Megan's Island (14 page)

Now Megan wondered if that was a lie, too, though she couldn't think why it should have been. But there were pictures of her, and of Sandy, and some of Mom, too, including snapshots taken with Grandpa and Grandma Davis when Mom was real little. Why would only the ones of Daddy have been lost?

And what about the names? Her own initials were the same as those of the girl on the birth certificate. She had been “born to Caroline and Daniel Kauffman.”

Ben was saying something, but she paid no attention. Mom's name was Karen, and Daddy's name had been Dan. Dan was short for Daniel, and that was the name of the mysterious, unknown grandfather in Chicago. And Grandpa Davis never called Mom Karen, he called her Karo. Which sounded the same as the first part of Caroline. And while Collier started with a C, and Kauffman started with a K, both sounded the same when spoken aloud.

Megan knew she was jumping to conclusions, but they seemed so logical she was convinced her suspicions were true.

The birth certificate was her own. Only her name wasn't really Collier, but Kauffman. It made her feel stranger than ever, sort of sick to her stomach.

Everything she had taken for granted, all her life, was turned upside down. If she wasn't really Megan Collier, but someone named Margaret Anne Kauffman, it was scary. If Mom had told as big a lie as that, what else that Megan had believed in was false?

Why hadn't she asked Grandpa, before they left, if her grandfather's name was Daniel Kauffman? If he had refused to answer, she thought she might have read the truth in his face.

Whatever it was, Grandpa knew, she thought. Though Grandpa might not have told the lies, he had kept silent about the truth. Did that mean Mom had very good reasons for what she had done? Or only that both the adults in Megan's life had deceived her for reasons of their own?

She thought about the new grandfather. Why should Mom be hiding her and Sandy from him? Was he an evil man in some way? He must be quite terrible if Mom felt she had to run and hide, then run again, for eight years. If he had hired a detective to search for them, what did he mean to do when he found them?

There were no answers, of course. Only more speculations.

“Hey! Megan, we're here,” Ben said.

Megan came to with a start. They had arrived at the island.

“You carry that stuff,” Ben said, “and Sandy can get that box. I'll manage the rest.” He was giving orders, as usual. For once Megan didn't care. She wasn't thinking about Ben at all, only about herself and Sandy, and wondering what was going to happen next.

Twilight fell slowly across the island. Sandy and Ben set out the checkerboard after Megan declined to play a game of Clue. She knew she'd never be able to concentrate on any game. Instead she decided to go for a walk by herself, so she could think.

“Remember you don't want to be seen from the mainland, in case that guy comes back tonight instead of tomorrow,” Ben warned.

Megan didn't bother to answer. She was already walking away. She sort of wished the island were bigger, now, though before she'd liked it the size it was. It was a relief just to get away from the boys, to be able to stop worrying about how she looked, or if she cried, or what Ben thought about her being scared.

“You're safe out here,” he had pointed out to her only a few minutes ago.

There was a lot Ben didn't know, and she couldn't pretend to be interested in some stupid game while she was thinking about all of it.

For a long time Megan sat on the little beach in the cove, listening to the call of a loon, seeing an occasional fish jump. Thinking didn't seem to help anything, and after a while she simply let herself drift, not trying to figure it out, not trying to think of a solution. Solving the problem was out of the question anyway, until she knew what the source of the problem was. Mostly what she hoped was that her mother had a good explanation for what she had said and done, one that would prove she was the kind of person Megan had always felt her to be.

It was nearly dark when she finally made her way back to the tree house. The boys were just putting away the checkerboard.

“Have a cookie,” Ben said, and even that sounded like an order.

Megan
was
hungry. She hadn't eaten much of Grandpa's chicken and salads. She took a cookie from the package Sandy offered.

“It got too dark to see,” Ben told her through a mouthful of chocolate chip crumbs. “I didn't think we should light the lantern. Even if it sits on the floor, they might be able to see the glow of it on shore. We're going to go to bed and tell ghost stories, okay? And just in case of an emergency, we're going to sleep in our clothes.”

