Free Victory by Susan Cooper Page B

splashes over the edge of the glass. “A pompous jerk!”
    Molly says, “What happened?”
    Russell gives an explosive angry grunt and drinks his juice. Kate says, “Russ had to turn left, and he was really careful to make a hand signal, because the examiner had reminded him to be sure to do that. But he didn’t put on his flasher as well, so the man failed him.”
    â€œHe said that stuff about hand signals just to throw me,” Russell says bitterly. “And he kept calling me Carl.”
    â€œWell, it is your first name,” Kate says mildly. “He wasn’t to know we don’t use it.”
    â€œStop by that lamppost, Carl! Carl, we’re going to turn left at the light!” Russell makes his angry grunt again. Looking at him, Molly sees an echo of her stepfather in the straight nose and lean jawline, and the shape of those arched eyebrows.
    At the same time it occurs to her that Russ will not now be able to drive her to see Mr. Waterford, and that she cannot possibly ask Carl or her mother to take her there.
    Later that day, Molly begins to read The Life of Nelson . She discovers that Horatio Nelson was born in Norfolk, and that when he was a small boy and was punished for stealing pears from his schoolmaster’s pear-tree, he said he “only took them because every other boy was afraid.”
    Then she turns the page and comes across the bookmark that Mr. Waterford put inside the book when he sold it to her. She remembers the way he smiled at her as he did so. The bookmark is tucked so securely between two pages that it has even survived the book’s disastrous crash when she threw it at Jack. Molly looks at the bookmark, and sees printed on it the name and address of Mr. Waterford’s shop, his telephone and fax numbers—and his e-mail address.
    So she turns on her computer and writes him an e-mail.
    Dear Mr. Waterford, she writes, I am Molly Jennings, the English girl who bought Robert Southey’s The Life of Nelson. Something amazing has happened. Hidden inside the front of the book there was a sort of envelope with a piece of cloth inside that is a piece of HMS Victory’s flag at Trafalgar. . . .
    . . . and she tells him about the inscription, and Emma’s note about her father Samuel Robbins—and then, taking a deep breath, she types out the question that is her real reason for wanting to talk to him.
    Is it still all right for me to keep this book? she writes.
    She is so nervous about the answer she may get to this question that she hits the “Send” button even before she has signed the e-mail. And off it goes, irrevocably launched into the ether, on that mysterious instant journey taken by all e-mails.
    There is a tap at the door, and Kate puts her head in. “Want to come and get a pizza, darling? Russ has a sailboat race at two, so I thought we’d all have lunch on the way.”
    â€œSure,” Molly says. She puts the computer to sleep. It’s too much to hope that Mr. Waterford will send her an instant reply.
    â€œRuss can drive us,” Kate says. “I told him it’s like getting back on the horse after you’ve fallen off.”
    Molly and Kate sit on the balcony of the yacht club, watching the small white sails tack to and fro out in the bay. They have no idea which boat is Russell’s, or who is winning, but they feel family loyalty demands that they watch the races.
    â€œWe’re showing the flag for Russell,” Kate says, rocking Donald gently in his stroller. She smiles. “What a lot of phrases we use that come from the Navy. Keeping an even keel. Putting your oar in.”
    â€œAll in the same boat,” says Molly, inspired. “Clearing the decks.”
    There is a faint muffled bang out on the water, and they both peer, but can see nothing to tell them whether this is signaling the beginning or end of a race.
    â€œMum,” Molly says, “when are we going to