Keeping Secrets (2 page)

Flora shook her head. Some things about Ruby would
never
change. Ruby saw her sister's expression and turned on her. “It could happen —” she started to say.

But she was interrupted by Lacey's brothers, Travis and Mathias, and Olivia's brothers, Jack and Henry, running across the yards toward them, Alyssa trailing behind.

“Nikki!” called Henry Walter. “We're glad you're here. We have a question. Can we be in the dog parade if we don't have a dog?”

Over the summer, Nikki had come up with the idea of holding a dog costume parade on Main Street as a way to raise money for Camden Falls's animal shelter. The people who ran Sheltering Arms had taken over the project (to Nikki's relief, since it was a very big project), but everyone knew that Nikki was the one who had thought it up. And everyone wanted to be in it. Flora and Ruby were going to enter Daisy Dear, their golden retriever.

Nikki frowned. “How could you be in a dog parade without a dog?” she asked.

“Well, what if one of us dressed up
as
a dog?” suggested Mathias.

“Or as a dog in a costume?” said Jack. “Henry could put on a dog costume, and we could put a clown costume or something over
that
, and then I could put him on a leash and walk him in the parade.”

“You mean Henry would crawl on his hands and knees all the way down Main Street?” said Olivia.

“Oh,” said Jack and Henry.

“We didn't think of that,” added Travis.

“We should probably stick to actual dogs in the parade. Besides,” said Nikki, “we also need people to
watch
the parade. Don't you guys want to see all the dogs in funny costumes?”

“Hey,” said Mathias. “There's Mr. Pennington and Jacques. I'll bet Mr. Pennington is going to walk Jacques in the parade.”

“I could help him with the costume!” said Flora, brightening.

“Hi, Mr. Pennington!” called Ruby.

Old Mr. Pennington locked his front door (he lived next to Olivia and her brothers) and waved to the kids. “I'm off to Needle and Thread,” he called as he stumped down the walk with his cane in one hand and Jacques's leash in the other.

“To visit Min?” said Ruby with a grin.

“Of course.”

Flora felt something in her stomach tighten just the teensiest bit. She loved Mr. Pennington. He had been a good friend to her and Ruby and Min. But his longtime friendship with Min was becoming … Flora wasn't certain how to describe it. She found that she was rather clueless in matters of the heart. And her feelings were jumbled. What, exactly, did that tightening in her stomach mean? Was it jealousy? If it was, who was she jealous of? Min for having a boyfriend, or Mr. Pennington for having Min's attention? Both possibilities seemed at once silly and monumental.

Mr. Pennington and Jacques made their way slowly along Aiken Avenue, the younger children walking beside him, presumably questioning him about Jacques's participation in the parade.

Ruby flopped onto the stoop next to Flora. “Move over,” she said.

Flora, Nikki, and Olivia squeezed together, and Flora returned Grace to her stroller.

“Hey!” Olivia held up one hand. “Is that our phone? I think our phone is ringing.” She jumped to her feet and made a dash for her front door.

“Ha! It's probably Jacob,” proclaimed Ruby.

Flora stared sullenly at nothing and said not a word when Olivia, smiling, returned to the stoop and exclaimed, “That was Jacob! We're going to do our homework together over the phone tonight.”

Flora remembered the times
she
and Olivia had done their homework over the phone. She remembered when Mr. Pennington was just Min's dear friend, and when she didn't have to think about whether to go trick-or-treating. She let her thoughts meander through her head, and when they settled on sewing, Flora found her mood improving. Making dog costumes would be fun. What could she make for Jacques? What could she and Ruby make for Daisy? Maybe they could dress her as a daisy. That seemed appropriate. Flora considered daisy petals and leaves. She began a shopping list in her head. Yellow felt, green felt, elastic, probably some Velcro …

From a distance, and in the fading light of an autumn afternoon, Nikki Sherman thought her house looked rather nice. It sat alone in the countryside, a small island in a sea of earth and grass. It was only as a person drew closer that he might see the dilapidated sheds in the yard and notice that the yard itself, unlike the ones in town, consisted mostly of hard-packed dry earth, and that around the perimeter of the yard, wild stalky grasses stretched away in all directions.

Nikki hurried along her lane as the school bus wheezed back in the direction of Camden Falls. The nearer she got to her house, the more clearly she could see all the disappointing, run-down details: the sagging steps of the front stoop, the peeling paint, the mark by the side window where her father had once thrown a board at her brother. (He had missed, luckily.) But Nikki loved her house anyway. She and Tobias and Mae had grown up in it. They knew no other home. And with her father away (permanently, Nikki hoped), her home was even more pleasing.

Still, it would be nice to come home to people at the end of a school day, and that didn't happen anymore. Nikki's mother had finally landed a big job, the kind her husband had told her she'd never qualify for, but it came with long hours. And because Mrs. Sherman didn't want Nikki to feel responsible for her little sister, she had kept Mae in after-school day care. So no more Dad, Mom at work, Mae in day care — and Tobias off at college, which was something no one had expected, least of all Tobias. He was the first Sherman to go to college, and the day he graduated and held that diploma in his hand would be a proud day indeed, a day to go down in Sherman family history.

Nikki herself would go to college one day. She knew that with certainty, in the same way she knew her name. She had dreamed of college for as long as she could remember, and now that Tobias was a college student, her dream seemed nearer than ever.

“Six years,” she said to herself. “In six years, I'll be in college.”

Nikki climbed the porch steps, set her books at her feet, and pulled her house key from her pocket. From the other side of the door she heard snuffling and a quiet whine.

Nikki grinned. “Hi, Paw-Paw!” she cried.

The whine turned to a plaintive
woof
, and then another.

