“Everything all right?” he asked. His big hands hung limp at his sides, and there was sweat on his brow.
Nest nodded. “Sure. I’m on my way to meet Cass and the others in the park.”
Her grandfather glanced toward the house hesitantly, then back at her. “John will be here at three for the picnic.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back.” She gave him a reassuring smile. How much did he know about Gran and the feeders? “Bye, Grandpa.”
She stepped around a sleeping Mr. Scratch and crossed the yard quickly, eyes determinedly forward so she would not look back. She felt as if her grandfather had read everything she was thinking in her eyes, and she did not want that. She felt as if everything was kept secret from her, while she had no secrets of her own. But there was John Ross, of course. She was the only one who knew the truth about him. Well, some of the truth, anyway. Maybe. She sighed helplessly.
She was pushing her way through the gap in the bushes when Pick dropped onto her shoulder.
“ ‘Bout time,” he grumbled, settling himself into place. “Some of us have been up since daybreak, you know.”
She gave him an angry look. “Good for you. Some of us have been trying to figure out why others of us aren’t a little more truthful about things.”
The wooden brow furrowed and the black-pool eyes crinkled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She stopped abruptly beside the service road and looked off into the park. There were families laying out blankets and picnic baskets on the grassy lawn farther east where the shade trees began. There were baseball games under way, softball pickup contests. Two boys were throwing a Frisbee back and forth and a dog was running hopefully between them, giving chase. It was all familiar to her, but it felt quite alien, too.
“It means you were awfully quick to disappear last night after the spirits of the Sinnissippi appeared.” She glared at him. “Why was that?”
The sylvan glared back. “Bunch of mumbo jumbo, that’s why. I got bored.”
“Don’t you lie to me!” she hissed. She snatched him off her shoulder by the nape of his twiggy neck and held him kicking and squirming before her. “You saw the vision, too, didn’t you? You saw the same thing I did, and you don’t want to admit it! Well, it’s too late for that, Pick!”
“Put me down!” he raged.
“Or what? What will you do?” She felt like tossing him out on the grass and leaving him there. “I know who it was! It was Gran! I knew it from a picture on the fireplace mantel! I thought it was Mom at first, but it was Gran! You knew, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
“Yes!” He lashed out.
He stopped squirming and stared balefully at her. Nest stared back. After a moment, she placed him in the palm of her hand and squatted down in the grass next to the service road, holding him up to her face. Pick righted himself indignantly, brushing at his arms and legs as if he had been dumped in a pile of dirt.
“Don’t you ever do that again!” he warned, so furious he refused even to look at her.
“You stop lying to me and maybe I won’t!” she snapped back, just as angry as he was.
His mouth worked inside his mossy beard. “I haven’t lied to you. But it isn’t my place to tell you things about your family! It isn’t right for me to do that!”
“Well, what kind of a friend are you, then?” she demanded. “A real friend doesn’t keep secrets!”
Pick snorted. “Everyone keeps secrets. That’s part of life. i None of us tells the other everything. We can’t. Then there f wouldn’t be any part of us that didn’t belong to someone else!” He tugged on his beard in frustration. “All right, so I didn’t tell you about your grandmother and the feeders. But she didn’t tell you either, did she? So maybe there’s a reason for that, and maybe it’s up to her to decide if she wants you to know that reason and maybe it’s not up to me!”