Looking at the Moon (10 page)

“Aunt Mary?” breathed Norah.

“No—Enid. And her mother.” A small girl in a frilly dress was standing on the edge of the group, licking an ice cream cone while her mother bent over her and wiped her chin.

“Don't let them see us!” Norah grabbed each of them by the hand and headed back around the corner.

“I'm hungry!” complained Sally. “Couldn't we get some ice cream too?”

“Not yet,” said Norah. She looked at her watch. “If we haven't found Aunt Mary by four-thirty we'll take the boat into town and get some.”

They strolled back and forth aimlessly, avoiding the croquet game. Norah was just beginning to get up the courage to venture into the hotel itself when Gavin called
“Look!”

“Shhh!” Norah pressed her hand over his mouth as a woman turned around at his voice. “Stay calm—sit down on the grass and don't turn your head. Did you really see her?”

Gavin nodded and leaned over to whisper into her ear. “She's out on the lake! In a boat! Left of the boathouse—I saw her yellow hat.”

Carefully Norah raised her eyes. Sure enough, Aunt Mary was in the bow of a red canoe, her back to them. And someone was with her—a stocky man who steered awkwardly, making the canoe go in a wavering line.

“Good for you, Gavin! Okay, be as quiet as mice—we'll follow the canoe from the shore.”

They ran lightly down to the lake and slunk along the shoreline behind the screen of trees. The canoe was far enough out that they wouldn't be seen. Soon it rounded a promontory ahead of them.

“Be
very
quiet,” warned Norah. “We don't know how close it'll be to the shore on the other side.” They got on their stomachs and slithered over the rocks until they could peek over.

The canoe had turned in to a tiny cove below them.
The man hauled it up on the beach, then held out his hand to Aunt Mary. They sat on some rocks, Aunt Mary drawing her legs up under her dress.

Before Norah could stop them, Gavin and Sally had crept through the bushes to get closer. She joined them reluctantly. Suddenly it felt wrong to spy on Aunt Mary like this. Whoever this man was, it wasn't their business. She imagined her guardian's hurt face if she caught them.

“Let's go,” she whispered to the others when she reached them. “We've seen enough.”

“Not yet,” entreated Gavin, digging out his notebook. “I need to describe him.”

Norah fidgeted while he looked and scribbled. Aunt Mary and the stranger were talking intently to each other, their voices too far away to be heard. But Aunt Mary's frequent laughter floated up to them. The man looked as old as she was; he took off his hat and his white hair caught the light. At least they were both facing the lake, not the trees.

After what seemed like an eternity, the couple got into the canoe again and the three detectives trailed them back to the hotel dock. They hid behind the boathouse as the canoe arrived. Now they could hear every word.

“Just look at the time! I must get back to town before Mr. Hancock comes. Goodbye, Tom. I've had a lovely afternoon.”

“Goodbye, then, Mary. I'll see you on Friday at three.” The man lifted his hat as Aunt Mary hurried past the boathouse.

“Who
is
he?” whispered Sally.

“Not yet!” hissed Norah. “No talking until we get out of here. Wait until he's gone too.” The man finished tying up the canoe and went up the path. When he reached the hotel, they got into their own boat.

Gavin whipped out his notebook, but Norah clapped her hand over his. “Don't write anything!” she ordered. “As soon as we get back to Gairloch we'll have a meeting.”

“But aren't we going to have any ice cream?” asked Sally.

“No!” said Norah fiercely. “We're going straight back before Mr. Hancock comes. But you can say you had ice cream if your mother asks you what you did.”

“That's not fair—” began Sally, but the engine revved and Norah drove back to the island as fast as she could.

“T
HIS CASE
didn't turn out to be very interesting,” said Gavin, back in the playhouse. An indignant Peter and Ross had been shooed out of it. “All she does is visit that man. But wasn't it exciting when we were following the canoe?”

“Is he her
boy friend
?” giggled Sally. “Aunt Mary's too old to have a boy friend!”

Norah's thoughts raced. “Of course she is,” she agreed. “He's probably just a friend of the family.”

“So why does she keep it a secret?” persisted Sally.