“In case we have to move fast,” Sandy supplemented, putting the game box on one of the shelves.

Megan didn't participate in the ghost-story telling. In fact, she didn't really listen to them. She hoped that Grandpa Davis was right in thinking he could handle that man if he came back.

Sandy and Ben were still giggling when she fell asleep. She woke later, feeling chilly, and zipped up her sleeping bag, then slept until the sun was well up in the sky.

While Megan fixed sandwiches for breakfast—they'd already decided not to risk being detected by building a fire that would send up a column of smoke—Ben looked over to the shore with his binoculars.

Just as Megan handed him a sandwich and juice in a cardboard carton, Ben yelped.

“He's back,” he said. “The guy in the white car, with the Illinois plates—he's back!”

Breakfast was forgotten.

Megan knelt between the boys, conscious of the fact that only a thin fringe of boughs and leaves hid the trio from anyone who might have been looking their way.

Even without the binoculars, Megan was sure the car was the same one, the one that belonged to the man from Illinois. A detective, Grandpa Davis thought, who had searched them out on behalf of a grandfather they had not known existed until yesterday.

“Grandpa's coming out to meet him,” Sandy reported unnecessarily.

“He's inviting the guy inside. He must not seem dangerous.” Did Ben sound disappointed?

Megan had lost none of her own apprehension. The three of them sat waiting, tense and expectant, for what seemed a long time and probably was no more than ten minutes.

Then Grandpa and the man came back into the yard. They exchanged a few words, the man got into the car, they talked a bit longer, and the man drove away.

Not exciting at all, Megan thought. She wished she could have overheard what they said to each other.

Grandpa stood alone in the yard until the car had gone. He looked out across the lake toward them, but gave no sign of seeing them. Then he walked back into the cottage and let Wolf out into the yard, where the dog ran wildly around, smelling the ground and the canoe, looking for them. Discouraged, Wolf finally lay down near the red canoe, big head drooping onto his paws as he stared mournfully out over the lake.

“He's gone,” Sandy said, relieved.

Megan shook her head.

“Grandpa didn't hang out the blue shirt to signal for us to come ashore,” she said.

The day passed slowly. They kept only an occasional eye on the cottage. Holding binoculars was hard work if they did it for more than a short time, and nothing moved along the lake shore.

They ate, then Megan tried to read but couldn't concentrate. Finally she took out the birth certificate and studied it, more convinced than ever that it was her own, that she was not Megan Collier at all but some stranger named Margaret Anne Kauffman.

“What's that?” Ben demanded when he finally noticed.

She hadn't wanted to talk about her latest discovery; to put her suspicions into words would make them all more real, and she didn't want them to be real. She wanted to be the person she'd always been, didn't want a mysterious grandfather who hired detectives, didn't want to be a girl whose picture was flashed on television screens with the words
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD?

Yet maybe Ben and Sandy could explain her discovery away, she thought. Maybe if she told them, they would think of some other explanation.

They didn't. Ben read through the birth certificate, nodding. “Same date, same initials, names like your parents' names. It's from a hospital in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Is that where you were born?”

Megan was getting a headache. “I was born in Wisconsin, I think. I don't remember that anyone ever told me which town.”

“It all fits,” Ben said. “Boy, this is crazy! You must have some idea of what it all means.”

“I don't. Only that Mom kept moving us around, and now it looks as if it might be because this other grandfather has been trying to find us.”

“Maybe he's a millionaire, and we're his heirs,” Sandy suggested.

“Why would Mom run away from him for that reason?” Megan asked reasonably. “There has to be more to it than that.”

“Was my birth certificate in the package, too?” Sandy wanted to know.

“I didn't see it. I suppose it might have been; I didn't go over everything. Or else Mom kept papers like that in something else, and grabbed mine and put it in with other stuff by mistake, because she was in a hurry. I'm pretty sure she didn't intend for me to see it.”

They talked about it for a while, and nothing either of the boys said made Megan feel any better. Finally, she had to change the subject before it all made her really sick.

