could have happened—maybe she’s too much for us to handle. We’ve never dealt with anything like this before.”
“Now calm down,” he said. “Let’s all pile into the car and find the police station.”
That’s what they did, heading onto the highway that led to Bar Harbor, since the Seaside Motel was located about five miles from the town proper. In the back seat, Ashley held a flashlight while Jack tried to follow the street map of Bar Harbor, and Olivia studied the directions she’d scribbled. The town wasn’t all that big, but it had a lot of quirky little side streets that confused Jack. “I can’t really tell…,” he muttered. “Wait, turn here,” he told his father, who was driving. After a couple more turns they found the police station, a pale brick building, squat and square and plain, as if it, like the state of Maine, would tolerate no nonsense. Lights radiated from inside the building, casting a greenish glow onto the street. What a scary place for Bindy to be! Steven must have been thinking the same thing, because he didn’t even bother to parallel park. He left the car sitting with one tire on the curb and the headlights still on, as the family hurried into the station.
The first thing Jack saw when he walked in was Bindy. She sat alone on a wooden bench, elbows resting on her knees and her head in her hands. Her mousy hair had fallen forward to cover her features. When she looked up, Jack could see fear in her eyes.
A policewoman, stifling a yawn, stood up from behind her desk to approach the Landons. “Sorry to drag you folks in here in the middle of the night. I’m Officer Bartlett. Is this the girl you phoned about?”
“She’s the one,” Steven answered grimly.
“Officer Wilson picked her up in Smokey’s Bar about an hour ago—the bar’s up the hill, not too far from your motel. Anyway, the bartender had called us, saying he had a minor on his premises. He said she was a lot more underage than what he usually gets—which is, you know, 17-or 18-year-olds. That’s why he didn’t want to throw her out alone into the night. So we told him to just leave her there and not say or do anything until we sent an officer.”
Olivia’s brows knit together as she asked, “Is she being charged with a crime?”
“No. She didn’t try to order any alcohol; she said she just went into the bar to use the pay phone. We could charge her with breaking curfew, but…let’s just say she convinced us all that she’ll never do it again. Your girl can be very persuasive.”
Steven and Olivia sat down on either side of Bindy. Jack could tell that his mother was trying to keep her voice calm as she said, “That sounds pretty lame, Bindy. The pay phone? If you wanted to make a call, why didn’t you just use the phone in your room?”
Squeezing her eyes tight, Bindy answered, “I didn’t want Ashley to hear. It was a private call.”
“To whom?” Steven demanded. “Who were you trying to call at midnight?”
“Why should I even answer? I know you won’t believe me. Nobody ever believes me. Except these kind officers here. They listened.”
“Try us,” Steven said. It was Olivia, though, who reached out to cover Bindy’s hand with her own. Maybe she’d noticed the tears welling up in the girl’s eyes. Even from across the room, Jack had noticed that. Real tears? Or part of an act?
Her words came out in a rush. “I wanted to call Aunt Marian, but I never even got to use the pay phone because this jerky man was on it and he wouldn’t hang up—he kept talking to someone about a boat and he was going on and on and on. I was in a booth right behind him, and I waited and waited, and then he turned and looked at me and said—” She stopped for breath, then muttered, “Forget it—it doesn’t matter what he said.
So I went to ask the bartender if I could use his private phone and I’d pay him for the call, but before I could, the policeman came in and arrested me.”
“Why did you want to call your aunt?” Ashley broke in. “You told us she was really mean to you.”
Olivia shook her head, trying to cue Ashley to keep quiet, but too late—Bindy dissolved into tears as she wailed, “Because I want to go home. When we were watching Melissa’s Dream, I started thinking about my mom, and—and I started to miss having a family. Aunt Marian and Uncle Jim and Cole—they’re the only family I’ve got left.” Her voice quivered as she spoke, but she seemed to will herself to go on. “OK, so she loves Cole way more than me, but I can live with that. At least with them I had a home. Now I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. No one wants me. The only one whoever really loved me is dead.”
Both Olivia and Steven put their arms around Bindy and raised her to her feet. “It’s all right,” they were telling her. “You’re with us now. Let’s get back to the motel. It’s late, and we have to check on a dead whale tomorrow.” To the officer, Steven said, “I guess it’s all right for us to take her with us, isn’t it, since she’s not being charged with anything.”
“You have to sign some papers,” Officer Bartlett answered, “and then she can go. Technically, we could charge her with theft, but we’ll let it go—at least this time.”
“Theft!” Steven exclaimed.
“I needed money for the pay phone, so I borrowed a bunch of quarters off a table,” Bindy cried. “I had three dollars in my pocket—I was going to put the bills back on the table to replace the quarters. Honest!” When Olivia looked skeptical, Bindy added quickly, “I just didn’t have time before I was arrested.”
The ride back to the motel was silent, except for Bindy’s sniffles. Jack couldn’t tell if she was still crying or if she was pretending. With Bindy, the actress, it was hard to separate truth from fiction. Yet her tears in the police station, when she’d sobbed that nobody wanted her, had seemed real enough.
Jack was ready to agree with his mother. Bindy Callister might be more than the Landons could handle.
Everyone in the rental car stayed quiet. They’d had less than five hours’ sleep from the time they got back from the police station until the alarm clocks buzzed in both their motel rooms at 7:30 a.m.
That is, everyone but Bindy, who chattered just as much as usual. “…so when I found out they were shooting the movie in New Zealand, I thought maybe I could get a role as a hobbit, just to get away from my aunt. After all, kids at school kept telling me I looked like a hobbit—short and wide. One guy even asked me to take off my shoes so he could see if I had hairy feet. So I did. I took off one shoe and hit him over the head with it. Too bad it wasn’t a spike heel….” And on and on.
If Bindy hadn’t yapped so much, Jack could have enjoyed the scenery more. The park covered 35,000 acres of much larger Mount Desert Island, named by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who landed there in 1604. They hadn’t reached the park boundary yet; instead, they drove on a winding two-lane road through hills bedecked with greenery—beautiful but impossible to appreciate because Bindy the Blabber showed no signs of winding down.
Finally, to shut her up, Jack asked, “Mom, what about these marine mammals that are stranding?”
Before Olivia had a chance to reply, Bindy said, “Mammals. That must be where the word ‘mamma’ comes from. Mammals, mamma. Mamma, mammals.”
Olivia answered, “Those words aren’t connected, Bindy. ‘Ma’ is one of the easiest sounds for a baby to make. Proud mothers tell you, ‘Oh, she’s so smart. She’s only
