A Summer of Sundays (23 page)
Read A Summer of Sundays Online
Authors: Lindsay Eland
He nodded and patted down the soil around one of the flowers.
It was funny. Most people asked me questions like Ben Folger’s. Do you fight? Do you like your siblings?
They never asked if I felt lost in the crowd, or if I felt invisible. They never asked if I wished that for just one moment I could have my parents’ attention all to myself.
We were finished in an hour or so. Ben brought out a pitcher of lemonade, I carried a plate piled high with marshmallow crispy treats, and Jude carried the glasses filled with ice.
“You should become a baker,” Jude said, taking a gooey square. “Every day you make something delicious.”
“Actually, before two kids ruined one of my flower beds, I don’t think I ever baked much of anything.” He winked. Jude and I looked at each other and smiled.
“So how long were you a librarian?” Jude asked.
Ben gazed off across the field at the library. “Fifteen years there. Then I … I moved for a little while. I came back about twenty years ago.”
I took a sip of lemonade. “Where did you move to?”
“New York City,” he said. “A far cry from quiet little Alma, but nice in its own way.”
I nodded solemnly, though my insides were screaming. He had to be the Librarian in the letters and the person that left a daisy by Lee Wren’s grave every day. If anyone
knew about another manuscript that she had written, it would be him.
Still, it was obvious that he didn’t want to talk about Lee Wren. I decided to try a different angle.
“I’m still reading Lee Wren’s book,” I said. I hadn’t picked it up in a few days, but if the manuscript tucked under my bed was Lee Wren’s, then it wasn’t really a lie.
“That’s good,” Ben said.
“Yeah, I really wish she had written another one.” I knocked Jude gently with my foot.
He caught on and nodded. “Yeah, I wish she had, too.”
Ben Folger eyed me over the lip of his glass. “Yes, it’s a shame that she didn’t.”
“How do you know that she never wrote anything else?”
Ben Folger gulped down the rest of his lemonade. “Have you found something?”
“No,” I said, hoping that my expression wasn’t screaming
YES!
It’s under my mattress at home! “I was just … wondering … since you two were friends.”
“You know,” he said, “the sun is getting a little too hot now. I think I might go in and rest. How about you two come back tomorrow for lunch?” Then he turned and walked inside the house, leaving us with the pitcher of lemonade and the plate of crispy treats.
“He definitely doesn’t want to talk about her at all,” Jude whispered, taking one last sip of his lemonade.
“I know. But don’t you think that makes it even more likely that there was something between them? If there wasn’t, then he wouldn’t care about talking about her.”
“Maybe. But since he’s not going to help, we need to think of somewhere else we can get proof.”
I wiped my forehead, squinting back across the field. It was getting hot. “Yeah, and the only place I can think of is the library.”
JUDE
and I parted ways when we crossed the field. “I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” he called after me.
“Of course. Have fun with Wally.”
I expected to walk in the house and find my siblings shuffling and scuffling around the table for lunch, but instead it was only Mom stirring a bowl of chicken salad at the kitchen counter.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
She smiled. “They’re all over at the library helping your dad. I told them I’d give them a ten-minute warning. Could you run over and help May carry up all the boxes on the table in the basement? I sorted through them yesterday and made piles for trash and recycling.”
That’s where I was going to look. “You didn’t throw anything away yet, did you?”
She shook the saltshaker over the bowl and then opened a family-sized bag of chips. “Nope, that’s what you’re going to do.”
I rushed out the door and down the stairs.
Flying across the grass to the library, I dashed up the stairs, pushed through the doors, then ran down to the basement. May was hefting a cardboard box.
“Oh good,” she said, letting it drop on the table. “You can carry up the last one. It feels like Mom filled these boxes with bricks.”
Standing on tiptoe, I saw the shiny metal box still sitting on the top shelf of the bookcase and sighed with relief. “So this is the last one?”
She rolled her eyes. “Didn’t I just say that?”
I tried to hide my curiosity. “Sorry. Did you find anything interesting in the boxes?”
May examined her fingernails. “Not that I saw. Mostly just old papers and a few ancient cassette tapes.”
“Cassette tapes?” I remembered seeing old tapes when I found the manuscript. They were in the cardboard box where I had tossed the letters the first time.
“Yeah,” May said. “Somewhere in that box. If not, they’re probably in a trash bag.”
“Thanks.” I shuffled toward the stairs, then turned. “Mom said it’s almost lunchtime.”
“Finally. She’s had us working all morning.”
When I reached the Dumpsters in the back of the library, I set the box down next to the others and sifted through a mess of old papers and broken pencils before
finding two unlabeled cassette tapes. I dusted them off and carried them with me back to the house just as Mom rang the bell signaling that lunch was ready.
“Do you know where I can find a tape recorder, Mom?” I tried to make my voice rise above the din of the table, but I could tell she hadn’t heard me. “Do you?” I asked louder.
“What? Henry, if you flush your sandwich down the toilet again, I will ground you until Christmas. Emma, I can help you with the costumes tonight, but only for a bit. Miss Jenny and I are going to finish shelving the last of the books. Yes, May, you and I can drive Emma tomorrow. Emma, don’t make that face, she’s getting much better. Bo, really, just eat the chicken salad, I promise there aren’t any bones in it, and CJ, stop saying that the mayonnaise is liver juice, you’re making me lose my appetite. Adam, can you pass the water pitcher?” She stopped to take a breath.
