“Mary Anne?” It was Sunny. “I just wanted to say good night,” she said. “And — I wanted to thank you. You really helped me.”
She sat on my bed and we talked for awhile. It was late, and everyone else was asleep. The house was very quiet.
Then I began to hear the strangest noises. Creaking sounds, coming from all around. I’d heard them before as I was drifting off to sleep, but they’d never seemed so loud. “What’s that?” I asked, startled.
“It’s the house settling,” said Sunny. “My house makes the same sounds sometimes. It just means that the house is taking its shape, settling in.”
After she’d reassured me, Sunny said good night and left.
The next morning we headed for the airport. Dawn and Sunny sat in the backseat, talking about plans for later that summer when Dawn would return to California. I sat up front with Sharon.
Seeing Sunny off was sad. But I felt happy for her too. “She’s doing the right thing,” I said to Dawn as we watched Sunny walk toward her gate.
That night, I lay in bed thinking about the last couple of weeks. They’d been busy ones, full of change. But now everything seemed to be settling into place. Sunny had gone home. Jeff was feeling as if he had a home away from home. And me? I thought about how proud I’d felt when our guests told me they liked our house. I thought about how comfortable I was in my room, how easy the house was to live in, how seldom I’d thought about our old house in the last few days. I looked down at Tigger, lying peacefully next to my pillow. And I sighed. It was as if I’d finally found the ruby slippers and clicked my heels.
I was home.
As I drifted off to sleep, I heard those creaking noises again. But this time they didn’t startle me or scare me. They were just the sound of the house settling, the sound of my new home taking shape around me.
The author gratefully acknowledges
Ellen Miles
for her help in
preparing this manuscript.
About the Author
ANN M. MARTIN is the acclaimed and bestselling author of a number of novels and series, including Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), A Dog’s Life, Here Today, P.S. Longer Letter Later (written with Paula Danziger), the Family Tree series, the Doll People series (written with Laura Godwin), the Main Street series, and the generation-defining series The Baby-sitters Club. She lives in New York.
Copyright © 2000 by Ann M. Martin
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First edition, 2000
e-ISBN 978-0-545-87517-2
Welcome Home, Mary Anne Page 9
