Safe As Houses

ALSO BY ERIC WALTERS

Shattered

Elixir

Triple Threat

Camp 30

Grind

The True Story of Santa Claus

Juice

Run

Overdrive

I’ve Got an Idea

Underdog

Death by Exposure

Royal Ransom

Off Season

Camp X

Road Trip

Tiger Town

The Bully Boys

Long Shot

Ricky

Tiger in Trouble

Hoop Crazy

Rebound

The Hydrofoil Mystery

Full Court Press

Caged Eagles

The Money Pit Mystery

Three on Three

Visions

Tiger by the Tail

Northern Exposures

War of the Eagles

Stranded

Trapped in Ice

Diamonds in the Rough

Stars

Stand Your Ground

Alexandria of Africa

Copyright © 2007 Eric Walters

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Seal Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.

SAFE AS HOUSES

Seal Books/published by arrangement with Doubleday Canada

Doubleday Canada edition published 2007

Seal Books edition published January 2009

Ebook ISBN 9780385673402

Seal Books are published by Random House of Canada Limited.

“Seal Books” and the portrayal of a seal are the property of

Random House of Canada Limited.

Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website:

www.​randomhouse.​ca

v4.1

a

For Penny Doucette, who lived through the storm,
and Jim Crawford,
a genuine Canadian hero who saved her life.

CONTENTS

Cover

Also by Eric Walters

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Historical Note

Author Note

A Family’s Narrow Escape—A Note From Penny (Doucette) Phillips

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

Suzie and I huddled beneath the umbrella. It gave us at least some protection from the rain that had been coming down in buckets all day. The whole schoolyard was filled with kids bobbing about under umbrellas or in bright yellow slickers. A few of the boys from my Grade 8 class just turned up the collars of their denim jackets, like the rain wasn’t any great inconvenience. They were too busy trying to look cool to even attempt to stay dry. Most of them were all wet even when it wasn’t raining…although a few of them were cool even without the jacket. I looked around. I was waiting for Suzie’s brother David, but I was hoping to catch sight of Donnie Davis. He was nowhere to be seen. Too bad.

Almost everybody was rushing to get away from the rain and home or to a friend’s house. All my friends were going over to Debbie’s to listen to some 45s on her new record player. Debbie had all the new songs—“Shake, Rattle and Roll” by Bill Haley, both versions of “Sh-Boom,” by the Chords and by the Crew-Cuts, and “That’s All Right” by Elvis Presley…Elvis was so dreamy…he would have been my favourite even if he couldn’t sing.

I sighed. I hadn’t even been invited. Everybody knew there was no point. I couldn’t go, and asking me would have been cruel. Instead I was standing here, my saddle shoes soaked through, waiting. Couldn’t David ever get here on time?

Suzie was pressed close against my leg, dressed in her little yellow raincoat and matching hat. It wouldn’t have been nearly so dreadful if I were just babysitting her every night after school. She was a nice, sweet, friendly little Grade 2 kid. Nothing like her brother at all.

“How about if we just leave him here this time?” I asked.

Suzie giggled. We’d talked about this before. It was something we’d both have loved to do, but of course we couldn’t. I was responsible for her brother as well, even if he didn’t like it. I had to admit—at least to myself—that I understood why he felt he didn’t need a sitter. He was in Grade 6 and should have been able to take care of himself. But his parents didn’t trust him to watch out for Suzie, so I was in charge of both of them.

I looked at my watch—it was almost three-thirty. School had let out over ten minutes ago. That meant he wasn’t just dawdling—he had a detention. David had to stay after class at least three times a week. Sometimes it was because he hadn’t finished his work. Sometimes it was because of his behaviour. That boy just didn’t like to be told what to do, and he loved to argue about why he shouldn’t. I was tired of having those arguments with him. I could only imagine how much he must have annoyed the poor teacher who was stuck with him all day.

“Did he get in this much trouble at your old school?” I asked Suzie.

