“Will you tell her I called?” I ask my grandmother.
“Of course,” she says. “How are you doing, Allison? Have you seen your mom and dad?”
“I’m okay,” I say. “Mom and Dad aren’t exactly welcoming me back home with open arms. But I started my job today. At a bookstore.”
“Good for you,” my grandma says enthusiastically. “See, you’re already getting back on your feet.”
“Grandma, does Brynn ever talk about that night? Did she ever tell you about it?”
There is silence on the other end and I’m afraid that we’ve been disconnected or, worse, that my grandmother has hung up on me. “Grandma?” I repeat.
“No, she never talks about it,” my grandma answers sadly. “I wish she would, though. At least with her doctor. Keeping things bottled up inside doesn’t do anyone any good. I’ll tell her you called, Allison. You take care of yourself, okay?”
“Thanks, Grandma. Bye,” I say, and hang up the phone. I guess I’m not the only one good at keeping secrets.
My hair feels heavy and scratchy on my neck and I wonder if I dare ask Flora for a haircut instead of a pedicure. Then I remember what Olene said about hope, and I make my way down the spiral staircase toward the sound of laughter.
Charm
No matter how many times Charm sees a mother holding her newborn baby—and at the hospital she sees many—she still thinks of that night five years ago.
Gus was snoring in his chair. The windows were wide-open and a cool breeze, unusual for July, blew through the screen door. It had rained off and on earlier that evening and everything smelled fresh and clean. Charm was sitting in the dark, watching TV with the volume turned down low so she wouldn’t wake Gus. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately. It was getting harder and harder for him to catch his breath and he would wake up several times during the night gasping for air. They didn’t know it at the time, but that was just the beginning of his downward spiral into lung cancer.
Charm heard the crunch of gravel as a car approached and she rose from the couch to peek out the window. A small car, without its headlights on, stopped in front of the house and a person stepped from the passenger side. She couldn’t tell if it was a male or female, but whoever it was moved slowly and shuffled toward the front door as if very old or in a great deal of pain. The tall figure was carrying something and stopped every few steps as if resting, regaining strength. “Gus,” Charm called softly, suddenly afraid. He slept on. She flipped on the outside light.
It was Allison Glenn, a junior at her high school. Allison was beautiful, smart, athletic—nice even—and Charm had no idea why she would show up at her home. Charm wasn’t even sure if Allison even knew who she was. Allison was dressed in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, her blond hair piled on top of her head. Though she looked sick and her face was as pale as the moon that had just started to peek through the clouds, she was beautiful. Charm strained her eyes, trying to see who was in the driver’s seat of the car. Another girl, her dark hair hiding her face. Charm could hear her cries. “Gus,” she called again, more loudly this time.
Before she could say anything, before she could even open the screen door, Allison spoke in a tired, scared voice. “Is Christopher here?” She glanced around nervously.
“I’ll go get him. Come on in,” Charm answered, and her eyes settled upon the bundle in her shaking hands. She was trembling so hard Charm thought she was going to drop it.
“No, I’ll just wait here,” she said, her teeth chattering.
Gus came up behind Charm and peered over her shoulder. “She’s looking for Christopher,” Charm told him.
Gus made an impatient noise, one that Charm was now used to hearing every time someone said Christopher’s name. “Hmmph,” he muttered. “Who’s asking?”
The cries from the car grew louder, more desperate. “Is she okay?” Charm asked worriedly.
Allison looked wearily over her shoulder. “She’ll be okay. Please, get Christopher.”
Charm hurried to the back of the house and knocked on her brother’s bedroom door.
“What?”
“There’s someone here to see you,” she called. “Hurry,” she urged, rapping on the door again.
“Jesus, I’m coming. Who is it?” Christopher, tall and handsome, threw open the door and emerged from a fog of smoke.
“Christopher,” Charm snapped. “You’re not supposed to smoke in the house.”
“Who is it?” he asked again, ignoring her lecture, running his hands through his thick brown hair.
“It’s Allison Glenn,” Charm said, and Christopher froze and she saw something new skitter across his face. Something she’d never seen before in her brother’s eyes. A flash of hope. “How do you know Allison?” she asked, as she followed him through the house to the front door.
“Christopher,” Allison said, trying to control her voice, but failing. She looked terrible.
“Are you okay?” Christopher asked, then recovered, his face transforming into an unreadable mask. “What are you doing here?” His voice was cold.
Charm and Gus watched them regard each other, Allison and Christopher both trying to appear cool and indifferent. Allison, Charm knew, was a girl who was used to getting her way, but she looked so sick, so miserable. No match for Christopher, she thought. But she was wrong.
“Here.” She thrust the blanket toward Christopher. “He’s yours. You need to deal with it.” Christopher looked dumbly down at the bundle in his hands and nearly dropped it when it softly squawked.
“Jesus.” Christopher paled. “What is it?”
“Be careful,” she said, and her icy eyes fixed on Christopher’s. “A baby,” she said matter-of-factly. “He’s yours and I can’t…I can’t keep him.”