I took the pause to yell, “I said, Do you know where I can find a tape recorder?’ ”
Dad slathered a baby carrot with ranch dressing. “What do you need a tape recorder for?”
“I found some old tapes in the library and wanted to listen to them.”
Mom was about to answer but stopped when she glanced over at CJ. “If you give one more bite to Butters
under the table, you’ll have chicken salad for breakfast, lunch, and dinner tomorrow. And you’ll be cleaning up the dog’s diarrhea when she gets an upset stomach.”
CJ giggled. “Diarrhea. Diarrhea.”
“CJ, I mean it!”
Dad swallowed some milk. “You didn’t find one in the library?”
“No.” I’d found old catalogues and stamps but I hadn’t seen a tape recorder.
“How about the thrift store? They might have one.”
Of course!
CJ looked at me. “I might want ice cream tomorrow, so maybe I’ll come along with you, Sunday. I’m thinking a double scoop of cotton candy with sprinkles.”
Ugh. That’s right
. Any money I had was now in CJ’s ice cream fund. Still, maybe the tape player was super cheap and I could find change somewhere.
“I want ice cream!” Henry cried.
Bo tugged on my arm. “Me too.”
“I can drive you down to the thrift store tomorrow when I take Emma,” May said.
CJ poked at his chicken salad. “Maybe if she wants to crash.”
May let her fork and knife clank onto her plate.
I shrugged and nodded, hoping to prevent World War III. “Yeah, okay, I’ll go.”
May grinned and turned up her nose at CJ. “See, some people in this family have faith in my abilities.”
CJ silently ran a finger across his throat.
As the afternoon dragged on, I realized that I’d just have to wait until tomorrow to go to the thrift store.
So that night after dinner I snuck up to my bedroom, locked the door, and pulled out the manuscript. I flipped through the pages, my gaze landing on the beginning of one of the last chapters.
When Lilly received what was to be Mark’s last postcard, something in her froze. He was coming home.
Finally, after two years away, he was coming back to Price.
Price.
Price.
The name—the town—hit heavy in Lilly’s stomach.
It reminded her of all the dreams she’d had.
Mark had traveled as she had longed to. He had left Price behind and seen the world. Her world.
The thoughts sat with Lilly, frightening her, embarrassing her. What if he came back to Price only to see that she had done nothing? That she was unchanged, walking her four blocks to town and her
four blocks back, writing a story that would probably die a silent death, while he had flown over oceans, woven through busy streets in taxis, felt hot Indian sun on his face, tasted mangoes and passion fruit.
Lilly tucked the postcard inside her notebook. She couldn’t let him see her like this. She wouldn’t.
Packing up her books and clothes, Lilly left her small apartment in Price and drove up to New York City. New York City, the center of excitement, the center of publishing, the center of the world. Any fear disappeared as she dove into her new life. She began as a waitress at a small diner, barely making the rent for her dingy apartment. She wrote every spare moment she had. It was not the glamour Lilly had first dreamt of, but she had created it, and that was something.
Mark did not write her and she found, at first, that she did not mind. She wrote to him after she sent her first story, “The Day We Met, and After” to a publisher she had met one morning at work.
The man had sat by a window, spreading out a manuscript. The white pages reminded Lilly of her own story, which had sat on her table for the past two months.
“Coffee. The strongest you have,” he said, not looking up.
Lilly nodded and returned, careful not to let the coffee spill onto the manuscript. She watched the man over the next couple of hours, refilling his cup every so often.
“You’re a writer, then?” the man asked, his eyes never leaving the pages.
At first, Lilly didn’t realize the man was speaking to her and kept her focus on the stream of coffee that dribbled into the cup.
The man looked up and Lilly could tell he was used to getting quick answers. “Well, am I right?”
Lilly wiped down the already clean table. “Yes.”
“And what do you write?”
“Fiction.” Was that right? Her nerves jostled her thoughts around so that nothing was clear.
“Are you any good?”
Humility told her to shrug off his question with a loose answer, but she knew she wasn’t a bad writer. Besides, she might never get another chance. So Lilly turned up her nose and said, “Yes, actually I am. I’ll send you my manuscript if you’d like,” then blushed at her brazenness.
The man nodded, then pulled out his business card. “I guess we’ll see.”
Lilly tucked it into her pocket with trembling hands and finished her shift. When she arrived
home, she took the pages straight from their place on the coffee table to the post office. At the counter she also purchased a postcard, filled in Mark’s address, and scrawled across the bottom, “I’ve sent in my story. Love, Lilly.”
Then she went home and cried.
This had to be Lee Wren’s manuscript.
After sliding the pages back under the mattress, I flipped the fan on to high. The library reopening was just days away. My hands trembled just as Lilly’s had when she placed the business card in her pocket. I finally found something to make me stand out, but what if I couldn’t prove it to the world?
I hoped that the tapes held another clue. In my heart I knew this was Lee Wren’s manuscript.
I just needed to find a way to prove it.
THE NEXT
morning after breakfast, May, Emma, and I walked over to the library to let Mom and Dad know that we were going into town.
“Mom, can I just drive Emma and Sunday into town by myself? It’s not far—three blocks. Please?” May asked.
Mom shook her head. “Sorry, May, but someone with a license has to be with you. I’ll come along.”
