“You sneaky squirrels! Get over here!”
“Do you think she knows?” whispers Birdie. “Do you think she’s mad?” Birdie can’t stand it when people are upset with him.
Before I can answer, Rosie comes out of the truck. “Boy, boy, boy, you should have seen your poor uncle yesterday. You almost gave him a heart attack. He rode all over, asking everyone in town if they’d seen you.” She pretends to snap the towel at us.
“We’re sorry,” Birdie says quickly. His eyes are all glassy and his nose is red. “Really.”
Rosie looks at him and then squishes him in a side hug. “Oh, you. Come on, now. Don’t cry. You guys hungry?”
She leaves a voicemail for Patrick saying we are hanging out with her and Uncle Carl.
Off in the distance, two hot-air balloons float in the cold blue sky like tiny colorful lightbulbs. Mama would have loved a hot-air balloon ride.
“Rosie, would you ever go up in one of those things?”
“A balloon? Absolutely.” She scatters different kinds of cheeses on the tortillas. “In fact,” she continues, “I rode one for my thirteenth birthday. It was just me and my dad. I hardly got any time with my dad just on his own and we went up into that big balloon and looked out on the miles and miles of green countryside. You know, we barely said a word to each other. We just grinned like idiots the entire time. It was one of the most joyous days of my life.”
Rosie keeps her back to me. She clears her throat. “My dad’s having to go into the hospital to get treatment every couple of weeks. But the silver lining,” she says, “is that now he calls me all the time. When he’s bored, stuck at the hospital, sometimes at three o’clock in the morning. You take what you can get. Hopefully we get along as well when I’m there in person!”
She turns around, two half quesadillas in her hands, each with a sour cream and guacamole heart. Her eyes are wide and kind of glassy like Birdie’s were earlier. She’s smiling big, though.
“I’d ride a hot-air balloon again in a heartbeat if I had someone to do it with.” Her face is all glowy and I kind of wish I could just stand at the ordering window forever.
But new customers arrive, so we take our quesadillas to Uncle Carl’s apartment and he opens the door before we even knock.
He takes my plate and goes over to the counter and cuts off a piece for himself. “Now, I’m only doing this because it’s what I deserve after what you put me through yesterday.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “We didn’t mean to worry you. It just seemed like something we had to do . . . we just . . . we miss . . .”
Uncle Carl waves at us while shaking his head and says, “I know, I know, okay?” He waves his hand again like he just wants to forget about it. He goes to the coffeepot.
Birdie wipes his mouth, which is covered in sour cream, and says, “We probably would have come back to visit. Honest.”
Uncle Carl frowns as he pours himself a cup of coffee. “Well, the old man is doing a great job, isn’t he? Let’s count how many times you ran away when you lived with me. How do you count zero on your fingers?” He plops himself down on the couch, takes a long drink of coffee, and then fans himself with a magazine. “If it hadn’t been for my Rosie, I would have lost my head.”
Suddenly my eyes are burning. Everything has turned out wrong. Again.
“You should have seen Rosie in action,” says Uncle Carl. “She kept me from losing it. She even kept me hydrated as I rode around trying to find you two monkeys. Said I had to keep my electrolytes up.”
Right then, Rosie’s glowy face pops into my head and I suddenly know exactly what we need. What Uncle Carl needs. Maybe what we all need.
Uncle Carl needs Rosie. For real.
“Hey, Uncle Carl. You have a plan for your next proposal to Rosie?”
He squints at me with suspicion. “Not exactly. Why?”
“I just had an idea.”
I tell him about Rosie’s hot-air balloon ride with her dad. I tell him it might show how serious he is about marrying her if he proposed up in the sky in a balloon.
“And I could sew you a bow tie so that you look super fancy,” says Birdie.
Uncle Carl rubs the back of his neck. I can see him imaging the scenario. Maybe this can be my gift to him. An apology gift. And if she says yes, then maybe he could be reliable enough for us to live with him again. We could all be together. It’s perfect.
He gets up and goes back to the coffeepot even though I think his mug is still full. “You ever not have a bunch of crazy ideas in that head of yours?”
“What?” I say. “It could work.”
He sighs. “Jackie-O, that woman could be with anyone.”
“Yeah, but she hangs around you. She parks her truck in front of the Lock and Key! In front of your apartment! She could park it anywhere.”
“Yeah,” says Birdie. “She could park it by the high school and make serious money.”
Uncle Carl rubs the back of his neck again, looking at Birdie. Suddenly, he stands up straight and points. “What the heck are you wearing?”
Birdie frowns and picks up a magazine from the table.
“Oh my God, the goat did this, didn’t he?” Uncle Carl asks.
“I don’t want to talk about it!” Birdie announces. “In fact . . .” He reaches down into his backpack and pulls out his outlawed mad cap. He puts it on and goes back to the women’s magazine, his knee bouncing up and down with agitation.
“I swear that old man is clueless. He doesn’t know anything about people. He spends too much time with that damn dog! You watch—you thought I went crazy after Marlboro
