Calico Horses and the Patchwork Trail Read online

  “I’m busy,” he said, trying his best to make the red, gooey, stinky stuff disappear.

  “Hurry up,” said Shannon. “I have to use the bathroom and Mom told me to tell you it’s time for dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry.” The nail polish was already hardening on the tiles and the towel no longer absorbed any of it.

  “Mo-om,” Shannon called, “Brian won’t come out of the bathroom and it smells like nail polish.” Jodi put down the plate she was setting on the table and came running. “Brian Thomas Miller—open this door immediately!” she said, pounding on the locked bathroom door. Shannon covered her mouth holding back laughter—she knew Brian was hiding something.

  “Click” went the bathroom door as it swung open wide and Jodi let out such a loud scream that a neighbor walking by stopped to ask Shannon’s dad if anyone needed help.

  Dinner was cut short, Brian was sent to bed, and Shannon headed off on her bike. There were at least two good hours left before sundown and she wanted to scout around for any non-New Jersey license plates, especially any from Ohio. She slowly rode down her street looking right and left.

  “Hi, Shannon,” hollered a young girl named Lizzie.

  “Hi, Lizzie,” called Shannon as she rode by.

  “Wait for me,” Lizzie said as she ran to get her bike. Great, thought Shannon, just what I need—a seven-year-old kid tagging along.

  “I’m pretty busy, Lizzie,” she shouted over her shoulder, riding a little faster.

  Lizzie sped up and caught her as Shannon stopped to cross the street. “Where ya goin’?” asked the younger girl. Shannon looked at the bike decorated in hearts and roses with pink handlebars. Kids, she thought. She herself had a simple green bike without any trappings that could cause teasing from the older kids in the neighborhood.

  “Nowhere,” Shannon said as she began to ride again, this time a little faster. She carefully eyed every car, searching for any license tag that looked out of place.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Lizzie, who was copying Shannon, looking from side to side.

  “Umm,” said Shannon, stalling. “I was just playing a kind of game,” she said as she turned right at the next corner.

  “I like to play games,” said Lizzie, who was sticking close no matter how hard Shannon tried to lose her.

  “It’s a game about cars that are new in the neighborhood,” Shannon explained.

  “Mr. Swanson just got a new car,” said Lizzie, all excited.

  “No, not a new car, a car that is new to the neighborhood,” Shannon told her.

  “I don’t get it,” said Lizzie, trying to keep up.

  Shannon realized she couldn’t get rid of the girl so she slowed her bike and stopped on the sidewalk. “Look Lizzie—I’m playing a big kid’s game about cars from other states and you’re too little to understand,” she said, hoping not to hurt Lizzie’s feelings.

  “Oh,” said Lizzie, looking as if she was about to start crying.

  “How about you just go for a ride with me and I’ll play the game by myself?” Shannon asked, ringing the little flower bell on Lizzie’s bike.

  “Okay!” Lizzie was happy again. Shannon rolled her eyes and started pedaling again in search of unfamiliar cars.

  “We’re getting a new pool,” Lizzie said as she maneuvered a large tree root that had pushed its way up through the sidewalk cracks. Shannon didn’t answer—she was concentrating on every car.

  “My dad and my Uncle Tim, who came to visit, are going to make a deck for it,” Lizzie said, sticking her feet out sideways to avoid getting splashed in a puddle.

  “I’m happy for you, Liz,” Shannon said, trying not to let a pestering little kid distract her from her mission. Just then a German shepherd with its hair raised and head lowered began to move slowly toward them.

  “Rats, it’s Humphrey. Look out!” Shannon shouted as she quickly bump-bumped off the curb to narrowly miss the teeth of the snarling chained dog. Lizzie was right behind her and they rode for a block without a word.

