“According to the book, Martha loved being alone and she loved being alone at sea,” said Fiona. “I don’t think Miss Webster is like that. She strikes me as more of a people person.”

“I like her best of everyone we’ve met here,” said Charlie. “If I could pick someone to be our guardian for real it would be her. She slipped me and Natasha chocolate bars when she saw us at lunch the other day.”

“Well, we don’t get to pick a guardian from just anyone we want,” said Fiona practically. “We’re lucky to get anyone to even pretend to be one. Even if it is a waste troll like Al.”

“He’s like one of the wild beasts,” said Charlie.

“He certainly is,” said Marlin. “The way he hollers every time I knock on the door to give him his dinner.”

Marlin and Fiona took turns delivering Al’s dinners and despite the fact that he must have known by then that it was them at six o’clock each night at his door, his method of answering never varied.

“Wild beast, wild beast, wild beast troll,” chanted Charlie.

“There are no wild beasts for us to be afraid of,” said Fiona as she did every time Charlie brought them up. “They’re all far back in the woods.”

Fiona worried about Charlie and what seemed her increasing nervous nattering about wild beasts. Charlie still never went out the front door without peering into tree branches for crouching cougars. She even scanned the waters for shark fins when they went to the beach even though all of them had assured her that the local waters didn’t contain sharks. Fiona wondered if everything Charlie had been through in the last year had made her yet more fearful and if there was something she should be doing about it. Maybe Charlie needed some kind of professional help which they couldn’t anyway afford. How could you tell when someone had tipped over the edge from normally fearful to pathologically fearful? Fiona was therefore thrilled when as April sped by, Charlie, after Fiona had taught her how to adjust the seat for her shorter legs, began of her own volition to take the bike up and down the driveway and down the road and back. At first, she wanted Fiona or Marlin to walk alongside her and keep a watch on the surrounding forest for wolves and bears that might be stalking her but now she seemed content to go alone. She was confident enough that one Thursday after school Fiona gave her the job of dragging the wheeled garbage can to the end of their driveway as she had noticed most people on the street did for pickup early the next morning rather than dragging it down at six a.m. when the garbagemen began their route on Farhill Road. Whenever possible Fiona tried to apportion the many chores fairly but there weren’t a lot of chores she felt Charlie could handle yet and she was happy to give her this one.