“We have to go back,” said her father. “We have to return at the regular Saturday-afternoon time. We have to act normal, natural, unconcerned.”
Flora wanted to object, but she could read the writing on the wall, or rather she could read the words that hovered above her and her father and the squirrel.
DESTINY COULD NO LONGER BE FORESTALLED!
THE ARCH-NEMESIS MUST BE FACED!
“Holy bagumba,” said her father. His right ear was wrapped in a huge amount of gauze. His head looked lopsided. “Holy unanticipated occurrences! A squirrel vanquished a cat.” He shook his head. He smiled.
“And now it’s time for another battle,” said Flora.
“Everything will be fine,” said her father.
“So you say,” said Flora.
It started to rain.
Ulysses pulled his head back inside the car. He looked up at Flora, and the sight of his little whiskered face calmed her somehow. She smiled at him, and the squirrel sighed happily and curled up in her lap.
“When I was a girl in Blundermeecen,” Dr. Meescham had said to Flora when they were all leaving apartment 267, “we wondered always if we would see each other again. Each day was uncertain. So, to say good-bye to someone was uncertain, too. Would you see them again? Who could say? Blundermeecen was a place of dark secrets, unmarked graves, terrible curses. Trolls were everywhere! So we said good-bye to each other the best way we could. We said: I promise to always turn back toward you.
“I say those words to you now, Flora Belle. I promise to always turn back toward you. And now you must say them to me.”
“I promise to always turn back toward you,” Flora had said.
She whispered the words again, now, to the squirrel. “I promise to always turn back toward you.”
She put a finger on Ulysses’s chest. His tiny heart was beating out a message that felt like I promise, I promise, I promise.
Hearts were the strangest things.
“Pop?” said Flora.
“Yes,” said her father.
“Can I feel your heart?”
“My heart?” said her father. “Okay. Sure.”
And then, for the first time ever, George Buckman took both his hands off the steering wheel while the car was in motion. He opened his arms wide. Flora gently moved Ulysses out of her lap and onto the seat beside her, and then she reached up and across and put her hand on the left side of her father’s chest.
And she felt it. Her father’s heart, beating there inside of him. It felt very certain, very strong, and very large. Just like Dr. Meescham had said: capacious.
“Thank you,” she told him.
“Sure,” he said. “You bet.”
He put his hands back on the steering wheel at ten o’clock and two, and the three of them — Flora, her father, and the squirrel — traveled the rest of the way home in a strange and peaceful silence.
The only noise was from the windshield wipers; they hummed back and forth, and back and forth, singing a sweet, out-of-tune song.
The squirrel slept.
And Flora Belle Buckman was happy.
Her father pulled the car into the driveway and cut the engine. The windshield wipers let out a surprised squeak and then froze in midwave. The rain slowed to a trickle. The sun came out from behind a cloud and then disappeared again, and the smell of ketchup melded with butterscotch rose with a gentle persistence from the seats of the car.
“Here we are,” said her father.
“Yep,” said Flora. “Here we are.”
412 Bellegrade Avenue.
It was the house that Flora had lived in for the whole of her life.
But something was different about it; something had changed.
What was it?
Ulysses crawled up onto her shoulder. She put her hand on him.
The house looked sneaky somehow, almost as if it were up to no good.
Foreboding.
That was the word that popped into Flora’s head.
The house seemed full of foreboding.
“Do inanimate objects (couches, chairs, spatulas, etc.) absorb the energy of the criminals, the wrongdoers among whom they live?” The Criminal Element had queried in a recent issue.
“It is, of course, entirely unscientific to assume such a thing. But still, we are forced to admit that in this woeful world, there exist objects with an almost palpable energy of menace . . . spatulas that seem cursed, couches that contain literal and metaphorical stains of the past, houses that seem to perpetually groan and moan for the sins contained in their environs. Can we explain this? No. Do we understand this? We do not. Do we know that criminals exist? We do. We are also terribly (and unfortunately) certain that the criminal element will be Forever Among Us.”
And the arch-nemesis, thought Flora, the arch-nemesis will be forever among us, too. Ulysses’s arch-nemesis is in that house right now.
“Do you remember the Darkness of 10,000 Hands?” Flora said to her father.
“Yep,” said her father. “He wields 10,000 hands of anger, greed, and revenge. He is the sworn enemy of Incandesto.”
“He’s Incandesto’s arch-nemesis,” said Flora.
“Right,” said her father. “I tell you what. The Darkness of 10,000 Hands better stay away from our squirrel.”
He honked the horn.
“Home the warrior!” he shouted. “Home the cat-conquering, superhero squirrel!”
Ulysses puffed out his chest.
“Let’s go,” Flora said. “We have to do it. We have to face the arch-nemesis.”
“Right!” said her father. “Bravely forward!”
And he honked the horn again.
They walked into the house, and the little shepherdess was waiting for them. She was standing where she always stood: the lamb at her feet, the tiny globe above her head, and a look on her face that said, I know something you don’t know.
Flora’s father took off his hat and bowed to the lamp. “George Buckman,” he said. “How do you do?”
“Hello?” Flora shouted into the silence of the house.
From the kitchen came the sound of laughter.
“Mom?” said Flora.
No one answered.
Flora’s sense of foreboding deepened, expanded.
And then her mother spoke.
She said, “That’s absolutely right, William.”
William?
William?
There was only one William that Flora knew. What would he be doing in the kitchen with a known arch-nemesis?
And then came the familiar rattle of the typewriter keys being struck, the thwack of the carriage return being hit.
Ulysses’s grip on her shoulder tightened. He let out a small chirrup of excitement.
Her mother laughed again.
The laughter was followed by the truly terrifying words “Thank you so much, William.”
“Shhh,” said Flora to her father, who was standing, listening, his hat in his hands and a goofy smile on his face. There was a small, round drop of blood on his ear bandage. It looked oddly festive.
“You stay here,” Flora said to him. “Ulysses and I will go and check this out.”
“Right, right,” said her father. “You bet. I’ll stay here.” He put his hat on his head. He nodded.
Flora, superhero on her shoulder, walked quietly, stealthily through the living room and into the dining room and stood before the closed kitchen door. She held herself very still. She made herself into a Giant Ear.
She was getting extremely good at making herself into a Giant Ear.