All That's Missing (17 page)

“Mind your own business, Hafer,” Maywood yelled back.

So much for ignoring them,
Arlo thought. He bent down to make sure Steamboat was safe. “Are you OK, boy?”

Steamboat looked up at him with wide eyes. He was panting hard.

“Come on,” Maywood said. “Let's get him out of here.”

“I'm ready when you are,” Arlo said.

And with that, they took off through the trees, weaving a path down the hill to the park.

“Where you going, Mayflower?” Hafer called after them.

“Yeah. Who's your boyfriend, Freak Girl?” the other boy yelled.

This time Maywood
did
ignore them. She made sure that Steamboat stayed between them as they made their way through the woods. They didn't stop until they reached the bottom of the hill.

“What's the story with those creeps?” Arlo asked, catching his breath and wiping the sweat off his forehead.

“They're just your basic morons,” Maywood said. “Eddie Hafer's dad is the mayor. So Hafer figures he can get away with anything. Chip Boyle's not so bad. He's just dumb. And he does whatever Eddie tells him to do because nobody else will talk to him.”

Arlo nodded toward the parking lot, where Ida was waving at them from her car. “We'd better go,” he said. “She'll be worried about you-know-who.” He pointed toward Steamboat, who promptly lifted his head and howled.

“You can say that again,” Arlo said, ruffling Steamboat's ears.

Maywood smiled. “Trouble with a capital
T,
” she said.

Then they made their way over to the parking lot. Just before they reached Ida, a black sedan drove past the parked cars and turned up Cemetery Road.

“Wonder who that is,” Maywood said.

“Maybe somebody who works in a funeral home,” Arlo said. “Look at that car.”

“Maybe,” Maywood said.

They watched the car take the first switchback curve.

Arlo groaned when he saw the look on Maywood's face. “Don't tell me you want to go back up there,” he said.

“Come on,” Maywood said. “We need to check this out.”

When they reached the top of the hill they tiptoed through the woods, watching the black sedan snake its way up the hillside and pull into a space beside the office. Hafer and Boyle had obviously been waiting for it. They walked over to the driver's side and waited until the window went down and a black-suited arm emerged. An envelope passed from the hand of the man in the car to Hafer's hand.

“What's going on?” Arlo asked.

“Nothing good,” Maywood said. “You can bet on that.”

Steamboat rubbed his nose against Arlo's leg. When Arlo looked down at him, he whimpered and tilted his nose downhill toward the park.

“Shh. Quiet, Steamboat,” Maywood whispered.

Arlo patted Steamboat on the head. “Just hang on, OK?” He glanced again at Hafer and Boyle. They were leaning against the car now with their heads ducked forward, as if some sort of discussion were taking place.

“We've seen enough,” Maywood said. “Let's get out of here.”

Ida was still waiting when they returned to the parking lot.

“What happened to you?” she asked. “Why did you go back up there?”

Maywood told her what they'd seen.

“I noticed that car,” Ida said. “It doesn't belong to anyone around here.”

“What do you think they were doing?” Maywood asked.

Ida shook her head. “That Hafer boy's liable to end up in prison at the rate he's going.”

Nobody said anything on the way to the bookstore.

“Call me, OK?” Maywood whispered as she got out of the backseat.

Arlo nodded.

On the rest of the ride home, Ida seemed thoughtful. She didn't speak until they had reached the bridge over the creek at the marina. Her voice didn't sound as sharp as it normally did, either, so Arlo was surprised by what she asked.

“I suppose Albert must have had some choice words to say about me over the years,” she said, tilting her voice up a notch at the end, making it clear she expected a response.

Arlo thought for a moment. He needed to be careful. The wrong answer might turn her against him for good.

“Poppo said he met you a couple of times and you seemed nice,” he said after a pause.

That was the truth after all, though it was leaving out a lot of other things Poppo had said that Ida probably wouldn't want to hear.

She glanced over at him. “Albert told you I was nice?”

Arlo nodded.

“What else did he tell you?”

She had her eyes trained on his face, so Arlo had to control his reactions. His tendency to blush usually gave away when he was stretching the truth. He hoped she wouldn't figure that out.

“Poppo said it was a shame that you and my mom got off on the wrong foot.”

Ida tilted her head as if she were trying to map a path from the relationship she remembered to the one Arlo was describing.

“That's one way of putting things, I guess.”

At that moment, a large, brownish-white bird swooped low in front of the car, then came to rest on the telephone pole at the side of the road.

“Was that an eagle?” Arlo asked.

Ida smiled, and with that, the tension in the car eased.

“That's an osprey,” she said. “I'll bet you've never seen one before, have you? Unusual to see one this late in the fall. That fellow must be reluctant to head south for the winter. Your father was particularly fond of those birds.”

“Osprey and eagles, right?” It was a guess, but Arlo felt pretty sure his father had loved eagles too. He patted the wood carving in his pocket. He felt one step closer to finding out if his father had made it.

“How did you know?” Ida's hands tightened on the wheel, bleaching her knuckles white.

