Mary watched as Min Read’s car approached. It slowed to a stop across the street from Needle and Thread.
“’Afternoon, Mary!” called Min, waving from her window.
“’Afternoon, Min,” replied Mary.
“Slow day?” asked Min.
Mary nodded. Then she added, “Welcome back.”
“Thank you. I’ll see you next week.”
The car continued down Main Street.
Almost home, Mary thought as she watched the car. Min and her granddaughters were almost home. Left off of Main Street, then right on Aiken Avenue, a wide street shaded by huge old maples and oaks and elms. Most of the houses on Aiken were Victorians and colonials, but one block on the west side of the street — the block on which Min and her neighbors lived — was occupied by a row of eight attached houses, one long building three stories high, built in 1882. They were the only homes of their kind in Camden Falls, and everyone referred to them simply as the Row Houses.
The fourth house from the left, between the Malones’ and the Walters’, was the house belonging to Min Read, which was about to become the new home of Flora and Ruby Northrop.
Mary Woolsey glanced up and down Main Street once more. She tsked at the sight of Nikki Sherman in her dirty, threadbare T-shirt, peering into Cover to Cover. Then Mary opened the door to Needle and Thread. It was time to collect her mending and go home.
When Flora was a very little girl visiting Camden Falls with her parents, she used to like to stand across the street from the Row Houses, squint her eyes, and pretend that instead of eight houses they were really one huge house, a giant’s house an entire block long, an enormous granite mansion. Flora remembered this now as Min’s car turned onto Aiken Avenue, remembered, too, that there had been a time when she wasn’t sure which front door was Min’s unless she counted. One — the Morrises’, two — the Willets’, three — the Malones’, then Min’s — that was number four, then Olivia’s — five. Mr. Pennington’s was six, the Edwardses’ was seven, and number eight belonged to the Fongs. Eight doors. And eight houses all in a row, attached, identical in size, similar in layout, but otherwise nothing alike.
Running behind the gardens of the Row Houses was an alley. It gave access to the backs of the houses and to the garages, each of which sat behind its house, a narrow yard between. Most of the Row House residents parked in their garages and entered their homes through the back doors. But sometimes they parked on the street in front. Min did that now, grateful to find no traffic on Aiken and almost no cars in front of the Row Houses. She had to cross the street and park headed in the wrong direction, but she didn’t think anyone would mind. Carefully, she aligned the back of the U-Haul with her front door.
“There,” she said briskly. “That should make unloading easier.”
Behind her, Flora and Ruby glanced at each other once more, then unclasped their hands and scooted toward the door Min was now holding open for them.
“Is King in his carrier?” asked Min. “Make sure he’s safely in the carrier before you get out.”
“I need King’s box of supplies,” said Flora. “We have to bring that in first.”
The girls were fussing with King Comma, and Min was reaching in the front seat for Daisy Dear, her mind on the business of unloading the U-Haul, when Ruby exclaimed, “Hey, look!” and pointed to Min’s house.
Min turned around and Flora scrambled out of the car. Draped over the front door was a banner with the word WELCOME painted on it in splashes of red. Flora had just opened her mouth to say “I wonder who made that,” when up and down the Row Houses doors began to open and people rushed outside toward Min’s car.
Mr. Pennington, smiling widely, stumped along the sidewalk with his cane and wrapped his arms first around Min, then around Flora, and finally around Ruby. “I’m so glad you’re back,” he said. His voice always made Flora think of a wide river running slowly and smoothly.
Olivia, followed by her brothers and her parents, bounced across the front lawn to Flora and Ruby. “Hi!” she called. “Hi! You’re here! And here for good, not just for a visit.”
Olivia Walter, whose grandmother owned and ran Needle and Thread with Min, had grown up in the Row Houses, and she and Flora and Ruby had played together every time the Northrops had visited Camden Falls. Olivia was a full year younger than Flora (in fact, she hadn’t yet turned ten), but because she had skipped second grade, she and Flora would both be in sixth grade in the fall. Olivia, Flora thought, was the bounciest, chattiest, smartest person she had ever met. Her mind was always working. Often it was organizing something, usually something to do with science. Olivia’s collections — from leaves to bird’s nests to butterfly wings (Olivia refused to capture and kill live butterflies) — were many. And to most of her year-older classmates they were overwhelming. As was Olivia. But Flora and Ruby thought she was wonderful and had looked forward to seeing her on every one of their visits. Olivia had looked forward to seeing them, too. In school she felt like a fish out of water. But not around Ruby and Flora.