  Some neighborhood kids were having a catch in the street and the two girls stopped to chat with them. They were interrupted by the jingle-jangled tunes of a nearby ice cream truck. The off-key song sent kids scrambling to beg their parents for loose change. Shannon couldn’t be bothered with ice cream. Detectives had to finish their work before enjoying dessert so she slowly pedaled away. Lizzie seemed to hesitate between tagging along with the cool ten-year-old or scurrying home for a quick shake of her piggy bank and the reward of an ice cream sandwich. Following the cool kid won out and with pigtails flying behind her she rode by Shannon’s side. Shannon decided this was as far as she was allowed to venture from her block and turned her trusty green bike toward home. Maybe she was wrong and it wasn’t those mean kids from the Ocean City beach who were doing all the creepy things in her yard.

  As they neared the place where Lizzie had joined her she turned to say goodbye. Lizzie’s face seemed to take on a look of fright and Shannon slowed her bike to a halt. “What’s the matter,” she asked. “Are you okay?”

  The little girl fought back tears as she stood there straddling her pink bike decorated with hearts and flowers. “Thanks, Shannon,” she said. “Thanks for playing with me and letting me hang out with you.”

  “Its okay, Lizzie,” Shannon replied, wondering what all the tears were about. After all, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

  “It’s just that I don’t want to go home,” Lizzie said, pointing to her house that looked perfectly normal to Shannon with its clipped azaleas and rows of salmon-colored impatiens that lined the flowerbeds. Suddenly, she saw a familiar girl step out through Lizzie’s front door. The girl flopped down onto the porch swing and began to rock back and forth. “If it isn’t Grizzly Lizzie,” she taunted, “and look who she’s with—her friend, Smelly Pig’s Feet Shannon.”

  Shannon was horrified. It was the same girl she had seen poking a stick into the horseshoe crab on the beach. Sure enough, there was the car bearing an Ohio license plate sitting in Lizzie’s driveway. She turned to look at the whimpering seven-year-old. “Who’s that girl?” Shannon whispered, wondering how the bully knew her name.

  “It’s my cousin, Karen, and she’s here for the summer,” Lizzie replied. And with that Lizzie dropped her bike and ran into the back of her house sobbing.

  Chapter 33

  Flannel walked straight into Milla’s bedroom and flopped down as if she owned the place. It felt odd, but sensing how comfortable her dog was somehow made Carrie a bit jealous. She realized she should probably let go of her possessive attitude. After all, the Spencers had cared for the collie when a dog-sitting arrangement had fallen through. It was true she had been pretty angry at first, but now she realized she owed them her gratitude, especially Milla, to whom she had been rude a few days ago. All of that seemed unimportant as the girls waited anxiously for any news of Hope.

  “I’m starving,” Milla said. “Mrs. Adams cooked me eggs and I almost gagged.” Carrie knew all about Mrs. Adams, as Milla had filled her in. The fact that a monster of a kid named Foot was a part of the ordeal just added to its awfulness. Carrie was hungry, too, and hoped Milla would offer something un-vegetarian, which would be a welcome break from her mom’s kitchen. She looked at the framed photos on the mantle over the fireplace and picked up an old black-and-white photo of a woman sitting with a baby on her lap. She wondered if the photo was Milla’s mom who had passed away. Milla walked up behind her holding out a box of granola bars.

  “That’s my grandma holding my dad,” Milla said. “I love that photo. Look at his hair sticking up,” she laughed. Carrie examined another photo of a woman standing beside a horse. The photo was faded and the woman looked as if she was squinting against a bright sun.

  “That’s my mom and her horse, Freckles,” Milla explained. “My dad said she loved that horse almost as much as me.

  “Where do you keep Freckles?” asked Carrie. “At your dad’s work?”

&n
bsp; “No. Freckles died,” sighed Milla. “It feels like everyone in my family is gone except Dad and me.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Carrie said. “I didn’t know.”

  “No biggy,” Milla said as she turned to the kitchen to get a drink. “Want some milk?”

  Carrie wasn’t sure if she should ask Milla any more questions about her family. She told Milla all about her parents’ breakup and how angry she felt. Milla listened quietly and just nodded. She was easy to talk to, thought Carrie, glad she didn’t ask for any details.

