Pies & Prejudice

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  The lawyer finishes reading, and sets the letter down on his desk. Now it’s his turn to wipe his eyes. “She was one-of-a-kind,” he says, shaking his head.

  “Absolutely,” agrees Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid.

  “She was a treasure, and I know exactly what we should do with her gift,” says Mrs. Hawthorne.

  We all turn and look at the computer screen.

  “What could be more extravagant and fun than a Mother-Daughter Book Club jaunt to Jane Austen country?”

  There’s a collective gasp as her words sink in, and she smiles at us. “I think you all should come to England!”

  Jess

  “No one who has ever seen you two together,

  can doubt his affection.”

  —Pride and Prejudice

  I knew this day had to come, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

  My dad reaches across the front seat of the truck and squeezes my shoulder. “You did a fine job with this little fox of yours,” he tells me. “I’m proud of you, honey.”

  A slender red foreleg with black markings pokes through the grate of the pet carrier between us and bats at my denim-covered knee.

  “See?” my father adds. “Lydia agrees.”

  I manage a wobbly smile.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?”

  I shake my head. I got my permit a few weeks ago, and I need all the practice I can get. Besides, setting Lydia free is something I want to do all by myself, start to finish.

  A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Mueller and I took her to see Dr. Gardiner, who gave her a clean bill of health.

  “That leg has mended nicely,” she says, holding up the X-ray. “She’s obviously thriving.”

  It’s true. Lydia is beautiful. It’s been nearly two months since that afternoon she was brought into the animal shelter, and she’s grown a lot. She’s put on weight and her coat is soft and shiny, and her tail has grown bushy and full. I love the white splash on the end of it that looks as if she dipped it in a pot of paint.

  After Lydia got her cast off, I helped Mr. Mueller move her outside to a nice big enclosed dog run so she could start getting more exercise. I could tell how much she loved getting rid of the cast and being out in the fresh air again by the way she scampered around in there, as full of energy as my twin brothers.

  Then last week we started leaving the dog run open at night. I was really worried the first time, so Mr. Mueller invited me and my dad to stay over. We watched from the window in the kitchen as Lydia stepped out and sniffed the air cautiously, then wandered around the yard checking everything out. She eventually headed for the stone wall at the far edge of their property, and we lost sight of her. She must not have ventured too far, though, because when we went to check the dog run around midnight, she was already back again, curled up fast asleep on her blanket in the little doghouse we put in there for shelter.

  Every night after that, she was gone a little longer until finally, two days ago, she didn’t show up until after breakfast, and instead of being starving she wasn’t much interested in food, which meant she must have either hunted or foraged for herself.

  “It’s time,” Mr. Mueller told me when I rode over that afternoon. “She’s ready.”

  Of course, it’s been the plan all along to set Lydia free, but the news struck me like a thunderbolt. Which is why I’m driving down Estabrook Road right now with a lump in my throat the size of a softball.

  I originally wanted to set her free in the woods behind Half Moon Farm, so she’d be close by and could maybe stop in for a visit now and then, but my parents said absolutely not, on account of our chickens.

  “We have enough predators in these woods already,” my mother told me.

  Mr. Mueller recommended releasing her in Estabrook Woods. For one thing, it’s where she was found, so there’s a chance she could be reunited with her parents and littermates. Plus, it’s secluded and safe, with over a thousand acres of protected land for her to run around in.

  Up ahead, I see the turnoff for the parking area and I slow down, preparing to pull in. I cut the corner a little sharp, though, and the pet carrier goes sliding across the seat toward my father.

  “Whoa!” he says, and Lydia gives a worried little yip.

  “Sorry, guys.” I’m not the world’s best driver yet.

  My science fair project on Lydia was a huge success. I couldn’t bring her to school for it and I didn’t want to, anyway—there was no way I was turning her into a circus sideshow—so I borrowed a video camera from the Wongs and made a film about her instead. I showed her getting fed, and curled up asleep, and getting her cast off and running around the stall and then, later, the dog run. I filmed myself putting on the leather gloves and explaining the need for safety when working with wildlife, and why it’s important not to try and turn an injured wild creature into a pet. I shared information about all the research I did on red foxes—I know more about them now than I ever expected to—and I interviewed Mr. Mueller, too, and got him to explain the process of getting a rehabilitator’s license and tell stories about some of the animals he’s rescued. And of course, I included a video tour of all the current guests in his barn.

