Authors: Pamela Grandstaff
Even now he still had Charlotte up on a pedestal. Grace knew he would forgive any bad behavior on Charlotte’s part if she would just throw him a crust of bread, like he was a stray dog.
“What does she see in him?” he asked Grace
“He’s popular,” Grace said. “I think that’s all that matters to her now.”
“I talked to her mom about it,” Tommy said.
Grace cringed. Charlotte’s mother Ava was pretty and gracious, but her kindness seemed very calculated to Grace, as if it was a role she was playing, and not who she really was. Grace was small and quiet so people often forgot she was in the room; she had seen some things Ava would not want anyone to know about. Ava was still courteous to Grace when she ran into her, but she never said, “Where have you been?” or “When are you coming to dinner?” Charlotte’s mother made it obvious she knew what was up and approved.
Grace had seen Charlotte and her new friends hanging out behind the B&B, lounging around the picnic table and throwing pine cones at the boys who drove down the alley to flirt with them. They were always whispering, shrieking, or texting, their phones permanently attached to their hands.
They talked in text language, and made fun of Grace for things only Charlotte could have told them about her. It hurt, but Grace had come to the conclusion that if you don’t want to be hurt you just shouldn’t care so much.
“Have you heard from your mom?” Grace said.
“She’s getting out pretty soon,” he said. “She’s worried about what people will think. You can see why.”
“What do you think?”
“It’ll be weird,” he said. “She’s been gone for three years; things have changed a lot.”
“Do you think she and Ed will get back together?”
“I wish they would,” Tommy said. “But neither of them thinks so. Mom says, ‘That’s water under the bridge,’ and Ed says, ‘I blew my chance when I had it,’ so probably not.”
“Will you live with Ed or her?”
“I have to live with Ed since he’s my legal guardian,” Tommy said. “Since mom’s not actually related to me she doesn’t have any rights. She rescued me from those people and raised me from a baby, so she’s the only mom I’ve ever known. My real grandma didn’t see it as rescuing so much as kidnapping and transporting me across state lines. It didn’t help that mom stole her daughter’s identity.”
Tommy’s biological parents were killed in drug-related violence in Florida when he was still an infant. When his biological grandmother found him and discovered his mother was not the Miranda Wilson she had been searching for, she called the FBI. Melissa Wright, which was the real name of the person he considered his mother, was currently serving her sentence at a federal correction facility for women in Florida, where the crime took place. Tommy’s grandmother was dying of cancer when she found him; before she died she let him pick Ed as his guardian, and had left him a small trust fund to use for his college education.
“All that really matters is that you love the person who raised you and she loves you,” Grace said. “You’re lucky to have that.”
“I only saw your mom that time she came to school,” Tommy said. “What was she like?”
“I found the papers from where my grandma took her to a court-ordered psychiatric appointment. The official diagnosis was borderline personality with narcissistic disorder,” Grace said, “which basically meant she was crazy in general, but mostly crazy about herself. My grandparents didn’t believe in giving medication for things like that; things might have turned out differently if they had. They thought she had a demon inside her. Sometimes it seemed like she did.”
“Was she mean to you?”
“Whenever my grandma wasn’t looking,” Grace said. “She blamed me for ruining her life.”
“What about your dad?” Tommy asked. “You never talk about him.”
Grace shrugged.
“He lives somewhere out in the Midwest,” she said. “His parents moved the whole family away after my mom got pregnant in high school. My Aunt Lucy said I looked just like him but I’ve seen a picture of him and I don’t think so.”
“Where’s your Aunt Lucy?”
“Nobody knows.”
“Have you ever thought about contacting your dad?”
“No point, really,” she said. “He knows about me, and if he ever wanted to meet me he knows where I am, right where he left me.”
“We could find him online,” Tommy said. “Find out what he’s like.”
“I don’t want to know,” Grace said. “I don’t want him to seem real.”
“We’re like orphans, you and me, like in The Boxcar Children.”
“At least Ed likes you,” Grace said. “My grandfather doesn’t even pretend to like me.”
“We never talk about this stuff,” he said. “I’m glad we are now. It makes me feel better.”
“I’ll never quit being your friend as long as you want to be my friend,” Grace impulsively said, and was surprised at the tears that came with the promise.
“Me too,” Tommy said, and hugged her.
Someone seated further down the bleachers whistled at them and made a loud comment, so they parted. It felt awkward afterward, but in a good way. They sat in silence as they finished their lunches, and then watched cars on the highway until the bell rang for fifth period.
“Hey, Ed,” Maggie said as she entered the office of the weekly newspaper known as the
Rose Hill Sentinel
, which was quartered in a tiny storefront building next to her mother’s bakery.
Ed was working on his computer, which had the biggest, thinnest, flat-screen monitor Maggie had ever seen.
“Nice computer,” she said. “Is it new?”
Ed pushed back his chair and got up, gesturing to the screen with a flourish.
“I bought it for my website design business,” he said. “I say it’s for design purposes but it also helps with my aging eyesight.”
“How’s that Internet stuff going?” Maggie said, sitting on a stool by the tall worktable. “The Rose Hill website looks great, and it seems like every website linked to it was also designed by you.”
Ed went to the back, got two root beers out of the fridge in his kitchenette, and handed one to Maggie before he sat across from her.
“The website design business saved my hide,” he said. “Print journalism is not exactly a growth industry, you know.”
“You’re telling this to a bookstore owner,” she replied.
“How’s business?” he said.
“The book part of the business is shrinking as fast as the café part is growing,” she said. “If it weren’t for tourists buying sweatshirts and students buying textbooks, I’d be back working for my mother.”
