Although they’d taken the bus down this road yesterday and walked it once, it was different on a bike. From her higher vantage point on the bike but slower speed than the bus she could see all kinds of things she’d missed, houses hidden in the woods, horses grazing in fields, orchards hidden behind a fringe of pine trees. It took half an hour on the bike to get as far as the school and another ten minutes to be at St. Mary’s By the Sea’s “downtown,” which consisted of two intersecting streets. One street had a series of buildings with false fronts and it was here she found Mr. Pennypacker’s office.

She parked her bike, changed her shoes, putting her running shoes in her backpack, and went inside. The receptionist took her name and pointed to a couch where she could sit and wait and in a few minutes Mr. Pennypacker came out. He was a short, delicate man who Fiona guessed to be about the same age Aunt Martha would have been. He had sharp features, bushy eyebrows, and a long white pointed beard. He wore a red vest and colorful pants, reminding her of something, but she couldn’t think what.

“Ah!” He looked around. “Is no one with you?” he asked, ushering her into his inner office.

“No, just me,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “I thought you’d have brought whatever grown-up traveled with you. We have a great deal of paperwork to go through. But your great-aunt made things easier by having everything ready before she died. She was a meticulous and responsible person and I am sorrier than I can say that she is gone. Now, I know she was planning to adopt the four of you but died, of course, before that happened. She didn’t tell me what happened to your parents but I assumed they died together suddenly and that was why she was taking you in.”

“Yes,” said Fiona.

“As I say, your great-aunt had everything prepared for the eventuality of her death except a guardian appointed for the four of you in the case that anything happened to her. Biscuit?”

He held a plate with some rather chalky-looking Peek Freans cookies but Fiona took one politely and nibbled on the corner.

“Actually,” she said, “she did take care of that. We do have a guardian.”

“You don’t say. It would have been nice if your guardian had come with you. It’s highly irregular to be dealing with all the legalities with a fourteen-year-old. It would have been nice if Martha had told me about it too. I suppose she was going to but her unexpected death precluded that. Well, who is it?”

“His name is Al Farber,” said Fiona.

She had expected a name to reassure Mr. Pennypacker but although up until that moment he had been smooth and lawyerly, he now stood up and roared, “WHAT? THAT DRUNKEN WASTREL!”

Fiona was so startled she couldn’t say anything and her cookie fell from her hand into her lap.