The Penderwicks in Spring Read online

  ALSO BY JEANNE BIRDSALL

  The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy

  The Penderwicks on Gardam Street

  The Penderwicks at Point Mouette

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2015 by Jeanne Birdsall

  Jacket art and interior illustrations copyright © 2015 by David Frankland

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Birdsall, Jeanne.

  The Penderwicks in spring / Jeanne Birdsall. — First edition.

  p. cm. — (The Penderwicks)

  Sequel to: The Penderwicks at Point Mouette.

  Summary: As spring arrives on Gardam Street, there are surprises in store for each Penderwick, from neighbor Nick Geiger’s return from the war to Batty’s new dog-walking business, but her plans to use her profits to surprise her family on her eleventh birthday go astray.

  ISBN 978-0-375-87077-4 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-375-97077-1 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-307-97459-4 (ebook)

  [1. Family life—Massachusetts—Fiction. 2. Surprise—Fiction. 3. Moneymaking projects—Fiction. 4. Birthdays—Fiction. 5. Singing—Fiction. 6. Single-parent families—Fiction. 7. Massachusetts—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B51197Pei 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014023537

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Elliot

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  ONE Spring

  TWO Death of a Car

  THREE A Rock and Bach

  FOUR Chasing Rainbows

  FIVE Abandoned

  SIX PWTW

  SEVEN Duchess

  EIGHT Duets

  NINE Cilantro?

  TEN Spring Takes a Holiday

  ELEVEN Ninja Moves

  TWELVE Bribery

  THIRTEEN Dr. Who and Bunny Foo Foo

  FOURTEEN Still Life with Peacock Feather

  FIFTEEN Into the Woods

  SIXTEEN Dreaming

  SEVENTEEN Silence

  EIGHTEEN Beethoven

  NINETEEN Bus Stop

  TWENTY The MOOPSAB

  TWENTY-ONE The Secret Comes Out

  TWENTY-TWO Another Birthday

  TWENTY-THREE One More Gift

  CODA The Following Spring

  About the Author

  ONLY ONE LOW MOUND of snow still lurked in Batty Penderwick’s yard, under the big oak tree out back, and soon that would be gone if Batty continued to stomp on it with such determination.

  “Spring can’t get here until the snow’s all melted,” she explained to her brother, Ben, who was celebrating the end of winter in his own way, by digging in the dirt for rocks. Rocks were his passion.

  “Ms. Lambert said that spring came in March.” Ben was in second grade and still believed everything his teacher told him. “It’s April now.”

  “Officially spring came in March, but it can’t really be here unless the snow is gone and the daffodils are in bloom. Dad said so.” Having made it all the way to fifth grade, Batty had learned to be wary of teachers, but her father was much more trustworthy. “And since one of Mrs. Geiger’s daffodils bloomed yesterday, if I can just get rid of—”

  She was interrupted by a clunk—Ben’s shovel had struck metal.

  “Gold!” he cried.

  Batty looked up from her stomping, but before she could explain the unlikelihood of finding gold in their yard, she caught a flash of red in an upper window of the house.

  “Duck and cover!” she cried to Ben.

  He didn’t need to be told twice. He threw himself against the house and crouched, out of sight of that window. And just in time, too. The flash of red had resolved itself into a wild mop of curls atop a little girl, her nose pressed against the screen. This was two-year-old Lydia, the youngest of the Penderwick family, who was supposed to be napping. Recently she’d discovered that by standing on a pile of the toys in her crib, she could get a better view of the world. The family verdict was that it wouldn’t be long before she figured out how to climb out of the crib altogether.

  Lydia, so cherubic up there in her window, now roared like a furious foghorn. “BEN!”

  Batty called up to her. “Go back to sleep, Lydia.”

  “Lydia is done,” came the reply.

  “No, you’re not done, because nap time isn’t over for another fifteen minutes.”

  Wobbling atop her precarious pile, Lydia pondered this, then went back to her original thought. “BEN!”

  In his hiding place, Ben was whispering no, no, no at Batty. She sympathized. Lydia loved everyone she’d encountered in her short life—never had a Penderwick been so pleased with the human race—but she loved Ben most of all. This was a burden no boy should have to bear.

  And, too, it was important that Lydia not get her own way all the time. Batty shook her head at the window and said, “Ben is busy, and you have to rest some more.”

  “But—” Mid-protest, Lydia fell off her pile of toys and disappeared from sight.

  “Is she gone?” asked Ben.

  “I think so. Stay where you are for a minute, just in case she pops up again.”

  Lydia was the most recent addition to the Penderwick family, bringing the total to eight. For the first half of Batty’s life, there had been only five: Batty, her father, and her three older sisters, Rosalind, Skye, and Jane. Five had been a good number. Then Mr. Penderwick had married Ben’s mother, Iantha, making seven, and seven had been an even better number, because everyone was so fond of Ben and Iantha. And now, eight—eight was a lot, especially when the eighth one was Lydia.