Now tiny, wiry Olivia, wild hair flying, threw herself at Flora and Ruby, and the girls hugged fiercely. Olivia’s parents hugged Min, while Henry and Jack, Olivia’s younger brothers, stood back, awkward amidst the hugging.
From one end of the Row Houses, young Mr. and Mrs. Fong, artists who were new to Camden Falls, walked hand in hand toward their neighbors, followed by their corgi-mix puppies.
From the other end of the Row Houses, the four Morris children, voices at high volume, screeched down the sidewalk. “Did you see the banner?” cried Lacey, who was eight and felt quite grown up.
“We all helped make it,” added Mathias, her twin.
“I helped the most,” said Alyssa, the youngest Morris, who was four.
“Did not,” said Travis. Travis was six but wished to be much older.
“Did too.”
“Did not.”
“Kids — cut it out,” ordered their father.
And their mother, turning to Flora and Ruby and Min, added, “Welcome home.”
This isn’t my home, Flora couldn’t help thinking. Everyone is being so nice, but this isn’t my home.
Flora was surrounded. Lydia and Margaret Malone and their father, Dr. Malone, the dentist, were standing before her with the Willets. Flora noticed that old Mrs. Willet looked more frail than ever and was gripping her husband’s hand. Mrs. Edwards, holding out a pan covered with foil, joined the crowd followed by her husband and her son, Robby, who was probably at least sixteen now.
Robby bounced up and down on his tiptoes and clapped his hands. “You know what’s in the pan?” he asked. “You know what’s in it? Guess what’s in it, Ruby. You’re Ruby, right? And you’re Flora? Okay, guess what’s in the pan. Guess.”
“Robby, settle down,” said Mr. Edwards gently.
“It’s brownies!” Robby exclaimed, as if he hadn’t heard his father. He clapped his hands again, fast, fingertips neatly aligned. “And I helped make them.” Robby’s wide face, sometimes expressionless, was now lit by a grin. Then, abruptly, he stopped smiling, and he stared into Flora’s eyes, his tongue protruding wetly. “Are you sad?” he asked her loudly. “Are you sad about your parents?”
“Robby,” his mother admonished him.
“Are you sad?” he asked Ruby.
Olivia stepped in front of Robby then, took Ruby and Flora by their elbows, and pulled them along Min’s front walk. “Guess what I found today,” she said. “A feather from a male cardinal. I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. I have to look it up, but it’s red and beautiful, and I don’t have one in my feather collection.”
Flora listened to the voices around her. And she thought about Robby’s question. Was she sad? Well, yes. Of course she was sad. The strange thing, though, was that at the moment she didn’t feel particularly sad. Or angry or crabby or nervous. In the car, riding along with Min and Ruby and King Comma and Daisy Dear, she had felt all those things. But as she stepped into her ne
w life, she felt only a numb determination. She would now, as she had once heard Min say, soldier on.
She turned her attention back to all the voices.
“Robby,” Mr. Edwards was saying, “remember our talk about privacy? Sometimes feelings are private, too.”
“Dad, can I go back into town?” That was Lydia Malone.
“Not yet,” replied her father. “We’re all going to help out a bit here first.”
“Bill, I told you — it’s almost nighttime. Let’s go home now.” Mary Lou Willet tugged at her husband’s hand, and Flora, confused because it wasn’t even three o’clock in the afternoon, turned around in time to see Mr. Willet put his arm around Mrs. Willet’s thin shoulders and kiss her gently on her forehead.
Olivia’s father separated himself from the crowd then and said, “Come on, everyone. Let’s open the trailer and get this job done.”
“King!” Ruby exclaimed, and made a dash back to the car.
