Miss Edi was Mr. Bertrand’s sister. She was even older than he was and even though she didn’t live there, she owned the house. Kim had heard people say that she disliked her brother so much that she refused to live in Edilean.
Kim couldn’t imagine hating Edilean since every person she knew in the world lived there. Her dad was an Aldredge, from one of the seven families that founded the town. Kim knew that was something to be proud of. All she thought was that she was glad she wasn’t from the family that had to live in big, scary Edilean Manor.
So now she and her mother had been living in the apartment for two whole weeks and she was horribly bored. She wanted to go back to her own house and her own room. When they were packing to go, her mother said, “We’re just going away for a little while and it’s just arou#82
But in the end, Kim had grabbed the bicycle she’d received for her birthday and clamped her hands around the grips. She looked at her mother with her jaw set.
Her dad laughed. “Ellen,” he said to his wife, “I’ve seen that look on your face a thousand times and I can assure you that your daughter will not back down. I know from experience that you can yell, threaten, sweet talk, plead, beg, cry, but she won’t give in.”
Her mother’s eyes were narrowed as she looked at her laughing husband.
He quit smiling. “Reede, how about you and I go . . . ?”
“Go where, Dad?” Reede asked. At seventeen, he was overwhelmed with importance at being allowed to go away with his dad. No women. Just the two of them.
“Wherever we can find to go,” his dad mumbled.
Kim got to take her bike to Edilean Manor and for three days she rode it nonstop, but now she wanted to do something else. Her cousin Sara came over one day but all she wanted to do was explore the ratty old house. Sara loved old buildings!
Mr. Bertrand had pulled a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland out of a pile of books on the floor. Her mom said he’d sold the bookcase to Colonial Williamsburg. “Original eighteenth century and it had been in the family for over two hundred years,” she’d muttered. “What a shame. Poor Miss Edi.”
Kim spent days reading about Alice and her journey down the rabbit hole. She’d loved the book so much that she told her mother she wanted blonde hair and a blue dress with a white apron. Her mother said that if her father ever again went off for four weeks her next child just might be blonde. Mr. Bertrand said he’d like a hookah and to sit on a mushroom all day and say wise things.
The two adults had started laughing—they seemed to find each other very funny. In disgust Kim went outside to sit in the fork of her favorite old pear tree and read more about Alice. She reread her favorite passages, then her mother called her in for what Mr. Bertrand called “afternoon tea.” He was an odd old man, very soft-looking, and her father said that Mr. Bertrand could hatch an egg on the couch. “He never gets up.”
Kim had seen that few of the men in town liked Mr. Bertrand, but all the women seemed to adore him. On some days as many as six women showed up with bottles of wine and casseroles and cakes, and they’d all laugh hilariously. When they saw Kim they’d say, “I should have brought—” They’d name their children. But then another woman would say how good it was to have some peace and quiet for a few hours.
The next time the women came they’d again “forget” to bring their children.
As Kim stood in the garden and heard the women howling with laughter, she didn’t think they sounded very peaceful or quiet.
It was after she and her mother had been there for two long weeks that early one morning her mother seemed excited about somethi abhe book sng, but Kim wasn’t sure what it was. Something had happened during the night, some adult thing. All Kim was concerned with was that she couldn’t find the copy of Alice’s Adventures in a Wonderland that Mr. Bertrand had lent her. She had one book and now it was gone. She asked her mother what happened to it as she knew she’d left it on the coffee table.
“Last night I took it to—” The sentence wasn’t finished because the old phone on the wall rang and her mother ran to answer it, then immediately started laughing.
Annoyed, Kim went outside. It seemed that her life was getting worse.
She kicked at rocks, frowned at the empty flower beds, and headed toward her tree. She planned to climb it, sit on her branch, and figure out what to do for the long, boring weeks until her dad came home and life could start again.
When she got close to her tree, what she saw stopped her dead in her tracks. There was a boy, younger than her brother but older than she was. He was wearing a clean shirt with a collar and dark trousers; he looked like he was about to go to Sunday School. Worse was that he was sitting in her tree reading her book.
He had dark hair that fell forward and he was so engrossed in her book that he didn’t even look up when Kim kicked at a clod of dirt.
Who was he? she thought. And what right did he think he had to be in her tree?
She didn’t know who or what, but she did know that she wanted this stranger to go away.
She picked up a clod and threw it at him as hard as she could. She was aiming for the top of his head, but hit his shoulder. The lump crumbled into dirt and fell down onto her book.
He looked up at her, a bit startled at first, but then his face settled down and he stared at her in silence. He was a pretty boy, she thought. Not like her cousin Tristan, but this boy looked like a doll she’d seen in a catalogue, with pink skin and very dark eyes.
“That’s my book,” she yelled at him. “And it’s my tree. You have no right to them.” She grabbed another clod and threw it at him. It would have hit him in the face but he moved sideways and it missed.
Kim had had a lot of experience with older boys and she knew that they got you back. It didn’t take much to set them off; then you were in for it. They’d chase you, catch you, and pin your arm behind your back or pull your hair until you begged for mercy.
When she saw the boy make a move as though he meant to get down, Kim took off running as fast as she could. Maybe there’d be enough time that she could reach what she knew was a great hiding place. She wedged her small body in between two piles of old bricks, crouched down, and waited for the boy to come after her.
After what seemed like an hour of waiting, he didn’t show up, and her legs began to ache. Cautiously and quietly, she got out from between the bricks and looked around. She fully expected him to leap out from behind a tree yelling “I got you!” and then bombard her with dirt.