“Well, I can,” said Marlin. “The one I’m worried about is Charlie.”

“I won’t tell,” said Charlie solemnly. “I can keep secrets.”

“This is the most important secret you will ever have to keep, Charlie,” said Fiona. “Everything and I mean everything depends upon it.”

“What will we do if someone asks about our parents?” asked Natasha.

“I don’t know. I don’t have that part totally figured out. For now, just be vague. Don’t make up any elaborate lies. Just try and change the subject or say something truthful about them without happening to mention that they’re dead,” said Fiona.

“Yeah, like that’s going to work,” scoffed Marlin. “I give this plan a week at most.”

Charlie began to cry again.

“Crying won’t do you any good, Charlie,” said Marlin. “You have to toughen up about this. You have to be fierce.”

“I can be fierce,” said Charlie, drying her eyes.

“Okay then,” said Fiona. “Plan one, enjoy the rest of the day, and tomorrow I will go with the three of you to school to get you registered and see if they want you to begin that morning and then head to my school to do the same. I have looked on Aunt Martha’s computer and you all go to Greenwillow Elementary, grades kindergarten through seven, and I go to St. Mary’s By the Sea Secondary, grades eight through twelve. They’re across the street from each other. We probably saw them driving in but I don’t remember. We were all so tired.”

“How will we get there?” asked Natasha.

“Tomorrow we will have to walk and then I will sign us up for the school bus if they have one and hopefully it will pick us up not too far away from the house. One thing at a time.”

The rest of the day was spent with Marlin finishing baking the bread, Natasha and Charlie exploring the haylofts over the stables, and the four of them taking the fresh bread and butter for supper down to their beach and eating it while sitting on a log watching the tide come in.

“Look,” said Natasha, pointing at some angular white birds.

“Seagulls,” said Charlie.

“No, arctic terns, migrating back up north,” said Natasha, who had already looked up all local bird life but hadn’t expected to see terns. She knew of them and knew they migrated but hadn’t known they passed over Pine Island.

The birds turned from one side to the next looking like paper airplanes, their sharp lines slicing the air, the light reflecting off their brilliant wings as if they were glass.

“Arctic terns!” exclaimed Natasha, repeating the magic of their name, awed by seeing a bird she had never expected to.

That night they moved two of the cots into Aunt Martha’s room so that Marlin and Fiona, who liked to stay up later reading and chatting, wouldn’t disturb Charlie and Natasha once they fell asleep. As they lay there, Marlin put her book down suddenly and said, “It will never work, you know. Too much to go wrong.”