  Batty glanced back up at the window. It was still empty, which meant that either Lydia had gone back to sleep or she was rebuilding her pile of toys from scratch. Batty had watched her do it once or twice, and it was no easy project.

  “All clear for now,” she told Ben.

  “Then come see what I’ve found.” He went back to where he’d been digging, scrabbled around with his shovel, and brought to light a flat piece of metal encrusted with rust and dirt. Although his previous non-rock finds had been worthless—a tiny and ancient glass bottle, various chunks of broken plastic, and a ring full of keys that opened nothing—Ben never gave up hope of discovering riches untold.

  “It’s only an old door hinge,” said Batty. “Definitely not gold.”

  “Rats.”

  “Well, it’s not like there were ever pirates burying treasure in western Massachusetts.”

  “I know that.” He plunged his shovel back into the dirt. “Somebody else could have, though, like a banker, and maybe not just gold. Diamonds are possible, or mortgage bond fidelity securities.”

  Batty had a feeling he’d made up mortgage bond fidelity securities. It didn’t matter. There wouldn’t be any of
them in their yard, either. Good thing Ben was so fond of the rocks he did find. And also mud, because he was covered with it now.

  “How did you get mud on your head?” She went at him with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, rubbing off the muck obscuring his hair, the same bright red as Lydia’s.

  “Stop that,” said Ben.

  She gave him one last scrub, made sure Lydia hadn’t reappeared at the window, and went back to stomping on her pile of snow.

  Batty knew why Ben had hoped to find buried wealth among the mud and rocks. While the Penderwicks weren’t poor, money seemed to be tighter these days. The house, full-to-bursting even for seven people, had needed to expand when Lydia arrived, and that had been expensive, and then there’d been a new roof, and now there were years and years of college to pay for. The oldest sister, Rosalind, had already started, and Skye would go next year and Jane the year after. Not to mention the ongoing grocery bills, which Mr. Penderwick—when he thought no children were listening—had said were enormous. Actually, what he’d said was that they were immoderatae, which Batty looked up later in his Latin-English dictionary, knowing what all the Penderwick children learned at an early age: If their father said something incomprehensible, it usually turned out to be Latin. Rosalind had even been inspired to study Latin in school, but so far no one else had gone to that extreme.

  The snow removal was working. Batty had gotten rid of the mushy upper layer and was now working on the colder, denser layer underneath. When this part of the mound proved less vulnerable to stomping, she used a stick to jab and pry at the icy snow until the stick jammed against something hard and snapped into pieces. A vision of buried gold—enough to pay for unlimited groceries—flashed into Batty’s imagination. But it was gone in a second or two. Let second graders have their dreams. A fifth grader would, of course, know it was only a rock. She found a new stick to scrape away the snow. Beneath the snow were wet, rotting leaves. She poked and prodded at them, too, and found—

  It wasn’t a rock. It was a dog’s rubber bone, left behind months ago to be buried first under autumn leaves, then winter snow. Just an old rubber bone, but Batty was already braced for what she knew would come—the rushing in her ears, the stab in her stomach, and the seeping away of the colors from her world. The soft blue spring sky, the yellow forsythia hedge, even Ben’s bright red hair—all dulled, all gray and wretched.

  Batty hid the bone in her pocket and kicked at the leaves and snow to cover up where she’d found it. Whether spring came that day or another hardly seemed to matter anymore. Much more important at this moment was to get upstairs to her room, where she could be alone.

  “Ben,” she said. “I’m going inside.”

  “But I’ve found another good rock.” He was digging with renewed determination.

  “Show it to me later.” She slipped past him, turning away to hide her crumpled face, her fight to keep the tears from coming too soon.

  The only other person at home that afternoon was seventeen-year-old Skye, whose turn it was to make sure none of the younger siblings injured themselves or each other, especially Lydia. Skye, among all the Penderwicks, was the least likely to want to discuss grief or any other emotion, particularly, it seemed, if the emotions were Batty’s, though Batty didn’t know why—it had always been this way.

  But still, she paused in the kitchen, listening, hoping to figure out where Skye was. It didn’t take long.

  “No, no, the random variable x is discrete!”

  Batty peered into the dining room, and yes, there was Skye at the big table, tapping on her computer with one hand and tugging at her blond hair with the other. Skye was the only blond Penderwick, gleaming alone among the redheads—Iantha, Ben, and Lydia—and the brunettes, that is, everyone else. Some of them thought that Skye should treat her golden locks with more respect, but Skye had other ideas, keeping her hair cropped short and, whenever she was thinking hard, pulling and yanking at it until it looked like she’d been through a tornado. This could be a useful barometer for those around her. The messier the hair, the more oblivious its owner, and right now Skye’s hair was going in thirteen different directions. Batty, still holding back her tears, was able to get through the dining room unnoticed and make a break for the stairs.

