Pyewacket the cat hissed at his back—three times.
“Sisters,” said Ginny, “I believe the brinded cat hath hissed thrice.”
“Virginia?” said Hannah, quite sternly. “We are retired. How many times must I remind you?”
“But …”
“Re-tired. To this, we three did agree, did we not?”
“Oh, yes,” said Sophie, a blizzard of white powdered doughnut sugar showering down on her ample bosom. “We did. I remember. We agreed.”
Ginny sighed.
“Of course, Hannah,” she said. “You are correct. We are retired.”
* * *
Birds chirped. Uncle Gus wheezed in the wheelchair. Hannah snapped open her very organized plastic pillbox and prepared to pop her daily regimen of anti-everything medication. Sophie nibbled a chocolate-frosted Pop-Tart. Ginny peeled open her banana and sipped ice water through a straw.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” said Ginny. “You’ll never guess who I exchanged text messages with last week.”
“Text messages?” said Hannah. “What on earth are those?”
“Why, I suppose you could say they are postcards you can read on your telephone.”
“How?” inquired Hannah, tossing her head back to swallow her pills the way a pelican swallows a fish.
“You read the message on the screen.”
“I don’t really like telephones,” said Sophie with a quivering giggle. “They’re a bit like children, aren’t they? Always making noise, always insisting that you answer them immediately.”
The comment saddened Ginny. She and her sisters had never married, never had children. All three were what were once called spinsters.
That was why all three had always doted on their only nephew, Georgie, the son of their brother, James. Of course, Georgie was all grown up now, a very important lawyer in New York City, living in North Chester, Connecticut, the Jennings family’s ancestral home.
Georgie even had a son of his own, a boy named Zachary, whom the aunts had not spent much time with, because his mother, a rather dour woman named Susan, had made it frightfully clear that her husband’s aged aunts were not welcome in the young family’s swanky New York City apartment.
The three sisters had, however, returned to New York after Susan’s untimely death and, more happily, eighteen months later, for George’s second wedding, when he married the lovely and talented Judy Magruder.
Ginny pulled a sleek cell phone out of her purse, swiped her fingers across its glass face, turning it on, and set it down on the table.
A faint smile creased Hannah’s sour lips. “So, tell us, Virginia: How is Georgie?”
“How’s Zack?” asked Sophie, her eyes sparkling like sugared plums. “And Judy? I liked Judy.”
“They’re all fine,” said Ginny.
Suddenly, her cell phone started vibrating.
“Oh, my!” gasped Sophie, fanning her hands, making her upper arms jiggle. “It’s alive!”
“No, Sophie,” said Ginny. “That simply means I have received a new text message.”
She glanced at the screen.
“Oh, dear. I should have turned my phone on earlier! We must fly home to North Chester. Immediately. Georgie needs us!”
“Fly home, Virginia?” said Hannah. “Whatever is the problem?”
“It’s Zachary,” said Ginny, quickly looking around to make certain no one was eavesdropping. “Georgie’s son has—the gift.”
“Oh, dear,” said Hannah.
“Oh me, oh my,” added Sophie, nervously nibbling the sprinkled edge of her second Pop-Tart.
Ginny was about to give them more details when the boorish nephew returned with a sloppy bowl of mush, which he slammed down so hard in front of his wheelchair-bound uncle, chunky gray clumps leapt up and splattered his bathrobe.
“Hah! Look at you, sitting in your high chair, food all over your face. No wonder you need diapers! You’re a big baby!”
Ginny had seen enough.
She placed her banana peel on the table and plucked the plastic straw out of her water glass.
“Sisters?” she said, angrily arching an eyebrow.
“We three agree,” said Hannah and Sophie.
Ginny held up the straw as if it were a conductor’s baton she meant to fling at the oafish young man.
But she didn’t.
Because at that very instant, the baboon seemed to slip on something very slick, very wet.
Why, it was almost as if he had stepped on a banana peel.
He lost his footing and, arms whirling, fell into the swimming pool.
Ginny smiled.
So did her two sisters.
So did Uncle Gus in the wheelchair.
“I believe our work here is done,” said Ginny, plopping the plastic straw back into her water glass. “Shall we go upstairs and pack?”
“Oh, yes,” said Sophie.
“Indeed,” added Hannah.
The three sisters walked over to the elderly man left stranded in his wheelchair.
“Would you like us to take you up to your room, Augustus?” offered Hannah.
“Thank you. How very kind of you.”
Then the three Jennings sisters, with Hannah piloting the wheelchair, left the poolside patio, ignoring the frantic pleas of the young brute flailing about in the water so violently, he would probably slosh it all out before he remembered he knew how to swim.
Early Saturday, two days before Halloween, Zack; his stepmom, Judy; and his two best friends from school, Malik Sherman and Azalea Torres, piled into Judy’s car and headed out to pick pumpkins at Paproski’s Pumpkin Patch, a farm a few miles south of North Chester.
They took Zipper, too, because pumpkin picking was an outdoor activity. But Zack would need to make sure that Zip didn’t pee on somebody else’s just-picked pumpkin.
Zack’s father would’ve joined them for pumpkin picking, but even though it was Saturday, he was extremely busy managing the affairs of the Pettimore Charitable Trust, which, thanks to Zack and Malik, had just inherited a ton of gold. Literally. The boys had found more than two thousand pounds of solid gold bars hidden underneath their middle school.
Malik and a school janitor named Wade Muggins, who kind of sort of accidentally helped discover the gold, were supposed to receive big rewards. Malik would use his share to help his mother pay her colossal medical bills. Mr. Muggins would probably use his to buy an electric guitar and several cowbells.
“Here we go, guys,” said Judy as the car bumped down a gravel road toward the field where pumpkin pickers parked. Zack could see acres of wilted greenery spotted with bright orange balls. Hay bales, some with comical scarecrows squatting on top, lined paths to wagon rides, an apple cider stand, and a corn maze—what Paproski’s Pumpkin Patch called the Amazing Haunted Maize Maze.
“Did you know that the tradition of carving gourds into lanterns dates back thousands of years to Africa?” said Malik, who was African American and quite proud of his heritage. He was also the smartest kid in Zack’s sixth-grade class.
“So why do they call them Jack O’Lanterns?” asked Azalea, who had stopped doing her total Goth look but had maintained much of her Goth ’tude. “Were Jack and the beanstalk from Africa, too?”
“Doubtful,” said Malik. “The term ‘jack-o’-lantern’ comes from the phenomenon of strange lights flickering over the Irish peat bogs, called ignis fatuus or jack-o’-lantem.”
“Irish, huh?” said Azalea. “No wonder his last name is O’Lantern.”
“Indeed,” said Malik, who sometimes talked like a walking Wikipedia. “Throughout Ireland and Britain, there is a long tradition of carving lanterns from vegetables. Particularly the turnip and mangel-wurzel.”
Behind the wheel, Judy laughed. “The mangel-what?”
“The mangel-wurzel,” said Malik. “It is a little-known root vegetable hailing from the same family as beets.”