  Helping to rehabilitate Lydia has been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done so far in my life. I’ve enjoyed it more than volunteering at the dog shelter, more than helping on our farm, and more, even, than raising Sundance for 4-H, although that’s a close second. While it’s not something a person could do for a career, exactly—it’s a volunteer job—I could definitely see combining wildlife rehabilitation work with something else someday, and I’m thinking seriously about working toward getting my license. Until then, Mr. Mueller has told me that he’ll always be glad to have my help, and that I can consider myself his official apprentice.

  I pull into a parking spot and turn the engine off.

  “I guess this is it,” says my dad.

  I don’t reply. I can’t. I’m afraid the tears might spill over.

  Instead, I open the cab door and climb out of the truck. My father does too, then carefully lifts the pet carrier out and sets it on the ground. Lydia starts pacing back and forth, sniffing the air and making excited fox noises.

  “Are you sure you can carry this?” my father asks me, and I nod.

  “Okay, then.” He gives my shoulder another squeeze. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”

  Picking the carrier up by its handle, I head off on the trail into the woods. Mr. Mueller and I decided that it would be best to release Lydia right in the center of the sanctuary, near one of the ponds. I wanted to be sure she was as far away as possible from any of the roads.

  People often walk their dogs along the trails, but it’s dinnertime and I pass only one jogger. We figured dusk would be the best time of day to release her, since she’s nocturnal and that would give her the whole night to explore her new home.

  I continue walking for a quarter of an hour or so, the carrier bumping lightly against my leg. Finally, rounding a curve by a large boulder, I see the clearing that I’m looking for. It’s a pretty spot, and Emma and I ride our bikes out here sometimes in the summer and bring a picnic lunch. When I reach it, I set the carrier on the ground. I know I should put my leather gloves on—Lydia has nipped me twice, accidentally, in her eagerness to get to the food I was offering her, making me glad I was wearing them—but since this is the last time I’ll ever get to touch her, for once I break the rules and leave them in my pocket.

  I open the mesh door and she trots out, all her senses on full alert. She circles the clearing, panting, then comes back and stands beside me, pressing herself against my leg. She stands motionless for a minute, only her long nose and ears twitching.

  I squat down beside her and run my hands over her soft fur, then scratch her behind her ears. She looks up at me and gives me a little fox grin, just the way our dogs Sugar and Spice do, then takes a few steps forward. She pauses, looking back over her shoulder.

  “That’s right, g
irl,” I tell her softly. “You can do it.”

  And she bounds off into the woods, a streak of pure joy.

  “Good-bye, Lydia,” I whisper.

  I’m still missing her a week later when we get on the plane to England.

  After we met with Mrs. Bergson’s lawyer, Mrs. Wong and Mrs. Hawthorne took charge of planning our trip. At first we weren’t sure Mrs. Chadwick would want to go with us—my mother says her nose is still out of joint over Hepzibah Plunkett and Spring Reckoning—but I guess the prospect of visiting the gardening capital of the world was too hard to resist.

  “When she heard the roses would be in full bloom, she caved,” Becca told us.

  The money Mrs. Bergson left us was enough to cover plane tickets and hotel rooms and all that stuff not only for our book club, but for our families, too, if they wanted to come. Mr. Wong and Mr. Chadwick couldn’t, because of work, and my dad stayed behind too.

  “Somebody’s got to keep an eye on the farm,” he told my mother and me. “Besides, you’ll want to visit tea shops and gardens and all that girl stuff. The twins have their Cub Scout camping trip coming up, and I know they don’t want to miss that, so I’m perfectly content to stay home with them. We’ll eat lots of he-man food and watch inappropriate movies, right, boys?”

  “Right!” my brothers shouted in agreement. They loved the idea of being he-men, and ran around flexing their skinny little arms for days.

