“What’s going on?” Max demanded, sticking his head through the doorway to where Addie and Buddy were wrestling to set up an old-fashioned brass bed in the back bedroom where Addie’s desk had been.
“Bart found my dad,” Buddy told him, beaming. “He’s going to come here to recuperate when he gets out of the hospital.”
“No kidding! What happened to him?”
For once the story hadn’t gotten all over town within ten minutes. Buddy happily related as much as she knew while Addie went off to get sheets and blankets.
“That’s great,” Max said. He was carrying the kitten, which purred loudly against his chest as he stroked him. “I heard you went home from school, but nobody knew why.”
“Did you get the letter that came today? Was it from your mom?”
“I didn’t see it. It wasn’t with the mail downstairs. Maybe Addie picked it up,” Max guessed. “Sometimes she sticks it in her pocket so my old man doesn’t see it. He froths at the mouth when anybody mentions my mom. I don’t know why. Sure, she left him, but he deserved it. And he’s married to Cassie now, so why does he care about what my mom does?”
“Did you talk to Addie at all? Did she tell you her news?”
Max stopped petting the kitten. “No. What?”
Addie came to the doorway behind him, her arms full of linens. “I sold a book.”
Max’s eyes went wide. “A book? You sold one of ’em? Wow! Did they send you a check?”
“No. I have to do some revisions on it first, then sign the contract and send it back before they get to that. But they’ve offered me ten thousand dollars. That’s not too bad for a first book, do you think? Well, of course it isn’t my first book, it’s just my first sale.”
Max let out a triumphant yelp. “All right! I hope my old man turned green.”
A small smile softened Addie’s mouth. “Almost, I think. I reminded him of what he’d said about my wasting time.”
“What did he say?” Max asked eagerly.
“Not much of anything. I think Gus was speechless for once.” Addie plunked the bedding down on a chair and picked out a fitted sheet. “Grab that corner, Buddy.”
“Wish he’d stay that way,” Max said. “But he probably won’t. Did I get a letter from my mom?”
“Yes. I almost forgot about it.” Addie pulled it out of her pocket and handed it over.
“Congratulations,” Max said, taking the letter. “I hope you sell all the rest of them, too. Come on, Scamp, let’s go read our letter.”
Buddy was somewhat disappointed when Max retreated to his own room. She’d hoped he had good news, too, and that he’d share it.
Some of what she was feeling must have shown on her face, for Addie paused in the act of putting a flowered case on a pillow. “He always likes to read the letters from his mother in private. I suspect sometimes they make him cry, and he doesn’t want anyone to see him.”
“Oh,” Buddy said. “I hope it’s a nice letter. You have wonderful news today, and so do I. I want Max to have something good to think about, too.”
“He doesn’t have an easy time, with Gus for a father,” Addie said, plumping the pillow and placing it on the bed, then reaching for the other one. “But he’s a good kid. He’ll be all right.”
Silently, Buddy helped finish making up the bed for her father, including smoothing out the bedspread to go over it. Her own future was uncertain—how long would Dad be unable to work? Would he get this newest job back when he could drive again? And where would they go, back to Washington State or somewhere else? But at least Dad was alive, and he’d get back on his feet, and they’d be together somewhere as a family again.
“There,” Addie said as they straightened up across the bed from each other. “I’m sorry we can’t find somewhere else to put the rest of those boxes. There’s not much room in the attic, and those stairs are enough to kill anybody. But at least he can rest comfortably. Now I need to arrange the stuff we moved out of here. Will you help me set up the computer and printer in my bedroom so I can work there? I want to do those revisions as soon as I can.”
They walked down the hallway together to Addie’s room. “You said you based a little girl character on my mother,” Buddy said. “Why?”
“Why?” Addie echoed. “Well, because she was a charming little girl, and I wanted a character like that.”
“So you liked her before she . . . ran off and married my dad.”
