Dana couldn’t help herself. She began to laugh. “I’m sorry!” she’d gasped. “I’m sorry.” She hadn’t laughed in weeks, but hadn’t wanted to say so, hadn’t wanted to tell a stranger about Julia or the awful, poisonous fight with her mother.
Matthew had started to laugh, too. He was still sprawled on the floor, the boxes beside him. After a few moments he said, “In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not very coordinated.”
That was the beginning of their friendship. Dana, who hadn’t had a single serious boyfriend in high school, had fallen for Matthew in that instant. (Later, when she would tell the story to Francie, she would always say, “We fell for each other, pun intended.”) Dana and Matthew had become friends on that first day of school, and not much later had become girlfriend and boyfriend, spending as much time together as possible. Less than two years later, during the summer after their sophomore year, they’d gotten married in a small ceremony at a chapel near campus.
Adele had been shocked when Dana announced the wedding. “But Prescott,” she’d said. “Your career.”
“Matthew and I are going to finish school,” Dana assured her. “And I am definitely going to have a career. Don’t worry. Anyway, I should think you’d be pleased that we’re having a wedding and not just eloping or something.”
Adele had been pleased about that, but couldn’t help saying (more than once) that this wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind for Dana. Still, she’d attended the wedding. So had Julia. Abby had politely declined. And Papa Luther had become quietly furious.
“She’s marrying a Jewish boy?” he’d said icily to Adele when she’d phoned him with the news.
Adele had sighed. “Yes, Matthew is Jewish.”
Dana gathered that there hadn’t been much more to the conversation. She’d understood that she would see little of Papa Luther from then on. Well, that was her family. She rarely saw her mother or Orrin either.
After the wedding, Dana and Matthew had moved into an apartment near the Prescott campus, worked hard for the next two years, graduated with honors (Dana was five months pregnant with Francie), and immediately moved to Boston, where they’d found their shabby, homey apartment. Matthew had been offered his first commission on the day Dana had been offered her design job. Two months later Francie had been born. After a tumultuous first few weeks, during which Matthew’s mother and later Adele had arrived to help with the baby, Dana and Matthew had settled into a routine with Francie.
“It probably isn’t a traditional routine,” Dana had said one night as she and Matthew finally crawled into bed at three o’clock, each having finished an assignment just in the nick of time.
“But we aren’t like most people.”
Dana cherished her life with Matthew and Francie. It might not have been the life she’d envisioned for herself — not her life at twenty-two anyway — but, well, you couldn’t plan everything.
“You know what?” she said to Matthew now. She lifted Francie out of the playpen and walked her around the room. “Tomorrow I’m going to talk to Roger and tell him I’m ready to come in full-time again. It will mean almost twice the money.”
“But your work,” said Matthew. “I mean, your own work, your art. When will you have time for that?”
Dana winced. “Later, I guess. But we need the money now. Francie will start preschool in a couple of years, and —”
The phone rang then. Matthew picked it up. “Hello?”
Dana carried Francie into her tiny room and changed her, dropping the soggy diaper into a pink plastic pail. Soon it would be time to wash yet another load of diapers, a chore she didn’t mind as much as she’d thought she would. “There you are,” she said to her daughter. “All nice and dry. All ready for —”
“Honey?” Matthew was standing in the doorway, looking stunned.
Dana felt a wave of fear wash over her. “Everything all right?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Matthew ran his fingers through his curly hair. “I mean, yeah, it’s really all right. I’m just sort of . . .” He shook his head. “That was Princeton. Princeton University. The head of the art department. I just got offered a teaching job.”
“At Princeton?”
Matthew nodded.
“In Princeton, New Jersey?”
“Yes. This is amazing. I’d be teaching at one of the most prestigious universities in the country and I’d still have time to paint. They’re offering a very nice salary. Money would be a lot less tight.”
Matthew didn’t say, “This is my dream job,” but Dana knew that that’s exactly what it was. Her husband’s dream job.
And Dana didn’t say, “What about my job?” since she wasn’t sure she wanted her job. The money and the experience, yes. The job, not particularly. She shifted Francie to her other hip. What she did say was “We’d have to move to New Jersey. It’s so far away.”
“We’d be closer to Adele, though. And closer to my family. You might even be able to get a job in New York and commute. If that’s what you want.”
Dana couldn’t imagine leaving Francie with a babysitter while she went to New York and Matthew taught at the university.
“Honey?” said Matthew. Dana offered him a smile. “I know it’s a big change, but just think about it, okay?”
She already knew what her answer would be.
She’d be leaving some things behind — some important things — but she’d always wanted to be an artist. Maybe the move to Princeton would allow her to seize, at last, what her father had hoped to give her.
“Yes,” she said to Matthew. “Yes, let’s go.”
And just like that, she accepted Zander’s gift.
Ann M. Martin in the acclaimed and bestselling author of a number of novels and series, including Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), A Dog’s Life, Here Today, P.S. Longer Letter Later (written with Paula Danziger), the Doll People series (written with Laura Godwin), the Family Tree series, the Main Street series, and the generation-defining series The Baby-sitters Club. She lives in New York.
ALSO BY ANN M. MARTIN:
Belle Teal
A Corner of the Universe
A Dog’s Life
Everything for a Dog
Here Today
On Christmas Eve
P.S. Longer Letter Later written with Paula Danziger
Snail Mail No More written with Paula Danziger
Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far)
Ten Kids, No Pets
Ten Rules for Living with My Sister
The Baby-sitters Club series
The Doll People series written with Laura Godwin
The Main Street series
Copyright © 2013 by Ann M. Martin
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Martin, Ann M., 1955– author.
The long way home / Ann M. Martin.
pages cm. — (Family tree ; book two)
Summary: Dana is Abby and Zander’s daughter, but growing up in New York City in the late nineteen fifties is not always easy, especially when you would like your own room separate from your twin sister — and when your beloved father dies and you are forced to move things just get worse.
ISBN 978-0-545-35943-6 (jacketed hardcover) 1. Families — New York (State) — New York — Juvenile fiction. 2. Twins — Juvenile fiction. 3. Fathers and daughters — Juvenile fiction. 4. Mothers and daughters — Juvenile fiction. 5. New York (N.Y.) — History — 1951 — Juvenile fiction. [1. Family life — New York (State) — New York — Fiction. 2. Twins — Fiction. 3. Fathers and daughters — Fiction. 4. Mothers and daughters — Fiction. 5. New York (N.Y.) — History — 1951 — Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M3567585Lq 2013
813.54 — dc23
2013
018597
First edition, November 2013
Cover art © 2013 by Bagram Ibatoulline
Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi
e-ISBN 978-0-545-57647-5
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Ann M. Martin, The Long Way Home
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