The boy’s bloody forehead knotted. “Don’t call me Josie. What am I supposed to be looking at?”
Freddy, Mel, and Roland stood all in a row, watching as the boy—Josie, or Josiah, or whatever it was—leaned against the side of the stricken van and pulled himself to his feet. Waving the smoke away from his face, he squinted out through it at them. It was hard not to stare. The woman was ordinary looking, despite her clothes, but there was something … not right about the boy. From what Freddy could see through the smoke and the bloody mask, he was average in size for his age, which seemed to be about the same as her age. His hair was black and straight, though tousled by the accident, and his skin was much darker than the woman’s. He should have been practically indistinguishable from any other fourteen-year-old boy. But there was something different. It was making her eyes water. She had no idea what it was.
And then the boy was staring at them.
“Not again,” he said. “Where is he, then?”
Freddy thought maybe he was looking at her in particular. “Uh…?”
“Him. Where is he? You have to know,” said Josiah impatiently.
Freddy glanced at Mel, who shrugged.
Slowly, Josiah’s face changed. It was hard to say for sure with the blood in the way, but Freddy thought what she was seeing may have been a look of dawning horror.
“No,” he said.
“I think so,” the woman replied, gazing vaguely off into the park. “Look … trees.”
“But it’s not—I don’t—we shouldn’t—Cuerva Lachance! No. We’re not here for this. I refuse to be here for this! You,” he said, pointing dramatically towards them with a hand shaking so violently that Freddy wasn’t sure whether his finger was aimed at one of them in particular or all three of them in general, “go away. You appall me. I refuse to acknowledge your existence. You’re not here.”
The woman beamed at them all from under her improbable hat. “Would you help us unload? There may be pie in the van. It’s possible it’s been squashed by the couch, but you never know. Helping us unload will be fun, and there’s a squirrel in the tree. I never expected that. I’m Cuerva Lachance.”
Freddy looked at Roland and Mel for help, but she could already see they were going to be useless. Roland’s mouth was hanging open. Mel, usually not shy at all, was sidling behind Roland. Freddy’s eyes moved from her stepbrother and sister to the boy Josiah, who was muttering to himself and working his hands into and out of fist shapes, and then to the woman in the trench coat and fedora. Nothing added up at all. “Are you…” said Freddy, and stopped. She moistened her lips with her tongue and tried again. “Are you going to live here?”
“Of course,” said Cuerva Lachance brightly. “We had to live somewhere, and it seemed convenient. It’s pure bad luck there’s a tree instead of a driveway. I take it you live next door? I like meeting neighbours. Josiah, did you know you were bleeding? I can’t think why you’re doing that. Let’s go find that pie.”
*
Somehow, Freddy, Mel, and Roland found themselves hauling boxes and furniture from the van to the house on Grosvenor Street. It made no sense. They should have been phoning 9-1-1 and calling for the nice men in white coats to come deal with Cuerva Lachance; they should certainly have been staying out of the house. “I think we’re all enchanted,” Mel told Freddy at one point. It was sometimes a little too easy to forget that Mel was only twelve. She could go on about string theory for twenty minutes before turning the entire conversation on its head by mentioning unicorns. Freddy didn’t think they were enchanted. She thought they were in shock. It just seemed easier to turn their brains off and do what Cuerva Lachance told them.
It was impossible to think of her as anything but “Cuerva Lachance,” which was what Josiah called her, always in tones of contempt or exasperation. The part of Freddy that wasn’t striving to catch up observed that all of them tried to change this. When Cuerva Lachance wrenched open the back doors of the van (and dodged the six boxes and the bookcase that tried to fall on top of her), Mel, still standing behind Roland, said in a subdued voice, “Ms.… Lachance…?”
“Cuerva,” said Cuerva Lachance.
“Cuerva,” said Mel. There was a pause. Freddy watched her sister struggle, then give in and add, “Lachance. Shouldn’t someone move the van away from the tree?”
“It’s a good theory,” said Cuerva Lachance, “but I don’t know where we’re going to find anyone like that. Here, little fat one. Take this box. Don’t drop it; we wouldn’t want to break anything.”
Mel gingerly took the box, which had been flattened and mangled by the accident and the tumble from the van. “Uh—”
“Big awkward one,” said Cuerva Lachance to Roland, who didn’t notice because he was watching Josiah walk around in circles, tugging at his own hair. Freddy nudged Roland. Her resentment of him had, for the moment, been swallowed up in bewilderment.
Roland looked at the woman. “Yes? Cuerva … Lachance?” His struggle was shorter than Mel’s, but Freddy still heard the pause.
“Chairs,” said Cuerva Lachance. “You look about the right size for those. Curly-haired one, you help the fat one with the boxes. I see another squirrel.”
“Uh,” said Freddy, “Cuerva…”
She was determined not to say the surname. There was no reason she should. All her classmates’ parents went by their first names except Paul Jacobs’s, who insisted on children calling them “sir” and “ma’am.” Paul was constantly being embarrassed about his parents.
It was no good. The “Cuerva” seemed incomplete by itself. When she said it alone, she found herself stuck with a space of silence that could be filled by only one word.
“… Lachance,” continued Freddy, defeated. “We can’t get into the house.”
“Josiah has the key,” said Cuerva Lachance. “He never misplaces keys. It must be boring to be that responsible. Josiah, let the nice people inside.”
Keys and trees, whispered something inside Freddy’s brain. For a sliver of time, she almost knew why. Then the conversation continued, and the thought flitted away.
“They’re not here,” said Josiah. His voice started high on the first word and dived into the subbasement on the last.
“They still need you to open the door for them,” said Cuerva Lachance. “What’s your name, little fat one?”
“Mel,” said Mel. To Freddy’s surprise, she added, “Melanie Duchamp.” She even pronounced it the French way, as Dad always had. Freddy was pretty sure her sister hadn’t said her full name to anyone since Dad had left.
“Curly-haired one?” said Cuerva Lachance, industriously picking up boxes.
“Freddy. Frédérique. Duchamp.” It was, again, as if the pauses could only be filled in by certain words. She felt, and she couldn’t have said why, that she had to give Cuerva Lachance her full name.
Cuerva Lachance had simply to glance in Roland’s direction for him to say in resigned tones, “Roland Michael Isamu Fukiyama.”