Coming Apart (9780545356152) by Ann M Martin Page B

later.”
    â€œDenise!” roared Mr. Sherman from down the hall, and Nikki’s mother winced.
    â€œLater. I promise.” She kissed Nikki on the head and hurried from the room.
    Nikki flopped onto her bed, sighing immensely, and reached for
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
, which she was reading for the next meeting of the seventh-grade book club. Nikki was entranced by the story of Francie Nolan and her family, of their lives in Brooklyn at the beginning of the twentieth century. But she found herself unable to escape into their world when it seemed possible that her own world was about to collapse.
    Â 
    â€œNow?” said Nikki the moment she could hear her father’s truck roar to life. It was past the Shermans’ usual dinnertime, Mae was hungry and overtired, and everyone was crabby after the long, strained day.
    â€œAs soon as dinner’s over,” Mrs. Sherman said wearily. “Mae needs to eat. We all do.”
    Nikki waited until the food had been eaten, the table cleared, the dishes washed. Then she glanced at her mother with raised eyebrows.
    â€œAll right,” said Mrs. Sherman. “Let’s go back to your room.”
    Mae was engrossed in her doll again, seated on the couch in the living room, caressing the silky hair. “I think I’ll name you Peppy,” she said softly. She didn’t glance up as Nikki and Mrs. Sherman left the kitchen.
    â€œMom, please tell me that Dad isn’t going to get custody of us,” Nikki said desperately, the moment her door was closed. This time she sat next to her mother on Mae’s bed.
    â€œI can’t make any promises,” her mother replied. “I don’t want to do that until every last piece of paper has been signed. But I am fairly certain that I am going to have full custody of you and Mae.”
    â€œMe and Mae?!” cried Nikki in alarm. “What about Tobias?”
    â€œOh, honey. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Mrs. Sherman pulled Nikki closer to her. “Tobias is an adult. The custody arrangements apply only to you and Mae.”
    Nikki relaxed against her mother. “I thought … I thought we were going to be separated.”
    â€œNo. Tobias will stay in college and come home to us on vacations.”
    â€œAnd Mae and I won’t ever have to see Dad again?”
    â€œLike I said, I don’t want to make any promises yet. But if I do wind up with full custody — and I expect to —” added Mrs. Sherman hastily, seeing the look on Nikki’s face, “then you and Mae won’t have to visit your father unless you want to. It will be up to you.”
    Nikki tried to feel relieved. But she was afraid that if she let relief trickle in, then something would go very, very wrong. The mosquito was buzzing inside her head again, and she really needed to examine it. Long after her mother had left the room, Nikki lay on her bed and tried to capture the mosquito, tried to identify what, specifically, had troubled her that day. Not the thought of custody arrangements going awry. Not her father’s unsettling presence in the house. Mae? The gifts?
    No. It was two words:
    Daddy’s nice
.

Rudy Pennington had begun nearly every day of Jacques’s long life by sitting next to him on the couch in the living room and holding a Morning Discussion. Jacques, who was allowed anywhere in the Row House and on any surface, would position himself on the middle cushion and look seriously into Rudy’s face while Rudy stroked his ears and told him about the day to come.
    â€œYou’re going to like today, boy,” Mr. Pennington might say. “Lots of company, and I think we’ll walk into town after lunch. Maybe we’ll visit Min at Needle and Thread. And, let me see, after that we’ll stop in the Cheshire Cat before we go home. We’ll pick up some more biscuits for you.”
    On Sunday, the day after Nikki’s father had arrived, Jacques