Her sister smiled. “Thanks. I’d like that.”
On the way down the path to the dock, Angie looked around. “This place is incredible. You’re so lucky.”
At the dock, they waited as the skipper moored the ferry. The water was calm. Seagulls circled overhead, looking for lunch among the broken branches and other storm debris.
“Anyway,” Angie said, the moment growing awkward between them again, “I hope I see—”
“Why now?” Lucy asked suddenly.
“What?”
“Why are you talking to me now? Why not a year ago, three years ago? It’s not just a contest. Why did Jack have to talk you into—”
“I didn’t want to waste any more time,” Angie said. “That’s all.”
The skipper helped Angie onto the ferry.
“Talk to you soon?” Angie asked. “I’d love to hear from you when the game’s over. Tell me if you win?”
Lucy hesitated before replying. “Maybe.”
The boat engine revved, and they moved away from the dock. Jack came and stood by Lucy as the ferry churned its slow way through the shallows and into the deep waters.
“She thinks I’m lucky.”
“Ah, well, you do have your health.”
“Why did I always assume her life turned out perfect?” Lucy said.
“Because she had your parents’ love. You thought she’d won the lottery. But you’ve heard about the lottery winner’s curse, yes?”
She had. And it seemed Angie had been cursed. She’d won their love but lost it just as easily.
“I can’t forgive her just yet,” Lucy said as the boat disappeared from view.
“Of course not.”
“But I don’t hate her.”
“Hate is a knife without a handle. You can’t cut something with it without cutting yourself.”
“Jack—”
“Lucy, please know that I’m sorry for hurting you today,” Jack said. “I know that wasn’t easy, and that I’m a meddling old fool, but if you take a little time—”
“Jack?”
He turned to face her. His expression was that of a condemned man waiting for the axe to fall.
“Thank you.”
One Last Little Question
“One last little question,” the Mastermind said from inside the shadow that seemed to follow him wherever he went.
Astrid’s blood went cold. One more question? Hadn’t she passed all the tests? Answered all the riddles? What was left for her and Max to do? Her mom and Max were waiting for her at the dock. She wanted to be with them, wanted to get home, start packing. Oh, but first they were going to call Dad and tell him the big news, that they were going to move to be with him instead of sitting at home, wishing and hoping he’d magically get a new job in town. Time to go. Time to start a new life. Time to put their family back together. Tick-tock, the clock said. Tick-tock, time to leave the Clock.
“What’s the question?” Astrid stood in the doorway, one foot in the house on Clock Island, one foot out, ready to sprint to the dock.
“You can tell me the truth,” he said. “The whole truth. No…the deep truth. Is this what you want more than anything else?”
The truth. The whole truth. The deep truth.
“I love it here,” she said and turned her head to look at the endless silver water, the forever blue-gray sky. “I want us all to be with Dad but also…I wish I could come back here someday.”
“To your town?”
“No, here. Clock Island. Can I?”
“Can you come back to Clock Island? If you’re brave enough, perhaps you’ll get that wish granted too.”
“Why do only brave kids get their wishes granted?” she asked.
“Because only brave children know that wishing is never enough. You have to try to make your own wishes come true. Like you and Max did.” The shadow moved a little closer to her, and it seemed almost to smile. “Run along. Your mother is waiting, and the fairy boat is on its way.”
Astrid glanced over her shoulder. The boat, skippered by a fairy with dragonfly wings instead of sails, was almost at the dock.
“One last little question from me,” Astrid asked. “What’s your wish?”
The shadow of the Mastermind smiled again, but then the smile was gone, and the shadow was just a shadow once more, and she knew he was gone too. Someday, when she got her wish and returned to Clock Island, she would ask him again.
Astrid turned and ran to the dock, to her mother, her brother, and the new life waiting for them on the other side of the water.
—From The House on Clock Island, Clock Island Book One, by Jack Masterson, 1990
Chapter Twenty-Six
Today was the last day of the contest. Someone would win the game. Or no one would win. But whatever happened, by tomorrow the game would be over, and they would all go home.
Lucy was sitting on the front porch in a white rocking chair, watching the sun shimmer as it set across the water. Though all seemed peaceful, her heart raced. The stillness in the air wasn’t the stillness after a storm, but the stillness in the eye of the storm. She tried to pace her breathing with the slow back-and-forth of the rockers. As she rocked back, she breathed cool salt air in through her nose. As she rocked forward, she exhaled the warm breath out through her lips. Back-and-forth, back-and-forth…The sound of the rhythmic roll of the rockers on the white wooden porch boards returned Lucy to the age of ten. She was sitting on her grandparents’ porch in their double rocker—Grandma and Grandpa Hart in the porch swing swaying, the coils squeaking—the soundtrack of a quiet evening, peaceful and safe.
She had been loved. Not by her parents, no, but her grandparents had loved her even if they hadn’t understood her loneliness. They would call her out to their porch on warm evenings, wanting her with them as they relived the day in soft conversation. No TV. No radio. Just them and the crickets.
Yes, she had been loved. Her grandparents, so different from the aloof and hard-hearted son they raised, must have wanted to travel and be free of toys on the floor and bake sales and parent-teacher conferences, but they had sacrificed for her, had taken her in—happily, without complaining—and given her love. She’d wanted her parents and her sister, wanted to have what other kids seemed to have. Still, she’d gotten something else instead, and now, after her talk with Angie yesterday, she wondered…had she gotten something better?
Maybe so. She knew what it was like to love a child well. She knew what love looked like, and she knew what sacrifice looked like. Her grandparents proved that you didn’t have to be the parent to be a good parent. Whatever happened with Christopher, someday she would be a good mother to him. If she lost, she would go back to Redwood. On Friday, she would tell Christopher goodbye, tell him she loved him, and make him the same promise she’d made him two years before—I will do everything I can for us to be together.
Then she would do whatever it took to keep her promise.
The sky was pink and orange and blue and wild as the sun went down. A screen door opened, swung shut with a clatter. A hand gently touched her shoulder and squeezed it.
She looked up. Hugo, of course. He smiled at her.