Flora & Ulysses

They were in the car. Flora’s father’s hands were on the steering wheel at ten o’clock and two. Flora was sitting up front and Ulysses’s head was out the window. They were heading back to Flora’s mother’s house in spite of Flora’s protestations.

“We have to go back,” said her father. “We have to return at the regular Saturday-afternoon time. We have to act normal, natural, unconcerned.”

Flora wanted to object, but she could read the writing on the wall, or rather she could read the words that hovered above her and her father and the squirrel.

DESTINY COULD NO LONGER BE FORESTALLED!

THE ARCH-NEMESIS MUST BE FACED!

“Holy bagumba,” said her father. His right ear was wrapped in a huge amount of gauze. His head looked lopsided. “Holy unanticipated occurrences! A squirrel vanquished a cat.” He shook his head. He smiled.

“And now it’s time for another battle,” said Flora.

“Everything will be fine,” said her father.

“So you say,” said Flora.

It started to rain.

Ulysses pulled his head back inside the car. He looked up at Flora, and the sight of his little whiskered face calmed her somehow. She smiled at him, and the squirrel sighed happily and curled up in her lap.

“When I was a girl in Blundermeecen,” Dr. Meescham had said to Flora when they were all leaving apartment 267, “we wondered always if we would see each other again. Each day was uncertain. So, to say good-bye to someone was uncertain, too. Would you see them again? Who could say? Blundermeecen was a place of dark secrets, unmarked graves, terrible curses. Trolls were everywhere! So we said good-bye to each other the best way we could. We said: I promise to always turn back toward you.

“I say those words to you now, Flora Belle. I promise to always turn back toward you. And now you must say them to me.”

“I promise to always turn back toward you,” Flora had said.

She whispered the words again, now, to the squirrel. “I promise to always turn back toward you.”

She put a finger on Ulysses’s chest. His tiny heart was beating out a message that felt like I promise, I promise, I promise.

Hearts were the strangest things.

“Pop?” said Flora.

“Yes,” said her father.

“Can I feel your heart?”

“My heart?” said her father. “Okay. Sure.”

And then, for the first time ever, George Buckman took both his hands off the steering wheel while the car was in motion. He opened his arms wide. Flora gently moved Ulysses out of her lap and onto the seat beside her, and then she reached up and across and put her hand on the left side of her father’s chest.

And she felt it. Her father’s heart, beating there inside of him. It felt very certain, very strong, and very large. Just like Dr. Meescham had said: capacious.

“Thank you,” she told him.

“Sure,” he said. “You bet.”

He put his hands back on the steering wheel at ten o’clock and two, and the three of them — Flora, her father, and the squirrel — traveled the rest of the way home in a strange and peaceful silence.

The only noise was from the windshield wipers; they hummed back and forth, and back and forth, singing a sweet, out-of-tune song.

The squirrel slept.

And Flora Belle Buckman was happy.