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It starts when Donald gets a phone call. He takes one glance at the caller ID and breaks into a grin. “Oye, Pistoles!” he answers. Webby and the triplets watch in awe as Donald’s entire demeanor seems to change. His shoulders are relaxed, he’s laughing, he’s speaking rapid-fire Spanish--which he’s never spoken a word of, to their knowledge.
“Who do you think he’s talking to?” asks Huey.
Dewey bounces in place. “Probably some cool adventurer he met on one of his expeditions with Scrooge!”
Louie scoffs. “Or some accountant buddy he met at work.”
“Hardly!” Webby argues. “I bet it’s some cool, grizzled sailor buddy from the navy.”
“Put José on,” Donald is saying. “Yeah, hey José,” he chuckles. “How’s the rooster treating you?”
They eavesdrop for a while on the conversation, but it’s mostly just boring adult stuff. Catching up, as grownups call it. Even Webby begins to lose interest.
“Let’s go. This is lame,” Dewey announces, turning to go to another room of the mansion. The rest trail behind him. The manor has about a thousand things that are a thousand times more interesting than Uncle Donald’s boring phone call.
“I found something really cool on the third floor yesterday…” Webby begins, rubbing her palms together.
As the children are leaving, they catch one last snatch of the conversation: “In Duckburg? You oughta pay a visit!”
///
Webby stands stiffly in the foyer, shoulder to shoulder with the boys. Everyone looks a little put out about the situation, but she’s sort of excited. Donald had asked that everyone come to meet his friends, and he’s pulling into the driveway with them now. Scrooge is checking his watch and grumbling about lost productivity. Launchpad appears to be playing games on his phone. Granny is marching about straightening things.
She leans close to Louie’s shoulder. “What do you think these guys are like?”
Louie shrugs. “They’re friends with Uncle Donald. They’re probably just… kind of boring, normal adults.”
Donald bursts in with his arms around two smartly-dressed fellows: a rooster at his right side, a parrot on his left. They’re all grinning. Donald is humming under his breath. Webby doesn’t know Donald very well yet, but she definitely doesn’t know him to be quite so jovial.
Donald lets go of his friends and steps forward. “Okay, okay, introductions. Everyone, this is José Carioca and Panchito Pistoles.” He gestures to the parrot and rooster respectively. “Zé, Pancho, this is my family.”
Family. Webby privately hopes she’s included in that. She can’t imagine a family she wants to be part of more than this one.
Donald introduces each of them individually. Webby watches, giggling, as Mr. Pistoles shakes Launchpad’s hand so hard he leaves him trembling in place afterward. He quickly starts moving down the line, towards her and the boys.
Mr. Carioca grabs him by the collar and yanks him backward. “Panchito, really, you’re going to scare the poor kids away.”
Panchito dusts himself off and straightens his collar. “These kids? No way.” He grins and leans toward them. “You are Donald’s nephews, aren’t you?”
“Yessir,” Huey affirms, rocking back on his heels.
Panchito claps him on the shoulder. “Well, José, there you have it. Donald’s boys aren’t afraid of anything, you’ve heard the stories just like I have.”
Webby tugs awkwardly at the hem of her skirt.
“And the little girl?” José asks.
“Webbigail Vanderquack, sir.” She drops her hands to her sides. Fidgeting is a bad habit, Granny always tells her. Don’t let your nerves show. “I’m...” She flounders. She’s what? “My grandmother takes care of the house.”
José reaches for her hand and she shakes it politely. “Nice to meet you, Miss Webbigail.”
“Webby’s good friends with the boys,” Donald explains as he approaches. He leans his elbow on José’s shoulder.
Mr. Pistoles reaches toward Webby. Cautiously, she takes his hand. “Well, any friend of Donald’s nephews must be a friend of Donald’s,” he says, giving her hand a vigorous shake, “and any friend of Donald’s is a friend of ours!”
Webby feels a little rattled from the enthusiastic handshake. She retracts her arm and shakes her wrist back and forth, trying to get the blood flowing again. “It’s nice to meet you both,” she says.
“Nice to meet you,” the boys chorus.
Donald scowls. “You shouldn’t need Webby to remind you of your manners.”
“Ah, ease up on them, Donald.” José pats his shoulder. “They’re just kids.”
Webby leans close to Louie again. “Boring adults?”
He shrugs one shoulder, but can’t hide that he’s smiling.
///
Donald and his friends have retired to one of the sitting rooms, citing a need for a private conversation.
Webby counts to thirty before gesturing for the triplets to follow the adults with her.
“Do you think we should be doing this?” Huey whispers. “Didn’t José say this was private?”
Dewey snorts. “Do you like, hear yourself when you say stuff like that?”
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Webby replies. “But we’re totally going to anyway.” Besides her natural curiosity, she thought that Donald’s friends were cool. Almost as cool as Donald, even. If they had something to discuss with one of the world’s greatest adventurers, it had to be good.
She carefully picks her way through the hall, avoiding all the squeaky spots. The boys aren’t quite as good as her at sneaking yet, she notes when she hears the floorboards groan. They’ll have to work on that. When they get close enough to the sitting room to hear voices distinctly, she presses her back against the wall and gestures for the boys to do the same.
“...you can imagine, we haven’t come all the way to Duckburg for no reason,” José is saying. “We have something to tell you.”
“Something important enough that we wanted to say it in person,” Panchito adds.
“Sounds serious,” Donald says, apprehension clear in his voice.
“Sounds interesting,” Webby whispers. She presses her ear closer to the wall, hoping to pick up any background noise.
“It’s nothing like that,” José assures. “It’s good news.” He pauses, laughs. “Okay, Panchito, you wanted to tell him. Tell him!”
