All Good Children - Catherine Austen [67]
The trade school calls after supper—Ally must return to school tomorrow or supply a doctor’s note confirming her illness. When Mom tells her, Ally bursts into tears. She runs to the living room and stares out the window, crying for her dead squirrel.
“I don’t want to send either of you to school tomorrow,” Mom says.
I dissolve my homework with a sigh. “The police will take us if we don’t go. It’s been on the news. Zero tolerance for truancy.” Another news story about a bear attack in the national forest gets me thinking about Mom’s orchard memories. I lead her into the living room and ask nonchalantly, “Did you tell Ally about the squirrel I saw today when the principal drove me home?”
“What squirrel?” Ally asks through her tears.
“You know that squirrel we saw in the park? The dead one we thought was Peanut?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know if that was really Peanut. On my way home today I saw a squirrel heading toward the forest that looked exactly like her.”
Her eyes widen and her mouth hangs open, disbelieving.
“I think she was following the roads out of town,” I say. “Away from the poison.”
Mom stares at me warily, waiting to see where this goes.
Ally wipes her nose. “You saw a real squirrel? You think it was Peanut?”
“It looked like her. And that one by the tree didn’t look like her at all, did it?”
“No, it didn’t.”
“You know how smart Peanut was. She probably knew there was poison on the ground so she hid in her nest until it was safe to come down. Now she’s running away to find a better home.”
Ally sniffles and sighs. “Did you really see a squirrel?”
“Yeah. Not far from here. It looked just like Peanut. I told you that, didn’t I, Mom?”
“Yes, dear. It slipped my mind.”
Ally stares suspiciously at Mom, who avoids her eyes.
“So you know what that means,” I say.
Ally shakes her head.
“It’s really sad,” I warn her.
She shrinks back.
“It means you’ll probably never see Peanut again. She’s so smart, she won’t come back here because of the poison. She’ll stay in the forest in an oak tree. You know what comes from oak trees?”
“Acorns,” she whispers.
“She’ll have time to collect them before it snows,” Mom says.
Ally leans over the back of the chair, looks out the window down to the ground. “She’s gone,” she whispers. “Poor Peanut. She’ll miss me.” She stares down the back of the chair for a bit. Then she wiggles it away from the wall.
A spider has spun its web in the corner of the living room. It’s plain, brown, half an inch long, scared of the light.
“Watch out,” I say. “Spiders can bite if you bother them.”
“What do you think he eats?” she asks.
“Flies.”
“We never have flies. He must be hungry.”
“Put the chair back, honey,” Mom says. “You’re scaring him.”
Ally wiggles the chair back, but not as close to the wall as it was before. She leans over the upholstery and smiles. “I’m calling him Fred.”
“You’re a good brother,” Mom tells me after Ally’s in bed.
I shrug. “She wasn’t going to make it through tomorrow without a lie.”
“You make it through too, Max.” She sits on the couch with her hands folded in her lap. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’m just scared.”
“We’ll be okay.”
She pats my hand. “Sure we will. I looked up some things about Canada. Did you know that parts of it aren’t much colder than here?”
I laugh. “That’s the part we’ll head to.”
She smiles. “They have a nursing shortage. That’s hopeful, right? And we can keep our citizenship so we could come back eventually.”
“Great.”
She nods. “I’m sorry I got so mad, Max. I’m supposed to lead you kids out of trouble, not the other way around.”
“It’s all right. So we’re really going?”
“Yes. We’re really going. I sent a message to Rebecca. We have a better chance of getting in if we have a place to stay.”
“And we can go before Christmas?”
Mom nods. “We’ll need a car.”
“And a passport for Dallas.”
“If he really wants to come.”
“He really wants to come.”
She sighs. “Okay. Hang on a little longer.”
Ally can’t stop smiling in the stairwell. She’s imagining Peanut setting up house in the national forest, packing leaves and mud