Staying Together (12 page)

“What is it?” asked Min.

“Variety. His name is Variety.” Mr. Pennington opened his front door. “Come on in and see your house, Variety,” he said. And they disappeared inside.

Ruby was torn between feeling elated and terrified. She was elated not only because Mr. Pennington had brought Variety home that morning but because she had big plans for the afternoon. She was terrified because her deadline for telling Min the truth about the owl was fast approaching, and she knew Flora would hold her to it. If Ruby didn't tell Min what had happened, then Flora would do it for her.

Ruby tried to tear her mind away from Min and the owl and rigid, unfair Flora. Take one thing at a time, she said to herself. And since she had quite an adventure planned for the afternoon, that's what she turned her thoughts to.

She was glad the weather that May weekend was warm and sunny — what Min would call glorious. In fact, Min had used that very word earlier when they were on their way to Sheltering Arms to bring Variety home.

“A glorious day,” Min had said, looking at the clear blue sky. “Simply glorious.”

Ruby hoped the weather would remain simply glorious that afternoon. Her plans would work much better in good weather. In fact, if it rained, the whole adventure would probably fall apart.

She thought back to the afternoon two weeks earlier when Aunt Allie had received the phone call that had set the adventure in motion. Ruby had been visiting her aunt and Janie — without Flora — and in fact had been the one to answer the phone when it rang.

“Ruby, could you get that, please?” Allie had asked.

Ruby had been displeased, not because she didn't want to answer the phone, but because Allie had just been about to hand Janie to her. Now Allie took the baby back, saying, “If you can pick up the phone, I'll settle Janie in her swing” (Janie had an indoor swing, of which Ruby was unreasonably jealous) “and then we can trade places.”

So Ruby had made a grab for the cordless phone, which she'd found buried on Allie's desk, and said, “Hello? Allie Read's house.”

She'd heard the sound of a throat clearing at the other end of the phone.
Ahem
. “Hello?”
Ahem, ahem
. “This is Vincent Barnes.”
Ahem
. “Is Allie there?”

“Just a moment, please,” Ruby had replied politely. What she'd wanted to do was shout, “Yow! Mr. Barnes is calling you, Aunt Allie!” She wished she and Flora were talking to each other so she could spread the news. On the other hand, it would be sneaky and fun to have such a good secret from her sister.

Ruby had run full speed into the living room, holding the phone at arm's length. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “Aunt Allie, it's
Mr. Barnes
!” she hissed. She jerked her thumb across the street in the direction of his house.

“Thank you, Ruby,” Aunt Allie had replied, and she took the phone from her so calmly that Ruby wondered if she'd actually heard what she'd said.

“Mr. Barnes!”
Ruby had repeated, slightly more loudly.

But Aunt Allie was already walking out of the living room, saying, “Hello? Vincent?”

Ruby had looked from Janie, who was now swinging contentedly in the doorway of the living room, to her aunt's disappearing back. She was pretty sure there was some rule about never leaving a baby unattended. Did that only apply to bathtubs? Ruby wasn't sure, but she did not want to miss out on Allie's end of the phone conversation, so keeping an eye on Janie, she'd walked backward down the hall and stood outside her aunt's study. Allie had closed herself inside.

Ruby had considered the situation for less than a second and then plastered her ear against the door.

“Well, that would be lovely,” she'd heard her aunt say. “All three of us? Even better.… Yes.… Yes.… Oh, this weekend won't work, though. What about next weekend? Are you free on Saturday? … Okay.… Okay. Great, it's a date.”

A date! thought Ruby, who had already been poised to run, sensing that the conversation was about to end. Aunt Allie on a
date
! But all three of them? All three who? What did that mean? It couldn't be an actual date — not the kind Ruby was thinking of — if more than two people were involved.

She'd pressed her ear to the door again, hoping for some clarification, but heard only the sound of footsteps approaching the door. She bolted back to the living room and had just enough time to position herself in front of the swing before Aunt Allie appeared, smiling, her face somewhat flushed.

Ruby had looked questioningly at her aunt, but Allie just continued to smile.

“Good conversation?” Ruby asked.

“Mmm” was the reply.

“So that was Mr. Barnes?”

“Mmm.”

“I guess he calls here pretty often.”

“Well …” Allie said vaguely.

It had taken Ruby nearly half an hour, but eventually she'd learned the details of the phone call. Aunt Allie and Janie and Mr. Barnes were going to take a picnic lunch to Tyler Park in two weeks and spend the afternoon there. Just the three of them.

This was an even better kind of date than Ruby had imagined. If Janie was going along, it could only mean that Mr. Barnes wanted to get to know her, too, and
that
could only mean that he was
really
interested in Aunt Allie.

Ruby decided to spy on them.

She simply could not pass up an opportunity to witness the date. The only sad aspect of the affair was not being able to tell Flora about it. As much fun as it would be to keep her sister in the dark about the date, sharing it with her would be even better. But it was out of the question. Ruby was on her own.

After much thinking, she decided to arrive at the park before Allie and Janie and Mr. Barnes got there. That way she could observe the very beginning of their date. So as soon as she had called good-bye to Mr. Pennington and the lucky Variety, she hopped on her bicycle and rode through town to the park. Ruby had never been there by herself and she felt very grown-up as she locked her bike in the rack and strolled along the gravel drive to the information center. She passed between the stone pillars marking the entrance, and there she paused. She needed a good hiding place from which to watch for Aunt Allie, and eventually she positioned herself behind a wooden building marked
LATRINES
. Not surprisingly, the latrines did not smell good, but Ruby hadn't expected them to, and anyway, sometimes a spy had to make sacrifices.

