The Secret of Rover (2 page)

Baby Theo's luggage lay open in the hall outside her room. The plane was taking off at sunup the next day, but there were just a few last items that needed to be packed, and David and Katie could not seem to make them fit.

Their parents' luggage wasn't ready either. Each had an enormous blue duffel, not yet zipped but already stuffed. These lined the wall like bulging blue sausages, spilling rain gear and papers, pills and sweaters.

That was their problem. But David and Katie were packing for Theo. Her things were to go in a pair of trunks, each hard and square and the size of a coffee table. Nonetheless, it was not at all clear that the baby's many belongings would fit inside.

“How come the littlest person has the most stuff?”
Katie fretted while struggling to wedge a camera between the back wheel of Theo's new stroller and the edge of her collapsible cradle.

David did not look up from the other trunk, where he was trying to balance a small pink giraffe on top of a tottering stack of tiny pajamas. Concluding at last that it would not stay put, he toppled the tower, stuck the neck of the giraffe into a baby bottle, and slammed the trunk decisively shut. “Whatever,” he announced cheerfully. “It works.”

Katie glanced at David's trunk, annoyed. They were twins so he wasn't older or anything—they were both twelve—but David often finished things first. That was because she was careful and he was not, she reflected. She could be done too if she did it like
that
.

Their parents were in their room and Katie could hear them laughing. Peeking around the corner she could see them both: her mother's dark oval face with its high forehead and deep eyes, and her father's fair face, ruddy, round, and softened by a golden beard.

Both faces shone with pure happiness. Sandra and Alan Bowden had just adopted a baby from the faraway country of Katkajan, and the next day—Monday morning—they were flying off to get her. When they returned one week later, Theo would be with them.

Katie felt a pang of unease when she thought about the week to come. An ocean would lie between herself and
two members of her small family—no, three, she corrected herself. She and David would be with a stranger, a new nanny who was coming to dinner that night.

But Theo was worth it. Life had been good lately—very, very good. But with Theo, life would be perfect.

Things hadn't always been good for the Bowdens. Before Katie and David's parents and their uncle Alex invented Rover, the present had always been bleak and the future had always been uncertain.

The family had been poor—just poor. There had never been enough of anything. Their house in Washington DC had been small. That was OK, but the rats that infested it had not been—not for anyone but the cat, Slank, who had roamed in and out through his private cat door, feasting. And because of neighborhood thieves there had been bars on their windows. They had needed the bars, but what had kept the thieves out had usually kept the family in, and alone.

The Bowden parents had been busy with Rover all the time, and their work was totally private—secret, even. Even the name of their invention, “Rover,” was a code name. That was because Rover was for spying. When dangerous people started trouble far away, Rover was supposed to discover it and stop it.

Rover was important, and David and Katie were proud of it. But it was hard to know so little about it. Although
they often asked exactly what Rover did, their parents never answered. Though they often asked how it got its strange name, they were never told.

Rover had meant other things for their family, as well. Though all four Bowdens liked people, there could be no guests, so there were few friends, sadly. Nor did the family ever go anywhere, not even to see their uncle Alex. Alex was their mom's brother, and he was a hermit who lived on a mountain far to the north in Vermont. Alex had taken to his mountain after a mysterious quarrel with a girlfriend long ago, and he had never left it. In the busy days when Rover was nearing completion it seemed as if one parent or the other was constantly heading off to meet with him.

David and Katie had heard about this long journey north so many times that they felt they knew the way by heart. But their uncle Alex was a riddle. Ever since that quarrel he had been shy—very shy; and private—very private. He was a scientist, but he lived a simple life. He invented machines, but he did not like to use them. Their parents said he cared about his family, but he did not come to visit. Katie and David had seen pictures of Alex as a boy. But though he was their only relative, they had no idea what he looked like now, and they had not been to his house.

Worst of all, in the old days there had always been just Katie and David—only two children in the Bowden family.
Both of them felt strongly that four people were simply too few for a family without even any cousins. They watched other families roll through parks and malls in noisy packs. They tried not to stare as older brothers and sisters manhandled tiny siblings with a practiced air. In their lonely house—huddled around their lonely table—Katie and David had pleaded. But they had pleaded to no avail.

“I know little kids are very cute,” their mother had said unhappily.

“It's not that,” replied David testily. “I mean, they are, but that's not really it.” He looked around at the tiny room and his tiny family. “It's just that it's always only the four of us. Don't get me wrong,” he added quickly. “I mean, I like you and everything.”

“Thanks,” said their father shortly.

“But with another kid or two this family could eventually move from man-to-man to zone.”

It was never any use. Their parents could not buy shoes for one more pair of feet or sandwiches for one more mouth, and there were no babies.

