I shrugged. “I guess.”
“You guess! Truly Lovejoy!” She took me by the shoulders and spun me around. “Just look at that view, darlin’!” Shading her eyes, she gazed out across the road at the long sweep of meadows that sloped down toward the Pumpkin River. She turned to Mrs. Freeman. “How long has it been here?”
Mrs. Freeman laughed. “The view or our farm? I suspect the view has been here longer.”
My mother laughed too.
“The farm was built shortly after the Civil War, by one of my husband’s ancestors,” Annie’s mother told us.
Annie’s family were the first African Americans to settle in Pumpkin Falls. I knew this because we’d learned about them in school a few weeks ago, during Black History Month. Our social studies class had even taken a field trip to the old Oak Street Cemetery. Oak Street paralleled Maple Street, where my grandparents’ house was—the house we were living in now. At the far end of our backyard there was an overgrown cut-through to the cemetery. Hatcher and I had discovered it one summer when we were visiting Gramps and Lola.
On our field trip my classmates and I had wandered around looking at the graves of long-departed Freemans and learning a bit about their history. For instance, Franklin’s grandfather had marched with Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights movement back in the 1960s, which was pretty cool. I took a bunch of pictures of the tombstones. I still had some of them on my cell phone, including Fanny Freeman’s (because who doesn’t love the name Fanny?), an earlier Franklin Freeman (I took that one because of the awesome owl carved into the headstone), and, of course, the tomb of Frank Freeman, the original ancestor who had built Freeman Farm. That particular grave was one of the most famous in the Oak Street Cemetery.
“The whole namesake thing is as bad for Franklin’s family as it is for mine,” I’d remarked to Calhoun as the two of us had stood there looking at it.
He’d flashed me one of his rare smiles. “No kidding. Way too many Franklins, Franks, and F ’s in general. But the epitaph is pretty sweet.”
Two hearts forever entwined, one forever yearning to be free. I looked at it again, then slanted my friend a glance. Calhoun was a bit of a puzzle. He had this übercool exterior, but underneath he was smart as a whip and knew a ton about Shakespeare, of all things, thanks to his Shakespearean scholar father, and he could be funny and really nice when he wanted to. Which had been a lot more than usual lately. He’d even asked me to dance at the Valentine’s Day party. I was beginning to think that maybe he liked me.
We’d both taken photos of the sculpture on top of the lid to the tomb and agreed that a mother cradling her infant was kind of a weird thing to have on a guy’s grave. But then, there were a lot of weird things on the tombstones in the old Oak Street Cemetery, including a stone pumpkin on the one belonging to my ancestor Nathaniel Daniel Lovejoy. Way to represent the Lovejoys, Nathaniel, I’d thought, staring at it.
“You folks certainly ordered up some fine weather for the Maple Madness kickoff,” commented one of the customers standing in line at the Snack Shack.
My mother nodded. “Couldn’t be prettier.”
A pretty day for a birthday, I almost blurted out, but didn’t. Even I had to admit that helping the Freemans was the right thing to do. Still, being a Good Samaritan didn’t completely erase the sting of missing my birthday breakfast.
I swear, moms must have radar that tells them when their kids are unhappy, because just then mine handed me a maple donut and a cup of hot chocolate. “I know it’s not sourdough waffles,” she whispered, “but maybe it will tide you over until tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, and we smiled at each other.
“That’ll be two dollarth,” my little sister announced smartly, holding out her hand. Her front teeth are finally starting to grow in, but she still has a bit of a lisp.
My mother arched an eyebrow. “You drive a hard bargain, young lady,” she said, reaching into her pocket for some coins. “But I’m happy to pay for the birthday girl.”
As she plunked a pile of quarters into Pippa’s palm, I bit into the donut. It was so good I groaned out loud. “Oh man, these are fantastic, Mrs. Freeman.”
Annie’s mother handed me another one. “Why, thank you, Truly! It’s an old family recipe.” She winked. “This one’s on the house, since it’s your birthday.”
Scooter Sanchez, who was walking by just then, turned and looked at me in surprise. It seemed like he was about to say something, but before he could, my father bellowed at him to double-time it back to his station. He sketched a wave and ran off.
