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there?"
     
     
     

    Now didn't seem like the time to split hairs and
    mention that I'd taken my step-dad's last name and went by Forsythia
    Hall.  Or to ponder the notion that my bio-dad came up with the
    term "Greensun" to memorialize himself.  Both fathers aside,
    there was yet another stranger on my doorstep, and it definitely
seemed worth crawling out of bed to see who this one might be.
     
    When I made my way out onto the porch, though, I
    discovered that stranger 2.0 (or maybe 3.0 if you counted Jacob in the airport)
    wasn't actually on my doorstep at all.  The previously
    mild-mannered creek had flooded up to the top of its five-foot-high
    banks and was beginning to spill out over the sides, so the stranger
    was marooned on the opposite shore.  Or, perhaps more
    realistically, I was marooned on this one.
     
    "Hello?" I called as I walked across the sodden
    lawn to within speaking distance.  This stranger, actually,
    didn't look any more scary than the last visitor, and it seemed rude to
    be yelling at a sixty-year-old man who had such a kindly twinkle in
    his eye.  "I'm Primrose," I added when I was near enough to
    speak instead of shout.
     
    It turned out my newest visitor was even less a
    stranger than the last one, as I soon realized when he told me his
    name.  Arvil was the sole Greensun-affiliated person Mom had
    stayed in touch with, and she'd given me his number in case of
    emergencies.  Which this seemed to be.
     
    "I don't want to alarm you," Arvil said after the
    introductions were concluded.  "But I have some news.  And
    I'd really feel better if I told you while we're both on the same side of
    the creek."  He and I scanned the raging floodwaters,
    watching Lucy leap into the fray, swim madly against the current,
    and still end up twenty feet downstream before she reached the other
    shore.
     
    "I'm really okay over here," I said
    finally.  "Whatever's wrong, I can handle it."
     
    I later realized that Arvil's chivalry was in
    large part due to his sense of adventure, in the face of which a
    flooded creek was akin to a red flag waved at a bull.  "There's
    a fallen tree down there," he pointed.  "I could probably walk
    across."
     
    The tree he'd noticed did seem to be
    well-anchored and pretty level as it spanned the creek.  And if
    the trunk had been a foot above solid ground, I would have pranced
    across it laughing.  (Well, maybe not pranced, but you get the
    picture.)  Still, I could easily imagine Arvil slipping and
    falling, hitting his head on the wood, and sinking beneath the muddy
    waters before I could leap in and rescue him.  Lucy would
    probably be the only one left alive.
     
    But Arvil was already striding downstream toward
    his found bridge, so I rushed after him on my side of the
    creek.  "No, I'll cross!" I called.  What else could I
    do?  The guy was almost geriatric.
     
    The log really wasn't that bad once I took off my
    shoes and could grip it with my bare feet.  I'm not sure I
    actually breathed until I got to the other side, but the wide smile
    on Arvil's face made the effort worthwhile, even after Lucy joined
    the party and shook muddy water all over us.  I grinned back at
    both of them, letting the shoes I'd slung around my neck fall to the ground, already thinking of the log as an
adventurous story to tell someone (other than Mom) in the near future.
     
    Which is when Arvil dropped the bombshell. 
    "Your father's in the hospital.  He's okay, but he had a heart
    attack."
     
    And then I fainted.
     
     

     
    Once I came to, I was quick to assure Arvil that
I'd only passed out due to low blood sugar from the previous
    night's indisposition, but he refused to leave me
    alone after that.  My neighbor patted down his pockets and came
up with
    a mint, which was enough to fuel my walk up the hill, but he
    wouldn't take no for an answer when he invited me to his house for