  Gigi’s coming, of course, and so is Cassidy’s stepfather. Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid said she needed him to help watch Chloe, who is walking on her own now and into everything. The other person who’s coming is Stewart Chadwick, which I think is a good sign. He says Darcy needs reinforcements, but I’m hoping it’s because he wants to see Emma.

  The flight is long and boring. We leave shortly after dinnertime, but I’m too excited to sleep, mostly because I can’t wait to see Darcy. My mother and I have seats together by a window, and while she puts on one of those eye mask things and dozes off, I watch a movie and then reread the last few chapters of Pride and Prejudice, hoping that maybe some of Elizabeth Bennet’s magic dust will rub off on me.

  It’s nearly midnight Boston-time when we land in London, but over here the sky is streaked with pink clouds and it’s tomorrow already. I’m still not tired, though. I can hardly stand still as we wait to collect our bags, and I’m on pins and needles as we inch our way through the line at customs. I keep craning my neck and trying to see over the heads of the people in front of us to the waiting area beyond. Finally, we get our passports stamped—I had to get my own passport for the trip, which is pretty cool—and head through the big double doors.

  I spot Emma right away. She and her mom are holding up a huge sign that says WELCOME MOTHER-DAUGHTER BOOK CLUB! Emma is bouncing up and down with excitement, but there’s no sign of Darcy.

  “He’s at a football game,” Emma whispers in my ear as she gives me a hug. “I mean soccer—they call it football over here. He said to say hi.”

  She and Stewart greet each other awkwardly, shaking hands.

  “I wish someone would give your brother a kick in the pants,” mutters Megan to Becca, watching them.

  Outside in the parking lot, Mr. Hawthorne is standing proudly in front of a small bus. A very fancy bus.

  “It’s called a luxury mini-coach,” he informs us. “Mrs. Bergson said extravagant, and we’re taking her at her word.”

  We climb aboard, cramming our luggage into the overhead bins and what Mr. Hawthorne calls the “boot” way at the back. There are pairs of leather seats on either side of the aisle, so Emma and I sit together. Megan and Becca are across from us, and Cassidy and Stewart plop down behind us and start jabbering away about hockey.

  There’s a lot of traffic leaving London, and it’s weird to be driving on the left, but Mr. Hawthorne doesn’t seem bothered by it at all. I guess he’s used to it by now.

  Emma and I can hardly stop talking. We have so much to tell each other! I tell her all about letting Lydia go, and how hard it was, and I show her the picture that I keep in my wallet of me feeding the little fox. She tells me about how she’s been working really hard on something to submit to her school’s literary magazine, and about a trip she took with her friend Lucy’s family to Lucy’s grandparents’ farm in Yorkshire.

  “They have this amazing border collie named Mitzi—you would have loved her, Jess. She’s incredibly smart. All they have to do is say, ‘Fetch the cows in, Mitzi!’ and she’s off like a shot. She runs all the way out to these fields way at the far end of their property and rounds up the cows by herself, then brings them back to the barn.”

  “Cool.”

  Emma glances across the aisle at Megan and Becca and lowers her voice. “So tell me about Alcott High’s spring formal,” she says. “Cassidy says that Becca went with Zach Norton?”

  I nod. “Yeah. He asked her that week you were home in Concord on spring break.”

  We’re quiet for a moment. Emma had a crush on Zach all the way from kindergarten through seventh grade, when she got to be friends with Stewart. I wonder whether she’s feeling any twinges now.

  But apparently not. “I’m really glad for Becca,” she says, then gives me a mischievous smile. “I guess it’s her turn for Zach attacks.” That’s what Emma used to call it when she got all fluttery over him. She wrote a poem about it once, and Becca found it and read it out loud to Zach and completely humiliated her.

  I smile back. “Yup.”

  “So what did Megan do? Since Simon didn’t ask her to the dance, I mean.”

  “She thought about going stag, but I guess in the end she stayed home.”

  “Did Simon go?”

  I shake my head. “He stayed home too.”

  “Maybe that’s a good sign,” says Emma. “I mean, if he really didn’t like Megan, wouldn’t he have asked somebody else?”

