Megan's Island (15 page)

The sand under their feet was soft and warm; the water was still pretty cold. Still, after they'd been in it for a few minutes, Megan decided she wasn't going to turn blue after all. For a short time she was able to enjoy the splashing and cavorting around.

As soon as they came out of the water, however, she was the first one back at the tree house, snatching up the binoculars as soon as she'd reached the platform.

There was the cabin, and there was the area where Grandpa had stretched the clothesline, and there . . .

She turned excitedly to the boys, who were climbing the ladder behind her.

“The signal is out! We can go home!” she cried.

They didn't even wait to get dressed, but scrambled to the ground and ran toward the boat.

*  *  *

Grandpa and Wolf were waiting for them on the beach. Wolf barked his welcome, swimming out to meet them. Sandy had to push him off to keep him from trying to climb into the boat, and when they disembarked the dog leaped around them, licking whatever part of any person he could reach.

“Who was he?” Sandy asked eagerly, turning toward Grandpa Davis. “Was he a detective?”

“Yes,” Grandpa said. Megan noted uneasily that he didn't look either relieved or happy. “His name's Jules Picard, and he's from Chicago, just as I thought.”

Megan was once more very tense. “And was he hired by . . . our other grandfather, to find us?”

“Yes. He didn't make any bones about that.”

“What did you tell him?” Ben demanded.

“I told him it was true you'd been here, but that now you were gone. Without actually lying, I gave him the impression that your mom had come and taken you away, and I could truthfully state that I didn't know where she was. He assured me that he wished to cause no trouble—he says your grandfather doesn't wish that, either—and that he'd probably be in touch with me again after he'd reported to your grandfather. He wants me to persuade your mother to talk to him, at least. I think maybe that's what she ought to do, and put an end to this everlasting running and hiding. It's quite possible that Daniel actually has had a change of heart. After all, he's past seventy, and he can't expect to live forever. Maybe it's true that he really does want to mend his fences while there's still time.”

“What's mend his fences mean?” Sandy asked uncertainly.

“Make amends for problems he's caused in the past. Make friends of his enemies. Make his peace with the world—and his grandchildren—before it's too late.”

“Are we his enemies?” Sandy asked, looking worried.

“No, but he and your mother had a falling out, years ago, and . . . well, there I am again, trying to explain what your mom has said
she
wants to explain. The thing is, I'm not sure Mr. Picard believed me, about your mother having taken you away. He probably went into town to call Daniel and give him a report. I waited a few hours to see if he'd come right back, and he didn't, so I thought I'd better call you in. If we hear a car, though, get out of sight until I can decide what to do next. Until I'm sure what your mother will want to do, I'd rather they think you really aren't here.”

Megan was trembling again. She ignored Wolf, who was affectionately licking her bare thigh. She couldn't wait until her mother came to know
anything,
and it wasn't fair that she should be expected to.

“Is our grandfather's name Daniel Kauffman?” she wanted to know.

For a moment she thought he wouldn't answer. “How did you learn that?” he asked at last.

And then she told him about the document she had found among her mother's papers. “It's
my
birth certificate, isn't it?”

For a long time there was silence. Even Wolf stopped jumping around and sat down, watching their serious faces.

“Oh, dear. Karo, love, if you want to do your own explaining,” Grandpa said, as if Mom were there to hear him, “you'd better show up pretty soon. You've put me in an impossible position. This isn't fair to anybody.”

“I'm . . . really Margaret Anne Kauffman,” Megan persisted. The sick feeling was back, stronger than ever, and she felt as if she might throw up.

Grandpa's reply was indirect. “We called you Meg. That's sometimes a nickname for Margaret. And when your Mom decided it would be better to change it, she called you Megan, because it was as close as she could come to your real name.”

Sandy moved closer, as if to draw comfort from Megan. She felt the warmth of his arm as it touched her own.

“Did she change my name, too?” he whispered.

