“Oh, no,” I groaned. “That woman is too tidy for our own good.”
“When I tried to get out, I did a bit of damage to the book.” The tears in the cover. The loose pages. That was all because Pops had tried to escape a closed book. Then he smiled. “But Nancy here snuck into the house and got the book out—”
I pointed an accusing finger at Nancy Drew’s innocent face. “Youstole my book? You sneaky, thieving…Ah, you’ll be stealing my clothes next, won’t you?”
“Rainy,” she said matter-of-factly, “whose name is on the cover of the book? And on literally every page? Face it, it wasmybook. Also I’m better dressed than you are. You’ll be stealing my outfits long before I steal yours.”
“Hurtful, but true,” I said.
“She wasn’t stealing the book,” Pops reminded me. “She was helping me escape from it.”
“So you did get free and yet you didn’t come home? Do you know how scared I was?” I demanded. “Very scared. Very, very, very. In italicsvery.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. But I had a marvelous time getting to know Nancy here.”
“So you were in on this mystery the whole time?” I demanded.
“Had to be done, Raindrop. Oh, and I promise we’ll fix that Little Free Library we sabotaged.”
“You did that? Why?”
“So you’d charm it with book powder,” Nancy said. “Then when I gave you the Duke of Chicago book, you’d assume it was because you accidentally charmed yourself, not because I was setting you up with Duke to solve a mystery.”
“I can’t believe it. My own sister and grandfather, plotting against me.”
“Plotting? Yes, butforyou,” Nancy said, “not against you.”
“And it worked, because here you are.” Pops smiled a little wistfully and looked around the house. “Your true home, I suppose.”
“Can you believe it? I’m fictional.”
He took my face in his dear old hands.
“Please don’t run away into a book and never come home to us. All I ask, Raindrop.”
I kissed his cheek, and he hugged me again.
When I turned my head against his shoulder, I saw Nancy grinning at both of us.
“Thank you,” I mouthed.
“Anything for my sister,” she said.
“Nancy Drew is my sister,” I said. “And I’m…I’m Carson Drew’s daughter. I’ll never get used to that.”
“And I have a new granddaughter,” Pops said as Nancy rushed to join me in his arms.
For one beautiful moment, the length of a single sentence in a story, we three held on to each other. If this were the ending of my story, it would’ve been a happy one.
But we weren’t to THE END quite yet.
I pulled away first and looked at them. “We have to go, don’t we?” I asked Pops. “Before we damage Nancy’s books by being here?”
“No,” Nancy pleaded. “Don’t go yet. I promise, we’ll put everything to rights soon. You want to meet Dad, don’t you?”
I did, more than anything. But…
“Will he even know who I am?” I asked, afraid I already knew the answer.
