was low and heavy against the solid oak door. No one came, and I knocked again. I was about to leave when the panes vibrated with approaching steps.
The door opened slowly, and Mr. Pettit peered out. “If you’re here to cause trouble …”
“Mr. Pettit? It’s me, Lily Hancock.”
“Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. Come on in, Lily. I’m afraid Gabrielle’s not here and Jack, well … who knows where he is these days.”
“I don’t want to bother you, but I was wondering if you knew a … a coyote.” The question sounded more ridiculous out of my mouth than it did in my head.
“Are you talking about Everett Coyote?”
“Oh!” This whole time I’d been picturing an animal. This wasn’t going to be as embarrassing as I thought.
“He’s my dentist. Let me go look in the kitchen. I think he has an ad in the phone book. I’ll be right back.”
I’d never been inside the Pettits’ house before. Dark brown shag carpeting led from the front door down a long hallway. The TV blared from a room on the left.
“Your dad told me about your Minneapolis friend,” called Mr. Pettit from the kitchen. “I hope he’s okay.”
“Yeah, he’s okay. You saw my dad?”
“Ran into him at the IGA. He was in a really good mood.”
“Oh.” I was already clinging to Calder’s Maighdean Mara theory by a thinning thread. A happy merman meant one of two things, and since Dad hadn’t been spending any time with Mom, that didn’t bode well for my exercise in denial.
While Mr. Pettit fumbled in drawers in the kitchen, I wandered farther down the hallway, pulled by the childhood pictures of Gabby and Jack hanging on the wall, an eight-by-ten glossy marking each year of school. Gabby’s room was just past the last frame, judging by the band posters and pile of clothes on the bed.
A second door was opened a crack. I peeked in. A blanket hung heavily over the window, making it seem more cave than bedroom. The light from the hallway raced in—breaking across the walls, exposing a floor-to-ceiling collage of Jack’s artwork. I slid my hand along the wall inside the doorway, searching for a light switch. I flipped on the light and drew in a sharp breath.
It was like being underwater. A blue light flooded the room. Seconds later, a lava lamp sent a pulsing pattern of bubbles across the ceiling. Pictures of mermaids, some beautiful, others terrifying, plastered the walls. He’d drawn some images on full sheets of paper, others cut out precisely along their exquisite shapes. Charcoal drawings, oil paintings, sculpted pieces that reached toward the center of the room.
I walked in, holding my breath. On a bookshelf beside the bed, a battered sketchbook lay open. I flipped through its pages. Every single drawing was of Pavati, her blue-sequined tail unmistakable. Her lavender eyes stared out from the paper as if she could leap at me as soon as I turned my back. Page after page. Until I got to the back cover and found something I would have never expected.
There, Jack had stashed at least two dozen letters, all sent from a P.O. box in New Orleans. The postmarks indicated weekly letters through last fall, but then they tapered off. There were six weeks between the last two. Pavati had sent her final letter just two weeks before my family arrived. I pulled it from its envelope.
Jack,
Don’t send any more letters like the last one. Get a grip or you’ll ruin everything.
P
Oh, poor Jack.
“I see you’ve found my son’s room,” Mr. Pettit said.
I jumped and slammed the sketchbook shut. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s a nightmare,” he said. “Ever since his friends all left for college he’s gotten stranger and stranger. I keep telling him he’s got talent. He should pursue this art thing if that’s what he wants to do. So what if he’s a year behind now? People go to college later in life all the time these days. But there’s no talking to him.”
Mr. Pettit handed me a torn piece of paper. “Here’s Dr. Coyote’s address and phone number. Are your teeth bothering you?”
“Something like that.”
I found Calder pacing in the woods beyond the car, pitching pinecones against the trunk of a tree. When he saw me coming, he lobbed one over my head and reached for the piece of paper I handed to him. He read it quickly, nodded, and said, “Let’s roll.”
The sign read DR. EVERETT COYOTE—THE GENTLE DENTIST. It seemed like an oxymoron to me. Calder pushed open