“Are you nuts?” shouted Fiona.

“What? It wasn’t your fault.”

“I don’t know where he lives!”

“I do. I looked it up.”

“His family doesn’t know about us. What would they think?” shouted Fiona.

“Well, then write him a note. I’ve got the address for you although you could have found that yourself with a little digging.”

“Go away!” shouted Fiona. “This is none of your business and I don’t want to talk to you.”

“McCready women,” Fiona could hear him saying to Marlin. “Hard nuts to crack.”

When Marlin finished at Al’s and had returned home and gone to bed, she turned to Fiona and said, “You know Random House rejected my book.”

“Did they?” said Fiona tactfully because she had guessed this before from the way Marlin had changed the subject whenever anyone brought it up.

“But if Al can help me get it published and if I could get the advance money this summer, you could stop babysitting.”

“That would be nice,” said Fiona wearily, and rolled over to fall asleep.

But all the next day it was at the back of Fiona’s mind. That dangerous little gleam of hope. If one of them were to pull off some kind of spectacular coup, it would be Marlin. She was the most original of the four of them. The one most prone to thinking outside the box. It would be like her to save them by becoming a bestselling author. Fiona’s mind went to new clothes and no worry about bills and maybe even college educations. She was practical enough to know that it was unlikely Marlin would ever get published let alone make a lot of money from it but it gave her a pleasant day’s daydreaming while she pushed the golden beast in her swing and filled the void where her daydreaming about Davy had been.

All the way home as she pedaled along she elaborated on this daydream. Now the four of them were going to Europe together on vacations when Marlin became the first person to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for a cookbook and like Martha’s Boat, it became an international bestseller. She was having a wonderful time embroidering this fantasy but when she pulled the bike into the front yard her heart dropped. Sitting on the front porch was a woman in a good pants suit chatting away to Charlie.

Social services, thought Fiona. This was a social worker if ever she’d seen one. She’d come when Fiona wasn’t even there to handle the situation. And if the social worker had to chat with someone did it have to be Charlie? Charlie, who, despite her best intentions, always gave everything away. And there was Charlie, true to form, nattering away, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and no doubt ruining everything.

The woman stood up when she saw Fiona and said, “Oh my, you must be Charlie’s big sister, Fiona. She has told me so much about you.”