  “I never had any grandparents except my grandma, who died last summer. I always wished I could have met my grandfathers. Do you have any grandparents?” asked Milla.

  “Yeah, I have my Grandmom and Grandpa Rose in New Jersey and then there’s my dad’s mom who I hardly ever see because she lives in South Carolina. I know all about the Rose family because my mom and I traced them back to 1736.”

  “What do you mean ‘traced them back?’”

  “We do research online and in libraries to find information about our ancestors in our family tree,” Carrie told her new friend. “We even stopped off in Salt Lake City on our way here. We visited a cool ancestry library that has tons of information, but they really didn’t have anything new on the Rose family.”

  Family tree, thought Milla. What had Grandma told me about our family tree? If there was anything about ancestry it would be in the chest in her Dad’s room.

  “Come on,” she said to Carrie. “I think there’s something about my family tree in that old trunk in my dad’s room. My grandma showed it to me once.” The two girls opened the cedar chest and started digging through papers. There were boxes of family photos and some old documents that looked like information about property and titles of cars. There were a few fragile, yellowed birth certificates. Milla kept digging as Carrie read the birth certificates, smoothing out the wrinkles and trying not to damage them.

  “Jacqueline Millicent Bradey. Oh, this certificate is so beautiful. Look at the delicate artwork,” she said, holding it up for Milla.

  “That’s my grandma’s birth certificate. I was named after her. That’s my name—Millicent—only everyone calls me Milla.” The girls continued looking into every folder and envelope. Milla pulled out a large album and opened the front cover. “Here it is! I remember my grandma showing me this. This is what she called a family bible. See, it says Spencer Family Bible right here,” Milla said, pointing to the elaborate hand lettering on the first page.

  “I know about these,” Carrie said. “They’re like finding gold because they have stuff inside that researchers can’t find in libraries.”

  “Let’s put all this stuff away so my dad doesn’t flip out. We can take this album out to the kitchen where we can see it better in the light.” The girls did their best to put everything back into the trunk, but when they tried to close the lid, it wouldn’t shut. Milla tried rearranging things, but it only made it worse and the lid stuck up higher. She picked up a blanket that was folded on a chair and draped it over the chest. “There,” she said, “He won’t notice a thing.”

  As the girls walked back toward the kitchen, Carrie stopped abruptly. She hadn’t noticed them before, but on the wall in Milla’s room were beautiful paintings of Flannel. She stood there, amazed at the artwork. There were a few rough pencil sketches of the dog that were also lying on Milla’s dresser. She turned to look at her new friend. “Did you do these?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Milla said, as she hurried back into the room, quickly turning some of the drawings over. “I was sort of, um, fooling around.”

  “I didn’t know you were such a good artist. These are wonderful!” She pointed to a watercolor of Flannel lying on a colorful coiled-rag rug with her head tucked between her paws. “Oh, Milla, can I please have this one?”

  “Sure,” Milla said, unfastening the thumbtacks from the corked board. “I wasn’t sure if you would even like them.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m so impressed! I never knew anyone who could paint or draw like this. My mom is gonna love this one, but she’s not gettin’ it, no way. It’s going up in my room, not hers,” she said, smiling at Milla.

  No one except her grandma—and sometimes her dad and art teacher—had ever admired her work. This praise coming from the remarkable girl who could train dogs made Milla feel extra special. Just then the phone rang and the girls raced to see if it was news about Hope, but it was only Milla’s dad. Work was finished and he was on his way home with a bucket of fried chicken.

  The girls opened the family bible and began to look at the notes scribbled throughout the pages. There were names and dates and even little scraps of inserted papers with information about marriages and births. These tidbits were obviously meant to be added to the tree later. Some old photos with writing on the back were loosely tucked in between some of the pages.

  “Wow, there’s a lot of information here, Milla,” said Carrie. “Did you know that your dad’s father was a railroad worker?”

  “Yes, my grandma told me all about him. He died way before I was born.”

