Fiona kept her promise faithfully not to bother Al while he was working but the other three let that rule slide as they got used to Al being around.

He had taken on a lot of little chores in the time he didn’t spend writing. He installed for them a longed-for porch swing. He cleaned the gutters so the roof stopped leaking during heavy rains. He promised to help Natasha cut a pathway through the woods to the top of the mountain because she had heard that the birds of prey on Pine Island gathered there in September and took off in a series of clouds to migrate south. She had read on the internet that it was quite the sight and she thought if she had a clear pathway cut through the bush to the mountaintop she wouldn’t get lost when she climbed up to watch.

Fiona was sitting on the porch swing reading one summer day and keeping an eye out so that her sisters didn’t knock on the trailer door, which they tended to do if she didn’t fend them off. But they had a way of finding their way there when she periodically went back into the house.

Natasha had decided the weather was cool enough for her and Al to take their cutting tools and work on the path so she knocked on his trailer door when Fiona disappeared from the porch.

“Do you want to cut the trail now?” she asked when he answered it.

“I’M WORKING!” Al roared. “I keep telling you, save it for the weekend!”

Charlie had found dozens of reasons to knock on the door that day and was never dissuaded by Al’s refusals, which were never as shouty and loud as he was with the rest of them.

“Can we go to see Billy?” she asked when again Fiona had disappeared.

“I’m working,” he said. “And it’s not Saturday. Go away.”

“Ashley couldn’t come over, can you give me a lift there?” she asked an hour later.

“Not right now, I’M WORKING!”

The latest was, “I know we can’t get a horse but what about a puppy?”

“A DOG?” Al roared this one, so startled was he, but Charlie was undeterred.

“We have a big fenced meadow. We could get two. So they can play together when we’re at school.”

“DOGS? You want TWO dogs? Oh, all right,” he said as Charlie’s lip began to tremble. “I guess a couple of dogs would be okay but I don’t want to talk about it until after dinner. I’M WORKING!”

Marlin came to the door the most that afternoon. She had endless questions about the book she was working on, things she needed to ask him that could not wait, was this sentence better or this one? Did she need a comma here? And endless queries about when she would hear from the agent. The new agent was sending the cookbook around but so far she had met only with rejection.