Scooter was a lot nicer to me now than when we first moved here. He was still kind of a pain, though. It was really, really hard for him to resist teasing people, for one thing. On my first day at Daniel Webster School, we got off on the wrong foot when he called me “Truly Gigantic.” Things got worse for a while, especially after he discovered that my brother Hatcher’s nickname for me was “Drooly.” It’s one thing for your brother to call you something like that, and another when a complete stranger does it.
“Truly?” Mrs. Freeman handed me a cardboard box containing two cups of coffee and a paper plate piled with donuts. “Would you please take these to Ella and Belinda? They’re manning the barn store for us this morning, and I’m guessing they could use a break about now.”
Picking my way around the puddles, I headed toward the barn. I was more than a bit curious to see how our former postmistress and the local cat rescue lady were getting along. Things had been a little tense for a while between Ella Bellow and Belinda Winchester after last month’s Valentine’s Day dance, where Belinda had slipped a kitten into Ella’s coat pocket. Of course she never admitted to it, but who else had a ready supply of kittens and handed them out like popcorn at a movie? Maybe Belinda had sensed that Ella was lonely and needed a friend—Ella was widowed a few years ago—or maybe Belinda was just being Belinda. Whatever prompted it, Ella had not been happy about the kitten surprise, at least not at first. She and Belinda had since patched things up, mostly. It helped that Ella had quickly fallen head over heels in love with little Purl—the name she picked for the kitten, to go with the new knitting shop she’d opened as a retirement project.
“Having fun yet?” Hatcher loped up behind me and slung an arm around my shoulders.
“You’ve got to try a maple donut,” I told him. “They’re amazing.”
My brother reached for the cardboard box I was carrying, but I whisked it out of his reach. “Go get your own. These are for Ella and Belinda.”
“C’mon, Drooly,” he coaxed, following me into the barn.
“Quit it, Hatcher!” I scowled at him. The Scooter Sanchez fiasco was still a bit of a sore spot between us.
“Sorry.” He grinned, obviously not sorry at all. “Can’t you let me have just one? Ella and Belinda will never notice.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in the satellite lot?” I replied, keeping a firm grip on the donuts.
My brother shrugged. “I’m just taking a break.”
“Better not let Dad catch you slacking.”
“He won’t. Cross my heart and hope to fly.”
I gave him a rueful smile. That particular family saying had been off-limits for months after Black Monday—our name for the day Dad had been injured. I’d gotten into huge trouble earlier this winter for accidentally using it. The catchphrase was something my father and his best friend Tom Larson made up a long time ago when they were in flight school. But when Dad returned from Afghanistan and Mr. Larson didn’t, the words stirred up too many bad memories for my father. Recently, though, the ban had been relaxed, and I’d even caught Dad using it himself a few times. Another sign that he was on the mend, according to Aunt True.
“Whoa,” said Hatcher, looking around the store. “This is over the top.”
The Freemans had pulled out all the stops for Maple Madness. I had no idea there were so many maple products in existence. In addition to the usual jugs of
every size filled with maple syrup, the shelves were crammed with a bunch of other stuff: maple sugar, maple candy, maple coffee and tea, maple-scented candles—even maple-scented soap. Who in their right mind wants to smell like breakfast? I wondered.
But that wasn’t all. There was also maple hot sauce, maple fudge, maple cookies, maple cotton candy, and maple pepper, along with maple leaf key chains, maple recipe books, stacks of Mrs. Freeman’s orange aprons, matching T-shirts, bumper stickers, and, I noted with chagrin, tote bags with MAPLE SYRUP—APPEARING SOON ON A BREAKFAST PLATE NEAR YOU! emblazoned on the side.
Not on one near me, I thought with a stab of self-pity, thinking wistfully of the sourdough waffles that had gone AWOL—military-speak for “absent without leave.”
