Nightmare (18 page)

“W
HO
’
S
THAT
?” C
AROLE
asked, looking over Lisa’s shoulder at the crowd of people who stood outside the stable at Pine Hollow.

“Those are your searchers,” Stevie said. “It’s everybody who was worried enough about you to tromp through the woods yesterday and today.”

“I think they were also looking for
us
today,” Stevie said.

“Oh, right. I forgot that we broke the rules,” Lisa said.

“It’s good for you to break the rules every once in a while,” Carole teased her.

“I’m trying,” Lisa said.

Suddenly someone in the group spotted the girls
emerging from the woods. Several people started waving. Then everyone was waving—and cheering.

“Aren’t they angry with us?” Stevie asked. She knew people would be relieved to find out they were all right, but surely somebody was going to be annoyed.

“Probably not,” said Lisa. “Max had a cellular telephone with him. As we were riding off, he was calling Pine Hollow to say we were fine. I’ll bet you he told everyone we’d done something heroic and should be welcomed.”

“It didn’t seem very heroic to me,” Carole said. “Just logical.”

“Well, it seemed heroic to him,” Lisa said. “Remember, Max cares about his horses as much as we do.”

That was true. Max had never been as worried about Carole as other people because he’d always understood exactly what she was doing—just as Mrs. Reg had, which was why she had pooh-poohed the policeman who’d tried to stop Lisa and Stevie.

They had a lot of confidence in The Saddle Club. They were sure the girls knew what they were doing with horses, and they knew the girls could take care of themselves when they camped in the woods. In short, they’d been more worried about Delilah than about Carole or her friends. And they’d been right to be. Carole felt a certain warmth from knowing that. Max and Mrs. Reg really trusted them.

The girls waved back at the welcoming crowd. Starlight and Belle picked up a trot. It was time to get home.

A few minutes later, the girls were close enough to distinguish faces in the crowd. Since it was a Sunday and nobody had to be at school or work, the whole place was filled with welcoming faces.

“I see your parents, Stevie,” Carole said. “They’re smiling.”

“What about mine?” Lisa asked nervously.

“There they are,” Carole said. “They’re smiling, too. And standing next to them is … is … is …”

Could it be true? Carole squinted to be sure she was seeing right. After all, she hadn’t seen him in a while—maybe five days. He could have changed. No, her eyes weren’t fooling her. It definitely was true.

“Dad!” she called out.

Starlight broke into a canter. He knew when it was time to go fast!

The next fifteen minutes were a blur of questions, hugs, and tears. The police took complete notes, and then, satisfied that everybody was happy and healthy, they closed up their command center and left the denizens of Pine Hollow to their reunion. All the other people who’d joined in the hunt for the girls hugged them, welcomed them, told them how relieved they were to know they were all right, and left them alone with their families and the Regnerys.

“Are you home for good?” Carole asked her father after she’d given him his umpteenth hug.

“No, honey, I’ve got to go back, but everybody is taking the weekend off, so I am, too. I just traveled a little farther than the rest of the group.”

“Where were you, Dad? Can you tell me now?”

“I can, but it has to be a secret between you and me. You can’t tell anyone, including your best friends. When I’m back for good, then we can talk about it, and I should be able to tell you some things, but for now—”

“Colonel Hanson?” Stevie said, interrupting the father-daughter reunion.

“Yes, Stevie,” he said.

“I figured out the new answer to the old joke you told me,” she said.

“And it is?” he asked.

“You,” she said.

He smiled and put his finger to his lips. “Can’t tell anyone that joke for a while,” he said.

“I promise,” she said. “National security and all.”

Then he leaned over to his daughter and whispered in her ear.

“Really?” she said. “And I thought you wanted to take me to a desert!”

He laughed then, long and loud. Carole thought it was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard!

“So what are you doing here?” Carole asked. “I mean, how did you get allowed to come all the way home?”

“It was after I spoke with Lisa and Stevie the other day. They kept telling me that you were doing just fine, no problems, there was nothing for me to worry about. I didn’t believe them for a minute. They were worried about you, but they didn’t want me to be. So I just had to get home. I couldn’t leave before last night, but here I am. And I’m all yours until Monday morning, when my transport takes off to deliver me back to, um, my destination. It isn’t long, but we’ll both stay at the Atwoods’, because our house is all locked up. And we’ll have the rest of today together. Want to go on a picnic or something?”

“Actually, Dad, I think I’ve had enough of the great outdoors for a little while.”

“How about going back to Lisa’s house and having a nice hot bath?”

“Now you’re talking,” she said, and hugged him one more time.

“I’m ready for a shower, too,” Stevie said to her parents. “Can we go now?”

“Sure,” they agreed. Stevie did want to take a shower, but even before she did that, she had a letter to write with some really exciting news for one Elizabeth Wallingford Johnson.

“O
UCH
!” C
AROLE
SAID
, settling onto the top of one of Pine Hollow’s fences.

“Is that still bothering you?” Lisa asked, perching next to her.

Carole nodded.

“It’s already been four weeks since Delilah threw you and you landed on those rocks and roots in the woods,” Stevie said, joining her friends. The three of them had been riding in Pine Hollow’s schooling ring after their Pony Club meeting and now decided to watch Max give a lesson while they chatted. Their horses were secured nearby, waiting to be groomed.

“Think of it more like, ‘It’s
only
been four weeks,” ’ Carole said. “When I landed on the forest floor, I landed
hard. Those are deep bruises, about which I can do nothing.”

“Except complain,” Stevie teased.

“I have to take my pleasures where I can find them,” Carole said, teasing back.

“So these days, her main pleasures are reading the newspaper and complaining,” Lisa put in.

