Second Child Read Free Page A

up D’Arcy today.
    After all, friends who existed in your imagination were only for children, too. When you grew up, you gave up the imaginary friends for real ones. Except that in Melissa’s mind, D’Arcy wasn’t really imaginary at all—she was almost as real as she herself was. She lived up in the attic here in Secret Cove, and never traveled to the city when they were in the apartment in Manhattan the rest of the time. Of course, besides Melissa, there weren’t many people for D’Arcy to talk to—only Cora Peterson, the housekeeper—but that had never bothered D’Arcy at all.
    Melissa thought that D’Arcy must be lonely when the house in Secret Cove was closed up for the winter, but years ago, during one of their long talks in the middle of the night when Melissa couldn’t sleep, D’Arcy had told Melissa that she liked being all by herself. In fact, when Melissa had confessed to D’Arcy yesterday that she’d promised to stop talking to her, D’Arcy had agreed immediately. “But I won’t stop thinking about you,” Melissa had reassured her friend.
    D’Arcy had said nothing, but Melissa had been certain that her friend knew exactly what she meant—that was the wonderful thing about D’Arcy. Even when no one else understood Melissa, D’Arcy always did.
    Melissa sighed. It was going to be hard giving D’Arcyup, even harder than giving up the dollhouse. Well, maybe she’d sort of cheat. Maybe she’d keep the dollhouse and pretend when she was talking to D’Arcy that she was really talking to the tiny wooden figures that populated the house. Except that even if it fooled her parents and Cora, she herself would still know she’d been cheating.
    “I’ll tell you what,” she said, unconsciously speaking out loud once again. “You can have the dollhouse. I’ll move it up to the attic, and then come and visit it sometimes. And if you’re there when I come, that’s not my fault, is it?”
    From far away, in the depths of her imagination, she was certain she heard D’Arcy laughing softly.
    She turned away from the dollhouse and went to the window. It was a warm morning—even in Maine, July wasn’t really cool—and the sky was clear and cloudless. Tag, Cora’s fourteen-year-old grandson, had already mowed the broad lawn earlier that morning, and Melissa breathed in the green scent of fresh-cut grass. The lawn swept down toward the beach fifty yards away, where the waves that came into the cove from the open sea were gentle this morning. They broke with a soft whooshing sound, then threw a white coverlet of foam onto the sand, smoothing out the tracks of the birds that skittered in front of the advancing water.
    Melissa’s eyes wandered over the beach. It was just the way she liked it—all but deserted, with only a few people far off to the south, sunning themselves on the sand that fronted the Cove Club. Between here and the club, which perched on the southern point of the cove itself, there were only five other cottages, none of them quite as large as the Holloways’, but all of them surrounded by equally well-manicured gardens and lawns. And since most of the other kids hung out at the club all the time, Melissa thought of the beach as belonging almost exclusively to herself.
    She dressed quickly, pulling on a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt she’d talked Tag into giving her last week, then went downstairs to find her father. The first thing they’d do today, she decided, was go for a long walk on the beach. They’d go north, away from the club, and maybe climb around the rocky point that cut Secret Cove off from the beach beyond. As she started down the stairs a few minutes later, she’d already made more plans for the daythan she and her father could possibly carry out. Still, whatever they did would be fine with her. The important thing was that it was her birthday, and no matter how important his business was, her daddy would spend the day with her, even if her mother thought it was