“Kids!” cried Belinda, waving at us from the far side of the store. Belinda Winchester looked a little less like a bag lady than she had when I first met her—Aunt True’s recent wardrobe makeover had helped, sort of—but Belinda was still a few tacos short of a fiesta platter, if you asked me, which nobody ever did. Belinda had been on kind of a purple streak lately, but today she’d traded that in for head-to-toe orange. Not just any shade of orange, either, but fluorescent hunter-in-the-woods orange. I was guessing this color scheme was inspired by the apron that Mrs. Freeman had designed, which Belinda was wearing over orange overalls, orange turtleneck, orange socks, and orange plastic clogs. With the bright green beret she’d plopped on her snowy owl white hair, Belinda looked like a carrot—an observation I whispered to Hatcher. He laughed.
“How’s it going out there?” Belinda asked, trotting over and reaching for a donut. Hatcher gave me a mournful look, which I ignored.
“Busy,” my brother and I replied at the same time.
Belinda nodded, sending the wires to her ever-present earbuds swinging back and forth. “Busy in here, too. Oh, happy birthday, by the way. Your aunt told me.”
“Thanks.”
“You having a party?” she asked hopefully as I handed her a cup of coffee. Belinda loved parties. Correction: Belinda loved the food that accompanied parties. “I have a great playlist I could bring.”
She bit into the donut, her earbuds leaking the tinny strains of “Surfer Girl.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Hatcher grinning broadly. He got a huge kick out of Belinda. I did too, as a matter of fact. The thing was, you couldn’t help but like her. As odd as she was, she had a lot of spunk for an older lady, along with a mischievous streak a mile wide.
Still, a senior citizen DJ-ing my birthday party wasn’t exactly my idea of a fun time. Not that there was anything wrong with her oldies mixes. Belinda always played them during her bookstore shifts, and I liked the Beatles and the Beach Boys as much as anybody.
I shook my head. “Nope. No party. My cousin’s coming tonight, though. She’s going to spend Spring Break with me.”
“Your aunt said something about that.” Belinda took another bite of donut, then reached into the pocket of her orange apron and pulled out a kitten. “Would you like a present?”
I had to admire her persistence. “My mother would kill me, Belinda. And so would Lauren—she’s been begging for one for months now.”
“You could keep him at the bookstore.”
Belinda worked part-time for us now—or maybe we worked for her, I wasn’t exactly sure which. When the bookshop was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy earlier this winter, she’d saved our bacon by becoming a silent partner. She might look like a slightly crazy cat lady, but it turned out she was a shrewd investor, too, and those deep pockets of hers contained far more than just kittens. Anyway, Aunt True put her in charge of the mystery section, since that was Belinda’s favorite genre and she knew pretty much everything there was to know about it.
I shook my head. “A resident kitten wouldn’t go over well with Memphis.”
“He’d get used to it.”
Fat chance. My aunt’s cat didn’t like anyone except my aunt. As for other animals, well, he’d made it his job in life to make Miss Marple as miserable as possible.
“Are you sure you don’t want him? He’s awful cute,” Belinda coaxed, holding out the little bundle of gray fuzz. “So are his six sisters, if you’d rather have a girl. They’re in a box behind the counter.”
“Oh, look, honey, a KITTEN!” shrieked a woman wearing an orange I WENT MAD FOR MAPLE MADNESS sweatshirt. She dragged her husband over to where we were standing.
Belinda pulled out her earbuds and smiled. “They’re free with a purchase,” she told the customer. “Better act fast, though—we’re almost out.”
My mouth fell open. Belinda winked at me. She was never above stretching the truth when it came to finding homes for her furry charges.
“Going, going, gone!” added Ella Bellow, materializing just then.
I handed the former Pumpkin Falls postmistress a cup of coffee and a donut, and she gave me a chilly smile. Tall and rake thin, Ella had thawed a bit since I’d falsely accused her of stealing a rare book from our store, but despite my public apology we were hardly pals.
“I’d better get back,” said Hatcher, who’d been watching for an opening and finally managed to swipe the last of the donuts.
“Yeah, me too,” I said. “Bye, Belinda. See you later, Ella.”
“You certainly will,” Ella replied, her mouth pruning up in a smug I-know-something-you-don’t smile.
“What was that all about?” my brother whispered as we headed out of the barn.
