Runaways (23 page)

“Mom?” Dani said.

“Dani,” her mother whispered. “You’re awake. Can you get up now? I could use some help.”

Feeling dazed and groggy, Dani struggled to stand up and, still wobbling a little, followed Linda down the hall to Al’s kitchen. While her mother made oatmeal with brown sugar, and scrambled eggs and toast, Dani found the silverware and began to set the table. “Just three places,” Linda said. “Al ate earlier and went off to the store.”

Linda’s first questions were about Stormy. “Did he sleep through the night all right?” she wanted to know, and then, “Dani, is it really true that it was Gloria who hurt him that way?” When Dani said it was true, Linda sighed and said that Pixie had said so but they’d all found it hard to believe. “I guess we didn’t want it to be true,” she told Dani. “And you know how unbelievable some of Pixie’s stories can be.”

Dani said she knew.

Linda sighed again and went back to looking for things in Al’s refrigerator, but the next time she turned around she was smiling in a way that Dani remembered but hadn’t seen for a long time. “Dani,” she said. “There is some good news. Some very good news. It seems that the land Chance left us is going to be quite valuable after all. The Smithsons located several important minerals on the property. Nothing as exciting as gold or silver, but something called fluorspar, for instance, that’s used in the production of steel. Ivor and Emily asked Mr. Bridgeman to be here yesterday when they told me about it, to help explain things I needed to know. Mineral rights and things like that.”

She stopped stirring the eggs for a moment and turned to look at Dani and her face had a shine about it. “Oh, Dani,” she said, “it’s so amazing. It seems that Chance’s worthless old ranch is going to make us a very comfortable living after all. Which means …”

“… we can move back to Sea Grove,” Dani almost sang.

Her mother nodded. “Or anywhere else we might want to go.”

For a moment they just stared at each other, with Dani holding a fistful of forks and knives and Linda still clutching her stirring spoon. They just stood there grinning for a while and then Linda’s eyes narrowed angrily. Before she even said a word Dani guessed what they were going to talk about next.

So Dani helped her out by asking, “And the Grablers?”

Her mother sighed. “Oh, Dani. Those terrible people. What must have happened was that Mr. Grabler listened in on the conversations when Ivor was talking to his company on the hotel’s phone. So he found out early on when the Smithsons began to make some interesting discoveries.”

“Ooh,” Dani said, “so that was why they wanted you to sell them the land in such a hurry? Before you had a chance to find out …”

“Exactly,” her mother said.

They went on trying to get something done for several minutes but Dani, at least, was so angry at the Grablers and so excited about everything else that she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to be doing. She was still staring at the same handful of forks and knives when Linda interrupted her dreams by saying, “Dani. Last night, while you were sleeping, Pixie told us some pretty amazing things. About the three of you running away?”

Uh-oh, Dani thought. Here it comes. Here it comes at last. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, we really did. We started out anyway. We just didn’t get very far.”

Linda looked shocked and then bewildered. “But when? When did all this happen?”

“You mean you didn’t even notice?” Dani was beginning to feel the way Pixie must feel—forgotten. As if her mother had forgotten to notice that her only kid had been missing for most of Thursday. Or at least from noon until way after dark. “Didn’t you notice I wasn’t home for dinner?” she asked accusingly.

Linda looked shocked. “No. No, I didn’t because I wasn’t there either. The Smithsons came into the shop during the afternoon and told me that they were expecting Mr. Bridgeman to arrive around dinnertime. And then they asked me if I could be at a dinner meeting.” Linda shrugged and shook her head. “I couldn’t imagine why, but I said all right. And then Ivor said he would bring some sandwiches over from the grill because it would be best if we could eat right here in the shop where it would be more private. So I said I could, but that I’d have to run home and let you know. Then Emily told me they’d left Portia with you, and she insisted on giving me enough money for you girls to eat at the grill. It must have been around five o’clock when I ran over to the house. You weren’t there, of course, and now I know why, but at the time I thought you probably were downtown or out on the bicycle. So I just left a note and the money on the kitchen table.”

“Oh.” Dani was beginning to see what had happened. “By then we’d already been gone a long time. But the bicycle was there, though. Right there on the front porch. Didn’t you see the Black Phantom?”

