“I know where the Mastermind lives.”
“Who?” she asked. The non sequiturs of small children never ceased to amaze her.
“The Mastermind from our books.”
“Oh,” she said. “You mean, Jack Masterson? The author of our books?”
“No, the Mastermind. He lives on Clock Island.”
Lucy wasn’t sure how to reply. Christopher was only seven, so she wasn’t in any hurry to tell him that the characters he loved in books and movies weren’t real. He didn’t have a lot to believe in right now, so why not let him think that the Mastermind from their Clock Island books was a real guy out there granting real kids’ wishes.
“How do you know where the Mastermind lives?”
“My teacher showed me. Want to see?”
“Go for it, Magellan.”
“What?”
“Magellan. Famous navigator. Had a rough time in the Philippines. Probably deserved it. But that’s beside the point. Show me Clock Island.”
He hopped up and pointed at the tip-top far right corner of the map. “There,” he said, and Lucy was surprised to see he’d gotten it exactly right. His fingertip touched a patch of water right off the coast of Portland, Maine.
“Good job,” she said.
“Is it really Clock Island?” he asked, scrunching his face at the map. “Is there a train and unicorns there?”
“You mean like in the books?” Lucy asked. “Well, it’s pretty amazing there, I hear. Did you know some people think the Mastermind and Jack Masterson are the same person?”
“But you said you met him.”
“I did meet Jack Masterson. A long time ago. He, um, signed a book for me.”
“He wasn’t the Mastermind, right?”
Damn. He had her there. The Mastermind always hid in shadows, shadows that cloaked him in darkness and followed him wherever he went.
“No, he didn’t look like the Mastermind when I met him.”
“See?” Christopher was triumphant. Nothing made a kid happier than proving a grown-up wrong.
“I stand corrected.”
Christopher traced a line from Clock Island back to their city—Redwood, California. “That’s really, really far.”
His face was scrunched up tight. Maine was about as far as you could get from California and still be in the same country, which was precisely why she’d moved to California from Maine.
“Pretty far, yeah,” she said. “You’d want to fly there.”
“Can kids go?”
Lucy smiled. “To Clock Island? They can, but they probably shouldn’t without an invitation. The island is private, and the Mastermind owns all of it, like it’s all his house. It would be kind of rude to show up without being invited.”
“Kids do it in books all the time.”
“True, but still, let’s wait for an invitation.” She gave him a wink.
Lucy knew better than anyone about the kids who showed up uninvited on Clock Island. Not that she was going to tell Christopher about that, not until he was older anyway.
He dropped his hands from the map and looked at her. “Why aren’t there any more books?”
“I wish I knew,” Lucy said as she went back to wrapping the scarf with tissue paper and twine. “When I was your age, they were coming out four or five times a year. And I read every one of them the day they came out. And about ten times the week after.”
“Lucky…” Christopher said wistfully. The Clock Island books weren’t very long, 150 pages or less, and there were only 65 of them. Christopher would have read them all in six months if she hadn’t doled them out to him one week at a time. Even so, they’d finished the whole series and started over from Book One a few weeks ago.
“Don’t forget the letter to our customer.” Lucy winked at him.
“Oh yeah. How do you spell Carrie?” he asked, putting his pencil on the paper.
“Sound it out,” she said.
“K-A—”
“It’s a C,” Lucy said.
“Carrie starts with a C? C- is a K sound,” he said.
“But so is C, sometimes. Like the C in Ca-hristopher.” She booped his nose.
Christopher glared at her. He disapproved of booping. “There’s a Kari in my class,” he explained as if Lucy wasn’t as bright as she looked. “It starts with a K.”
“You can spell names a lot of ways. This Carrie is with a C, two Rs, and an I-E.”
“Two Rs?”
“Two Rs.”
“Why?” Christopher asked.
“Why does it have two Rs? I don’t know. Probably being greedy.”
In his child’s hand, Christopher carefully blocked out the words Dear Carrie and made sure to put both Rs in the name.
“Your spelling and handwriting are getting a lot better.”
He smiled. “I’ve been practicing.”
“I can tell.”
Lucy included a thank-you note for buying a hand-knitted scarf from the Hart & Lamb Knitting Company in every package. Not a real company, just her Etsy store, but Christopher got a big kick out of being “co-president.”
“What do I write now?” he asked.
“Something nice,” Lucy said. “Maybe…Thank you for buying a scarf. I hope you like it.”
“I hope it keeps your neck warm?” Christopher asked.
“That’s good. Write that down.”
“Even if it’s a supergirly scarf.”
“Don’t write that.”
Christopher laughed and started writing again. Making him smile or laugh was better than winning the lottery, although she’d have a lot more time to make him laugh if she did win the lottery. She glanced over his shoulder as he wrote. His writing was getting really good. Even a few months ago he was misspelling about every other word he wrote. Now it was just every fourth or fifth word. His reading and math skills were improving too. That hadn’t been the case last year when he’d been shuffled between half a dozen foster homes. This year he had a steady living arrangement, great therapists, and Lucy tutoring him every weekday after school. His grades had been stellar ever since. If she could only do something about those bad dreams and his terror of ringing phones.
She knew what he needed, and it was the same thing she wanted for him—a mother. Not a foster mom with two sick babies who demanded every minute of her day. He needed a forever mom, and Lucy wanted to be that mom.
“Lucy, how much money do you have in your wish fund?” he asked while printing his name carefully at the bottom of his letter.
“Two thousand two hundred dollars,” she said. “Two-two-zero-zero.”
“Whoa…” He stared at her with wide eyes. “All scarf money?”
“Almost all of it.” Scarf money and any babysitting job she could get. Every day she thought about going back to waitressing, but that would mean never getting to see Christopher, and he needed her more than she needed money.
“How long did that take to make?”
“Two years,” she said.
“How much do you need?”
“Um…a little bit more.”
“How much?”
Lucy hesitated before answering.
“Maybe two thousand,” she said. “Maybe a little more.”
Christopher’s face fell. The kid was just too good at math.
“That’ll take you another two years,” he said. “I’ll be nine years old.”
“Maybe less? Who knows?”