Charm moved slowly closer and leaned in, reaching for the infant.
The towel fell away, revealing a pinched, red face, and the baby started wailing, his cries joining the cries of the unknown girl who remained in the car, her shoulders convulsing with her sobs. “Why?” Charm asked.
“I just can’t,” Allison said, and began to limp back to the car.
“Hey!” Christopher yelled after her. “Hey, I don’t want it. Get the hell back here.” She ignored him and started to get into the car.
Gus and Charm looked at each other and then down at the baby, whose skinny, twiglike arms moved spastically about his head. “Shhh,” Charm whispered to him, already falling in love.
Gus called out to her. “You don’t really think he’ll take care of this baby, do you?”
She stopped and turned back toward them, her face un=-bearably sad. “He has to.”
Gus and Charm stood there looking at the tiny little boy in stunned silence as Christopher stormed out of the house, knapsack in his hand, into the rainy night, letting the screen door slam behind him without a backward glance. Gus shouted angrily after him as Charm looked down at the baby in awe. A mixture of terror and wonder filled her chest. How was she going to take care of this scrawny, red-faced child, when that was all she really was herself?
Brynn
I’m working with Milo in the kitchen, teaching him to stay even though it’s his dinnertime and his food bowl is full and waiting for him. It seems so cruel, making him wait to eat, but it’s crucial for his obedience training. I started out having him wait just a few minutes to eat and now we’ve worked our way up to twenty minutes. He is sitting there, each muscle twitching, his eyes looking hopefully at me for the signal that will release him.
Some people believe that dogs are psychic, that they have this paranormal knowledge of the world around them, allowing them to know their master is home well before they come to the door or that they can sense danger. Actually, this sixth sense has more to do with the dog’s amazing sense of smell. They are known to be able to detect when an epileptic seizure or a heart attack is coming on. Some people believe dogs can sense certain kinds of cancers in humans even before a doctor can diagnose the disease.
This makes me think of Allison. I wonder if things might have been different if we’d had a dog growing up. Would a particularly intuitive golden retriever have been able to sense Allison’s pregnancy? Would he have sniffed at Allison’s nearly nonexistent belly long enough for our parents or for me to notice something was up? Or maybe, just maybe, in the time before the police came to take Allison away, he could have alerted my parents to how sick Allison was and I wouldn’t have had to do what I did. I don’t know.
It was bad enough having my sister taken away by the police, but what made it worse was that it was my fault that she was arrested. I was the one who panicked and called the police. I didn’t mean to get Allison in trouble. But I hadn’t slept since the night she gave birth. All I could think about was that baby. It just wasn’t right that she was so cold and wet in that river, and I couldn’t stop shivering and I couldn’t catch my breath. Allison was burning up with fever and she was bleeding, there was so much blood. I tried to tell my parents that Allison was sick, but as usual they were caught up in their own lives. All my mother did was peek into Allison’s room and say, “Are you okay, Allison?” And Allison said she was fine and then gave me hell when my mother went away.
I don’t know why I picked up the phone but I did. When the 9-1-1 operator answered the call I started hyperventilating and she kept asking me if I was okay and did I need an ambulance. Finally, the words came. “My sister, the baby in the river, please,” I cried. “You have to help her…” And then I started crying and couldn’t stop. Five minutes later the police were at our door and even though my father told them no one called the police, there was no baby, it was all a big mistake, they still came into the house.
After they took her away I still couldn’t sleep more than two or three hours at a time. Every time I closed my eyes I saw that blue-skinned baby in front of me and every time I opened my eyes I saw my parents’ disapproving looks. They couldn’t really say anything—the doctor said that Allison could have died if we hadn’t gotten her to the hospital. But I know my parents were angry at me for calling the police and for revealing to the world that their perfect daughter wasn’t all that pure.
I give Milo the signal that releases him and he runs to his food bowl and greedily gobbles up his dog food, then trots up to me, nuzzling against my leg as if to thank me. His ears perk up at the ring of the phone, followed by a soft growl that begins low in his chest. I absentmindedly shush him as I reach for the receiver and he whines quietly when I order him into a down position.
“Hello,” I say.
“Brynn, please don’t hang up,” she says in a rush. “Please just let me come see you. I need to talk to you. Please.” I don’t recognize the voice at first, but realization quickly dawns on me. I almost don’t believe that it is her. Growing up, Allison always sounded so confident, sure of herself. The girl I hear over the line sounds desperate, scared, but it’s her, it’s my sister, and her voice pierces my heart. “I found him,” she says in a rush. “I found the baby boy—”
Without answering her, I slam down the phone.
I feel my chest tighten with panic, although I haven’t had a full-blown panic attack in months. Why can’t Allison just let me be? I don’t care that she’s out of prison, I don’t care that she wants to make amends. I’m better off without her; I’m better off forgetting what happened that night. “No, no, no!” I shout, and Milo answers me with sharp, loud barks. “No!” I yell again at the phone.
The phone begins to ring again, loud and high-pitched, and I sit weakly down on the cool linoleum floor and cover my ears.
