Keeping Secrets

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Map

  Chapter 1 Changes

  Chapter 2 Dogs

  Chapter 3 A Peek in the Windows

  Chapter 4 Melody

  Chapter 5 Lions and Witches, Bears and Kittens

  Chapter 6 Patient Paw-Paw

  Chapter 7 New Neighbors at Last

  Chapter 8 The Invitation

  Chapter 9 Something Strange

  Chapter 10 Dogs on Parade

  Chapter 11 Aunt Allie’s Mystery

  Chapter 12 Still Life

  Chapter 13 Olivia’s First Date

  Chapter 14 Sewing Day

  Chapter 15 Visiting Day

  Chapter 16 House Arrest

  Chapter 17 Rules

  Chapter 18 Dinner for Two

  Chapter 19 Out of Control

  Chapter 20 A Quiet Day

  Chapter 21 A Saturday Adventure

  Chapter 22 Winter

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  On an afternoon in early October, the sun shone down on Aiken Avenue in Camden Falls, Massachusetts. It shone on the Row Houses and their small tidy yards and on the children of the seven families who occupied the eight attached homes. The second house from the left, formerly the home of Bill and Mary Lou Willet, was currently without an owner. But it wouldn’t be empty for long. The FOR SALE sign that had stood staunchly in the front yard for four weeks and three days (Flora had counted) was gone. Everyone wondered who would be moving in, and when. It had been a long time since there had been a new family in the Row Houses.

  Flora Northrop, sitting on her front stoop, pushed Grace Fong’s stroller lazily back and forth with her foot and considered changes. She had recently decided that life was a continuous series of changes, which was unfortunate, since she didn’t like change. No, that wasn’t true, Flora realized as she watched Grace gaze up and down the street with the wonder of a seven-month-old. Some changes were welcome and exciting. Grace’s birth, for instance. A new baby at the Row Houses was a very welcome event. And Flora had been excited about leaving elementary school behind in the spring and entering seventh grade in the big central school in September. Two fine changes.

  “Hey, guess what!” called Lacey Morris, galloping across the lawns to Flora and Grace.

  “Just twenty-six days until Halloween!” announced Ruby, who was at Lacey’s heels.

  Lacey glared at Ruby. “I was going to tell her.”

  “Well,” said Ruby, “the, um, important thing is that she knows.”

  “Huh,” said Lacey.

  Flora raised her eyebrows at her younger sister. “Ruby, remember what Min told you about hogging conversations.”

  “To do it?” said Ruby, and Lacey giggled.

  “Anyway,” said Flora. “Only twenty-six days? That’s pretty exciting.”

  “I’m going to be a scarecrow,” said Lacey.

  “I’ll be your crow,” said Ruby.

  “What are you going to be, Flora?” asked Lacey.

  “I’m not sure —” Flora started to answer. She glanced up as the door to Olivia’s house banged open, and Olivia and Nikki ran across the yard.

  “Ooh,” said Nikki, stopping to stroke Grace’s fine hair, “she’s so cute!”

  Olivia stood back, hands on her hips, and glared at Flora. “Is this going to be a regular baby-sitting job?” she asked.

  Flora shrugged. “I don’t think so. Mrs. Fong just asked me to sit today.”

  “Why didn’t she ask me?” said Olivia, frowning.

  “Probably because you’re too young,” said Ruby, and Olivia made a face at her.

  “Girls, girls,” said Flora.

  “So what about your Halloween costume?” Lacey asked again.

  “Hey, maybe you guys could be farm animals,” said Ruby. “Except one of you could be the farmer. Get it? A farmer, a scarecrow, a —”

  “We get it,” said Olivia.

  “But,” said Flora, “I’m not sure we’re going to go trick-or-treating this year.”

  “What?” cried Ruby. “What do you mean? You have to go!”

  Flora, Olivia, and Nikki exchanged glances.

  “We’re just not sure —” Flora began.

  “We might be too old —” said Nikki.

  “Just because you’re in seventh grade …” Ruby muttered. She crossed her arms. “You’ll change your minds,” she said.