“Well, you know, this has been a long time coming,” Panchito says, “and things are becoming easier, legally--well, José and I are tying the knot, so to speak.”
Webby pulls away from the wall.
“Tying the knot?” Donald’s voice drifts through the door. “That’s great! Congratulations, fellas!”
Webby begins to fiddle with her skirt. Her eyes dart between the boys, whose expressions seem mildly interested at best. She feels her cheeks growing hot, her heart is starting to pound, but she doesn’t know why. It seems like everyone else is in on a secret she wasn’t aware of.
“Can they do that?” she whispers. She’s embarrassed to ask. She knows she’s desperately naive about the real world. But she really needs to know this.
“What, can they get married?” Dewey gives her a weird look.
She nods furiously, staring at her hands.
“Sometimes I forget how little you leave this house,” Louie snorts.
Webby’s head snaps up. “Don’t laugh!”
Suddenly, Donald is there. “You kids--”
“Run!”
Louie grabs Webby by one hand, Dewey by the other, Huey stumbling along at the end of the chain. Together the four of them sprint down the hall, hopefully out of Donald’s sight.
///
Webby has a lot of questions. She always has a lot of questions; there’s just so much she doesn’t know. So much world she’s never seen. She’s stayed in one place as long as she can remember. Things have changed recently, but a few weeks of freedom compared to years and years of the same sheltered life… she has a lot of catching up to do. She’s sitting on her bed, hugging her knees, all of her questions bubbling up inside her, ready to boil over. The only problem is, she doesn’t know who to ask. Or how.
What exactly should she say in this situation? Can two men get married? Like, really for real married? She’d sound like an idiot. Is it okay for them to do that? Why have I never seen anything like that before? The triplets would laugh. She wants so much for them to be best friends forever. She doesn’t want to seem stupid in front of them. If two boys can get married, could two girls do it too? She buries her face in her knees. She doesn’t know why it’s so important. It’s none of her business. She shouldn’t have eavesdropped. Granny says you shouldn’t spy on friends.
Webby groans and flops onto her back. This obviously isn’t working. She needs a change of scenery. She always thinks better when she’s wandering the house. She slips off of her bed and through her door, into the hallway. She picks her steps carefully, so as not to disturb the silent hallway. Even with so many people in it, the mansion can feel dreadfully empty. No one could ever really use this many rooms, even if the entire Duck family moved in--and Webby knows from her research that they have a lot of relatives.
She traces the fancy wallpaper with one hand, remembering the pattern without looking. Why do people get married, anyway? The easy answer is because they love each other. Webby isn’t sure she understands love. She never really knew her parents. She doesn’t have much of an example of happy couples around the house. Grandpa died years before she was born. And of course, she’s only eleven. Too young to fall love, probably. She doesn’t have much example of normal eleven-year-old girls, either.
Webby wanders into one of the sitting rooms. It’s formal and old fashioned, like the rest of the house, and smells of tobacco. Which is odd, because she has never seen Scrooge smoke in her life, and no one else would dare to smoke in the house. She glances around the room. There is a pair of glass doors leading to a balcony, slightly ajar.
Curiosity gets the better of her, as it always does, and she approaches the glass. Donald’s friend José is leaning against the balcony’s handrail, smoking a cigar. She must make a sound, because he turns to look at her. He raises an eyebrow. “Good afternoon, Miss Webbigail.”
She pushes the door open. “Good afternoon, Mr. Carioca.”
He gestures for her to join him. She does. “There’s no need for formality. Just José is fine.”
“Then just Webby is fine, too.”
“Webby, then,” he says with a smile. “What brings you here all alone? Don’t you want to go play with your friends?”
“I dunno.” She grabs the railing of the balcony and leans backward, tilting her head to the sky. “Don’t you want to go talk to your fiancé?”
He laughs. “She’s got a sharp tongue!” He puffs out a breath of cigar smoke. “I guess we both needed a moment away, ei?”
Webby nods. “Congratulations on your engagement, by the way.”
“Thank you.”
She stares at a cloud formation. If she turns her head the right way, it looks just like a rabbit. “Are you excited to be married?”
“Very much.” His cigar smoke seems to mingle with the clouds.
There is a period of silence. Webby begins to feel her heart pounding, her face flushing again. She can’t stop herself from asking. “Can girls do that too?”
“Pardon?”
Her hands slide down the rails. She pulls herself into a ball. “Can two girls marry each other?”
There is silence again. “Yes, they can.”
The tension evaporates. Webby’s heart rate slows to normal. “Oh. Okay.” She glances up at Mr. Carioca. He’s smiling, but he doesn’t look like he’s laughing at her.
He leans against the railing and looks out across the yard. “Do you want to know what I love about this world?”
Webby straightens, sitting on her knees, resting her forehead on the rails. “What’s that?”
“It is always changing. Every day, something different. And some of these changes are bad things. But many are good.” He pauses. “People are changing too.” He looks down at her for a few moments, with an odd look on his face. Sort of sad, but sort of happy too. “They are changing in good ways.”
Webby isn’t quite sure what this all means. Somehow, though, she feels like he’s telling her something important. Like he understands the questions she’s asking. She tucks these words away, close to her heart, for a time when she’ll understand them. “I... see.”
He smiles. “I remember being your age... I was very lonely. Always looking for where I belonged.” He ashes his cigar. “There is no ‘where’. You don’t belong with places. You belong with people.”
“And you belong with Panchito?” Webby ventures.
He nods. “And with Donald. They’re my best friends.”
Webby thinks about her best friends. The triplets. When they’re all together, she certainly feels like she belongs that way. She knows she belongs with Granny. “I think I get it.”
“I know you do.” José grins. He puffs his cigar. “Things are going to be just fine.”
And she believes him.