“Do you think he can do them, though?” asked Marlin. “I mean he seems pretty out of it most of the time. How much longer do you think he’ll be down there? Do you think we can just fall asleep before he’s gone? Is that rude? Should we stay up to see him to the door the way Mom did with guests?”

“Well, he can’t be any worse at it than I was. And I’m too tired to stay up any longer, I don’t care if it is rude,” said Fiona wearily, and fell asleep.

When she got up the next morning she found a note from Al saying, I printed them out. Sign where I left the Post-it and send a check. P.S. It wasn’t really all that hard.

She sighed. Why can’t he ever be just nice? Why does he have to coat the nice thing he does in some jeering comment? Well, who cared anyway? The important thing was that it was done. She was grateful even if he did want to jeer at her. But then she looked at what they owed with late penalties and she wanted to cry again. If things kept going like this they would be in big trouble. Could they sell the farm and live off that? The farm that was beginning to feel like home to them? The farm that was almost becoming a member of the family? The peaceful member, she thought wryly. Sell it and live where? In some cramped apartment in town? Did St. Mary’s By the Sea even have apartments? She’d never seen any. Where did Miss Webster live if not in an apartment? Then she remembered that Miss Webster and Mr. Pettinger would probably soon be adopting them before anything reached a crisis and she calmed down again. She would give Miss Webster and Mr. Pettinger the farm if they would just take this incessant worry away.

With the taxes done, there was a slight respite from things hanging over Fiona’s head until one day another email came from Mr. Pennypacker. The subject was CITIZENSHIP. Fiona decided not to read this one either. Miss Webster was sure to make her announcement soon. And if Miss Webster adopted them then she and Mr. Pettinger could have all these bureaucratic worries. Fiona would just point them in the direction of Mr. Pennypacker and let them deal with it all. She could wait.

But her mind would go fretfully on its own sometimes to the subject line CITIZENSHIP. Would they be deported if she didn’t deal with this? Was there more money involved? If the government found out they were living without an adult that was social services for sure. Best to steer clear of that one. Maybe Canada would just forget about them. They were just four small children in a large country. Perhaps no one really kept good track of these things.

When she began to spin in circles over this she trained her mind to start thinking of Davy instead. More and more she wondered if he felt about her the way she did about him or if he thought of her as just another friend, a new one from somewhere interesting, Borneo. Maybe he was more interested in Borneo than in her. He never put his arm around her, never took her hand, never tried to kiss her. She supposed since they only met at lunch and he probably did not want to be teased, particularly if she rebuffed him, he didn’t dare try these things publicly but she worried nonetheless that he thought of her as a like-minded soul, not a girl per se. He had said that he didn’t tell the sister in Natasha’s class that he knew her because he didn’t want his family to know because they might tease him about having a girlfriend. Did he mean by this that he didn’t think of her as his girlfriend? Or that he did? She didn’t know how to interpret this and was too embarrassed to ask.