The next hour went by in a blur. Flora and Ruby brought King and his things inside, and Ruby set up his litter box and showed him where it was.
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” asked Ruby. “I know he’s visited here before, but this is different.”
“Just don’t let him outside,” said Flora. “He’s never been outside Min’s house.”
“Everybody!” shouted Ruby, standing on a stool. “Don’t let our cat out! He’ll be scared and confused.” Hardly anyone heard her. People kept coming and going, and the front door kept opening and closing. Ruby felt a little scared and confused herself. She stepped into the bathroom for a few minutes, even though she didn’t need to use it.
On the other side of the bathroom door, Flora watched as Mr. Fong and Dr. Malone carried Ruby’s dresser inside.
“Which room is Ruby’s?” asked Dr. Malone.
“I’ll show you,” said Flora.
She led the men — her new neighbors — up the wide, curving staircase to the second floor and to the first door on the right. This had been a guest room, but on their last trip to Camden Falls, when Min had insisted that the girls make the final decisions about their bedrooms, Ruby had selected this one. Ruby thought it was the coziest of the spare rooms, so she and Flora and Min had cleared it out. The room across the hall, which Min had used as a study, was to be Flora’s room.
Flora returned to the stairs. “This is chaos,” she had once heard her father say as he surveyed the Northrops’ living room on Christmas afternoon — a sea of wrapping paper, ribbons, drying pine needles, dolls, boxes of chocolates, and torn catnip toys. Now Min’s tidy house was chaos, but for a much less happy reason.
Flora paused halfway down the stairs. Below her, Ruby, who had left the bathroom, was screeching, “Don’t let King out!” Three neighbors, one after the other, lugged large cardboard cartons through the door. They were followed by Lydia Malone carrying one of Flora’s suitcases. “Now can I go?” she asked her father. Daisy Dear charged through the living room, pausing only to lick Travis’s leg, which caused Travis to shriek. Mrs. Morris, Alyssa on her hip, emerged from Min’s kitchen, saying, “Your refrigerator is full of food. Paula and I saw to that.” Min hugged her. “Thank you. Thank you, too, Paula,” she said, turning to Robby’s mother, then added, “What would I do without all of you?”
Flora made her way down the rest of the stairs, squeezing to the side to make room for Mr. Walter, Olivia’s father, who was carrying a rocking chair in the other direction. At the bottom, she met Olivia.
“I think the trailer’s almost empty,” said Olivia. “People are starting to go home.”
“It is empty,” said Ruby. She deposited King in the living room. “What’s Min going to do with it now?”
“My dad’s going to return it to the U-Haul place for her,” replied Olivia.
“Your dad is? That’s nice of him,” said Ruby.
“We’re all kind of like one big family,” Olivia said.
Ruby looked around at the neighbors. “A colorful family,” she said.
Olivia grinned. “We are pretty colorful.”
When the Row Houses had been built, the first families to occupy them were white. All white. The help — the people for whom the maids’ rooms and butlers’ pantries had been created — had been white, too. Mr. Pennington was the first person of color to move into one of the Row Houses. That was decades ago when his wife was still alive, and Camden Falls had buzzed about the event for more than two years. But these days, as Ruby had pointed out, the Row House neighbors were pretty colorful, and no one thought much about it. Olivia and her family, Mr. Pennington (more than eighty years old now), and the Morrises were African-American. The Fongs were Asian-American, and the Malones, the Willets, the Edwardses, and Min and Flora and Ruby were Caucasian. Light skin, dark skin, brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes, red hair, black hair, brown hair, blond hair — a human rainbow had swarmed through Ruby’s new home that afternoon.
The front door banged open again, and Mr. Edwards stepped inside and called to no one in particular, “That’s the last of it.”
“My stars and garters,” replied Min, following him through the door. “I can’t believe it. Is everything in your rooms, girls?”
“Yup,” replied Ruby.
Min sank into a chair in the living room and realized that except for Mr. Edwards and Olivia and her father, the neighbors had drifted away.
“You want to come upstairs with us?” Ruby asked Olivia.
“Sure. I can help you organize your rooms,” replied Olivia, who liked nothing better than putting things in order.