Allison
I walk into Bookends like nothing has happened. Claire greets me with a cup of coffee and a doughnut. “You came back!” she teases. “I thought maybe I scared you away. Love your haircut, by the way.”
“Oh, no,” I protest, “it’s great here. Thanks again for the chance.” I self-consciously run my fingers through my newly shorn locks. “Thanks.”
“Come on, a new shipment of books came yesterday afternoon. I’ll show you how to check them in.”
We work quietly for a while. I still can’t get over all the books and I have to force myself to keep working and not stop to open them and begin reading.
“It must be very hard to be here,” Claire says finally, breaking the silence. My stomach leaps. She can’t know. There’s no way. “Starting all over again. It must be very difficult.”
I slowly nod. “It is,” I whisper. “It’s like the whole world moved forward and I’m stuck. I’m twenty-one, I’m supposed to be done with college, supposed to be starting a career…but here I am.”
“You can’t let that hold you back,” Claire proclaims. “No one knows what they’re really going to do with the rest of their life when they’re twenty-one. I sure didn’t. Do you know what I was doing when I was your age?” I shake my head. “I was a librarian.”
“You were?” I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.
“Of course,” Claire continues, “most people don’t just get out of college and open up their own business right away. I had so much to learn at the library and I had to meet Jonathan before it even dawned on me that owning a bookstore was what I wanted to do.”
“How’d you meet Jonathan?” I ask.
Claire laughs. “In a flood, of all things.”
“Really?” I ask, impressed. “What happened?”
“Come on, let’s run across the street and grab something to eat and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Can we do that?” I ask with surprise. “Can we just leave?”
“That’s the beauty of owning your own business,” Claire says wickedly. She locks the door behind us and we cross the street to a small restaurant. Once we are settled in our booth the waitress hands us our menus and we both order burgers and fries.
“This place has the best food,” Claire explains. “Actually, this restaurant is one of the reasons I decided to buy the building across the street. The idea of being able to run over here whenever I wanted to was just too tempting.”
“So you met your husband in a flood?” I ask, bringing the conversation back to the story of Claire and Jonathan.
“Well, sort of,” Claire begins.
Claire
“The floods were supposed to come the spring I turned twenty-five,” Claire explains as she pushes her plate away from her. “That spring started out beautifully, each morning a brisk fifty degrees, but by ten o’clock the temperature would rise to seventy degrees. We were all well aware that the flooding was heading our way from the north—towns and farms along the Mississippi in Minnesota and Wisconsin were already devastated—but it was just so hard to believe, because we hadn’t received an unusual amount of rain that spring. And it was even more difficult to imagine the destruction that was making its way toward us.”
“I remember my mom and dad talking about that spring. We… They live by the Druid…” Allison breaks off and lowers her head in embarrassment.
Claire pretends not to notice and continues on. “We had planned to sandbag the block surrounding the library. We had so many people who volunteered. The Friends of the Library Organization, our local Red Hat Club, members of the Jaycees, even the homeless man who spent cold or rainy days in the library reading the Des Moines Register or dozing behind a huge world atlas. Everyone had gathered in front of the library, ready to help.”
Claire smiles at the memory of seeing Jonathan for the first time. He was tall and had the face of an academic and the body of a laborer. Serious, thoughtful blue eyes looked out from wire-rimmed glasses. His forehead was furrowed, a permanent crease already set between his brows. His long, lean frame was powerful and sinewy. He was wearing work gloves and holding a shovel when Claire thanked the crowd for coming out to help. She could feel her skin burn with the weight of his gaze on her face as she described the thousands of books that they were trying to save, along with the computers and art collections that were also at risk. Inside the library, employee
s worked to move the contents of the library to the upper floors, but it was a daunting task.
“My job was to hold open a bag while Jonathan lifted shovelfuls of sand in. I’d tie the bag closed and put it into the waiting arms of the homeless man, who I learned was named Brawley, and it would be whisked down the assembly line that we formed. By the fourth hour I had blisters on my hands and the skin on the insides of my forearms was raw from being scoured with the sand that Jonathan poured into the bags. ‘You should pace yourself,’ Jonathan finally said to me.” Claire remembers watching as Jonathan leaned against his shovel, wiping the sweat from his face with his arm and leaving granules of fine sand clinging to his sweaty cheek. “Things just progressed from there.” Claire shrugs. “The funny thing was that the floods never actually came. We did all that sandbagging for nothing. But Jonathan and I were married a few months later, bought a house, opened Bookends. Then came Joshua.” Claire smiles thoughtfully at Allison. “It’s funny how things work themselves out.”
Claire notices the look on Allison’s face. Allison wants to ask her something, but is too shy, too embarrassed. Too something.
Allison
I know I need to form the question carefully, to make it sound like it is a natural part of our conversation. “How long were you married when you had Joshua?” I ask, trying to sound normal, but inside I’m screaming.
A ripple of pain passes across her face. “Joshua’s adopted. Someone else did the hard part, but we get to enjoy him.”