Clara Barton #1

Chapter 1
Newport, Rhode Island

On the hottest day of the hottest summer on record, Maisie and Felix Robbins stood on the rolling front lawn of Elm Medona and wished more than anything that they could go back in time. Five hours ago they had left the apartment at 10 Bethune Street in New York City, where they had lived their entire twelve years, and driven in a U‑-Haul with their mother to this gigantic, -peacock-​-blue mansion on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. To Maisie and Felix, it looked more like a museum than a place to live.

“Home sweet home,” their mother said as the three of them stared up at Elm Medona.

Maisie folded her arms across her chest and glowered at the ridiculous monstrosity their -great-​-great-​-grandfather Phinneas Pickworth had built in 1909. She would never like living here, she decided. No matter what happened, she would hate it.

Felix, her twin brother, tried not to cry. He was homesick already, and he missed their father, who was having his own moving day halfway across the world.

A horn beeped to announce the arrival of the moving truck.

“Right on time!” their mother said, sprinting across the expansive front lawn to greet the movers.

“What do you think Dad is doing right now?” Felix managed to say. He was a skinny boy and not very tall for twelve, and standing in front of Elm Medona made him feel practically tiny.

“I don’t know,” Maisie grumbled. On a regular day, her blond curls stuck out of her head like springs. With the heat and humidity, they got even more unruly. She ran her hands over her tangle of hair, trying to tame it a little.

“And I don’t care, either,” she added, which Felix knew meant she did care. A lot. Maisie might be seven minutes older than Felix was, but he was definitely more mature than her.

Everything in their lives had changed all at once. Or so it seemed to them. Until breakfast one Saturday at the corner -diner—​-Maisie had French toast, Felix a cheese -omelet—​-Maisie and Felix and their parents all lived happily at 10 Bethune Street. But that April morning, their parents told the twins they were getting divorced. People grow apart, their mother had said. They want different things, their father explained. Those “different things” appeared to be their father taking a job at a big, new museum in Doha, Qatar, and their mother joining a law firm in Newport. What about us? Maisie had demanded. Their mother had leaned back in her chair and said, We get to live in Elm Medona.

Except they weren’t going to live in the mansion. Not exactly. -Great-​-Aunt Maisie, Phinneas Pickworth’s daughter, had made an arrangement with the local preservation society years ago. It allowed her to live in the -third-​-floor servants’ quarters while the preservation society could give tours of all seventy rooms and eighty acres of the estate and throw fancy events for wealthy people. Right before that awful morning at the diner, -Great-​-Aunt Maisie had had a stroke and moved into assisted living, leaving the -apartment-​-like attic available for them.

“Aren’t we lucky?” their mother said now, pausing to stand beside them. Her own unruly blond hair poked out from a pink bandana she’d tied around her head. She held a box on which she’d written fragile in black Sharpie about a million times.

Maisie and Felix exchanged a look. They had made a vow not to complain to their mother about the terrible twists their lives had taken. She’s going through a lot, too, Felix had said. New job. New town. New everything. Maisie had agreed, reluctantly. -Grown-​-ups should be able to deal with all this stuff, she thought. Especially the -grown-​-ups who made it all happen.

“So lucky,” Maisie said, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.

“At least all of our things have arrived safely,” her mother said.

“Do you think there’s a pool nearby?” Felix asked as the sun shone down on them through a hazy, humid sky. “Like on Carmine Street?”

“Stop thinking about what was,” their mother said, “and start thinking about what is.” With that, she headed through the door with her box.

“It sure is big,” Felix said, turning his hazel eyes back to Elm Medona. His square, tortoiseshell glasses slipped down his nose, and he pushed them up.

“It’s positively vulgar,” Maisie cried. She liked to use vocabulary words whenever possible.
“Can you believe they used to call these things cottages?” Felix said.

He had read the brochure the preservation society had sent them in preparation for their move. It had explained how during the Gilded Age at the end of the nineteenth century, the tycoons of finance, industry, and mining had built bigger and bigger mansions along Bellevue Avenue. Elm Medona had been the biggest and most lavish of them all. If he didn’t have to live there, Felix might have found this information fascinating. Instead, it just gave him a pit in his stomach. He had tried to read the brochure out loud on the drive up, but Maisie made him stop. I don’t care about Elm Medona or the Gilded Age or stupid Phinneas Pickworth! she’d said miserably.

“I hate Phinneas Pickworth,” Maisie said, wiping her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand. “Not only did he build this awful place, but he also fathered -Great-​-Aunt Maisie. And if he hadn’t done that, she wouldn’t have been able to let us move into this awful place.”

Her logic was illogical, but Felix understood. She only meant that she wanted to be back at home on Bethune Street, roller-skating down the hallway between the apartments and playing softball in Central Park, both of their parents cheering her on.

Felix draped his damp arm around his sister’s shoulders. “I hate him, too,” he said softly.

Maisie leaned her head on his -chest—​-awkwardly because she was taller than him. The smell of her coconut shampoo mixed with the salty smell of sweat filled his nose.

“There’s a gazebo somewhere on the grounds,” Felix offered hopefully. Gazebo was a good vocabulary word, too. Maybe that would win her over.

Maisie sighed.

“Phinneas copied it from a famous French temple called the Temple of Love,” Felix added.

Maisie glanced up at him. Even though they were twins, they looked nothing alike. Maisie had inherited everything from their -mother—​-unruly blond hair, big green eyes, long -legs—​-and Felix had inherited everything from their -father—​-hazel eyes flecked with gold and afflicted with nearsightedness, -stick-​-straight brown hair, even the cowlick that refused to be tamed.

She turned those green eyes on him now and said, “I want to go back. I want to close my eyes, and when I open them again, I want to be in our room on Bethune Street with Mom and Dad both in the kitchen, laughing and singing show tunes.”

“Me too,” Felix said, giving her a squeeze. “But there’s no going back.” Saying that gave him a big lump in his throat. He swallowed hard three times, trying to make it go away.

For most of their childhood, their mother had been an actress, going to auditions and taking voice and dance lessons and -scene-​-study classes; their father had been a sculptor, working in a big studio downtown that he rode his bike to every morning after he dropped them off at school. But a few years ago, their mother had gone to law school, and their father had taken a job in an art gallery. Maybe, Felix thought, that was when everything started to change.

From high above them, their mother pushed open a window and popped her head out. “Are you just going to stand there all day, or are you going to help unpack some boxes?”

“We’re going to explore!” Maisie shouted back.

“Don’t go too far,” their mother said. “And make sure you can find your way back.”

Felix laughed. “Not everybody has a backyard as big as eighty football fields where they can actually get lost,” he said. “With real temples and English gardens and who knows what else.”

“Isn’t there a carriage house with a bunch of old cars in it?” Maisie said.

Felix pointed a finger at her. “Aha! You were listening.”

“Reluctantly,” she said, peering off into the distance where the grounds seemed to go on forever. “I see something way down there,” she said.

Without hesitating, Maisie walked off. As usual, Felix had to hurry to catch up with her.