DOTTIE SAT BESIDE DA at the Walcott kitchen table, inching word by word through a picture book.
“The woods were dark,” she intoned. “A cold wind made her shrink.”
“Shiver,” said Da.
“At last she saw a house. Oh, God, she told herself.”
“Oh, good,” whispered Mo.
“I can take shhh…shepherds here.”
“Shelter,” said Da. “You’ve got the ‘sh’ sound down solid, Dorothea Wren. Kiss your brain.”
Dottie smooched her fingers, then smacked herself in the forehead.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Mr. Wren, freshly showered and wearing his favorite Wahoo T-shirt, poked his head through the kitchen doorframe.
“Daddy! You’re home?”
Mr. Wren grinned. “I had to leave early-important business,” he said. “Da, would it be all right if the Little Bit hangs with you for a while? I need to borrow my partner, Mo.”
“It’s far more than all right.” Da lifted her chin the Walcott way. “This is my star pupil.”
“Where we going, Daddy?” Mo asked as they climbed into the car.
“I’ve got something to show just you.”
They cruised up Paradise and onto the highway. Lake Erie was flat and blue, like a distant mirage. Mr. Wren sang along with the radio, his voice extra loud because the car’s air-conditioning had conked out and both their windows were rolled all the way down. His voice trilled up high as a girl’s, then dropped down into his shoes.
Mo remembered sitting in the backseat as her parents sang duets. One of their favorites was “I Got You Babe.” Every time they sang that line, they’d both point over the seat, at her.
Today empty warehouses and factories flew by, a blur as she squinted into the wind. Where were they going? Oh, Mo hated surprises. But her father’s happiness was contagious. It was like the wind itself, catching you up, carrying you along with it.
When a song she liked came on, Mo began to sing, too. Her father tried to harmonize, their voices twining together like the strands of a sturdy rope. Mo began to wish they’d never get wherever they were headed, that they’d just ride around and around like this, happy together, the car a little houseboat floating on the summer afternoon, till at last the sun dropped into the lake and they’d sail back toward Fox Street.
But Mr. Wren took an exit, passing a hospital and a bunch of apartment buildings and easing into a neighborhood of old-fashioned houses that had seen better days. The ground floors had been turned into shops. They passed a bookstore, a bakery, a café, a place selling homemade ice cream. Some had colorful awnings and little tables set out on the sidewalk. Flowers bloomed in boxes and tubs. The upstairs windows were hung with curtains or shades. A white cat solemnly stared down as they went by.
Mr. Wren pulled up in front of a dark green house with curlicue trim over the windows and along the edge of the roof. The bottom floor was built out and fitted with a big plate-glass window. CORKY’S TAVERN said the faded sign over the door. FOR LEASE OR SALE read the sign in the window.
Cupping their hands around their eyes, they pressed their noses to the window. A small bar with stools ran across the back wall. There was space for tables, and the corners were snug with wooden booths. Dingy linoleum covered the floor.
“It needs some TLC, that’s for sure,” said Mr. Wren. “But wait’ll you see the upstairs. Three nice little bedrooms, one with built-in shelves ready-made for Dot’s bottles.”
Mo stepped back from the window. “You already saw the upstairs?”
Mr. Wren took her hand. “Come on, come see the backyard.”
A crooked white fence covered with blooming vines looped around its edges. The yard was empty, not a single tree, the sun pouring down.
“I was thinking that’d be the perfect spot for a little vegetable garden. We could grow our own tomatoes and herbs for the sandwiches and soups.”
Mr. Wren gently lobbed his invisible baseball into the invisible garden.
“It’s a good neighborhood, Momo. I met a guy who runs his own hardware store, and a gal who’s looking to open a teahouse. It’s just like Fox Street, except things are looking up instead of down. There’s hope in the air.” He scooped the air. “See it?”
He drew her to the back kitchen window and pointed out the nice new grill, the fryers where the best onion rings in town would sizzle. The cooler would hold all kinds of beer, but chocolate milk and all-natural fruit juice, too, because this was going to be a family place, where everybody in the neighborhood felt at home.
“Corky, the old owner, fell on hard times. But that just means a better price.”
The excitement in her father’s voice worked a spell, and in spite of herself, Mo saw the two of them, side by side, sweeping and scrubbing and painting. She saw herself doing her homework in one of the corner booths, and heard her father’s laughter from behind the bar as he sliced a home-grown tomato for a delicious BLT. Mo glanced up at the curlicued windows. She could see the small face with a lollipop jutting out, waving down at her.
“You know the best part?” he asked her.
“What?”
“I’d never have to leave the two of you again.” His voice went crooked. “We’d be together all the time. I…I could quit asking too much of you, Locomo.”
“You don’t!”
“Yeah, I do.” Suddenly he sounded angry. “It hasn’t been fair, no way. I want us to be more of a family again. We could be…we could almost be like we used to be.”