“I'm coming,” Nikki said, working the lock as fast as she could.

She pushed the door open, and Paw-Paw jumped up, resting his feet on Nikki's belly, trembling with excitement.

“Hello, boy,” Nikki said softly. She gave him a great hug. “I'm hungry. And I'll bet you need to go outside.”

Paw-Paw bolted through the door. Nikki had gotten no further than opening the refrigerator when she heard the sound of tires on gravel. She peered through the front window. A white van was easing up the driveway, and Nikki could read the words on its side:
SHELTERING ARMS
.

She breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn't known someone from Sheltering Arms would be coming this afternoon, but it was fine with her. She abandoned the idea of a snack and went outside.

A woman was climbing out of the van, and she waved to Nikki. “Hello!”

“Hi, Harriet!” Nikki called.

Paw-Paw ran to Harriet and gave her the same enthusiastic greeting he had just given Nikki.

“So, how are things?” asked Harriet, disengaging herself from Paw-Paw.

“Good,” replied Nikki. “Really good. I like school. We get a lot of homework, though.”

“And the dogs?”

Nikki knew that Harriet meant the stray dogs that hung around the Shermans' yard. They came nearly every day, usually early in the morning and again in the evening, just as darkness was falling. Nikki fed them but couldn't afford to do much more for them. The previous fall, when so many dogs had been coming by (Paw-Paw was one of them) that Nikki couldn't keep up with them, she had finally asked the people at Sheltering Arms for help, and since then, they had come by regularly. Often they brought a supply of food for the dogs. And sometimes they set up humane traps for them, brought them back to the shelter, spayed or neutered them, gave them medical attention, and kept the ones they felt were adoptable. The feral ones were returned to continue living on their own. Nikki was grateful, and she very much liked everyone she had met at the shelter.

“There aren't very many of them,” she told Harriet now. “Lately, I've only seen four dogs.”

“Excellent,” said Harriet. “Spaying and neutering is the key. Do you need anything?”

“More dry food, if you have it,” said Nikki uncomfortably. She had felt like a charity case many times in her life, and accepting donations didn't come easily.

Harriet laughed. “
If
we have it!” she said. “Nikki, come take a look in the van.”

Nikki peered through the back doors. She counted eleven enormous bags of chow.

“You're my sixth stop today, and I have two more to go. Believe me, we're grateful to people like you who help strays.”

Nikki smiled.

Harriet heaved a bag of food out of the van. “
Oof
.” She straightened up. “So, is Paw-Paw going to walk in the dog parade?”

“Definitely. I promised Mae we'd make his costume soon.”

“The newspaper ad is going to run at the end of the week,” said Harriet. “Five dollars to enter the parade, and everyone who comes to watch will be encouraged to contribute. We'll have volunteers up and down Main Street with canisters for donations. Did you see the posters? We put them up on October first. Nikki, you had a wonderful idea.”

“Thank you,” said Nikki, patting Paw-Paw and looking at the ground.

Harriet gazed across the Shermans' yard. “Are you concerned about any of the dogs that are coming by?” she asked.

“Well,” said Nikki thoughtfully, “three of them look okay. You know, scruffy and they probably have some fleas, but basically okay. The fourth one is limping, though. And I think she has a tick on her neck.”

“Will she let you get close to her?”

Nikki shook her head. “Nope. And I've tried lots of times.”

“Do you think she's feral?”

“I don't know. Maybe not exactly feral. She doesn't run away from me. I think she might just be hand shy.”

Harriet paused. Then she said, “I guess I should try to trap her.”

“Okay.” Nikki and Harriet both knew what that meant. Trapping a specific dog, even with a humane trap, wasn't as straightforward as it sounded. Any kind of animal could wind up in the trap, including one of the other dogs. Once, Harriet had set a trap, and later that day Nikki found Paw-Paw sitting grouchily in it.

“Will you be able to check the trap tonight and again tomorrow before you leave for school?” asked Harriet. “I'll want to come pick up the dog as soon as possible.”

“I'll make time,” said Nikki.

Harriet grinned. “I can't ask for more.”

 

Nikki and Harriet set the trap, placing a dog biscuit at the back and carefully setting the door so that it would shut — and lock — behind the dog when she nosed inside for the treat. Then Nikki called good-bye to Harriet, returned to the house, and sat down at the kitchen table, her schoolbooks stacked beside her, Paw-Paw dozing at her feet. She was reading an amazingly dull paragraph about the French Revolution for what she estimated was the seventh time when the phone rang, startling her and causing Paw-Paw to leap to his feet, barking mightily.

“Thank you for protecting me from the telephone,” Nikki said to him as she pressed the
TALK
button. “Hello?”

“Hello, little sis.”

“Tobias!”

“How's everything?”

“Great. But I miss you.”

“I miss you, too. Is Mom there?”

“Nope. No one else is home yet.”

“Oh.” Tobias sounded disappointed. “I didn't look at the time before I called.”

“Is something going on?”

“Something good.”

“What? What?”

“What are you guys doing the first weekend in November?”

“I don't know. Why?”

“I just found out that the first Saturday in November is family visiting day at Leavitt. I was hoping you and Mom and Mae could come.”

Nikki let out a small shriek. “Yes! Yes, oh, yes, oh, yes! Come visit you at college? I've been waiting for this! I want to see everything! I want to see your dorm and the science center — didn't you say there's a greenhouse? — and the library and the theatre —” Nikki could hear Tobias laughing. “I want to see everything!” she exclaimed again.

“Do you think Mom has to work that day?”

“I don't know, but it's a month away. I'm sure she can figure something out. Then it'll just be …” Nikki's voice trailed off.