“Of course I liked her,” Addie said. She shoved the desk into a better position and lifted the computer monitor onto it. “Can you get down under the desk and plug this in? I guess I’ll have to put the printer on the other side now. There’s an outlet right in the middle under there, so I’ll pass that cord down to you, too.”
“But if you really liked her, how could you hate her now?” Buddy wanted to know.
Addie gave her an exasperated look. “I don’t hate her. I’ll admit I resented it when she showed up and made Dan forget all about me. I really thought he was going to marry me, and it was . . . very disappointing, when they just took off together. It was a big shock, and very humiliating. In a town the size of this one, everybody knew about it and felt sorry for me. It’s uncomfortable to have people pitying you.”
Buddy, down on her knees, plugged in the two electrical cords, then backed out of the kneehole on the desk. “They fell in love. I don’t think either of them meant to hurt you, Aunt Addie.”
“No, I don’t suppose they did. But it did hurt.” Addie lifted the power tower and set it beside the monitor, busy hooking up connections. “There, let’s see if we’ve done it right so it works.” She started pressing buttons, and the monitor lighted up for her to check her password. “Good. I’m ready to go to work.”
Buddy stood up and hesitated, wanting to say more, afraid to do it. “I don’t see how you can believe that Mama was a thief. That she stole Grandpa’s money. She always taught Bart and me to be truthful, to be honest. Once, Bart swiped a candy bar in a store and she made him take it back and apologize. Why did you think she stole money from Grandpa?”
Addie stood very still. “Because she was the only one who could have taken it. I’m sorry, Buddy, but she was here the day the money was delivered to Grandpa. It was foolish, but he insisted on cash instead of a check because he didn’t trust the man who was buying the store. Well, that part wasn’t foolish—Alf Peterson really wasn’t trustworthy—but we should have insisted on a cashier’s check for the major share of the money and not let Grandpa dictate the terms. He had all that cash in a bag, a small case, and we expected to take it to the bank later in the day. Only when we went to get it, it was gone.”
Buddy stared at her, incredulous. “But that’s crazy! Mama couldn’t have taken it! She never would have done something like that! If you knew her, how could you even think it?”
Addie was reacting as if to something very stressful. Her face had once more gone very pink, and now was so white that Buddy wondered if she was about to faint, but she stood there supporting herself with a hand on the edge of the desk.
“Obviously you don’t understand what the situation was, Buddy. She knew that Dan and I had been seeing each other while she was away at college. Yet she blew in here in a swirl of curls and pretty skirts and swept him right out from under my nose, and they ran off and got married without even telling me. Up until then, I’d trusted her, but I was never able to trust her again.”
“But that was years ago! I don’t think she even knew you were in love with Dad; she never said anything except that you’d been friends. And if Dad had been in love with you, he never would have eloped with her! She never knew why you cut her off the way you did, didn’t write to her or anything. She’d say, ‘We used to be friends, when I was a kid,’ but she couldn’t have known, Aunt Addie!”
“She was your mother,” Addie said, sounding cold. “So naturally you thought well of her. But EllaBelle was here on the day Grandpa got the money for the store, and she helped him pack it in that bag, and Herbert Faulkner saw the bag beside her on the seat as she was leaving town. He admitted that to me later, and while he’s a little wimp of a school principal, I never had any reason to believe he was a liar. It was a distinctive bag, a flowered one, that had belonged to Cassie. She’d loaned it to him to carry the money, and Herbert saw it. He couldn’t possibly have been mistaken in that.”
Buddy felt as if someone had struck her in the chest, knocking all the wind out of her. “But someone must have been mistaken! Mama never would have stolen anything from anyone, let alone Grandpa! She loved him! She loved all of her family! She used to tell wonderful stories of when she was a little girl, and how much she loved living here with the rest of you!”
“She chose a peculiar way to show it,” Addie said, and that apparently was to be the end of the conversation. She picked up the thick manila envelope from her dresser, where Buddy had seen it the first time she was in this room, and ripped it open with a dagger-like implement.