  As Flora watched Lacey drift back to her house, she recalled the previous Halloween. She and Ruby had been living in Camden Falls for just four months. She had been a whole year younger, but sometimes she had felt like the oldest person in the world, older even than Min, her grandmother. That Halloween had been one of the first holidays she and Ruby had spent without their parents. Maybe, Flora thought now, it was a good thing Halloween in Camden Falls was celebrated so differently from Halloween in the town in which she and Ruby had grown up. There, kids just went trick-or-treating up and down the streets in their neighborhoods. Here, some kids did that, but most wound up on Main Street, trick-or-treating at the stores.

  Changes, Flora thought again. She lifted Grace out of her stroller and sat her in her lap. The very biggest change in Flora’s life — Flora knew with absolute certainty that no matter how long she lived, she would experience no bigger change — had occurred on a snowy night in January almost two years earlier. That was when the car in which she and Ruby had been riding with their parents had collided with a truck, and the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Northrop had been taken immediately. Min, their busy grandmother (Min was short both for Mindy and for “in a minute”), had arrived that very night and had taken care of Flora and Ruby until the end of the school year. But as soon as school was over, she had packed up their things and moved them to Camden Falls to live in the house in which their mother and Min herself had grown up.

  This change, Flora knew, was certainly not all bad. Of course, if she could somehow have her parents and her old life back, if she could reverse time and stay home on that stormy night, she would do it. No question. But all things considered, her new life in Camden Falls was more than satisfactory. She and Ruby lived next door to Olivia in the Row Houses, and Olivia Walter was one of her best friends. Nikki Sherman was her other best friend. Flora was grateful to have made good friends so quickly. Furthermore, Olivia’s grandmother and Min owned Needle and Thread, a sewing store on Main Street. How many girls who loved to sew, as Flora did, had a grandmother with a sewing store? Flora knew she should count her lucky stars.

  “Hey, where’s Robby?” Ruby asked suddenly, the subject of Halloween costumes apparently forgotten.

  “Mom and Dad gave him more hours at the store,” Olivia told her.

  “Really? That’s great,” said Nikki.

  Olivia’s parents had recently opened a store, Sincerely Yours, on Main Street, not far from Needle and Thread. One of the first people they had hired to work in the store was Robby Edwards, who lived in the second to the last Row House on the right. Robby, who was eighteen and had Down syndrome, had graduated from high school in June and then proudly started his new job.

  “He must be really happy,” said Flora.

  “You don’t sound happy,” said Ruby. “What’s the matter?”

  Flora shrugged. “I was thinking about changes,” she said. She shifted Grace in her lap.

  Olivia and Nikki plopped down on the stoop on either side of Flora, but Ruby cocked her head and frowned. “Again? We’ve already had this discussion.”

  “You could be a little more supportive,” Nikki said, and put her arm around her friend.

  “Well, Ruby’s right, actually,” said Flora.

  “Thank you,” said Ruby contritely.

  “Rem
ember when I was the one who didn’t want things to change?” said Olivia.

  “Change is hard for lots of people,” Nikki pointed out. “But think of all the good changes.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying!” said Ruby.

  Olivia replaced one of the barrettes in her wild hair. “Actually, I still wish certain things could stay the same forever. I wish Mr. and Mrs. Willet hadn’t moved away.”

  “Me, too,” said Flora.

  “But aren’t you excited about getting new neighbors?” asked Ruby. “Maybe it will be a family with ten kids! The youngest one could be Grace’s age, so she wouldn’t be the only baby in the Row Houses. Then there could be, like, a five-year-old for Alyssa Morris, a few boys for all the brothers around here, a girl for Lacey and me, some teenagers for Robby and for Lydia and Margaret Malone, and a cute boy for you guys to drool over.”

  “We do not drool!” exclaimed Nikki.

  “Well, anyway, Olivia already has a boyfriend,” Ruby said smugly. “Olivia and Jacob, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S —”

  “Jacob is not my boyfriend!” cried Olivia.