Linda shook her head. “I suppose it was there, but I used the back door.”

It wasn’t until then that it began to sink in, that no one had even known that they’d run away. It was an amazing thought. All that time while she and Stormy were nearly dying from sunstroke in the gully, and dodging rattlesnakes in the tunnel, and then being turned down by the bus driver, no one had even known that they were missing. But there was an important part of the story that her mother still didn’t know. And that was …

“Mom,” she said. “There’s something else you ought to know. About why we ran away.”

“Oh, I think I understand about that.” Linda’s smile looked a little sad. “I know how you felt about living in Rattler Springs, and how much you wanted to get back to Sea Grove.”

“Yes,” Dani agreed. “That’s what it was for a long time, but the important part is, I changed my mind. I decided not to because …” She paused and then shrugged. She’d decide how to explain that later. When she went on she only said, “Even after Pixie got enough money for bus tickets I told her I wasn’t going. I was even going to stop planning about it. That is, I was until …” She nodded toward the bedroom where Stormy was sleeping. “That’s why,” she said.

Linda sighed. “Yes, yes, I understand,” she said. And just a second later she looked up and added, “Well, good morning, Stormy. How are you feeling?”

And there he was standing in the doorway. The swelling around his mouth had gone down just a little but his smile was still lopsided. “I’m hungry,” he said.

Dani and Linda both smiled too. At Stormy first, and then at each other.

T
HE O’DONNELLS NEVER DID
go back to live in Jerky Joe’s historic old cabin. In fact it was the very next day after the Great Runaway Adventure didn’t quite happen that they began to move to another house. But not to Sea Grove. Sea Grove, it turned out, was still a few weeks away. A few weeks in which mining operations would be set up out at the ranch and then, after the results were measured, the O’Donnells would begin to collect their mineral rights income.

But in the meantime it was important for them to find someplace else to live as soon as possible. For instance, before Linda got around to telling the Grablers that she wasn’t going to let them buy the ranch. And exactly why she wasn’t! Which meant, of course, no more Jerky Joe’s cabin. It was a problem that got solved in an interesting way.

It turned out that Al Cooley had never liked the Grablers much, and now that he was about to leave town he didn’t mind saying so. And another thing he wouldn’t mind was letting the O’Donnells use his house for a few weeks.

Al’s house was old too. Not a lot newer than Jerky Joe’s cabin maybe. But it had been built for one of the owners of the old silver mine, so it had been a better house to start with. There was a nice bathroom with tile on the floor and a real claw-foot bathtub. And, best of all, there were three bedrooms, so nobody had to sleep in the living room anymore. Linda shared Dani’s bedroom until Al left, after which they would each have a bedroom of their own. Linda and Stormy thought the Cooley house was great, and even Dani had to admit that, for a Rattler Springs house, it wasn’t all that bad.

So it was the day after the failed runaway attempt, and a few days before Al took off for Arizona, that the O’Donnells began to move into his house. Linda was going to go on working in the store until all the books were sold, and after that she had the job of finding a new renter for the store and, as soon as the O’Donnells didn’t need it anymore, for the house as well.

Linda and Dani started moving their clothing and kitchen things that very first day. And on Wednesday, after Al had left for Arizona, Gus and a couple of his friends helped move the heavy stuff. By Thursday, when Linda went back to work in the bookstore, there was nothing left in Jerky Joe’s cabin except a few boxes of odds and ends. Dani was about to cross Main Street carrying one last box when something awful happened. She ran into Ronnie Grabler.

It was a pretty touchy situation, but it might have been a lot worse except the Rattler Springs mail truck had just arrived, which meant that lots of people were downtown to get their mail. That made a difference because, while Ronnie certainly didn’t mind hitting girls, he didn’t like to do it when a bunch of people were watching. So Dani wasn’t afraid to say what she felt like saying when Ronnie blocked her path and said, “We kicked you out, so now you’re bumming off old Cooley. That right?”

What Dani said, loud and clear, so all the people standing in line outside the post office could hear, was, “We’re moving out of your crummy cabin, if that’s what you mean. And you might be interested to know that my mom is talking to a lawyer about how your dad tried to swindle her out of her property.” Some of the people in the post office line laughed and a couple even clapped and cheered, and Dani marched around Ronnie and headed across the street.

