DOTTIE CONTENTEDLY SIPPED the last can of Tahitian Treat, while outside, the world dripped away the last raindrops. The sound of the swollen stream played beneath the voices of the birds as they began to sing again. Mo had retrieved the poncho and spread it on the ground, and dried Dottie’s scraped-up feet with a bit of old towel. Dottie had sworn she never got lost, not for a single minute, and then she’d cried a little bit, and then Mo had given her the last can of pop, and now she was all right again.
She’d almost gotten scared, Dottie said, but then she found a trail. It was a nice little trail all mooshed down so it didn’t hurt her feet at all, and it led right straight smack to the berries. And that was when she found the fur. And that was when she got so sleepy, like someone had put a dream spell on her.
Birdsongs stitched the trees together with trembling, silvery threads. Mo knew she should tell Dottie about the fox. But oh, she was glad her little sister hadn’t seen it. The secret still belonged to her alone.
“Daddy’s going to be mad at me, right?” Dottie asked.
Mo watched a raindrop slide to the tip of a branch, hang on as long as it could, then let go and plummet. “He doesn’t even have a clue you were missing.”
“You’re mad at him, right?” Dottie sighed. “Everybody’s so mad all the time.”
Water dripping, birds singing, the sideways waterfall of the brimming stream-she tried to listen past all that waterlogged clamor for any sign of Mercedes. It had been more than an hour. Mo hated thinking of her best friend still searching. She knew Mercedes would rather die than give up and come back alone. Mercedes! How could Mo ever have doubted her?
“I had a dream,” Dottie began, her voice dreamy.
But now a new, powerful sound bored straight through all the others, like a train in a tunnel.
“Mo!” The deep, anguished bellow came from above instead of below. “Mo! Dottie!”
The Wild Child went off like a firecracker.
“Daddy!”
Arms and legs wheeling, she exploded out of the Den. Mo watched as, a dozen yards up the hill, he clasped Dottie to him like he’d never let go.
“Are you all right? Dottie, Little Speck, thank God…”
“I bited Mo. And my shoe busted. I couldn’t help it.”
“I’ll buy you new shoes. I’ll buy you ten pairs of shoes!” Mr. Wren promised, making Dottie laugh. “A hundred pairs!”
To Mo’s confusion, he wore his water department uniform. When he saw her, his whole self seemed to open out-Mo thought of one of Mrs. Steinbott’s roses. It was all she could do not to run to him, too, and bury her face in that flung-wide sweetness. Instead she wrapped her arms tight around herself and stood her ground, while her father staggered down the hill like a man with one leg shorter than the other, Dottie in his arms.
“This is Mo and Mercey’s clubhouse, Daddy. It’s secret and pirate and we’re not allowed.”
Mr. Wren set Dottie on her feet. He bear-hugged Mo, who managed to keep herself stiff as one of Mrs. Steinbott’s boiled sponges.
“I get home and the whole street’s in an uproar. Duong’s got half the police force out, the Baggotts are plastering LOST signs all over Paradise.” He looked at Dottie, who was fussing around inside the Den. “They’re offering a million-dollar reward for you, Little Bit.” His voice choked off.
“Come on in,” invited Dottie. She’d found Mercedes’s discarded skirt and pulled it on, and now she made a sweeping gesture, like a TV game-show hostess. “Take a load off.”
Bent in half, Mr. Wren backed into the Den. He lowered himself onto a beanbag like a man who’d been waiting to rest a long time.
“So I ran to Da’s, and she knew right where you…Da!” He pulled out his phone and hit speed dial. “Got her!” he said into it, and Mo could hear Da’s “Lord give me strength!” all the way from where she stood outside the Den door.
“Yeah, she was with Mo, where else would she be?” he said into the phone. “Safe and sound, safe as can be… Mercedes?” He broke off, listening. “You didn’t hear from her? Don’t worry-it must be she can’t get a signal, that’s all. Hey, we’re not coming back without her! I’ll call you right away. She’ll be all right-she’s a Walcott. Don’t worry.” Clicking off, he regarded Mo with wonder.
“Just how long were you out here searching?”
Mo lifted her chin, making herself into a righteous steeple. He must have forgotten she wasn’t speaking to him.
“Long, huh? Really long.”
Long as the Mississippi, thought Mo. Her father hung his weary head.
“What a day,” he said. “Between the storm and that busted main, I know how that sucker Noah felt. After wishing for rain half the summer, I saw enough water to sink the Titanic. I-”
“Wait,” said Mo, the first word she’d spoken to him in days and days. “Another main broke? That’s where you were?”
Mr. Wren looked up, gaping. “Where’d you think I was? I left a note, didn’t…” He slapped his pockets, as if it might be in there. “Shoot. I didn’t, did I? Forgot my phone, too.”
Mo inched closer. “You weren’t signing the papers?”
Mr. Wren rubbed the tree trunk between his eyes. Its outline was so sharp and deep, Mo winced to see it. “I was at work. Yeah, work. I’m sorry, Mo. I should have been here.”
“But…I thought you were with Buckman. Or signing the papers for Corky’s.”
Mr. Wren’s head snapped up. Sharp little waves of anger came crashing off him. “Why are you standing out there?” he demanded. “How am I supposed to talk to you when you’re so far away?”
Mo edged inside. Carefully she sat on the other beanbag, hands in her lap.
“And why are you bringing that Buckmeister up now?” he wanted to know.
“Because.” Mo stiffened her spine. “I saw a letter that said somebody already sold out, and the rest of the street has no choice. They have to sell or else.”
