She stopped short at the top of the steps. “Robin?” she said suspiciously.
“How was your shopping trip?”
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong!”
“Why are you dressed that way?”
“Oh, I was just, we were just down at the lake, don’t you know, and David had a little incident.”
“Incident?”
“He panicked and thought he was drowning.”
“What?”
She pushed past him and hurried into the house. Alice and Lily followed; their father stood aside for them and then followed too, letting the screen door shut very gently behind him.
In the living room, Trent was lounging on the couch with one leg slung carelessly along the length of it, Alice’s Mademoiselle open on his lap. He raised an index finger to Lily and said, “Hey, babe.”
“Hi, Trent!”
“Where is he?” Mercy asked Robin.
He gestured silently toward their bedroom.
The door of the bedroom was shut, although in the daytime it always stood open. Mercy flung open the door and rushed in, still carrying her Robinson’s bag. “Honey?” she said. “Are you all right?”
David said something muffled that Alice couldn’t make out. Meanwhile Lily was asking Trent, “Have you been waiting long?” and Trent said, “Well, longer than I cared to, let’s put it that way.”
Alice peered into the room. She saw David curled on his cot, wearing his trunks but nothing else, clutching his cowboy doll to his chest. Mercy sat on the edge of the cot, stroking his back. “Did you have a little scare?” she asked him.
He nodded, and then gave a sniff.
“Come on out to the living room with me,” she suggested.
He just clutched his doll closer.
“You don’t want to come out and sit in my lap?” she asked. “Maybe try one of the chocolates the girls and I brought you from town?”
A shake of his head.
She sat straighter and studied him for a moment. Then she rose and returned to the living room. She asked Robin, “What on earth happened?”
“Oh, well, me and Bentley were just, you know, standing there keeping a watch on him—”
“Did you throw him in?”
“What?”
“Did you throw him into the water?”
“No, I didn’t throw him into the water! Why would I do that?”
“Like some sink-or-swim thing? You and Bentley doing some he-man thing?”
“What are you talking about?”
She walked over to the rocker and sank down into it. Trent had abandoned the couch by now; he was waiting by the front door while Lily rolled her towel into a cylinder around her swimsuit. “I’m going to Trent’s house,” she told Mercy, but Mercy just looked at her blankly.
“He wasn’t in any danger, Mercy, I swear it,” Robin said. “Me and Bentley were standing right there on the end of the dock. All I had to do was jump into the water and lift him up by one arm and he was fine. Soaked my shoes pretty good, though.”
“Bye, Mama,” Lily said. She and Trent left. Alice asked her mother, “Shall I put some things out for lunch?” But Mercy just dropped her shopping bag to the floor and rocked her chair back.
* * *
—
David did emerge from the bedroom, after a bit. He appeared while Alice and her parents were eating lunch; he crept quietly into the kitchen and hoisted himself onto his chair and plucked a slice of bologna from the platter. He still had his trunks on, but he’d added a sweatshirt, and he’d brought along his cowboy doll, which he laid facedown across his lap. Even Mercy knew enough not to make a fuss. She just moved the sack of bread a little closer to his plate and went on telling Robin about their trip into Dunnville. “Dullville, they ought to call it,” she said. “I was expecting they might cater some to the tourist trade, but they don’t.”
“Missing out on a good thing there,” Robin said. “Some guy with a little business sense could come along and make a killing.”
“Well, sooner or later, I suppose—careful, honey,” she broke off to tell David. “You’re getting mustard on Bobby Shafto.”
“Bascomb,” David corrected her. Bascomb was who the doll had been before he became Bobby Shafto. （The Garretts’ mailman was named Bascomb.）
“Oh, excuse me,” Mercy told the doll. David moved Bascomb from his lap to the seat of his chair and went back to spreading mustard.