“No idea,” I whispered back.
As we emerged into the sunshine, Hatcher trotted off toward the parking lot. I rounded the corner of the barn and nearly flattened Scooter Sanchez.
“Watch where you’re going!” he said, startled.
“Like I did it on purpose!”
We stood there awkwardly for a moment, glaring at each other, and then all of a sudden Scooter lunged at me. Before I realized what was happening, his face loomed close to mine and he kissed me.
On the lips.
I stepped back, too astonished to speak.
Scooter’s face flamed. “Happy birthday,” he mumbled, and loped off.
That’s when I spotted Calhoun. I could tell by the look on his face that he’d seen everything. Before I could say a word, he spun on his heel and stalked off.
It’s not what you think! I wanted to shout in protest. I didn’t have anything to do with it!
But he was already gone.
I slumped against the side of the barn. I never used to give boys a second thought. They were just there, like my older brothers. Now, though, they were kind of on my radar screen. Not the way they were on my cousin Mackenzie’s radar screen—she was totally boy crazy. At the moment, she was head over heels in love with Cameron McAllister. They were both on the same swim team in Austin. Behind Mackenzie’s back, I call him Mr. Perfect.
The thing was, though, it had recently begun to dawn on me that not only was there a chance Calhoun liked me, but that maybe, just maybe, I liked him back.
Except now, thanks to the kiss he’d just witnessed, he probably thought I liked Scooter.
Running behind the barn, I grabbed a handful of snow and scrubbed my lips. Why did my first kiss have to be from Scooter Sanchez, of all people? And why did Calhoun have to be there to witness it?
My birthday couldn’t possibly get any worse.
CHAPTER 3
Actually it could, as it turned out.
That bag I saw my mother sneaking into the house? There was a gift for me inside, just as I’d suspected, but it wasn’t what I’d been hoping for.
At breakfast the next morning after swim practice—waffles! finally!—I found a pile of presents waiting for me on my chair. On top was a big blue gift bag covered in sparkles.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Must be something for the birthday girl,” said my father, setting a loaded plate in front of me and planting a kiss on top of my head.
“But it ithnt her birthday anymore,” said
Pippa.
“A technicality,” my father told her.
Pippa’s forehead furrowed.
“He means you’re right, but she gets presents anyway,” said Hatcher.
I opened the envelope taped to the bag. Inside was a birthday card containing a slip of paper. I pulled it out and read it aloud: “This gift certificate enrolls the bearer in ‘Spring Break Socks!’ at A Stitch in Time.”
Hatcher’s eyes met mine across the table. So this was what Ella had been all mysterious about at Freeman Farm yesterday.
“We’re going to take knitting lessons!” my mother said, her Texas twang growing twangier as her excitement bubbled over. “The class starts tonight. I thought it would be something fun we could do together. You know, a little mother-daughter bonding time.”
My eyes slid over to where my cousin Mackenzie was sitting. We’d barely had time to say hello since she’d arrived late last night. She smirked at me. Mackenzie had turned thirteen just last week, and when I called to wish her a happy birthday, she told me that her mother had enrolled the two of them in a yoga class as part of her present. The whole mother-daughter bonding thing must kick in automatically when you become a teenager, like zits or something.
“You and I haven’t had much time to spend together since the move,” my mother continued.
She was right about that. I’d been busy with swim team and school and helping out at the bookshop, and between her full-time college classes, part-time job as receptionist at the Starlite Dance Studio, plus the fact that there are five of us Lovejoy kids, my mother had been spread a little thinner than usual lately.
I reached into the gift bag and pulled out two skeins of pool blue yarn and a pair of knitting needles.
“I thought it would be a nice way to support Ella’s new business venture too, Little O,” my mother added, her voice trailing off as she sensed my lack enthusiasm.
Little O was what she used to call me when I was, well, little. Which I hadn’t been for a long time. It’s short for “Little Owl,” because I was a night owl back then and never wanted to go to bed. My mother even knitted matching sweaters for us with owls on the front and our initials on the back: L. O. for me, and M. O.—Mama Owl—for her.