The Great Good Summer by Liz Garton Scanlon Page B

phone. When she first left, we thought she’d taken it with her. I called her every day, partly just to hear her voice on the voice mail but also so that she’d hear mine. Then Daddy found the phone sitting in her makeup drawer in the bathroom.
    â€œDoesn’t have her phone, hasn’t used her credit card, and must not care that we don’t know where in the world she’s gone,” said Daddy when he brought the phone downstairs and tossed it on the counter.
    I looked at it after he’d left the room. There were a whole bunch of messages on it, and the battery was nearly dead. I stopped calling, and it’s been here waiting on the counter, plugged in, ever since.
    I don’t know if it’d officially be considered stealing to take it, but it seems like a good idea either way. Mama shouldn’t have gone all the way to Florida without a phone, and neither should we.
    I don’t have a phone of my own. Daddy says that Loomer’s so small, you can just holler if you need something. Which isn’t true, but I’m too busy trying to talk him into a dog, which I want more than a phone, and I can only fight so many battles at one time.
    So Mama’s phone will do. I grab it, shut it down to save power, and grab the charger out of the wall too. Then I notice the coffee cup in the sink. Daddy left early to put on a new roof—on another one of the houses damaged by the wildfires. “I’d never be grateful for someone’s misfortune,” he always says when he heads off for these jobs, “but I’m grateful for good work.” And the fires made a whole lot of good work. That’s just the truth. (It’s also ironic, seeing as how they’re the same fires that drove Mama half-crazy and all the way to Florida, but he never mentions that.)
    Anyway, here I am packing to run away, with Daddy off at work and his coffee cup sitting in the sink like it’s a totally ordinary normal old day. He has no idea. It’s enough to give me the shivers again.

    â€œIvy, honey,” says Mrs. Murray as we’re putting together today’s snacks, “I am going to work at the library today, so you and Lucy and Devon can stay and play here for achange. It’ll help me focus, and you all maybe could use a day of being a little lazy. Is that all right?”
    â€œSure, we’ll play here. It’ll be fun. Won’t it be fun, little bugs?” I pull Lucy up onto my hip and kiss her fat, happy cheek just a tidge longer than usual, since I know I’m gonna miss her when I’m gone. Mrs. Murray keeps cutting up fruit while Lucy and I watch.
    â€œYou do such a good job with them, Ivy. You are a natural. You know how to tend to them. I didn’t know what to do with babies when I first had mine, but with you it just seems to be in your blood.”
    Which is kind of a funny thing to say to a girl whose own mother is off rolling around on the floor of a church in Florida instead of taking care of her family here at home. But still, it’s nice, and it makes me feel bad again about leaving them with no warning at all.
    â€œI don’t think I’m that good at it, really,” I say. “I mean, I’m only with them for a few hours, and you’re their mom. You’re with them all the time. That’s a whole lot. I mean, I can’t imagine how you know when you’re ready to do that kind of thing. Y’know, get married and have babies and everything?”
    â€œMommy, peanut butter!” Lucy reaches toward Mrs. Murray, who takes her from my arms and pops a littlesquare of peanut butter toast right into her mouth. Then she breathes a deep breath and turns back to me.
    â€œWell, that is a mystery,” says Mrs. Murray. “You never really know, sweet girl. There is so, so much in this world—both good and bad—that you never really know. You just have to learn to listen to that voice inside, the voice in you