Maybe a Fox (15 page)

Senna.

Senna, returning to the dugout in the late evening, pressing herself against his back. His sister, leading him through the woods to the old cave. To the oxbow, where gunshots had exploded the calm and the silent catamount watched from the nearby tree.

He breathed in deep and long and his body filled with the scent of her fur, the memory of her warm and living body pressed to his back in the den.

Now he closed his eyes and then pointed his head up to the wide sky glittering and pulsing with light, stretching high above the world, and he keened his grief to that unknown world.

A fox. Crying for his sister.

A book never happens all by its lonesome, even one that has two brains and two hearts. I would like to thank the people who loaned their time and thoughts along the way, especially Rita Williams Garcia and Diane Linn. For her expertise with rocks and hammers, a huge thank-you goes to Kerry Bowen White.

Just as the house was burning down, our agent, Holly McGhee, said, “I love this,” and that made all the difference. And then Caitlyn Dlouhy, Editor of the World, brought her keen green pencil to the page and helped us find our way through the rocky woods, and oh boy, were they rocky.

Thank you to my sweet husband, Ken, for staying in the car while I read and reread multiple drafts of this story out loud, and thank you for not driving off a cliff in the process.

Finally, in a whole life, if we are lucky, a soul sister appears just when you need one the most. For me, that would be Alison. Ever since the two of us met in Nobel Hall one freezing night at Vermont College of Fine Arts to join that esteemed faculty, we've been starting and finishing each other's sentences. With this book, we jumped, but she never let go.

So much gratitude to the people and animals who inspired this book. To the fox that my daughter, Min, and I witnessed in Wirth Park long ago; the fox that my friend Nel and I were haunted by in the Florida Panhandle; and the fox I saw sauntering down Irving Avenue last year—thank you.

Thanks always to Holly McGhee, agent extraordinaire, for her insight, guidance, and unshakable support. Thanks to Devon O'Brien and Mary Rockcastle, for their unforgettable reactions to an early draft reading at Hamline University years ago. Eternal thanks to Caitlyn Dlouhy, without whom this book (and many others) would not exist.

Finally, Sister Kathi, whom I met twelve years ago at Vermont College, was the one who first suggested that we write a book together. We began this novel not knowing anything other than it would be about two sisters and a fox. The four-year process of weekly back and forths was enormous work, and it was also magical. My gratitude, love, and devotion to her know no bounds.

ALSO BY KATHI APPELT

Counting Crows

Keeper

The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp

The Underneath

ALSO BY ALISON M
C
GHEE

All Rivers Flow to the Sea

Firefly Hollow

Little Boy

Star Bright

Someday

ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2016 by Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee

Jacket photo-illustration by Sonia Chaghatzbanian; jacket photograph of fox copyright © 2016 by Róbert Farkas

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Book design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian

The text for this book is set in Fournier MT Std.

CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4424-8242-5

ISBN 978-1-4424-8244-9 (eBook)