“Uhh … maybe he's someone Aunt Florence doesn't like. You know how many people she disapproves of.”

“Like Bernard,” said Gavin. “Bernard is our friend in Toronto,” he explained to Sally. “When Norah first knew
him she had to meet him secretly—even I didn't know. She doesn't have to do that any more, but Aunt Florence still doesn't like him much. She's always telling me how ‘unsuitable' Bernard is because his mother's a cleaning woman.”

“And if you'd
known
that I was meeting him, you wouldn't have told Aunt Florence, would you?” Norah asked him.

“Of course not!”

“Well, this is the same situation. Aunt Mary obviously wants to keep her visits a secret—but now
we
know. So we have to keep it a secret too. Do you understand? We can't tell anyone, or we'll get her into trouble with Aunt Florence. I don't even want you to write it down in your casebook, Gavin.”

“But—” Gavin looked deflated, but then he sighed and said, “Okay, Norah, I won't.”

“But can't we tell Peter and Ross?” asked Sally. “They're waiting to hear what happened!”

Norah knew they'd tell them anyway. “All right … but no one else! You've solved the case and you did it very well, but we found out something we shouldn't have known—and we don't want to hurt Aunt Mary, right?”

They nodded solemnly. Norah made them each say cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die. Then she left them and climbed up to her rock.

She stretched out on her stomach, trying to absorb all they'd seen. Aunt Mary's secret was probably safe. To the Fearless Four, everyone except herself was an Elder and therefore not to be trusted.

But what did the secret mean? Of course the man
was
Aunt Mary's “boy friend.” Norah had known that at once from the tender way they had looked at each other. Now she recognized in Aunt Mary the same symptoms she possessed herself.

Most important of all—his name was Tom! That meant he was
Thomas,
Aunt Mary's long-ago love, who had somehow come back into her life. He must be visiting from the prairies, just so he could see Aunt Mary.

No wonder she'd wanted to talk about Thomas with Norah that night! It was the same reason that Norah was always trying to casually introduce Andrew's name into conversations. Norah wished Aunt Mary had told her she was seeing him again, but she was probably afraid to reveal that even to Norah.

She glanced at Aunt Mary all evening and pressed up against her when Aunt Florence was reading. Aunt Mary smiled and squeezed her shoulder.

Surely she would soon have the courage to tell her mother—and this time she wouldn't give in. Then she would marry Tom and live happily ever after—just like all the songs and movies.

Norah's own love was far more insecure, especially since so much of it had to wait until she was older. She gazed at Andrew, who looked lost in a daydream as he stared at the fire. It was wonderful that she could talk to him again, but even that was no longer enough. He thought of her the same way he thought of Janet or Flo.

She knew what she had to do. She had to
tell
him, to reveal her feelings. Then he would realize that he loved her too and he would wait for her until she was old enough to marry him.

None of the songs or movies said how loving someone required all these difficult tasks.

9

Stormy Weather

N
orah and Janet sat together on the dock, listening to Clare's mother rant at her. Her furious voice drifted out of the open window of the Girls' Dorm. She had appeared there after breakfast and grimly ordered everyone out so she and Clare could have a “talk.”

“You are completely irresponsible, Clare! How could you possibly forget them?”

“I just did,” said Clare sullenly. “I didn't want to take them anyway—they talked me into it. They should have noticed when I was leaving.”

Yesterday Clare had taken her brothers with her when she drove the
Putt-Putt
to visit her friend Louise on Cliff Island. The little boys had gone off to play on the rocks and Clare, forgetting all about them, had returned alone. Louise's father had had to bring back Peter and Ross, tearful and scared; Ross had scraped his knee badly.

Clare's mother, who'd been visiting some friends on one of the other lakes for a few days, had arrived back very late herself and only heard about the mishap this morning.

Norah and Janet glanced at each other uneasily as Aunt Mar's voice grew more shrill. They shouldn't be eavesdropping, but they couldn't resist hearing Clare get into trouble.

“Clare Drummond, you are fifteen years old, not a child! If your father was here he'd be very disappointed in you. Why can't you be more like Norah? She takes such good care of Gavin.”

