Well, oddlings, I must admit, things were a bit rough there.
There was the mysteriously roving hole in the roof.
There was the fissure in the foundation that multiplied each night.
There was the morning I discovered that the pet gravestones in the front garden had been sucked underground.
There was the note from Cousin Cate that our Great Great Uncle O. Underhill had gone missing. Again.
There was the call from Mordecai that he had relocated most of my creatures from the Laboratory to the Underhill House when the wallpaper had turned itself into curtains and the curtains turned themselves into a chair.
And then there was the morning I came back from a pre-dawn promenade in the cemetery with Bubo to discover that the house was gone. Instead, there was a smoldering pile of rubble and a stench of potpouri and whiskey.
And so we left. We got in my jalopy and sputtered to Great Great Uncle O. Underhill’s house in the mountains of Vermont.
We have houses all over the world, you know. The Underhill House is laid out exactly like my Brooklyn House in mirror image. Rather…odd, wouldn’t you say?
Weary from our journey, I collapsed in an armchair (exactly like the one in my Brooklyn parlor) in front of the wood-burning stove. There was a bottle of whiskey on the side table with a card tied round its neck.
The card read: Mine is yours. O.U.
I do believe I am home.