  I lift a shoulder. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not an expert at this stuff.”

  “Me neither.”

  Cassidy’s head pops over the back of our seat. “What are you two whispering about up here?” I glance back and see that Stewart has conked out. His head is resting against the mini-coach’s window, and he’s snoring softly.

  “Nothing much,” Emma tells her. “Spring formal. Did you go?”

  “Do hockey players wear tutus? Of course I didn’t go.”

  “But you were asked,” I prompt her.

  She reddens, and Emma lets out a quiet squeal. “You were? Who?”

  “Tristan Berkeley,” Cassidy admits reluctantly, and Emma squeals again. Stewart’s head jerks forward and he makes this weird snuffling sound, then relaxes back into sleep.

  “So why didn’t you go with him?” Emma whispers.

  Cassidy shrugs. “He’s been a little nicer to me and everything since Mrs. Bergson died, but I still think dances are stupid.” Her face is bright red by now.

  “Cassidy! You should have gone.”

  “And have people think I like him? You sound like my mother.”

  “Okay, okay. Never mind.” Emma changes the subject. “How was California?” Cassidy flew out to visit her sister at college a few weekends ago, right after hockey season finished.

  Cassidy brightens. “Awesome!”

  “Did you go to any classes?” I ask her.

  “Right, like I take a couple days off school so I can fly across the country and go to more school. Duh.”

  “I was just asking,” I reply, stung. “You were at UCLA, after all.”

  Cassidy grins. “I was in L.A.—forget the U.C. part. Actually, I thought the dorm was pretty cool, and so is the campus. But we went all over the place. We borrowed Courtney’s roommate’s car and drove to Hollywood—”

  “Did you see the sign on the hill?” Emma asks eagerly.

  “Of course. And we went to Grauman’s Chinese Theater and saw all the stars’ handprints and footprints in the sidewalk, and afterward we drove down to the Santa Monica pier and rode the Ferris wheel, and th
en on down the coast to Laguna Beach, where we used to live.” A wistful tone creeps into Cassidy’s voice. “I hardly recognized our old house,” she continues. “The new owners painted it blue.”

  “Did you go surfing?” I ask.

  “Yup. It was fantastic. And we went to Crystal Cove, this great beach our dad used to take us to, and had shakes at the Shake Shack, and on the way back to UCLA we took the little ferry over to Balboa Island and got frozen bananas at Dad’s.”

  Emma and I have no idea what she’s talking about, but it’s obvious she had a great time so we smile and nod anyway. The three of us continue talking for a while, and then at some point I must have fallen asleep because I’m surprised to find myself jolted awake when the mini-coach pulls up to a stop in front of our hotel.

  “Here we are, ladies and gents!” Mr. Hawthorne announces into the microphone. He’s speaking in a fake English accent, which I bet we’ll be hearing a lot of over the next week. I can tell he’s having fun already. “Your hotel was once a private residence,” he goes on to explain.

  “Dude, you’d have to be way rich to live in a house like this,” says Cassidy, staring out the window.

  “Believe me, this is nothing,” says Mr. Hawthorne. “Wait until you see some of the ‘private residences’ we’re going to visit this week.”

  We pile out of the mini-coach and stand in the driveway, stretching. Our hotel is an enormous brick house perched on a hill in the outskirts of Bath. There are gardens and terraces everywhere, and a long, sweeping hillside at the back that leads down to a river.

  “That’s the Kennet and Avon Canal,” says Emma. “The one I told you I walked along everyday to school, remember? Our village is about ten minutes upstream.”

  “I picked this place for you because the owners love books,” says Mrs. Hawthorne, who’s as excited about everything as Emma and her father are. “You’ll see what I mean in a minute.”

  Inside, there’s an entry hall with black and white tiles on the floor. Mr. Hawthorne checks us in, and we’re each handed a room key. Stewart is staying by himself in the Charles Dickens room, and Cassidy’s mom and stepfather and Chloe are in William Wordsworth. Cassidy and Becca and Megan and me are all in the Percy Shelley suite, next door to my mother, who’s staying in the Jane Austen room.