cornered. The only way off the stairs was over the cliff and a roll through poison oak.
Thankfully, they hadn’t disappeared into The Ten Acre Wood. He’d never find them in that tangled overgrowth.
“What happened, Thistle?” Dusty asked over her shoulder as she fished for a cola in the employee fridge. She wiped the can top with a sanitized wipe and handed the cold drink to her charge. Then she washed her private glass and poured another iced tea for herself.
Dick had hastened away to his sales calls. He’d left today in a bigger hurry than usual, as if something, or someone, in the museum bothered him.
Dusty laid blame for that squarely on Thistle’s shoulders-one of which was showing too much skin as the neckline of her oversized T-shirt slipped, and then slipped some more.
Thistle stared at the pull ring on her cola as if it was a bit of alien technology. All the years Thistle had kept Dusty company during her recovery from leukemia with the chemo and bone marrow transplant, and then homeschooling, Dusty had never had a soft drink to show her how to use the pull ring. Mom hadn’t allowed any junk food in the house, not even organic soft drinks. None of the other kids, including Dick, appreciated snacks of whole wheat crackers and organic goat cheese with home-pressed fruit juice or soy milk to wash it down. Thistle had been her only company.
Dusty pulled the ring on the can, showing Thistle how to do it.
Mom would love to dress Thistle up in sixteenth century clothing and teach her the part of Arial in
“Why are you here?” Dusty prodded.
“Because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go but to you.” She opened those fabulous purple eyes wide in innocence. Feigned?
“Back up. Why do you need a place to go? You could just go home.” Dusty took a long drink, never taking her eyes off of Thistle. She watched carefully for any tic, or telltale flicker of expression that might give her clues.
“I can’t go home.” Thistle looked longingly over her shoulder. Where her wings should be. “At least not for a while. Alder will come to his senses in a few days. Then I’ll be away from here as fast as I can fly.”
“Who’s Alder?”
“The new king of my tribe.”
“And what did you do to him to deserve trimming your wings and exiling you?” Dusty turned toward the whiteboard with its lists of reservations and Chamber of Commerce notes of things to promote during tours. And the schedule for setting up and tearing down the parade tomorrow. She had too much to do to babysit a Pixie in exile.
But Thistle had been her only friend for too many years for Dusty to desert her now.
“I didn’t do much. Just a prank. Alder has a short temper and more magic now that he’s king. What are we going to do this afternoon?” She took a sip of her cola and spat it out. Sticky drops sprayed far and wide, clinging to the fridge, the walls, the chairs, the papers on the table. “What kind of poison have you given me?”
“It’s not poison. It’s a diet cola. People practically live on them.”
“There is nothing natural or clean or even interesting in it.” She held the can up, reading the ingredients. Dusty had taught her to read during those long hours of lonely homeschooling.
A clatter of bright voices interrupted Dusty’s thoughts. “Suzie!” she cried in delight. “Sharon!”
Dusty dashed to the entry hall and knelt to give big hugs to her two favorite children in the world.
“Auntie Dusty, we got lollipops.” Three-year-old Suzie held up a sticky red blob on top of a paper stick. It listed sideways at an alarming angle.
Dusty grabbed a tissue from her apron pocket and held it under the candy just as it decided to plop off the stick.
“I didn’t get to finish it,” Suzie wailed. A fat tear appeared at the corner of her eye.
“It’s too hot for lollies, my girl. How about a nice cold drink instead,” Dusty offered, using a second tissue to mop up tears before they grew too plentiful. “I’ve got lemonade in the fridge. Homemade, just for you.”
“Daddy promised us ice cream after dinner,” six-year-old Sharon confided. Her lollipop disappeared into her mouth before it collapsed. “Will you cook dinner for us, Auntie Dusty. You cook better than Daddy.”
“And where is your daddy?” Dusty asked, searching the walkway through the open door.
“Parking the car,” Sharon replied, obviously bored with adult chores.
“Well, come on back to the lounge. I’ve got someone I want you to meet.” That ought to fix the problem of babysitting Thistle. Suzie and Sharon could entertain her while Dusty talked to their father, Joe Newberry: her boss, her mentor, and a good friend.
“Go wash your hands, girls, and I’ll be with you in a minute,” Joe said as he entered the museum. He nodded to Dusty, looking weary and worried. He headed straight for his office, a tiny cubicle off the pantry that served as curator’s office and document storage. He barely had room for an antique writing desk and straight chair. Fortunately, the room borrowed air-conditioning from the adjacent lounge.
Last year they’d considered giving him an office in the attic rooms of the gift shop-another historic house, but newer and smaller than the museum. Joe had lasted less than a week before he moved back. He didn’t like being away from the core of the exhibits. And the gift shop didn’t have air-conditioning. Only a couple of fans in the front parlor.
“You look tired, Joe,” Dusty said, following him in and closing the door behind her. Deep lines radiated from his eyes. His naturally pale skin had an almost gray tinge beneath the high color on his cheeks from the heat.
“That’s only half of it,” he muttered, flopping into his chair and letting his legs sprawl. He ran his hands through his thinning brown hair. Then he loosened his tie with a frustrated yank. He wore a suit today, his good navy one, instead of his usual khakis and polo shirt.
“What’s wrong? Trouble with our grant from the state?”
“I wish it were that trivial.” He choked out a laugh.
Dusty held her breath. Keeping the museum in good repair had occupied most of Joe’s life since… since Dusty couldn’t remember how long ago. He’d befriended her during her junior year in high school when she started hanging around asking too many questions about history and how the house was built and who built it. Soon after that, he’d given her a job cataloging the books and documents the Historical Society kept in storage without knowing what was there. By the time she’d finished her BA, she was running the place behind the scenes and he was her best friend.
“Don’t look so scared, Dusty. The grant’s in good shape, though the state’s going to ask for a bigger chunk of matching funds. We just have to pass the inspection tomorrow morning, before the parade starts. The committee could have chosen a better time.”
He straightened a little and began fussing with the piles of reference books, papers, fat folders, bits of cloth, and other detritus of museum work that overflowed every flat surface available. “The parade participants are supposed to show up around nine and start marching at ten. So if we meet the committee at seven, we should be in good shape. I just wish they’d postpone the inspection until after Festival,” he continued, filling the silence with banal words rather than coming to the heart of the matter.
“The Ball? Are the plans falling apart without Mom overseeing them?” The annual Masque Ball held in the park at the end of Festival provided a large portion of operating funds for the museum. Townsfolk, and a growing number of patrons from nearby Portland, paid good money for tickets, then dressed in outlandish or elegant costumes and danced the night away to live music in the gazebo. Dusty loved stringing tiny Faery lights through the trees to add a magical flavor to the evening.
“Actually, the plans are going better than usual without your mother’s interference.” He looked down sheepishly.
This time Dusty laughed. “Yeah, Mom does get carried away sometimes.”
“Like the year she tried requiring costumes of Shakespearean characters that all had to pass her scrutiny for authenticity?”
They both laughed at that fiasco.
“You’re doing a good job, Dusty. You’ve managed to keep all the committees on track and out of each other’s hair.”