“Not as much,” she replied.

They had moved to our neighbourhood this past summer. Mr. McBride had bought some land by the river. It seemed as though there were new houses going up there all the time. My father said they were “springing up like mushrooms.” This was the third straight day of rain, so if what he was saying was true I guessed I could expect to see a dozen more there tomorrow.

Our house sat up on the hill overlooking the valley. I could see all those new houses from my bedroom window. Some seemed to go up all at once, started and finished in a few weeks. Others were ongoing projects, built little by little while the owners lived in them. That was the case with the McBrides’ house. They had had the outside shell built for them—foundation, walls, roof, electrical, and plumbing—but then it was up to Mr. McBride to finish the inside. He was an accountant. I hoped he was better with numbers than he was with a hammer and saw because the work was going pretty slowly, and even I could tell that it wasn’t being done particularly well.

“Here he comes,” Suzie said.

David came out of the front doors. He didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry. He sort of swaggered toward us. He was carrying his school bag slung over one shoulder and he wasn’t wearing a raincoat. I knew he had probably been sent to school in one this morning, so either he’d left it on a hook in his cubby or it was stuffed inside his bag. I could have asked him, but what was the point? It would only have led to an argument, and it wasn’t as if I could physically force him to wear it.

“I’m not putting it on,” he said defiantly, as if he were reading my mind.

Apparently he wanted an argument. Big surprise.

“Not putting on what?” I asked innocently.

“My raincoat. I have one, but I’m not going to wear it.”

“What do I care?” I asked. “It’s not me who’s going to get soaked to the bone.”

I took Suzie’s hand and spun around, starting to walk away before he had a chance to react.

He scrambled to catch us. “My mother would want me to wear it.”

“Then maybe you should.”

“Are you telling me I have to?” he demanded.

“I’m not telling you anything.”

“But you should,” he argued. “That’s your job, to make me do things that I don’t want to do. You’re the babysitter, aren’t you supposed to make me do things, or at least try to make me do things?” He was really trying to get into it.

“They don’t pay me enough to do that. Wear it or don’t wear it. I don’t care. Although your mother probably will when I tell her that you didn’t wear it.”

“You’re going to tattle on me?”

“No, I’m not going to tattle. That would be so childish. I’m going to report to your mother. That’s one of the things that babysitters do, tell the parents what their children did. She won’t be happy.”

“You’d better not tell her. She’ll be just as mad at you for not making me put it on.”

I shrugged. “Maybe she’ll be so angry she’ll even fire me.”

“She might,” he said smugly.

“And then she’ll hire somebody else.”

“Couldn’t be anybody worse than the sitter we have.”

“And you’d have a long, long time to learn to like her, because she’d probably be your sitter for the whole school year…maybe all of next summer.”

“No way! We’re only having a sitter until my birthday in January. Mom promised.”

“She promised that it would only be to January if you proved you were responsible. Do you think it’s responsible to have a detention after school, to not put on your raincoat, to fight with your sitter?”

He started to say something but stopped himself. I had him, and he knew it. He didn’t want a babysitter now, but what he really didn’t want was to put up with a sitter for any longer than necessary. The way out involved co-operating—unfortunately, not something that David was good at. At this rate, he might have a babysitter right through high school, and until he was married. Then his wife could be in charge.

David dropped back. I looked over my shoulder. He had put down his school bag and was pulling out his raincoat. I allowed myself a smile.

“I like having you as a babysitter,” Suzie said.

“And I like being your babysitter.”

We came to a stop at Weston Road. There were cars splashing along in both directions and we backed away from the road to avoid being sprayed. I squeezed Suzie’s hand. We’d just wait for a big gap before we crossed and—David stepped onto the road! He dodged one car and then sprinted the rest of the way, reaching the safety of the sidewalk just before a truck rumbled by.

I waited for the light to change down the block at the corner so that our stretch of road would be free of traffic. Carefully I led Suzie across.