Apparently it took a while for Ronnie to decide whether, under the circumstances, he could get away with slugging a girl, because she was halfway across Main Street before he caught up with her. This time he didn’t try to stop her but he stomped along beside her long enough to say, “Well, you and your ma better watch out because Gloria knows where her kid is now, and is she mad! And everybody knows what happens when old Gorgeous Gloria gets mad.”

This time Dani didn’t even try to answer. Of course Gloria would know by now. Stormy hadn’t been outside of the house since Gus carried him in, but in a town like Rattler Springs nobody could keep a secret for long.

In the bookstore Linda was talking to Mrs. Alwood, who’d come in to buy a book and probably to sneak out with a few more
True Romances.
Dani put down the box of knickknacks and stood around waiting impatiently for Linda’s customer to leave. As soon as Mrs. Alwood finished snooping around the magazine rack, and then scooted out the door, Dani asked, “Where’s Stormy?”

“He was in his room when I left. Why?” Linda looked worried. “I didn’t like leaving him alone, but when I asked him to come to the store with me, he didn’t want to. I think he’s worried about seeing his mother.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dani said. “And I guess he ought to be. Ronnie just told me that Gloria knows where Stormy is and she’s mad. Ronnie said she’s really mad.”

“She’s mad?” Linda’s face had an unfamiliar tightness around her mouth and eyes.
“She’s
mad!” she said again, and, whirling around, she ran out of the shop with Dani right behind her. They found Stormy sitting on the floor of his room looking through a box of stuff that Al had left behind. Antique toys that used to belong to Al’s kids, and things like that.

Stormy looked up quickly when they burst in. “Hi?” he said, making it into a question.

“Hi,” Linda said. “Just checking. You all right?” Stormy said he was.

Back in the living room Linda told Dani that they shouldn’t leave Stormy alone anymore. “Not till this custody question is settled.”

“Custody question?” Dani asked.

“Yes.” Linda put her hand on Dani’s arm. “I’ve been talking to Mr. Bridgeman about the possibility of getting Stormy legally removed from his mother’s custody.”

“Well, good,” Dani said, but then she began to put two and two together. “But then where would he live?” She began to get the answer before she’d even finished asking the question. “Ooh,” she said. “I get it.”

“And what do you think?” Linda asked.

Dani had to think about it. That would mean having Stormy around all the time, instead of just most of the time. And it would also mean all the hassle of having a younger brother when she’d always been an only child. It would be, she decided, a real pain in the neck. To have an extraordinarily stubborn, hardheaded nonreader for a younger brother! Who, on the other hand, was kind of brave. And loyal. Superloyal, actually. After a minute she shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

But that very night, right after dinner, there was a loud knock on the front door and when Linda opened it there stood Gloria Arigotti. Dani and Stormy had been playing dominoes on the dining room table but as soon as he heard his mother’s voice Stormy ran out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom. Dani heard him turn the lock on the bathroom door before she got up and crossed the living room to stand beside her mother.

Gloria’s blond hair was wild and stringy, her face was streaked with tears and mascara and there was a whimpering sound to her voice. Tugging at the latched screen door, she said, “I’ve come for my kid. I want my kid back.”

Linda’s eyes had gone narrow and that unfamiliar stiffness was there again, around her mouth and chin. But her voice was calm as she said, “No, Gloria. You can’t have him back. He doesn’t want to go, and I won’t let you have him.”

Gloria’s pitiful face disappeared in a flash and the one that took its place was hard-eyed, tight-lipped and pretty scary. But Linda went on talking quietly. “Listen, Gloria. I have all sorts of witnesses who will testify as to what you did to Stormy last week. People like Mabel Carey, who doctored his injuries. And Mr. Bridgeman, who’s a lawyer, says that if we have to go to court you will lose. And you could lose not only Stormy, but your own freedom as well. Mr. Bridgeman says that you could very well wind up in prison.”

“Prison?” Gloria’s voice had gone high and screechy. “What the hell you talking about? For knocking my own kid around a little I could go to prison? Everybody knocks their kids around when they need it.”