  “There isn’t much information about your dad’s father but a lot on your dad’s mother’s side, see?” Carrie said, pointing to some notes that had been recorded on the family tree.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s a big mystery. My dad always wanted to know about the Spencers but his father never told him too much. My great-grandfather abandoned his wife and kids and nobody really spoke about him. Grandma told me that my dad even tried to find stuff at the library, but he never really got too far.”

  Carrie looked closely at the inscriptions and noticed that the handwriting didn’t match. The bible had been handed down through the generations and had been carefully recorded by different members of the family. It was exactly like looking at a roadmap of Milla’s relatives, only with a huge detour—the missing information of Devon Spencer’s grandfather.

  “Where’s your computer?” Carrie asked.

  “Over there on the desk. Do you think we can find stuff out about my dad’s family?” asked Milla.

  Before Carrie could reply, Devon opened the front door and hollered, “Dinner!” He was carrying several steamy bags of fast food and looked like he was dancing as he tried to avoid tripping over Flannel, who raced to meet him. Ah, non-vegetarian, thought Carrie, pulling herself away from the computer. It smelled delicious and the mystery of the Spencer Family Bible was soon forgotten as they dashed into the kitchen where dogs and chickens danced.

  Chapter 34

  Devon Spencer thought about the call he received just before leaving work—how the little foal Hope would probably not make it through the night. Anne was going to nurse the animal but it was a sad hard fact that foals separated from their mothers had the odds stacked against them. He knew Milla and Carrie were sitting by the phone and had decided to distract them with food and maybe a game or two of cards.

  The girls were happy—even giddy, he thought. He pulled into his driveway and shut off the engine. The house seemed quiet and he wondered how the two were getting along. There was a tension that had been growing between him and his daughter regarding her stay with Mrs. Adams, as well as Milla’s constant begging for a pet. She had asked him for a puppy ever since she could talk. The life of a BLM manager didn’t leave much time for raising daughters, let alone puppies. Meeting Carrie and her collie seemed to increase her desire for a dog. He looked at the flyer about the horse and art camp Anne had given the girls. He tucked it between his teeth, grabbed the bags of hot steamy fast food, and was greeted by two squealing hungry girls.

  Devon noticed the difference in Milla’s attitude and was relieved. She seemed more relaxed and was quite chatty. Flannel was lying under the table between them, ready to catch a fry that might happen to drop her way. Devon grinned when Carrie showed Milla how to dip her fries into her milkshake, something his daughter would never have dared before. Milla teased Carrie about referring to her glass of pop as soda and the two of th
em shared examples of the language differences of New Jersey vs. Nevada.

  He wanted to catch up on the news so he left the two of them giggling in the kitchen and moved into his easy chair in front of the TV. Flannel joined him and he stroked her softly along her back. She laid her head on his lap and looked up with big eyes. “Don’t you start now,” he said. The dog sent him a look as if saying, Don’t you want a dog of your own, too? He clicked on the TV and saw footage of a helicopter chasing wild mustangs into a netted enclosure. He quickly switched the channel—he really needed a break from work. He waded through stations showing forensic crime dramas, cooking shows, and a few science fiction movies before he gave up and just clicked it off. What a waste of money, he thought, tossing the clicker aside. He noticed the large album lying on the table and reached over and opened it. The first page read, “The Spencer Family Bible.”

  “Hey, Milla, did you get this out?” he asked. “I hope you weren’t digging through my personal things,” he warned.

  “I was just looking at stuff Grandma showed me. Carrie’s an ancestry expert and she was helping me trace my roots,” Milla explained. Carrie shot her a look of disbelief and Milla quickly put a finger to her mouth to silence her. The last thing she needed now was her dad spazzing out over her curiosity.

  Devon looked at Carrie. “I thought you were only a dog expert. How did you become an ancestry expert?”

  “I’m not really an expert. My mom’s been doing research since I was a baby and now she’s got me hooked. We’ve traced our roots back to 1736, to a man named Winston F. Rose. He’s my oldest relative and we call him our brick wall.”