  “Or maybe,” continued Ruby, as if she hadn’t heard either Olivia or Nikki, “it will be a young couple and the woman is pregnant and she gives birth to sixtuplets, or whatever you call six babies, and a TV station wants to do a show about them, and we all get to be in it. Just think — week after week of TV cameras everywhere. I would make sure to practice my tap routines on the sidewalk so I could get discovered.”

  Flora shook her head. Some things about Ruby would never change. Ruby saw her sister’s expression and turned on her. “It could happen —” she started to say.

  But she was interrupted by Lacey’s brothers, Travis and Mathias, and Olivia’s brothers, Jack and Henry, running across the yards toward them, Alyssa trailing behind.

  “Nikki!” called Henry Walter. “We’re glad you’re here. We have a question. Can we be in the dog parade if we don’t have a dog?”

  Over the summer, Nikki had come up with the idea of holding a dog costume parade on Main Street as a way to raise money for Camden Falls’s animal shelter. The people who ran Sheltering Arms had taken over the project (to Nikki’s relief, since it was a very big project), but everyone knew that Nikki was the one who had thought it up. And everyone wanted to be in it. Flora and Ruby were going to enter Daisy Dear, their golden retriever.

  Nikki frowned. “How could you be in a dog parade without a dog?” she asked.

  “Well, what if one of us dressed up as a dog?” suggested Mathias.

  “Or as a dog in a costume?” said Jack. “Henry could put on a dog costume, and we could put a clown costume or something over that, and then I could put him on a leash and walk him in the parade.”

  “You mean Henry would crawl on his hands and knees all the way down Main Street?” said Olivia.

  “Oh,” said Jack and Henry.

  “We didn’t think of that,” added Travis.

  “We should probably stick to actual dogs in the parade. Besides,” said Nikki, “we also need people to watch the parade. Don’t you guys want to see all the dogs in funny costumes?”

  “Hey,” said Mathias. “There’s Mr. Pennington and Jacques. I’ll bet Mr. Pennington is going to walk Jacques in the parade.”

  “I could help him with the costume!” said Flora, brightening.

  “Hi, Mr. Pennington!” called Ruby.

  Old Mr. Pennington locked his front door (he lived next to Olivia and her brothers) and waved to the kids. “I’m off to Needle and Thread,” he called as he stumped down the walk with his cane in one hand and Jacques’s leash in the other.

  “To visit Min?” said Ruby with a grin.

  “Of course.”

  Flora felt something in her stomach tighten just the teensiest bit. She loved Mr. Pennington. He had been a good friend to her and Ruby and Min. But his longtime friendship with Min was becoming … Flora wasn’t certain how to describe it. She found that she was rather clueless in matters of the heart. And her feelings were jumbled. What, exactly, did that tightening in her stomach mean? Was it jealousy? If it was, who was she jealous of? Min for having a boyfriend, or Mr. Pennington for having Min’s attention? Both possibilities seemed at once silly and monumental.

  Mr. Pennington and Jacques made their way slowly along Aiken Avenue, the younger children walking beside him, presumably questioning him about Jacques’s participation in the parade.

  Ruby flopped onto the stoop next to Flora. “Move over,” she said.

  Flora, Nikki, and Olivia squeezed together, and Flora returned Grace to her stroller.

  “Hey!” Olivia held up one hand. “Is that our phone? I think our phone is ringing.” She jumped to her feet and made a dash for her front door.

  “Ha! It’s probably Jacob,” proclaimed Ruby.

  Flora stared sullenly at nothing and said not a word when Olivia, smiling, returned to the stoop and exclaimed, “That was Jacob! We’re going to do our homework together over the phone tonight.”

  Flora remembered the times she and Olivia had done their homework over the phone. She remembered when Mr. Pennington was just Min’s dear friend, and when she didn’t have to think about whether to go trick-or-treating. She let her thoughts meander through her head, and when they settled on sewing, Flora found her mood improving. Making dog costumes would be fun. What could she make for Jacques? What could she and Ruby make for Daisy? Maybe they could dress her as a daisy. That seemed appropriate. Flora considered daisy petals and leaves. She began a shopping list in her head. Yellow felt, green felt, elastic, probably some Velcro …

  From a distance, and in the fading light of an autumn afternoon, Nikki Sherman thought her house looked rather nice. It sat alone in the countryside, a small island in a sea of earth and grass. It was only as a person drew closer that he might see the dilapidated sheds in the yard and notice that the yard itself, unlike the ones in town, consisted mostly of hard-packed dry earth, and that around the perimeter of the yard, wild stalky grasses stretched away in all directions.