“Oh,
Norah,
” said Clare scornfully. “I'm sick of hearing about perfect Norah. Just because she's a war guest she gets treated differently. Not like me. This family is so mean to me…,” she howled.

Janet rolled her eyes. “What a baby,” she whispered. “Don't worry, Norah, she didn't mean it.”

Norah knew she did, but she tried to tell herself she didn't care.

“You're grounded for a week,” Aunt Mar was saying. “That means not leaving the island at all—not by yourself or with anyone else.”

“That's not
fair
! I didn't mean to leave them, I just forgot!” But her mother was already gone, not even noticing Norah and Janet as she marched past them up the steps.

“Well, I'm not going to stay out here all morning,” said Janet. “I was in the middle of painting my toenails.”

They ventured into the boathouse again, pretending to ignore Clare, crumpled up on her bed and sobbing into her pillow. “Everyone picks on me,” she wailed. “It's not
fair
…”

Janet put on “In the Blue of the Evening” and hummed along.

“Turn that off! I don't feel like listening to records!” Clare hurled her pillow towards Janet and it landed on the record, sending the needle screeching across it.

“
Now
look what you've done! You've ruined it!” Janet snatched up the record, examined the ugly scratch, then threw it down and dashed out the door.

“That was really mean,” said Norah. “It was her favourite.”

“Oh you shut up! It's none of your business, Norah Stoakes—you're not part of this family. You should be grateful that we took you in. And another thing, Norah—I've noticed how you follow Andrew around. You may as well give up. You're not nearly good enough for him. Anyway, you're only thirteen—it looks ridiculous for someone your age to go mooning after a nineteen-year-old.”

Norah was speechless. She almost jumped on Clare and pulled her hair. Last summer she would have. But now she just wanted to get away from her.

“You—you are
despicable
!” she hissed. She ran out even faster than Janet had and didn't stop until she collapsed on her rock.

Clare knew about Andrew! Would she tell Janet and Flo? Worse, would she tell Andrew? Did
everyone
know? Were they all laughing at her?

Norah sat up and hugged her knees against her sweaty blouse. If only it were last summer, when her life
at Gairloch was so simple. She almost wished she could cast off her feelings for Andrew. But she couldn't—it was as if she had an incurable disease.

And she hardly even saw Andrew these days, which made her long for him all the more. He'd been spending all his time with a family on the mainland. Janet told her they were the brothers and sister of a boy he'd been very close to who was now in the air force. Jamie and Lois and Dick Mitchell, his friends were called. Norah smouldered with jealousy every time she heard their names.

T
WO HOURS LATER
Norah sat listlessly on the dock with her fishing rod. She'd had a long swim but she was already hot again. Thunder rumbled in the distance; a storm was holding its breath but couldn't let it out.

“Any luck, Norah?” Aunt Catherine stood behind her, holding her knitting and fanning her face with her hand. “I thought I'd come down and sit by the water to see if I could catch a breeze. I certainly wish the weather would break. Just listen to those cicadas buzz! They're always especially loud before a storm.”

Norah didn't tell her that her hook wasn't even baited. She tried to smile at Aunt Catherine but could only manage a shrug.

Aunt Catherine pulled one of the heavy wooden chairs up beside her. “You look rather seedy, Norah. I hope you're not coming down with anything. Do you feel all right?”

“Mmmm,” said Norah, trying to control her irritation. It wasn't like Aunt Catherine to be this nosy.

“Everyone seems to be under the weather today,” continued the old lady. “‘Under the weather'—that's a very appropriate phrase when you think of it, as if the weather held us all squirming under its thumb. Mar is upset with Clare—and I must say, that child gets more impossible all the time. Dorothy told Mar that she shouldn't have been away so long—now Mar isn't speaking to her. Florence and Bea are having the most absurd argument over how to pronounce ‘forsythia.' And Mary seems to be off on a cloud. She forgot it was her turn to help with the children's breakfast, which is quite uncharacteristic. What a family … Sometimes I'm glad I'm not really part of it. Aren't you?”