“You should be more careful of traffic,” I warned him.

“You call this traffic?” he asked. “Traffic is what we have in Toronto, not up here in the sticks.”

David was always making fun of Weston. He acted like it was a million miles north of the city instead of a thirty-minute car ride. I knew it wasn’t the city, but it was a pretty big town and a really nice place to live. I liked Toronto, but I didn’t really want to live there. I guess the way David didn’t want to live here.

We turned onto my street, Hickory Tree Road. My house wasn’t far ahead, just where the street curved, but we were heading to the McBride house, down the valley and across the Humber River. Their house was almost exactly twice as far from school as my house, a twenty-minute walk instead of just under ten. Twice as long was twelve times as miserable when the weather was like this. Thank goodness I wouldn’t be walking with them all through the winter.

The road followed the lip of the valley, overlooking trees and grass and river. With all the rain, the Humber was brown and angry and wider than usual. It had burst its banks and was spreading out onto the flats. That wasn’t so unusual during the spring floods, but it was strange to see it happen in the fall.

My house was just up ahead. I would have loved to have gone inside. I could have changed my clothes and dried my hair. Mom would have made me a snack and a hot cup of tea, or maybe hot chocolate. I knew I could have hot chocolate when we got to the McBrides’ but it would be me fixing it for all of us. It always tasted better when somebody else made it. Actually, it tasted best when my mom made it.

I looked up. Mom was standing in the window. She was always there, each day, as we passed. I knew she was just worried—she was a worrier by nature—but it still felt as though she was spying on me, like she didn’t trust me. It was embarrassing to have your mommy standing over you, watching and—she waved and smiled. I waved back weakly and gave her a little smile in return.

It was always such a strange thing to just walk past my house as though it didn’t belong to me. I guess after six weeks I should have been getting used to it, but I wasn’t. By January it might be different. Part of me would miss the money, but it would be nice to have my time back again. Time to spend with friends, or do my homework, or just not be responsible for two children. It was only a couple of hours each night, but sometimes the time really dragged. Funny how slowly time moves when you want to be someplace else.

This job sort of fell into my lap. My father runs a garage, and he had fixed Mr. McBride’s car. He’d mentioned to my father that they needed a sitter every night for a couple of hours, from the time school dismissed until he and his wife arrived home, usually around six. It would only be for a few months, until David was older and able to look out for both himself and his sister. My father volunteered me, and when they offered me the job I jumped. I’ve always liked kids. I thought someday I might want to be a teacher. It was good to have my own money. I had my eye on a new record player like Donna’s.

I had to walk them home from school, get them a snack, help Suzie with her homework, and, in the words of Mr. McBride, “try to stop David from doing anything too stupid.” That last one was the real work. He was very creative in finding new and exciting ways to cause me trouble. After six weeks of taking care of him, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to ever have children—at least not boys.

I also tried to straighten up the house a little every night. I’d wash the snack dishes, and the breakfast ones if they hadn’t been done. In all the disorder of a house being constructed I needed to find some order. Once they’d had their snack and Suzie had done her homework, we’d sit on the chesterfield and turn on the television. The McBrides had the biggest television I had ever seen. Not that I’d seen too many—only a few of my friends had one—but their set was huge. It sat on the floor in a big, solid wooden cabinet with four legs. The screen had to be fifteen inches across, and the reception was so much better than on other sets. When the weather was good the picture was so clear that the faces were like you were looking right at the real person. If, that is, the real person was black and white and grey.

There was only one thing wrong with their television. Because their house sat at the bottom of the valley the only signal they could get was the CBC station from Toronto. They couldn’t get either of the Buffalo stations which meant they didn’t get any of the top American shows, as David constantly complained—another lousy thing about living in Weston. For me, one station was better than none, and that’s what I got at home. We didn’t have a television, and I didn’t know if there was one in my immediate future.