Grandpa sighed, and then seemed to make up his mind. “All right,” he said. “Let's sit down, let me get off this foot. I'll try to make you understand some of it, enough, I hope, to last you until your mom gets here. Here, on the porch will do.”

At last, Megan thought. Finally someone was going to tell the truth.

She felt sicker than ever, though, and she wondered if she really wanted to hear the truth. Maybe it would spoil everything for them all, would take away everything she'd thought their family had in the way of love and trust and affection.

She almost cried out—
No, don't!
—but the words were stuck in her throat, and she sank onto a step beside Grandpa's knee and waited for him to begin.

Sandy sat two steps below Megan, looking up at his grandfather. “Grandpa? Am I somebody different, too?”

Grandpa seemed to be having trouble figuring out where to begin. He stretched out the foot with the cast on it, trying to get more comfortable. When he spoke, his voice was gruff.

“Your name was Andrew. When you were a toddler, we called you Andy. That got changed to Sandy, so it would sound different, yet not so different we couldn't remember to say
Sandy.”

From the look on his face, the news that his name had been changed didn't make Sandy feel any better than it had made Megan feel.

“And Mom's name is really Caroline,” Megan said, when Grandpa stopped speaking and couldn't seem to get started again. “Not Karen. That's why you call her Karo.”

Grandpa grimaced. “It's hard to call your daughter by a name that's different from the one she grew up with. I always started with
Caro.
I wouldn't remember
Karen
until I'd already said it wrong to begin with, so I finally gave up and settled for something halfway between the two names.”

Ben stood leaning against one of the posts that supported the porch roof. He spoke from over their heads. “There's somebody coming.”

At the same moment Wolf leaped up, barking, sending Megan's heart into her throat. She was halfway to her feet, ready to flee into the house before the car came into the clearing, when Sandy—or should she think of her brother as Andy, Megan wondered in confusion—cried out.

“It's Mom!” he said, bounding down the lower steps. “It's Mom!”

The car was, indeed, familiar. It jounced over the bumpy spot in the driveway and rolled to a stop.

Mom looked the same as ever—well, better than when they'd last seen her. She was smiling, waving a hand out the window before she got the door open.

Grandpa pulled himself up, awkwardly because of the foot that couldn't bend inside the cast, and stumped after Sandy to meet his daughter. Ben stayed where he was, and so did Megan.

Her heart was pounding. A part of her was glad that Mom had come, that she was all right and that now
she
could answer the questions.

Mostly what she felt, though, she couldn't have described. Fear and anger and confusion. What possible reason could Mom have to change her name, make her another person from the one she should have been?

For a few moments Megan wasn't sure she liked her mother well enough to sit still and talk to her, or listen to her.

When her mother got out of the car, though, and kissed first Sandy and then Grandpa before she came toward the house, Megan reluctantly rose.

“Hi, honey. I'm back, I got the job, and I have a lead on an apartment, too. It won't be vacant until the fifteenth of July, but if you're having fun here with Grandpa that'll be soon enough to move anyway, won't it?”

She started to reach for Megan to give her a hug, then hesitated. “Is there something wrong?” she asked, sobering.

“You got here just at the right time,” Grandpa told her. “We sort of reached a crisis point, where I was going to have to explain some things to the kids. I'm darned glad you came; you can have the job yourself.”

And then, to Megan's astonishment, he clumped up the steps, past Ben, and into the house. Was Grandpa angry with Mom, too?

“Crisis?” Karen Collier echoed the word in alarm. “What's happened?”

“There's a detective looking for us,” Sandy said. “From our other grandfather.”

At the same time, Megan said, “I found my birth certificate.”

Consternation swept over her mother's face, and she put out a hand to the rail beside the steps to steady herself, as if her legs might give way beneath her. “Oh, dear.”

She stared into Megan's face, not far below her own. “Oh, honey, I'm sorry. I was going to tell you, I really was, only I couldn't bring myself to do it yet, not until I knew we had somewhere to go, some way to support ourselves. . . .”