“I’m starting to love the newspaper,” Carole agreed. “Every day I can read more about a certain top secret disarmament conference in a certain top secret location, and while it’s not exactly like getting a letter or talking to him every day, it’s nearly as good, especially now that the newspaper has started using phrases like
winding down.
I know Dad will be home soon.”

“And in the meantime,” said Stevie, “he’s spending every evening and weekend scoping out neat places to take you when you go with him to a certain top secret location, right?”

“
Absolument
,” Carole agreed in her best French.

“Well, there’s other good news around here,” Lisa said. “All the horses still seem to be healthy.”

“That is good news,” Carole agreed. “But we’re really not going to know for sure until the full forty-five days have passed. That’s another two weeks. They could be a long two weeks. Also, it’s possible for horses to carry the virus for a long time without showing any symptoms at all. That’s why they have to be tested frequently.”

“Sure, but nobody really believes any of the other horses got infected, do they?” Lisa asked.

“Nobody really knows,” said Carole. “And that’s the truth.” It was a scary truth, but all three girls knew they had to accept it.

“Well, in the meantime, all the horses seem to be totally healthy,” Stevie said, bringing a slightly cheerier note to the conversation.

“That is, if you don’t count three sore legs on Barq, Nero, and Nickel, and a case of colic that I diagnosed in Patch last week,” Carole said, more than a little proud of her latest diagnostic coup.

“You’re really doing a wonderful job here, Carole,” Stevie said. “Your sharp eyes have saved two horses from having minor colic turn into major colic by spotting it early. Max must be showering you with compliments.”

“Right,” Carole agreed. “He said, ‘Nice work, Carole.” ’

“Wow!” said Lisa. “Max really went overboard with that!” She was joking, but they all knew that Max gave compliments sparingly. He expected his students to do well, and he didn’t remark when they merely did well. “Nice work” was a big compliment from him.

“Hmmm,” Stevie said. “Seems to me it wasn’t all that long ago that you were furious because your history teacher—Mr. Mathios?—said you’d done nice work. Have you changed your mind about what constitutes a compliment?”

She said it in a cheerful voice, but both she and Carole were a little nervous about what Lisa’s response would be. They hadn’t talked with Lisa about her history class and her competitive tendencies when it came to grades since Lisa’s announcement that she was going to get a C. They both considered that plan so un-Lisa-like that there hardly seemed anything at all they could say about it.

Lisa was oblivious to their concern. “Oh, Mr. Mathios definitely trained at the same school of compliments as Max did! The other day, I did a presentation on Wood-row Wilson’s Fourteen Points, explaining them to the class. When I was done, he said ‘Very interesting,’ but when I got the report back, he’d given me an A-plus.”

“Not a C?” Carole asked hesitantly.

“No way!” said Lisa. “I did really great work. Why would he have given me a C?”

“Um, Lisa,” Stevie began, “you told us you were going to prove that grades weren’t important by getting a C in that class.”

“I almost forgot,” Lisa said. “It seems so long ago that I thought that. But it was a dumb idea from the beginning, and the only mystery is why you two didn’t tell me so. See, I’d gotten all hung up about Fiona Jamieson, and she’s not what’s important to me.
I’m
what’s important to me. If I need to get a good grade to feel good about myself, I have to work to get a good grade. I certainly
don’t have to work to beat Fiona, and besides, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Why’s that?” Carole asked.

“Something happened to Fiona. I don’t know what it was. But right about then, when Delilah died and you ran away and I was going nuts about getting a C, Fiona sort of fell apart, like she’d burned out or something. I have no idea what happened, but she’s been out of school as much as she’s been in since then, and her grades have really dropped. Not that anyone tells us who got which grade, but you sort of know. I feel sorry for her. I wish I could help.”

Carole thought back to the day she’d met Fiona in the library. She remembered how angry she’d gotten at the girl, wondering if she had really been angry at Fiona, or at Lisa for being so foolish about a history class, or at herself for being so confused. Whomever she had been angry at, it was Fiona who had taken the brunt of it, and then, right after that, she’d fallen apart. Carole had never told her friends about her run-in with Fiona. She did now. She asked Lisa if she thought she might have hurt Fiona. She hadn’t meant to hurt her. She’d just needed to be honest.

“Whatever caused Fiona’s problems wasn’t you,” Lisa said. “She’s been like she is for a long time. I know these feelings build up and then they sort of spill over. It’s happened to me, but I’ve been luckier than Fiona. I’ve
had friends like you to help me when I start heading for trouble. Fiona doesn’t have any close friends. So, no, Carole, it’s not your fault. I promise.”

Stevie reassured Carole, too, but she wasn’t quite as gentle as Lisa had been. “Look, anybody who’s pulling down an A-plus in a class and is trying to get extra credit is already nuts. You didn’t do anything that would make her more nuts, because how much more nuts could you get than that?”

Stevie kept thinking about Fiona, but not in the same way that Lisa and Carole were thinking about her. It occurred to Stevie that if Fiona was no longer going to be a local history genius, then there was an opening for the next prodigy, and she was available for the job. Wouldn’t that surprise her friends! The same night that The Saddle Club had returned from the woods, Stevie had written to Elizabeth Wallingford Johnson about the discovery of Hallie’s hiding place. She was a little surprised that she hadn’t heard from the author yet, but she’d sent the letter to the publisher of the book, who would forward it to her, and that probably took a while. And, because she’d written such a wonderful book, Elizabeth Wallingford Johnson probably got a lot of mail and couldn’t answer it all at once. But as soon as she saw Stevie’s letter, she was sure to write or call. What a discovery Stevie had made! There, in the middle of the woods of Virginia, she’d found the exact rock that Hallie
had described in her diary. There was no doubt about it. It formed a cave and it had the arrow shape chipped out of it. Carole and Delilah had camped at exactly the same place where Hallie and Esther had camped so many years before.