  Nikki hurried along her lane as the school bus wheezed back in the direction of Camden Falls. The nearer she got to her house, the more clearly she could see all the disappointing, run-down details: the sagging steps of the front stoop, the peeling paint, the mark by the side window where her father had once thrown a board at her brother. (He had missed, luckily.) But Nikki loved her house anyway. She and Tobias and Mae had grown up in it. They knew no other home. And with her father away (permanently, Nikki hoped), her home was even more pleasing.

  Still, it would be nice to come home to people at the end of a school day, and that didn’t happen anymore. Nikki’s mother had finally landed a big job, the kind her husband had told her she’d never qualify for, but it came with long hours. And because Mrs. Sherman didn’t want Nikki to feel responsible for her little sister, she had kept Mae in after-school day care. So no more Dad, Mom at work, Mae in day care — and Tobias off at college, which was something no one had expected, least of all Tobias. He was the first Sherman to go to college, and the day he graduated and held that diploma in his hand would be a proud day indeed, a day to go down in Sherman family history.

  Nikki herself would go to college one day. She knew that with certainty, in the same way she knew her name. She had dreamed of college for as long as she could remember, and now that Tobias was a college student, her dream seemed nearer than ever.

  “Six years,” she said to herself. “In six years, I’ll be in college.”

  Nikki climbed the porch steps, set her books at her feet, and pulled her house key from her pocket. From the other side of the door she heard snuffling and a quiet whine.

  Nikki grinned. “Hi, Paw-Paw!” she cried.

  The whine turned to a plaintive woof, and then another.

  “I’m coming,” Nikki said, working the lock as fast as she could.

  She pushed the door open, and Paw-Paw jumped up, resting his feet on Nikki’s belly, trembling wi
th excitement.

  “Hello, boy,” Nikki said softly. She gave him a great hug. “I’m hungry. And I’ll bet you need to go outside.”

  Paw-Paw bolted through the door. Nikki had gotten no further than opening the refrigerator when she heard the sound of tires on gravel. She peered through the front window. A white van was easing up the driveway, and Nikki could read the words on its side: SHELTERING ARMS.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t known someone from Sheltering Arms would be coming this afternoon, but it was fine with her. She abandoned the idea of a snack and went outside.

  A woman was climbing out of the van, and she waved to Nikki. “Hello!”

  “Hi, Harriet!” Nikki called.

  Paw-Paw ran to Harriet and gave her the same enthusiastic greeting he had just given Nikki.

  “So, how are things?” asked Harriet, disengaging herself from Paw-Paw.

  “Good,” replied Nikki. “Really good. I like school. We get a lot of homework, though.”

  “And the dogs?”

  Nikki knew that Harriet meant the stray dogs that hung around the Shermans’ yard. They came nearly every day, usually early in the morning and again in the evening, just as darkness was falling. Nikki fed them but couldn’t afford to do much more for them. The previous fall, when so many dogs had been coming by (Paw-Paw was one of them) that Nikki couldn’t keep up with them, she had finally asked the people at Sheltering Arms for help, and since then, they had come by regularly. Often they brought a supply of food for the dogs. And sometimes they set up humane traps for them, brought them back to the shelter, spayed or neutered them, gave them medical attention, and kept the ones they felt were adoptable. The feral ones were returned to continue living on their own. Nikki was grateful, and she very much liked everyone she had met at the shelter.

  “There aren’t very many of them,” she told Harriet now. “Lately, I’ve only seen four dogs.”

  “Excellent,” said Harriet. “Spaying and neutering is the key. Do you need anything?”

  “More dry food, if you have it,” said Nikki uncomfortably. She had felt like a charity case many times in her life, and accepting donations didn’t come easily.