Free Best Friends by Ann M. Martin Page B

about,” said Mr. Pennington, shifting on the couch when Jacques rolled over again. “My mother knew Sonny Sutphin’s grandmother.” (Flora raised her eyes and looked at Mr. Pennington with increased interest.) “The Sutphins were a respectable family in Camden Falls, what you’d call middle class nowadays. They didn’t have a lot of money, but they were doing fine, and your grandfather had invested their savings. They lost it all in nineteen twenty-nine, but quite unexpectedly they came into a large inheritance in nineteen thirty or thirty-one and were then far wealthier than they’d been before the crash.”
    Flora thought of Sonny in his shabby clothes, wheeling himself up and down Main Street every day. She thought of his tiny, dark apartment, which she’d visited with Mr. Pennington before the holidays. “What happened?” she asked. Surely the Sonny she knew now didn’t have any large inheritance.
    â€œThe money was spent rather” — Mr. Pennington paused — “ erratically . It really was a great deal of money and it caused some wild behavior in subsequent generations of Sutphins. When Sonny came into his portion of the inheritance, the first thing he did was spend most of it on a fancy car — maybe a Porsche, I’m not sure — and he hadn’t had it very long when he was in a horrible accident. He was driving way too fast and he crashed the car late one night. His brother was in the car, too, and he was killed.”
    â€œOh,” said Flora in a very small voice, imagining not Sonny and his Porsche but her family and their car on that snowy evening. “Is that how Sonny got hurt?”
    Mr. Pennington nodded.
    Flora tried to collect her thoughts, which were tumbling around in her head. She was glad the tape recorder was running because she was having trouble keeping track of all the people Mr. Pennington had mentioned. There was the hobo (an actual hobo — very exciting), and the man who wasn’t heard from again, and now Sonny Sutphin and his family. And, of course, there was Mr. Pennington himself. What would have happened, Flora wondered, if the Fitzpatricks hadn’t lost their money and Mr. Pennington’s father hadn’t lost his job? Flora might not even know Mr. Pennington. He might never have moved to the Row Houses. Flora couldn’t imagine the Row Houses, or her life now, without Mr. Pennington.
    Later, when Flora was leaving, she stood on tiptoe and threw her arms around her neighbor. It was time to go home to transcribe their talk and to think about what on earth she was going to say to Mary Woolsey when it was time for their formal interview. Mr. Pennington had started to close the door behind Flora when he stuck his head outside and said, “By the way, what are you going to do with your information, Flora?”
    â€œI’m not sure,” she replied.
    â€œWhat about making a book? I think you’re going to have enough material. You could bind your research into a book.”
    A book, thought Flora. Could she really write a book?

Nikki Sherman was pedaling fast. She liked the stretch of road that led from the end of her drive, through the countryside, and into Camden Falls, and she was happy for an opportunity to ride her bicycle to Needle and Thread. The sun warmed her hair, making it smell of moss and wildflowers and springtime. On either side of the road, oaks and maples dipped their branches in the breeze, their new leaves a haze of green against the gold of the sun. Nikki felt as if she were flying along through a dreamworld.
    She reached the top of a small hill and, as soon as she was coasting fast enough, stuck her legs out straight as she sailed toward the bottom. She considered removing her hands from the handlebars but decided against that, remembering the cautionary tale her mother had often told her and Tobias and Mae about the time when she was eight and decided to coast