His laugh was short and hard, like a rock thrown at a brick wall. “What an operator. You’ve got to admire the guy.”
“Admire!” she sputtered. “Him?”
His look was furious. Mo’s heart felt lumpy inside her, like something that had melted, then hardened wrong.
“After I took you to see Corky’s, I went to the library and pulled up some past reports on B and B.”
Mr. Wren ground his fist into his hand, as if trying to break in a new mitt.
“Their history ain’t pretty. They bought up land in Florida, cleared it, and then when the financing fell through, they flat-out abandoned the project. All in a day’s work, I guess. It sure didn’t discourage Buckman from trying the same thing with our neighborhood.”
“He’s mean!” hooted Dot.
“Naaah. He’s human.” Mr. Wren socked the invisible mitt one more time, then leaned back on his elbows. How exhausted he looked. “It’s a cold, cruel world out there, every greedy man for himself. If that guy can make things happen fast enough, he doubles his money on our house and everybody else’s. He’ll make a bundle turning a pig’s ear into a Gucci purse, then retire to Florida himself.”
The look on his face was dark as the bottom of a well. He thought the world was a cold, narrow place, the only light a little pinprick far out of reach. Believing that was doing him in. It was crushing him flat. In spite of herself, Mo longed to cheer him up. In spite of herself, she slid a little closer. And broke a little clod of mud off his work shoe. Because here they were, the three of them. Somehow, in the middle of the woods, in the worst of storms, each of them wandering around confused and mistaken, somehow they’d found one another.
Mo looked out the door of the Den. The world was silver and slippery. All right, it was true-you couldn’t stop bad things from happening. No human got that kind of power, no matter how you longed and wished for it. But if you knew how to look, if you knew how to listen, if you knew when to hunt and when to wait, you’d find the good things. They’d show themselves. They’d come.
Mo and her fox had memorized each other. A part of Mo had slipped off into the beautiful, mysterious kingdom, and a part of the fox was here, nuzzling them, keeping them together.
Mo turned to her father, who was looking so sad and angry her lumpy heart ached. You’re wrong, Mo yearned to tell him. Or you’re only partway right. But if she told him so, he’d tell her to quit thinking so much.
That was all right. Mo loved him too much not to try.
“Daddy,” she began.
“It’ll kill me to let that money go,” he told her.
“I know.”
“But it’d kill me even worse to do business with that bush leaguer. Give me a dozen busted mains before I turn over the most valuable thing we own to a guy like him.”
Mo sat back, dazzled and confused as if he’d just shone a bright light in her face.
“You.” He pointed at her. “You’re the one. You had to go and put second thoughts in my thick head. If it wasn’t for you, that house would be signed, sealed, and delivered, and I’d be one happy if ignorant man.”
His fingernails were caked with dirt. At the back of his head shone a round bald spot the size of a penny. Where had that come from?
“But Daddy, the letter said somebody did sell to him.”
“Trust me. The only house he’s bought so far is the one they tore down.”
“But what about eminent domain?”
“Is that in the letter, too? Forget about it. He doesn’t have a prayer of getting the city to declare it. Apparently there’s nothing that greedy lard butt won’t stoop to, including twisting the truth.”
Suddenly he grinned, his eyes gleaming like dark stars. Oh, he was handsome. The handsomest man on Fox Street, probably in the entire city.
“Easy come, easy go. Did Shakespeare say that?” He sighed. Little by little, the light faded from his eyes.
He wasn’t selling. They were staying. All because of her.
“Hey.” Mr. Wren poked her knee. “You don’t exactly look like a girl who just got what she wanted.”
“I…I’m happy. I’m sad, too.”
“What’d I tell you? You think too much.”
“I want us all to be happy, Daddy. Together.”
“That’s a bigger order than we thought, isn’t it?”
Mo nodded.
Mr. Wren sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. “I won’t lie. I’m not giving up on the Wren House. I mean, the Wren House number two. I’m going to have it, sooner or later.” He looked at Mo for a long moment. “What would you say to sooner?”
Outside the Den, the honeyed sunlight drizzled down, coating the branches of the trees and spilling over the gray rocks.
“We can put the house up for sale ourselves. It’s ours. We’ll do it on our terms, and make sure we get a good price, and good people.” He touched her cheek. “It’s time, Mojo. Good things are ahead, I feel it.”
Mo didn’t trust her voice.
“What do you say?” her father asked. “Can I still count on you for my manager?”
But her heart. She did trust that, and she heard what it was telling her now. Mo drew a breath. She nodded.
Mr. Wren tried for a fist bump but instead grabbed Mo’s hand.
“Hey! What bit you?”
“Grrr,” growled Dottie, attacking him from behind. She threw her arms around his neck. “I’m a fox. Grrr.”
Mr. Wren wrestled her over his shoulder.
“You know how I always say the only thing that could make me happy was being my own boss? I was wrong. Hard as that is to believe.” He tickled Dottie’s bare foot. “There’s one other thing, and that’s being the best dad you two ever had.”
Mo’s unbalanced heart tipped her sideways, into the jumble of arms and mud and Wren-ness. The three of them fit just right in this den. We could live here, she thought. We could rig up a real roof, and come winter we’d build a thick wall from logs, and chink it up with mud and leaves. We’d cook on a fire, and wash clothes in the stream. I’d gather us berries. We could live here. We could live any-
Mercedes’s voice called in the distance. All three of them shouted back, a deafening chorus.