“Don’t feel you have to do all the unpacking today, girls,” Min called after them.
In the second-floor hallway, Ruby stood outside her room, Flora stood outside hers, and Olivia stood between them, glancing from one room to the other.
Flora felt a tightening in her chest, in her throat, and knew that tears were threatening. She swallowed them. And then a phrase jumped into her mind. The Point of No Return. Flora saw it as if it were a weathered sign nailed to a tree, as if she were a character in a book and she had walked and walked through a dense and scary forest and now, suddenly, had reached The Point of No Return.
In the car, on the endless trip to Camden Falls, Flora could have said (and nearly had said), “Min, please just turn the car around and take us back home.” But now Flora and Ruby had arrived in Camden Falls and the trailer had been unloaded and their furniture had been carried all the way upstairs and the helpful neighbors had left and there was no going back.
Flora looked at Ruby and saw that her eyes had filled with tears, too, and also that her lower lip was quivering. This was a sure sign that a full-blown wail was not far away.
Flora looked at Olivia and saw that Olivia was looking at both of them. In a flash, Olivia went into action. “Wow,” she said, “your rooms are a really big mess. Okay. Here’s what we should do. First, put all the furniture exactly where you want it. Then stack the boxes neatly in the middle of the room. After that, put your clothes away. Last of all, unpack the boxes.”
Flora couldn’t help but smile.
“Are you a moving expert?” asked Ruby seriously, her lower lip now still.
“Nope,” said Olivia. “I just like to organize stuff. You know that.”
The girls moved the furniture around, and Ruby and Flora were arranging their clothes in cedar wardrobes (the Row Houses, like many older homes, had almost no closets) when the doorbell rang.
Ruby could hear Min talking on the phone, so she yelled, “I’ll get it!” and ran down the stairs. She opened the front door to find Robby Edwards standing on the stoop, holding a squirming cat.
“King Comma!” exclaimed Ruby. She held the door open as Robby stepped inside and set King on the floor.
“I saw the kitty in my backyard,” said Robby, “and I said to him, ‘You are in the wrong yard, kitty,’ and then I brought him over here.”
“Wow. Thank you,” replied Ruby. “I don’t know how he g
ot out.”
Robby stared at her. “Why is his name King Comma?” he asked.
Ruby looked at the big cat. He was mostly black, but his paws were white, as if they had been dipped in milk, and there was a white patch on his chest and a white mark between his eyes. “Do you know what a comma is?” asked Ruby.
Robby frowned. “Yes,” he said finally. “A comma is what I put after ‘Dear Ruby’ in a friendly letter. Which is what I would write to you, if I wrote you a letter.”
“Right,” said Ruby. “Okay. See that mark on his forehead? It’s shaped like a comma. And when Flora and I named him, we added King because we think he’s royal.”
Robby studied King Comma. “You could have named him King Boots,” he said. “Okay. I have to go. It’s the rule. Good-bye.”
Robby let himself out of the house, and Ruby turned around to find Olivia and Flora halfway down the stairs. “What is it that Robby has?” she asked Olivia. “I forget what it’s called.”
“Down syndrome,” replied Olivia. She checked her watch. “I’d better go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Later, when Olivia had gone home and Ruby was in her room, engaged in a search for her tap shoes, Flora sat on her bed, alone for the first time that day. From downstairs she could hear Min banging around in the kitchen. From across the hall she could hear Ruby ripping open packing cartons. Flora let out a sigh of monumental proportions, then turned to her own cartons. ART SUPPLIES, one was labeled. BOOKS. FABRIC. Flora tiptoed across the room, quietly closed the door, returned to her bed, and thought of her old house, her old neighborhood, her old school, and Annika and her old friends. She missed them all. But most of all she missed her parents.
Flora wanted to go home.
The next day, Sunday, dawned bright and sunny and already hot. In the garden behind Min’s Row House, the iris plants were in bloom, tall spiky stalks with deep purple blossoms. A timid phoebe, her nest hidden nearby, perched on the branch of a dogwood tree, waving her tail feathers. The air smelled of blooms and sunshine and damp earth and leaves that were still new.