A red bird flashed across the yard, looking for a tree to perch in. Mo felt its shadow flutter in her chest. What kind of yard had no place for a bird to nest, no place for a girl to settle her spine and think? Frightened, Mo dug her hand into her pocket. Where was it? Had it fallen out somewhere? Frantic, she shoved her fingers into her other pocket and there, there it was.
“Got an itch?” asked her father.
Words beat inside her, like a bird trapped inside a house, and she longed to tell him. But what if he didn’t understand? Her father was different from her. He’d tell her, “You’ve never seen a fox, Momo. You can’t abandon something you’re not sure exists.”
“I am sure,” she said aloud.
Mr. Wren gave her a funny look. His curls made a dark halo around his head, and his eyes shone so bright, Mo realized with a little shock that they were full of tears.
“There are a lot of things we haven’t talked about, aren’t there? That’s my fault, too. I’ve been a coward.”
“Daddy…”
“Don’t go making excuses for me. I won’t have you doing that anymore.” He put a finger to her lips. “Listen to me now. When…when your mom was still alive, she made me so happy, she filled up my life with so much light and sweetness-back then, I could work any job, handle any kind of junk, just so long as I had her to come home to. But ever since…since…”
The red bird, a cardinal, was uncertain as a spark, flitting from fence to ground and back again.
“Life’s not going to wait for you. If there’s one thing losing her taught me, that’s it. The world just keeps barreling forward, ready or not.” He slipped an arm around her. “I need to start over, Mo. I’ve got to take hold of things. I need to leave the bad things behind and make something new for all of us.”
Her father never talked like this. A small door, a door she hadn’t even known was there, not to mention shut, creaked open inside her.
“I lay awake a lot of nights, and you know what? I’m convinced she’d think it was the right thing to do. She couldn’t stand any of us hurting. Any time you cried, she’d cry too. I remember when you got your first haircut, she-”
“No!” Mo buried her face against his chest. The door swung wider, letting in a hot rush of pain. “Please, Daddy. I don’t want to move. It’s too far away. We don’t know anybody here! Who’d cut my hair? Who’d tutor Dottie? What about the Den? What about Starchbutt?”
Mr. Wren laughed. “Whaaa?”
“Daddy, I’d miss Mercedes too much!”
“It seems far, but it’s really just ten miles. I’d drive over and pick her up anytime you wanted. I promise.” He lifted her chin. “You trust me, don’t you?”
Looking away, Mo watched the cardinal settle on an overhead wire.
“I’ve finally got the perfect name for our place,” Mr. Wren said softly. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of it before. You ready?”
She shook her head.
“The Wren House. Get it? We’ll decorate with bird-houses and feature one on our sign.”
“That’s stupid!” The door inside her slammed shut. Bam. “We already have a Wren house!”
Mr. Wren let her go. The lines between his eyes, the trunk of the tree that arched up and disappeared in the shadows of his baseball cap-those lines seemed to grow deeper, harsher, even as she looked. All the joy drained out of him now. He cast his eyes down as if he could see it on the ground, a puddle of lost happiness.
“Too bad,” he said. The cardinal began to sing, its silvery song tumbling all around them. “I was hoping you’d be more open-minded. Maybe even glad.”
“That Buckman’s a creep!” Mo cried. “He wants to knock our house down!”
Mr. Wren’s face darkened. “A house is just four walls and a roof. You can put a price on a house the same as a car or a baseball team or a pedigree poodle. And when that price all of a sudden skyrockets, you’d be a fool not-”
“How come you’re the only one on the street who knows what Buckman’s doing?”
“There’s such a thing as asking too many questions.” He was scowling now. “You know when a chance like this is going to come our way again? Never, that’s when. ‘I hit big or I miss big.’ Babe Ruth, not Shakespeare, but it works for me.”
A single forgotten beer bottle lay near the building’s foundation. Mr. Wren nudged it with the toe of his sneaker. “Believe me, Mo. I wish I could tell you life was always fair.”
“You want to buy this place and so you’ll do anything! You’ll make a sleazy deal. You’ll betray everyone else. You’ll ruin my life. You don’t care!”
The cardinal broke off its song midnote, and the bird arrowed out of sight. The yard grew cemetery quiet.
“This conversation’s over.” Mr. Wren pulled his cap low over his face. “I’m the one making this decision. Your job’s to get used to it.” With that, he strode toward their car.
Mo grabbed the beer bottle and hurled it at the side of the house. The sound of it smashing zapped her like an electric shock. Yes! Whole one second and destroyed the next. Just like that. The blink of an eye.
“No!” she shouted. “I don’t trust you! And I never will again, as long as I live!”
Wild currents shot through her. At her feet glittered bits and pieces no one could ever put back together.