“Where were you born?” she asked Ben.

“Duluth,” Ben said promptly. “It's the only place I ever lived, until now.”

Megan sighed. “We've lived in so many places. Gone to so many schools.” No, that was getting back on the wrong subject. “What's it like, going to just one school, in the same place, all your life?”

“Well, as a matter of fact . . .” Ben hesitated, reaching down to scratch a scabbed-over mosquito bite on his bare ankle. “. . . I've been to three schools. I got kicked out of all of them, so I had to go to different ones. It was one of the things that made Lawrence mad, because he had to drive me to the last one.”

Sandy regarded him in awe. “Are you kicked out now?”

Ben shrugged. “I guess so. Maybe Dad will let me live with him and go to school wherever he is, but I don't think he's decided yet where he's going to be this winter. He's rented the cottage through September, because here at the lake is a good quiet place for him to work. I doubt if he'll spend the winter here, though. I think the road gets closed because of snow, and he wouldn't want to walk in from the county road with supplies and everything.”

“What did you do to get kicked out?” Sandy demanded.

Ben gave him a defiant look. “Last time, I was caught smoking in the boys' bathroom.”

Megan couldn't help herself. “That sounds stupid.”

Ben grinned. “Smoking, or being caught?”

“Both. Everybody knows smoking is stupid. It gives you cancer and heart trouble and all kinds of nasty things.” Then curiosity got the better of her. “Did you like smoking?”

He had scratched off the scab and now a trickle of blood ran down his ankle. He ignored it. “Nah, not really. I guess you're right, smoking's stupid. It tasted terrible, and I nearly strangled when I inhaled.”

“Why did you do it, then?” Sandy asked, puzzled.

“Because it was against the rules.”

“That sounds like a dumb reason,” Megan commented.

“Yeah, well, when you break the rules,” Ben told her seriously, “they call your folks. You know. Make them come in to school and talk about you. I thought maybe if they had to come in, somebody would realize . . . you know.”

“No,” Megan said. “I don't know. What? I wouldn't want my mom to be called in to talk about me.”

His smile was brittle; Megan had the feeling that it could shatter, like fragile glass. The way, she thought suddenly, Mom's favorite salad bowl had shattered when she dropped it. Megan knew, now, what had probably caused her to do it; she'd been frightened by seeing a picture of Megan and Sandy on TV, and the caption
HAVE YOU SEEN THESE CHILDREN?
That was why they'd left in such a hurry, because Mom was afraid the neighbors would see the picture and recognize it, too.

Ben was answering her statement. “That's because your mom already talks to you, right? She doesn't act as if you aren't there except when she says, ‘For heaven's sake, use your fork,' or ‘Ben, it's time to go to bed.' Your mom doesn't have a boyfriend, or a new husband, that resents every bit of attention she pays to you. Your mom doesn't shut you out, as if you weren't even part of the family.”

Megan just looked at him, and Ben had the grace to blush.

“Well, usually, I mean. What's going on now is different. She's kept secrets from you, but it was to protect you, not because she doesn't care about you.”

“I'm sure your mother cares about you, Ben. She got worried when you were late getting home from the beach, didn't she, or they wouldn't have called the police.”

“She was mad when I saw her. More mad than worried. Lawrence was even madder. I think he'd have hit me if she'd let him.”

“If she didn't let him,” Sandy said helpfully, “it must mean she cares
some.”

Ben hadn't considered that, apparently. And he'd decided he didn't want to talk about himself anymore, the same as Megan had decided.

“Let's go swimming,” Ben said. “We'll wait outside while you change first, Megan.”

“What about Grandpa's signal? Maybe we can go ashore soon.”

“And maybe it'll be hours before he puts up the signal for that. Maybe the guy is coming back. After all, he didn't get what he came for, did he? Come on, there's no sense in dying of boredom while we wait.”

He had a point. Megan allowed herself to be persuaded, though she was anxious to return to the cottage and find out what had happened. She put on her swimsuit, then waited for the boys, and they all headed for the little cove.