“Wifi,” he said. “That’s the next logical step.”
“Hell no,” Maggie said. “I prefer my customers to eat, drink, and then get the hell out. I don’t want them to hang out all day.”
“Why did you get into the retail business, again?” he asked.
“I know,” she said. “What was I thinking? My best customers are exactly the kind of people I hate the most: privileged and demanding, with an oversized sense of entitlement. They just cannot be pleased. The weird thing is the ruder I am to them the more they seem to like it.”
“Just be glad you’re surviving,” Ed said. “I know I said I’d work on a website for you but lately I seem to have more on my plate than I can cope with.”
“Something new?”
“The college wants to hire me to run their online education program,” Ed said.
“That’s great,” Maggie said. “Are you going to do it?”
“I might,” he said. “I just don’t want to throw in the towel on the Sentinel.”
“Can’t you do both?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Let me run this past you and see what you think: I’m considering offering the Sentinel to the college as an ongoing journalism project for their English students. I’d turn it into a kind of a lab where the college pays for production in return for their students learning how to run a publishing business. I’ve also been looking into electronic book publishing and I think it might be the next logical step for the college press. I’ve talked to several professors who are interested in publishing that way.”
“Wow,” Maggie said. “That’s a lot of change all at once.”
“I’d rather change the way I do business than close it and whine ever after about how life isn’t fair.”
“It actually sounds like a good survival plan,” Maggie said. “Maybe I could get some business major interns, myself.”
“Worth a try,” Ed said. “The advertising barely covers the cost of production for the physical paper, and while the Sentinel website is self-supporting, I’d kind of like to start saving for my eventual nursing home costs.”
“I don’t even want to think about retirement,” Maggie said. “What retirement? I’ll have to work until I drop dead.”
“Do you think the café and textbook business will be enough to keep you afloat long term?”
“Not if you start e-publishing textbooks,” Maggie said.
“Sorry,” Ed said. “I think it’s kind of inevitable at this point.”
“Remember record stores?” Maggie said, and Ed nodded. “I feel like the owner of a record store pretending MP3s will eventually go away.”
“A few record stores still exist, you know,” Ed said. “And some people will always love the feeling of an actual paper book in their hands.”
“I keep picturing this dystopian future where all books are controlled electronically and paper books are outlawed,” Maggie said. “It makes me want to hoard all the PG Wodehouse I can get my hands on.”
“You may want to ease up on reading Cormac McCarthy for awhile,” Ed said. “You’re making the future sound very bleak.”
“I need paper books,” Maggie said. “I look at my bookshelf at home and I feel comforted. There are all my old friends just waiting for the rainy day when I’ll need them again.”
“There is something to be said for a book you don’t need electricity to read,” Ed said. “As often as the power goes out in this town, that’s essential.”
“I know this is the direction in which things are going,” Maggie said. “I can easily envision Little Bear Books becoming 60% café, 35% tourist souvenirs, and 5% books.”
“Wifi,” Ed said. “I’ll help you install it.”
“Not yet,” Maggie said. “But soon.”
“Did Scott tell you about that guy dropping dead on Jacob Branduff’s porch?”
“That’s actually why I’m here,” Maggie said. “Scott’s really worried about Grace. I’ve met her and she seems like a nice kid. Do you think she’s safe living there with Jacob?”
Ed shrugged.
“He’s a huge grouch but I’ve never seen signs that she’s physically abused.”
“She’s so tiny and skinny,” Maggie said.
“It’s not a crime to be poor,” Ed said. “If it were, most of the people living out Possum Holler would be guilty.”
“Child neglect is a crime,” she said.
“True,” Ed said. “But we don’t know that she’s being neglected. We’re just assuming that from appearances. You’d think Hannah was starving if you’d never seen her eat.”
“Scott’s really worried,” Grace said. “You know him; he wants to save everyone.”
“She’s a very well-mannered, smart young woman,” Ed said. “I don’t really know anything more about her.”
“Maybe you could ask Tommy to spy a little,” Maggie said. “Find out if Scott needs to intervene.”
“I can’t do that,” Ed said. “That’s not fair to Grace.”
“How else are we going to find out if she needs help?” Maggie said.
“Well, the first thing you could do is ask her,” Ed said. “She might just tell you.”
“She barely knows me,” Maggie said. “It would have to be someone she trusts.”
“I think she’s pretty isolated,” Ed said. “Since Charlotte dumped Tommy and her, I don’t know that she has any close friends.”
“That’s what Matt Delvecchio said, too,” Maggie said. “Poor kid.”
“All we can do is to offer our help,” Ed said. “We can’t make her accept it.”
“Oh well,” Maggie said. “Thanks anyway.”
“Glad to help in any way I can,” Ed said. “She seems like a nice girl and Tommy needs a friend.”
“That rotten Charlotte,” Maggie said. “I know she’s my niece but I’d like to give her a good hard pinch.”
“Unrequited love,” Ed said. “It happens to everyone.”
“Have you heard from Mandy lately?”
“You mean Melissa,” Ed said. “Her real name is Melissa.”
“That’s going to be hard to get used to,” Maggie said. “When’s she coming home?”
“It’s looking like next month,” Ed said.
“Tommy will be glad to have his mom home,” Maggie said. “Whatever we call her.”
Grace was darting through a crowd of people clogging the hallway as she made her way to fifth period study hall. Suddenly, a huge wall of a person blocked her way and would not move. She feinted left and so did he.
“I play defense,” he said in a soft voice, a voice that did not match his giant stature. “I can do this all day.”
Grace looked up, way up, and met his kind, brown eyes. His smile was shy and sweet.