One amazing day, though, Rover was finished. And then the government bought it.

Though Rover was still top-secret, its sale led to many excellent changes for their family. After it was sold they left the small house with the bars on the windows. As far as any of them knew, no one had been in it since. They
moved to the other side of town, to an enormous house full of light and space. In this house, windows swung open to a neighborhood they could roam at will. Katie and David each had their own room and bathroom and a special room besides, where books and projects could be strewn and abandoned where they lay. There were long slippery corridors where they slid in their socks, whooping.

The children had always wanted a cuckoo clock, and their parents bought one for the kitchen wall—a real one from an antique store, with a bird that popped from a door and chirped out the hour. They had always wanted piano lessons but had never had the money for either the teacher or the instrument. Now they had a piano and an instructor, Mrs. Ivanovna, who came once a week. And in a sunroom off the kitchen they had coaxed real orange trees to grow in earthen tubs. Each morning Katie and her mom selected the day's fruit, and Katie never tired of the ritual: the stroll amid the trees, the pleasure of plucking her breakfast from the branch.

They had moved in the spring, just a few weeks before summer. There had not been enough time to get to know anyone at their new school. There had been enough, though, to leave them hopeful about the fall. Now, in August, David and Katie stuck with each other, swimming in the glittering local pool, throwing their football on their own endless lawn, and eyeing the potential friends who wandered past their house and who sometimes glanced
curiously their way. Not even rain could dampen David's and Katie's spirits. In bad weather they played indoors, sending long passes sailing across their new home's cavernous open spaces and kicking the ball to great heights without ever hitting their towering new ceilings.

Only the cat was dissatisfied with their new house. To his immense disappointment he ate canned food now, from a dish.

Best of all, though, was Theo.

Just two days before, Katie and David had wandered home from the pool to find their mom and dad awaiting them at the kitchen table, clutching a small photo and looking ready to burst. The photo was of a tiny baby with warm, coppery skin, dark black eyes, and a rosebud mouth. She had a slightly startled look, as if the light of the camera had surprised her. She was just three weeks old, and she was their sister.

Katie was round-faced and blond like their dad, and she had been named for his mother. David had their mom's oval face, with her dark eyes and hair, and he had been named for her father. But the baby's face was from far away, and she, their parents said, was Theodora: “Gift from God.”

With the last few items safely stashed, Katie slammed Theo's trunk shut. As she did so she found herself wondering yet again about the person who was going to
care for them while their parents were away. This woman was not only going to stay with her and David while their mom and dad were overseas; she was also going to stay on after Theo came home, to help.

They had not yet met this nanny. They couldn't. Everything had happened in such a rush. Their parents explained that that's how Katkajanian adoption works. You apply for a baby far in advance. Then when your baby is available, you're expected to go get it
fast
.

Fortunately, the orphanage where they'd adopted Theo had helped. It had strongly suggested that a nanny from Katkajan would ease the family's adjustment to its newest member. It had even recommended the agency where they'd found the woman who was coming that night.

Katie turned again to her parents' room. “When's she supposed to get here?” she called for perhaps the fifteenth time. “When did you say she was—”

Before she could finish the question, the doorbell boomed its deep notes throughout the house.

“Now!” her mother sang.

“Please get the door!” called their father. But David had already smacked his hands onto his sister's back and leapfrogged over her where she hunched by the trunk. Katie sprang after him, threw herself across the slick banister, and shot ahead.

“
Off
the banisters!” Hearing the familiar command behind her, Katie dropped to her feet on the landing, just
as her brother serenely launched himself into a slide down the next flight.

“We each ride one or it's not fair,” he said, shooting back into the lead.

“You can't do it after they've said no!” Katie cried. But he was already on the ground and was skidding toward the massive front door. He thudded into it as she collided into him. Still struggling for position, they seized the heavy knob and threw their bodies backward, tugging the door open. Breathless, they crowded into the doorway to peer at their guest.

She looks just like Theo, thought David, taking in the nanny's warm, coppery skin and thick, glossy hair. But—no. No, she's different.

Katie stood motionless. Her round face grew solemn beneath her disheveled blond hair as her eyes absorbed the woman in the doorway. It took less than an instant and the verdict was dismaying.

I don't like her, thought Katie.

While the Bowden children stared at their new nanny, the woman herself stared back from beneath straight black brows. She was short and squat and everything on her crackled with newness. Her neat skirt and blouse, her sensible low-heeled shoes, and even the twin suitcases that she clutched in each fist seemed to have been slipped from their plastic packages and arrayed on her person just moments before she appeared at their door. Her eyes flickered over them and for an instant her straight brows drew together.