moment.

One answer that came up without any asking was that they had come to an important agreement. A two-way agreement in which Abby’s dad had said that Dorcas should go on running the O’Malley Agency, as long as she stopped living in it. “So as soon as we find a house that suits all three of us,” Abby’s dad said, “we’ll buy it and the three of us will move in.”

“And Tree will take over here,” Dorcas said. “She’s delighted. Delighted for us and for herself too. Her new commute—from the kitchen to the parlor—is going to be a bit easier than having to cross the Bay Bridge at rush hour.”

There were even plans for the wedding, and Abby would be part of it. “As a witness,” Dorcas said, “or it might be fun for you to be my bridesmaid, if you’d rather.”

Abby was thrilled and she knew Paige would be too. She couldn’t wait to tell her and invite her and all the Bordens to the wedding.

Of course Paige thought the whole thing was “totally insane.” In fact she was the one who decided that she would be a bridesmaid too and then came up with lots of important details, such as the pattern for the dresses she and Abby would wear, and the kinds of flowers they would carry in their bouquets.

Dorcas was a little concerned about the cost of all that satin and lace, but Daphne insisted on paying for some of the material. And then, when Tree offered to do the sewing, the expense problem was pretty much solved. It turned out that along with being an excellent secretary and detective (not to mention being insanely gorgeous, which you didn’t if she was in earshot), Tree was also an expert seamstress. The way Tree explained it, her parents had insisted she learn to sew as part of her preparation to be a perfect wife for the rich husband she was supposed to marry. And even though she hadn’t appreciated the rest of their plan, Tree had discovered that she really liked to sew.

So it wasn’t long before Paige and Abby were going directly from school to the agency every day to help by posing for pattern adjustments and doing a little carefully supervised pinning and basting. At least that’s what Abby thought they were doing. It wasn’t until several days had passed that she discovered what else Paige had been up to.

Abby hadn’t suspected a thing until the day the three of them (Dorcas was away on a case) were using the kitchen table to cut out two pairs of satin sleeves. Abby realized that Paige was missing and had been for some time. When she went to investigate, she once again found Paige going through a file in the office, this time in the cabinet where Dorcas kept her new cases.

Instead of answering Abby’s “What do you think you’re doing?” in a guilty way, Paige slowly put the file she’d been reading back in the drawer, took hold of Abby’s arm, and led her to the row of client chairs.

When they were both sitting, Paige said, “Do you know if your mother is working on any murder cases?”

“No, I
don’t.
” Abby was shocked. “I told you. She doesn’t tell me about her cases, at least not any important ones.” Abby had no sooner said the word
important
than she began to get the picture—to guess that Paige had been going through the files looking for crimes that were “important” enough for Abby’s Magic Nation thing to play a part in solving them.

“Paige,” Abby said uneasily. “When people talk to a detective, they expect the things they say to be private. There’s probably a law that says so, and you were breaking it. Do you really want to get us sent to jail?”

But Paige only shrugged and said, “Look, Abby. Nobody’s going to put us in jail. For one thing we’re too young. And that’s one reason we’re going to be such great detectives. The criminals are going to think that we couldn’t possibly know anything, so when we’re around they’ll just go on saying and doing things that will give them away. And then you’ll do one of your Magic Nation things—”

“No. No, I won’t.”
Abby took a deep breath and began to say something that she knew had to be said, even if it meant another quarrel—a quarrel that, this time, probably
would
be the end of being Paige Borden’s best friend. “It’s
my
Magic Nation and from now on I’m going to be the only one to decide how to use it. And I don’t want you to ever mention it again unless I bring it up first. Okay?”

For a long moment she stared into Paige’s blue eyes, and as Paige stared back, her eyes widened with astonishment, narrowed with anger, and then, along with her smiling lips, gradually tipped upward. Putting her arm over Abby’s shoulder, she said, “Okay, okay! Come on, let’s go look at our sleeves.”

As soon as the bridesmaid dresses were finished, the two of them went back to spending most of their after-school hours at the Bordens, and Abby discovered that there had been some changes there too. The most important one was that Ludmilla had run away to Beverly Hills to cook for some movie stars. Sky was delighted of course, but Daphne was desperately looking for a new cook. In the meantime meals at the Bordens’ were a lot like the ones at Squaw, when it was Every Man for Himself. Abby loaned them some of the quick-’n’-easy recipes she’d collected for Dorcas, and most of the time the Bordens seemed to be enjoying the kitchen experience, even though the results usually weren’t all that great.

So as January ended, there were things to look forward to. There would be the wedding, and helping to choose the new house, and in February there would be at least one three-day weekend at Squaw. And even more fabulous—most fabulous of all—there would be living with her mom and dad too in the kind of “normal” family she’d been hoping for, for a long time.

Concerning Paige’s promise to forget about looking for an important enough case to make the Magic Nation thing work, who knew? Abby wasn’t sure she believed it. And as for what she herself believed, such as whether she’d outgrown the Magic Nation thing, and even whether it had ever been much more than her imagination, she still wasn’t entirely sure. But what she did believe was that if something as important as finding Sky ever happened again, she’d probably give it a try.