“Something’s very wrong,” Buddy said, near tears. “Didn’t you ever ask her about it? You couldn’t have simply let her go off with a bag holding thousands of dollars and not asked about it when you realized it was missing!”
Addie had pulled the contents out of the envelope and was staring at the manuscript in her hand, her jaw going slack. Buddy didn’t think her aunt had even heard what she’d said, and after a few seconds, Addie swallowed hard. “I don’t believe this.”
“What?” It was Max, still carrying the kitten, rubbing him against his cheek, who had come to the doorway. “What’s wrong?”
Addie swallowed again and sank down on the edge of her bed. “Not . . . wrong. Read this.” She reached out with the letter to hand it to him, letting the pages of the manuscript scatter across her quilted covering.
Max let the kitten slide to the bed, too, frowning over what he was reading. “We already knew this, didn’t we? They want to publish your book, only they want some revisions. What’s upsetting about it? I mean, you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“No,” Addie said, pressing a hand to her chest as if to quiet the tumult she was experiencing. “It’s not the same book. This is the one that was returned several days ago. I just took it for granted that they’d rejected it, and I didn’t open it, waiting until I figured out where to send it next. And it’s a different publisher.”
The kitten wandered across the bed, winding up in Addie’s lap, where she absently rubbed his ears. Max had forgotten his new pet.
“You mean you’ve sold two books, in just a couple of days? To two different publishers?”
“I’ve been trying for years,” Addie said, sounding as if she was going to cry. “I have six more books completely written, in that drawer. Two of them I’ve never even sent out except for the first time. Neither of these publishers has seen any of the others.”
Max’s eyes widened. “You mean they might be interested in those, too? Holy cow, Aunt Addie. You could wind up a millionaire!”
Addie gave a little coughing laugh. “Well, probably not. But even these two sales will take care of a lot of problems. And if the others are worth something, too . . .”
She looked straight at Buddy, but Buddy knew her aunt wasn’t really seeing her. And her own frustrations rose like bile in her throat, because she’d finally asked some pointed questions, and Addie had been too engrossed in her own thoughts even to realize what Buddy had said.
Should she repeat her words? Would it matter if she did? Addie was so convinced that Buddy’s mother was a villain—a thief—that she wouldn’t even consider the possibility that she’d made a horrible misjudgment.
Max was grinning as he handed the letter back to Addie. “My old man will sure have to eat his words now, won’t he? If you get rich and famous, will you still stay here in Hayseed? Or go to the big city somewhere?”
Addie made a snorting sound. “I never lived in a city in my life, or ever wanted to. I don’t know a soul in a city, not even Kalispell or Missoula. And the sale of two books, at this kind of price, wouldn’t support me very long in New York or San Francisco, or even in Los Angeles, with Gordon. But in Haysville I should be able to do quite a bit with it.”
“The way Grandpa’s money from the sale of the store should have taken care of him, if it hadn’t disappeared,” Buddy blurted out. She didn’t know where the courage to speak had come from.
This time Addie saw her. “Yes, it would have helped a lot,” she agreed. But there was no sign she was admitting that something else must have happened to the money other than its being stolen by her younger sister.
“Did you ask Mama about it?” Buddy persisted, gaining the nerve to pursue it further.
Addie was now looking straight into her face. “You don’t give up, do you, Buddy? She’d been home for a visit, and she’d talked about how difficult things were at home, financially. Dan had been off work for several months and only just gone back on the job. She was worried about paying the bills, about affording braces the orthodontist said Bart needed. Thousands of dollars’ worth of braces. And Cassie had a fit at the idea of demanding the money back, saying we’d make out all right with Grandpa without it. No, I never asked her. I never had a chance. By the time I’d decided that regardless of what Cassie thought, I would confront EllaBelle, she went and got herself killed in that car crash, and it was too late.”