They started back, passing home. They could see Stem up at the far end of the block, facing the Lincolns’ house, but they couldn’t see Abby. Denny walked faster, letting Red drop behind.
Abby was sitting on the brick steps leading to the Lincolns’ front walk, with a colorful pottery object resting on her lap. She seemed fine, but she was making no attempt to rise. “I’m so sorry!” she told Denny and Red when they reached her. “I don’t know how to explain it. I was just sitting here; that was the first thing I knew. I was sitting on these steps and I thought, ‘Am I coming, or am I going?’ I honestly couldn’t tell. It was so unsettling!”
“But you had your pottery,” Stem pointed out.
“My what?”
She looked down at it—a charming little clay house, no bigger than a box of notecards. The exterior was a vivid yellow, and the roof was red. A snarl of green pottery tendrils spread across one end of the roof to give a suggestion of leafy boughs.
“My pottery,” she said wonderingly.
“So you must have been coming, right? Coming home from pottery class.”
“Oh. Right,” Abby said. Then she cupped the house in both hands and held it up to them. “My very best work so far!” she said. “See?”
“Good job, hon,” Red told her.
And all three men nodded too vigorously, beaming too brightly, like parents admiring a piece of art that a child has brought home from nursery school.
Because of the way the house on Bouton Road was designed, a person could stand at the upstairs hall railing and hear everything that was said in the entrance hall below. The Whitshank children—and sometimes Red as well—used to do this whenever the doorbell rang, lurking invisibly overhead until they could be certain that it wasn’t just one of Abby’s orphans.
But Merrick, of course, had been a child in that house herself once upon a time, so when she dropped by on Thursday evening, she peered overhead the instant Abby let her in. “Who is that?” she called out. “I know you’re up there.”
After a pause, Denny appeared at the top of the stairs. “Hi, Aunt Merrick,” he said.
“Denny? What are you doing home? Hello, Redcliffe,” she added, because Red had stepped forward too now, his hair still damp from his after-work shower.
“Hey there,” he said.
Abby said, “How nice to see you, Merrick,” and gave her a peck on the cheek, craning around the cardboard carton in Merrick’s arms.
“Abby,” Merrick said neutrally. Then, “Why, hello, cutie!” because Heidi had just bounded in, panting and grinning. Merrick was always much nicer to dogs than to humans. “Who is this sweetie pie?” she asked Abby.
“That’s Heidi.”
“Don’t tell me poor old Brenda finally died.”
“No …” Abby said.
“Well, how do you do, Miss Heidi?” Merrick said, and she shifted her carton to one hip in order to stroke Heidi’s long nose.
Not counting the carton, Merrick was the picture of elegance—an angular, hatchet-faced woman, her too-black hair cut as short as a boy’s, wearing slim white pants and an Asian-looking tunic. “We’re about to leave for a cruise,” she told Abby, “and after that I’m going on to the Florida place, so I’ve brought you all the goodies from my fridge.”
“Hmm,” Abby said. Merrick was forever foisting her dribs and drabs of leftovers on the family. She disapproved of waste. “Well, bring them in,” Abby said, and she led Merrick toward the kitchen. Red and Denny, who had made their way down the stairs as slowly as possible, trailed them at a distance.
“How long are you here for?” Merrick asked Denny.
“I’ve come to help out,” he said.
This didn’t exactly answer her question, but before she could press him, Abby broke in to say, “What have you been up to, Merrick? We haven’t seen you all summer!”
“You know I hate to come here in hot weather,” Merrick said. “It’s barbaric, not to have air conditioning in this day and age.” She set the carton on the kitchen table with a thump. “Why, Norma,” she said.
Nora barely turned from the pot she was stirring. “Nora,” she said coolly.
“Does this mean Stem is here, too?” Merrick asked Abby. “Stem and Denny, both at the same time?”
“Yes, isn’t that lovely?” Abby said in a sort of cheerleader tone.
“Wonders never cease.”
“He’s upstairs showering just now. I’m sure he’ll be down in a minute.”
“Why is he showering here?”
Abby was saved from having to answer this by Red’s sudden “Excuse me?”
“Why here, I said.”
“Why what here?”
“Honestly, Redcliffe. Give up and get a hearing aid.”
“I have a hearing aid. I have two.”
“Get some that work, then.”
The three little boys arrived on the back porch, piling against a screen that was already starting to bulge. They yanked the door open and tumbled inside, breathless and overheated-looking. “Is it supper yet?” Petey asked.
“Boys, you remember your Great-Aunt Merrick,” Abby said.