The park was crowded, with people coming and going — carloads of them. Ruby scanned the people, and while she waited, she decided to come up with a spy name for herself. After a while, she settled on Madame Plush.

Madame Plush stood, shifting from one foot to the other, and holding her nose. At 12:45, she saw a familiar car pull into the parking lot, and she jerked to attention. At the last moment, she remembered that she had stuck a pair of sunglasses in her pocket, and she put them on along with a purple baseball cap that was hanging off one of the belt loops on her jeans.

Holding as still as she was able, she trained her eyes on the car. Aunt Allie stepped out of the driver's seat, Mr. Barnes stepped out of the passenger's seat, Aunt Allie lifted Janie from her seat in the back, and Mr. Barnes began to unload items from the trunk. A cooler, another cooler, two lawn chairs, Janie's stroller, a blanket, Janie's diaper bag …

“What on earth?” murmured Madame Plush, before she remembered that Min was always saying that babies don't travel light.

No kidding, thought Madame Plush.

It took quite a while, but finally Aunt Allie and Mr. Barnes managed to gather up Janie and all the other stuff and struggle along the path and through the entrance. They kept dropping things and laughing, and of course it was almost impossible to push the stroller over gravel, which only made them laugh harder.

“Huh,” said Madame Plush, thinking that she would not have been so cheerful about the situation.

A few moments later, the messy caravan passed several yards from Madame Plush's hiding place and continued to the banks of Tyler Creek, which ran through the park from the north end to the south.

“This looks like a good spot, doesn't it?” said Aunt Allie, surveying the picnickers and waders and Frisbee players and stopping a little distance from a group of kids Ruby's age who were clearly at a birthday party.

“Perfect,” replied Mr. Barnes, and he stopped mid stride and unburdened himself of the chairs, the cooler, and the diaper bag.

Before long, their camp was set up, the chairs arranged side by side in front of the blanket, which Allie and Mr. Barnes had spread out carefully, each holding an end and laughing (again) when the wind tossed it into the air before they could anchor the corners with the coolers and some of Janie's many necessary articles.

At first, Allie, Mr. Barnes, and Janie all sat on the blanket. Allie pulled packages out of the cooler, and Janie played with a spoon and some plastic cups.

“Boring,” said Madame Plush aloud, until she realized that Allie and Mr. Barnes were talking — and she couldn't make out a word they were saying.

She edged closer to them, but now she was completely out in the open. If Aunt Allie so much as looked over her shoulder, she would see Ruby standing there plain as day. Ruby eyed the birthday party. Most of the kids were running back and forth between the creek and a large picnic table laden with food. Several were wading; some were walking barefoot along the banks, looking for tadpoles in the water; some were sitting at the table, eating hot dogs; and three were crowded in the shade of a tree, making friendship bracelets. Ruby noticed only four adults, and they were standing in a group, talking earnestly.

She stepped carefully around the girls who were making the bracelets and crept to the banks of the creek. She smiled at another group of kids, then sat down a little apart from them. No one said a word. And Madame Plush, her sunglasses and cap in place, could now hear every word spoken by Allie and Mr. Barnes.

“I'm just a kid at a party,” said Ruby to herself. She fiddled with the Velcro on her sneakers, pretended to be fascinated by whatever might be swimming around in Tyler Creek, and listened to the conversation behind her.

“I applied to about a million adoption agencies,” Allie was saying to Mr. Barnes. “Paul and I had already applied to adopt a baby from China, and after he left, I investigated other agencies, too.”

Uh-oh, thought Madame Plush. It was probably better not to mention past boyfriends when on a date with a new boyfriend.

She strained to hear whatever uncomfortable reply Mr. Barnes might make, but all he said was, “Paul doesn't know what he's missing.”

Madame Plush didn't know if he was referring to Janie or Aunt Allie. She risked a quick peek over her shoulder. Allie was smiling broadly at Mr. Barnes and … holding his hand.

Ruby's eyes widened. She lost her balance and almost fell in the stream. She grabbed a fistful of tall grass, pulled herself upright, and risked another glance at her aunt. Now Allie was not only holding Mr. Barnes's hand but stroking it.

Ew, thought Madame Plush. Still, this was a good sign. A very good sign. She breathed deeply until her heartbeat had returned to normal. Then she slipped several feet back from the bank of the creek and listened again.

“Are you hungry?” Aunt Allie was saying.

“Starving.”

“You watch Janie, then, and I'll get the food ready.”

The next time Ruby risked a peek over her shoulder she saw Mr. Barnes cradling a dozing Janie in his arms. “Is she always this good?” he was asking.

Aunt Allie laughed. “Usually. But on the days when she's not in a good mood, she's …”

“Horrid,” said Allie and Mr. Barnes at the same time, and then they laughed so hard that Ruby wondered what she had missed.

But she didn't care. Madame Plush had unearthed a wonderful secret. Her aunt and Mr. Barnes were becoming more than friends.

Later, as the afternoon grew cool, the birthday party wound down, and Mr. Barnes and Allie loaded up the car. Then they returned to the bank of the creek, where they stood for a few moments, Mr. Barnes holding Janie in one arm, his other arm around Aunt Allie's shoulder.

Madame Plush smiled to herself and walked nonchalantly out of the park with the rest of the party guests.