The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall Page A

from college. And after him was Bill the basketball player. There were a number of Bills, now that I thinkabout it, except not every one of them was love at first sight. Hmm, who was next? I think my art history professor. Oh, and I forgot about Charlie! Mad Charlie. I adored him. Does any of this help, Jane?”
    “Yes, keep going!”
    “This could take hours.”
    “Well, then, what happened to them all?”
    “Different things. I almost married one—I’ll tell you that story when you’re older.” Aunt Claire stopped to shift her ice pack. “But don’t put them all in the past. I’m not too old to keep falling in love, first sight or second or third.”
    Jane had a thought, interesting and scary at the same time. “Not Alec!”
    “No.” Aunt Claire shook her head. “I like him, but not to fall in love with.”
    “But how do you know? How do you learn how to know?”
    “So many questions! Let me think—how
do
I know when I’ve fallen in love? It’s hard to explain without sounding silly. Like being struck by lightning, except nice. Or like having your heart sing.”
    “Singing heart. That’s good. May I use it for Sabrina Starr?”
    “Use away. I’d be honored.”
    Skye came out through the sliding door, sponge in one hand and dish towel in the other. A supply run to Moose Market was needed, and since Jane wasn’t doing anything important right now—book researchdidn’t count—it was up to her. Jane didn’t mind. Aunt Claire had already given her a lot to think about. She set off down Ocean Boulevard with the grocery list in her pocket and her imagination on fire.
    Sabrina Starr was fuming. Her sprained ankle was a disaster. If she didn’t rescue the Chinese ambassador from his kidnappers within the next forty-eight hours, discord would spread, countries would fall, and World War III would loom. And here she was stuck in the hospital. “Ms. Starr? I’m Dr. Albert, Ankle Specialist.” Sabrina gazed up at the doctor and her heart sang.
    No, that wouldn’t work, not with Sabrina on crutches and wearing that awkward plastic boot. There could be no dancing by moonlight, for example. In the movies that Jane had seen, people in love were always dancing. But was it like that in real life? That was a good second research question:
Does being in love make you want to dance?
Jane wished she had her notebook with her.
    She passed Alec’s house and came to the long stretch of rocky coast, with the great piles of boulders guarding the ocean, just as they had for hundreds of years, Jane thought, or maybe thousands or even tens of thousands, all the way back to the dinosaurs or the Ice Age—she never could remember which camefirst. The idea of treading rocks so ancient was too tempting to pass up. They weren’t hard to get to. She just had to slide down a pebbly slope for about five feet, cross a narrow band of coarse sand, and there she was at the rocks, a whole landscape of them, all tumbled together. Jane leaped from one to another until she came close enough to the ocean to feel the spray from the crashing waves.
    “Great and powerful Neptune,” she said, raising her arms in supplication, “grant me …”
    But she couldn’t think of anything sea-related that she would like to have granted, and Neptune never bothered with anything else, like helping writers with their projects. Mermaids were a possibility, but even if Jane believed it possible to be turned into one, she probably shouldn’t bother. In the books she’d read, mermaids were never that bright, worried only about combing their hair and driving sailors mad with passion. Of course, Jane’s hair was almost long enough now to be mermaid-like, and that thing about sailors could be a way to learn about love. Jane again raised her arms.
    “Great and powerful Neptune,” she cried, “let me be a mermaid just long enough to research my book.”
    Nothing happened—no fishtail or scales—which Jane figured was just as well, since Skye would