  The baby gates at both the top and bottom, necessary to protect Lydia from too much adventure, slowed Batty down, but in moments she was upstairs, with only one hurdle left, Lydia, who had the keen hearing of a panther. Cautiously, Batty tiptoed past Lydia’s room, without incident, and now was safe in her own bedroom and scrambling into her closet, her sanctuary. She dug her way toward the back, past stuffed animals, piles of board games and jigsaw puzzles, several plastic buckets full of shells, and an old favorite unicorn blanket, until she reached what she needed, a zippered canvas bag with VALLEY VETERINARY HOSPITAL printed on the front.

  Batty kept a flashlight back there for emergencies, but didn’t need it to see what was inside that bag: a well-worn dog collar and tags, a half-chewed tennis ball, a tuft of rough black hair curled carefully into a tiny pillbox. Now to add the rubber bone Batty had found under the snow and leaves. She wiped it clean with a stray sock, then reverently slid it into the canvas bag. There, done. All that was left of big, black, clumsy, loving Hound Penderwick, the best dog the world had ever known.

  Hugging the bag, Batty curled up and let the tears come. Her father had promised that the hurt, the terrible loneliness, would fade someday, but Hound had been dead for six months and Batty was still struggling to understand a world without him. Her earliest memories were of Hound. She’d heard all the stories about how he’d adopted her when she was a tiny infant newly home from the hospital. Her mother had just died of cancer, her father and older sisters were ripped open with grief—and Hound, who until then had been a goofy young dog with no apparent skills or intelligence, decided to become Batty’s best friend and loyal protector, and he stayed that way as they grew up together, year after happy year. And then last autumn his heart had stopped working properly. The veterinarian said that they just had to care for him and love him, and Batty had loved him, and loved him, and loved him, but it hadn’t been enough. No one in her family had ever said that Hound’s dying was her fault, but she knew the truth. She hadn’t been able to keep him with her, to stop him from leaving her behind.

  Her face now a wet mess, Batty groped around on the floor, hoping to find another sock to use as a handkerchief. Instead, she got hold of a twitching tail attached to a large orange cat.

  “I’m sorry, Asimov,” said Batty. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

  Asimov didn’t immediately accept her apology. As the Penderwicks’ only cat, he considered himself far too fabulous to be overlooked, but at last he honored Batty by snuggling next to her, and while she knew he’d abandon her in a flash at the far-off sound of a can opener, she allowed herself a little comfort, a little lifting of the awful gray.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep Hound alive. I know you miss him, too.”

  Here Batty was being generous. Asimov lived like a Buddhist, in the moment, not bothering with the dead and gone. But it was true that while Hound lived, Asimov had loved him as much as a cat can love.

  “And I know you’re not ready for another dog, either.”

  Asimov narrowed his eyes at her, wishing she would talk less and scratch his head more. Batty sighed, and scratched his head, and missed anew how Hound had understood every word she said. Her dad and Iantha had promised there wouldn’t be a new dog in the family until Batty was ready. But how could she ever be ready? How could she ever trust herself with a dog again? She barely trusted herself anymore with Asimov, who had never even been her particular cat, letting others in the family feed him and make sure he was doing well.

  Too soon her closet was invaded by distant cries from Lydia. “BEN, BEN, BEN!” Batty shut her ears against the noise for as long as she could, in the forlorn hope that Skye would be roused out of her concentration. But the wailing only got lou
der until Batty couldn’t stand it anymore.

  She crawled out of the closet and set off toward Lydia’s room. By the time she got there, the noise was over, but instead of peaceful silence, Batty heard strange little grunts. Suspicious, she pushed open the door to find her little sister in the middle of an escape attempt. Like an ungainly ballerina at her barre, Lydia was balanced with one foot propped up on the crib’s railing and the other on a teetering pile of toys.

  “I can see you,” said Batty.

  Lydia slowly lowered her foot from the railing, then carefully stepped down off the toys, all the while trying to look like doing so was her own idea. When she was once again standing solid, she tossed her head back and forth, making her red cloud of hair sway invitingly.

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel,” she said.

  “No Rapunzels,” Batty replied sternly. They’d had this conversation dozens of times.

  Lydia threw herself down in the crib and closed her eyes. “Snow White is dead. Kiss Snow White, Prince.”

  “No royalty at all. If you want to get out of that crib, stand up and be an American.”

  “Sad Snow White.”

  “I’m ignoring you.”

  While Lydia stuck with being Snow White, Batty looked around the room. It had been hers until the house had expanded. Batty loved her new room, but it still pained her to see the depths to which the old room had been lowered. Frills, ruffles, and princess paraphernalia were everywhere. Even when Batty was Lydia’s age, there had been none of that nonsense. Only stuffed animals and, of course, Hound. At least Batty’s Hound ceiling was still there. It had been one of Iantha’s first projects after marrying Mr. Penderwick, pasting glow-in-the-dark stars up there for Batty in the shape of a real constellation—Canis Major, the Great Dog—and painting an outline of a Hound-shaped dog all around the stars. So that he could watch over her always, Iantha had said. Well, now he was watching over Lydia, thought Batty. He wouldn’t have approved of the frilly stuff, either.

  “No Snow White?” asked Lydia.

  “Nope. Now hang on so I can get you out of there. Legs, too, Lydia.”