But Uncle Ben didn’t laugh. He looked at Mrs. Merritt. “Good kid. Congratulations.”
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Mrs. Merritt put her arm around her son’s shoulders, but he twisted away from her. He didn’t seem to want Uncle Ben to see him so attached to a woman.
They all watched Uncle Ben leave, and Kim’s mom said, “You kids go play. We’ll call you in time for dinner and afterward you can catch fireflies.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Merritt said. “Go play.” She looked as though she’d been waiting for years to say that to her son. “Mr. Bertrand is going to teach me how to sew.”
“Lucy,” Kim’s mom said, “I think I should tell you that Bertrand is using you for free labor. He wants his curtains repaired and—”
“I know,” Lucy Merritt said, “but it’s all right. I want to learn to do something creative and sewing is as good as anything else. You don’t think he’d sell me his machine, do you?”
“I think he’d sell you his feet, since he rarely uses them.”
Lucy laughed.
“Come on,” Kim’s mom said, “and I’ll show you how to thread the machine.”
For two weeks, Kim lived in her idea of heaven. She and Travis were together from early until late.
He took to having fun as though he’d been born to it—which Kim’s mom said he should have been.
While they played outside, the two women and Mr. Bertrand talked and sewed inside. Lucy Merritt used the old Bernina sewing machine to repair every curtain in the house.
“So he can get a better price when he sells them,” Kim’s mom muttered.
Lucy bought fabric and made new curtains for the bathrooms and the kitchen.
“You’re paying him rent,” Kim’s mother said. “You shouldn’t be paying for them, too.”
“It’s all right. It’s not as though I can save the money. Randall will take whatever I don’t spend.”
Mrs. Aldredge knew that Randall was Lucy’s husband, but she didn’t know any more than that. “I want to know what that means,” she said, but Lucy said she’d told her too much already.
At night the children reluctantly went to their respective apartments. Their mothers got them washed and fed and into bed. The next morning they were outside again. No matter how early Kim got up, Travis was always waiting for her at the back of the house.
One night Travis said, “I’ll come back.”
Kim didn’t know what he meant.
“After I leave, I’ll return.”
She didn’t reply to that because she didn’t want to imagine him being gone. They climbed trees together, dug in the mud, rode their bikes; she tossed the ball and Travis hit it across the garden. When Kim brought her second best doll out, she was nervous. Boys didn’t like dolls. But Travis said he’d build a house for it and he did. It was made of leaves and sticks and inside was a bed that Kim covered with moss. While Travis made a roof to the house, she used her jewelry kit to make two necklaces with plastic beads. Travis smiled when she slipped one over his head, and he was wearing it the next morning.
When it got too hot to move, they stretched out on the cool ground in the shade and took turns reading Alice and the other books aloud to each other. Kim wasn’t nearly as good a reader as he was, but he never complained. When she was stumped on a word, he helped her. He’d told her he was a good listener, and he was.
She knew that at twelve he was a lot older than she was, but he didn’t seem to be. When it came to schooling, he was like an adult. He told her the entire life cycle for a tadpole and all about cocoons. He explained why the moon was different shapes and what caused winter and summer.
But for all his knowledge, he’d never skimmed a rock across a pond. Never climbed a tree before he came to Edilean. He’d never even skinned his elbow.
So they taught each other. Though he was twelve and she only eight, there were times when she was his teacher—and she liked that.
Everything ended exactly two weeks after it began. As usual, as soon as it was light, sleepy-eyed, Kim ran out the back door, past the back of the big old house, to the wing where Travis and his mom were staying.
But that morning, when Travis wasn’t already outside and waiting for her, she knew something was wrong. She started pounding on the door and yelling his name; she didn’t care if she woke the whole house.
Her mother, in robe and slippers, came running out. “Kimberly! What are you shouting about?”