“Poppo told me,” Arlo lied. He didn't want to lose this chance to find out as much as he could. He kept his hand over the carving. He would show it to her eventually. But not now. The time didn't feel right. He wanted to be able to watch her face when she first saw it. And besides, he couldn't stand it if she took it away from him. He needed to keep it. At least for the time being. He couldn't explain why. He just knew it was important. The way Poppo knew things about angels and spirits. That same old superstitious feeling.

“I'm sure I've never seen one,” he said.

“Not surprising,” Ida said. “Considering where you live. Osprey like water. So they can fish. They don't usually come as far inland as where you live.” She slowed the car to get a closer look at the bird. “You know, we nearly lost them all in the seventies. Pesticides were killing them off. But they're back now. Stronger than ever.”

The words
tough old bird
floated through Arlo's mind. It was an expression Poppo used to describe Mrs. Beakerbinder down the street. Or maybe he had used it to describe Ida. Arlo wasn't sure.

“Can we call Poppo when we get home?” Arlo expected her to protest, but his grandmother surprised him.

“That's a good idea,” she said. “We should see how he's doing today.”

Back at the house, Ida filled Steamboat's water bowl and then made the call. Once again, Arlo asked to speak to Poppo, and again, Ida shook her head.

“He's awake,” she said, after she'd hung up the phone. “That's a milestone, Arlo. He's even speaking a bit.”

“Then why can't I talk to him?”

A twinge of sadness flashed over her face, then disappeared as her features flattened into her normal expression. “They said he's very weak and not quite up to talking on the phone.”

Arlo couldn't help wondering what part of the conversation Ida was holding back from him. “He's going to be all right, though, isn't he?”

She parceled out her words carefully. “The doctor says there's room for hope.”

Arlo's chest tightened.
Room for hope
didn't sound hopeful at all.

“Waking up and speaking are good signs, Arlo. One step at a time, OK?”

Her voice was sharp again. All angles and bones. Every time Arlo thought she might be turning less prickly, something happened and the pointy edges came poking back out.

Arlo's eyes burned. But he wouldn't cry in front of her. No matter what.

Two days had passed since Steamboat jumped out of the car in the Val-U-Mart parking lot. Aside from trips to the grocery store for food and the post office for stamps, Arlo stayed close to the house with Ida. They talked to the nurse on the morning shift just before noon and to the evening nurse around seven.

Each day Ida spoke to the doctor after he'd completed his morning rounds. Poppo was “holding his own,” according to Dr. Simon, who was the neurologist taking care of him.

“They think he's out of danger, but they need to keep a close watch for another couple of days,” Ida reported.

“Then what?” Arlo asked.

“Then they decide what to do next.”

What did
decide what to do next
mean, exactly? Whatever it meant, it did not sound promising.

At least Miss Hasslebarger wasn't a problem anymore.

“She won't bother you for a while anyway,” Ida had told him. “I called Nathan about her.”

“Who's Nathan?” Arlo asked.

“My lawyer. He and your grandfather were cousins once removed. He takes care of all my business. And he contacted someone in Marshboro to call off Miss Hasslebarger.”

“Thank you,” Arlo said.

Ida's face softened. She gave Arlo a sympathetic look, as if to let him know that no matter how she felt about his mother, she hated what Arlo had been through with the social worker.

“What a horrible woman,” Ida said.

“You talked to her?”

“Only briefly. That was more than enough. The idea that you might be better off in a shelter . . .”

That comment was followed by a sour expression and more head-shaking. Arlo looked at his grandmother's profile. If you were in a battle and you had to choose sides, you would definitely choose hers.

Sitting at the wooden desk in his father's old room, Arlo reached in the drawer and took out a small pad of paper. He drew a line down the middle of the page. On one side he wrote
MARSHBORO
, and on the other side he wrote
EDGEWATER
. Under each heading he listed the names of the people who were important to him. He was surprised to find more names under the Edgewater heading than under Marshboro. Of course, he had never felt closer to anyone than Poppo and Sam. But everything was different now. He stared at his list.

Arlo added question marks beside Maywood's and Ida's names because he wasn't really sure how they felt about him. Maywood seemed nice, but she was also nosy and had a sharp tongue like Augusta Stonestreet. As for Ida, he wasn't sure what to make of her. She must care about him because she was allowing him to stay in her house. But, she wasn't exactly friendly yet. Or, maybe she was, in those moments when they managed to avoid the subject of his mother.

Who knew what was going to happen? Going home to Marshboro wasn't going to work. But staying in Edgewater didn't feel all that safe, either. Arlo supposed he could get used to Ida's prickly ways if he had to. It wouldn't be the same as living with Poppo. But it would be better than dodging rats in the basement of a foster home, or being terrorized by a bully in a shelter. And if he had to change schools because of a foster home, he'd never see Sam anyway.

Later that morning, Ida managed to get Poppo on the phone.

“He's asking for you,” she said.

“I can talk to him now? Really?” Arlo stumbled over the vacuum cleaner in his rush to get to the phone.

“Poppo?”

“Is that my number one grandson?”

“It's me,” Arlo said. “You sound good.”

“I'm doing fine,” Poppo said. “For an old man whose memory is failing.”

“I miss you,” Arlo said.

“I miss you, too,” Poppo said.