She rested a hand on Megan's shoulder, then reached out for Sandy, too. “What's this about a detective? Tell me what's happened.”

Megan found herself unable to speak. She wasn't sure whether it was relief that her mother had returned; resentment over the troubles her mother had left them with; or the devastating idea that she wasn't really Megan Collier, that there
was
no such person as Megan Collier.

Grandpa came out of the house carrying two steaming cups. “Thought maybe you'd need this,” he said, handing over one of them. “Hold mine, son, while I get a couple of chairs,” he said in an aside to Ben. It was not until both the adults were seated on chairs from the kitchen that anyone spoke again. Then Grandpa said, “All right, Karo. You'd better start from the beginning, and don't leave anything out this time.”

She sipped cautiously at the coffee, visibly composing herself, but not being entirely successful. “All right. Only first can I know what the crisis is? What's this about a detective?”

“Name's Jules Picard,” Grandpa said. “Hired by Daniel Kauffman. The man was here yesterday and today. Daniel wants to see his grandchildren.”

For a few seconds Mrs. Collier closed her eyes. “No.” The word was soft, in fact barely audible, yet it was firm. “No, Dad.”

Grandpa ignored her response. “This Picard said that Daniel wants you to talk to him, at least. He says he is not threatening you, has no intention of causing any trouble for you or the kids. He only wants to talk to you, to try to persuade you to let him see the kids.”

“Oh, it's ‘persuade' now, is it? Not threaten? Not intimidate?” There was both pain and bitterness in her face and voice.

“Daniel is past seventy now, Karo,” Grandpa said evenly. “A man can change, can consider different viewpoints, when he's getting on in years. His son is gone. Megan and Sandy are all he has left.”

“They're all I have left, too, except you. I won't give them up, Dad.”

“He's not asking you to. Not anymore. He only wants to see them.”

Megan had never seen hostility flare in her mother this way, certainly not against Grandpa Davis. “So you're taking his side this time, are you?”

“No. I'm not taking any side at all. I'm simply trying to tell you what this Picard wanted you to know, what Daniel Kauffman wants you to know.”

“I don't owe a thing to Daniel Kauffman,” Mrs. Collier said, and her head came up in a defiant way.

“No, I don't think you do. But maybe you owe something to the kids. Maybe they've got a right to see their grandfather before it's too late.”

Megan's stomach was churning, and she couldn't stop shaking; she felt weak and queasy. Her voice shook, too. “I want to know why you changed me from Margaret to Megan, to somebody that's just made up, not real at all!”

The hardness went out of her mother's face. “I'm sorry, Megan, I never planned anything the way it turned out. I only did what I felt I had to do at the time. It was all for your benefit, and Sandy's. I wanted to do what would be best for you.”

There was pleading in the words. Megan wondered if she were supposed to melt at that. All she really felt was a fierce need to know the truth—and a fear of knowing, all at the same time.

Mom took another drink of the coffee, then set the cup on the porch rail. “Okay,” she said. “It's time you knew. You're old enough to make your own decisions on this, maybe. The thing you have to understand is that when it began, you
weren't
old enough. You were just babies, and I had to decide for you.”

Megan waited, unwilling to admit there might be something valid in what her mother had said.

Her mother sighed, then drew a deep breath. “Your father's name was Daniel Kauffman, Jr. He was the only son of Daniel Kauffman, Sr., who was a very wealthy man who had great plans for his son. There had been a daughter, too, but she was killed in an accident when she was twelve. That made him even more determined that Danny—that's what we called your father—should have the best of everything. As his father saw it, anyway.”

It was obvious that telling this was difficult. While Mrs. Collier spoke, her fingers twisted her skirt, pleating and unpleating it.

“Danny and I met, and fell in love. We wanted to get married, but his father didn't want him to marry me. When we did it anyway, your grandfather was furious. He told your father that he would be on his own, that there would be no more Kauffman money to make life comfortable.