EPILOGUE
April 12th
Dear Diary,
My sister is safe. She was cold, hungry, tired, and very, very frightened by the time we found her, but she’s safe and that’s all that matters.
Aunt True is right—nothing is more important than family. I know that now. Not world travel, not swimming, not owls, not sudoku or best friends or boys. Family is everything.
After the dust finally settled from the excitement of the search and rescue and the hoopla that followed—we got our press conference after all, though there was no mention of Bigfoot—Aunt True gave me this diary, and a fountain pen to go with it.
“We have to do something to celebrate,” she told me. “And this seems appropriate.”
Professor Rusty took the original Truly’s diary to the college, where the museum’s curatorial staff (including cretinous Felicia Grunewald) is busy studying and transcribing its faded pages. It turns out the diary is a big deal. Several collectors have asked to buy it, but Gramps and Lola told them it’s not for sale. I’m glad.
Our house is a big deal too, thanks to the hiding place and the tunnel. Aunt True is working with her boyfriend (she calls Professor Rusty that openly now, so it’s official) to get it listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
I’m kind of a big deal too. At least our local newspaper thinks so. I was on the front page of the Pumpkin Falls Patriot-Bugle, along with Lauren, of course, and Annie Freeman says I’m a H-E-R-O-I-N-E for rescuing my sister, and for solving her family’s mystery too.
The Freemans are still wrestling with the fact that their ancestor Frank Freeman was actually a she, not a he—a runaway slave named Frankie who was the original Truly’s dear friend, and the mysterious F in her diary.
Like many other runaway slaves, Frankie had concealed her identity and passed for a man. It was safer for women that way, Professor Rusty told us. Part of the “ordeal” that she and my ancestor and namesake shared was the birth of Frankie’s son. That’s what the whole our single package is now two! riddle in the diary meant.
“You mean my great-great-great-grandfather was actually my great-great-great-grandmother?” said Franklin, who was incredulous when he first heard the news. “Why would someone want to keep that a secret?”
Professor Rusty explained that it probably started when his ancestor fled the South. “In the end, Frankie simply kept her disguise,” he told us. “After reaching Canada, she probably stayed for a while, but her dearest wish was to return to Pumpkin Falls and her new friend Truly.”
It wasn’t easy for women to own property in those days, he told us—especially African American women. Frankie might have risked losing her farm if people knew she was a woman. So she’d kept her secret, but she left a clue: the statue on the crypt of a woman and infant. And sure enough, when Professor Rusty and his team of colleagues examined the statue closely, they found her name scratched in tiny letters on the bottom: FRANKIE.
As promised, Truly had kept her friend’s secret faithfully, taking it with her back to Germany, and eventually to her grave. We’ll never know for sure why she didn’t tell Booth about Frankie, but the secret remained for us to discover.
Professor Rusty had DNA tests done on the hair in the twin bracelets, and they came back 100 percent positive as Freeman and Lovejoy, further proof of the activity of the Underground Railroad in our tiny town. Frankie’s and Truly’s lives were entwined back then, just as our neighbors’ lives and ours are here in Pumpkin Falls still.
The whole sap rustler thing turned out to be kind of a big deal too. Scooter’s surveillance video of the raccoon saboteurs went viral, and Aunt True made hay with it, designing a bookshop window that featured blown-up stills of the mama raccoon and her babies, along with cookbooks, picture books featuring raccoons, and more stuff on maple syrup. Lauren got in on the act too, adding Rascal, one of her all-time favorite stories.
My aunt really is a marketing whiz. Cup and Chaucer, her new micro cafe, is starting to take shape. The two little tables she set up are almost always occupied, even though she’s only serving tea right now. The directions that came with the espresso machine were in Italian, and as soon as we get them translated, Aunt True is going to train Hatcher and me to be baristas.
Ella Bellow took pity on my poor pathetic socks, and I was invited to Stitch and Snitch—I mean A Stitch in Time—for a remedial class. “Free of charge,” she told me. “I did advertise successful socks in a week, after all.”
With her help, I finally finished them. They’re kind of lumpy, and they itch, but they don’t look all that bad, so I’m wearing them anyway. I worked too hard on them not to.
Mackenzie and I talk all the time, just like always. We videoconference a couple of times a week, and she loves to show me what Frankie, her new kitten, is up to.
Yes, Mackenzie took a kitten home. Belinda’s persistence paid off. And yes, my cousin named her Frankie, after Franklin’s ancestor. “That way I’ll never forget our Spring Break together,” she told me.
Like there’s any chance either of us could.
My cousin is still crazy about Mr. Perfect Cameron McAllister, although I think she’s keeping her options open with both Scooter and Lucas, because I’ve overheard them vying with each other about who gets more texts from her. She backed away from Franklin, though, after I told her that Jasmine liked him.
The two of us are cooking up a plan to get together this summer. Cha Cha and Jasmine might come along too. I can hardly wait.
I’m still adjusting to life as a teenager. I still cry unexpectedly sometimes, and I still find myself wishing I were a chickadee instead of an ostrich more often than not, but at least I don’t wish I were twelve anymore.
Thirteen is just fine with me, thanks to a certain boy whose initials are Romeo Calhoun.
Mackenzie’s little talk with him seems to have lit a bit of a fire under Calhoun, because he volunteered to go owling with me. I take this as a good sign. I’m hoping maybe there’ll be another kiss, eventually, to erase the memory of that first disastrous one with Scooter behind the Freemans’ barn.
I have to go now. There’s a full moon in the sky outside—a maple moon!—and Calhoun is waiting. I’m wearing the owl earrings that Mackenzie gave me for my birthday, and I can hear a barred owl in the distance. Wish me luck!
Yours, Truly
AUNT TRUE’S BOOKSHOP BLONDIES
Please ask a grown-up for help.
6 T. butter, softened
1 cup maple sugar
1 egg
12 tsp. maple flavoring
12 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
12 tsp. salt
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
Sea salt for sprinkling
• Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease an 8" square pan.
• In a large bowl, cream the butter and maple sugar together; beat in egg, maple flavoring, and vanilla. Whisk flour with baking powder and salt and add to egg mixture, stirring to combine. Add nuts.
• Pour into greased pan and bake for about 25 minutes, until edges are lightly brown and just beginning to pull away from pan.
• Remove from oven and cool on a rack. Sprinkle the top of the blondies with sea salt, if desired.
MISS MARPLE’S PICKS
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Hidden Staircase by Carolyn Keene
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton
Moses by Carole Boston Weatherford and Kadir Nelson
Rascal by Sterling North
The Sasquatch Escape by Suzanne Selfors
The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
HEATHER VOGEL FREDERICK is the award-winning author of the Mother-Daughter Book Club series, Absolutely Truly, the Patience Goodspeed books, the Spy Mice series, and Once Upon a Toad. An avid fan of
all things maple, Heather and her husband have recently been transplanted from Portland, Oregon, back to New England, close to where Heather grew up. You can learn more about the author and her books at heathervogelfrederick.com.
SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
Simon & Schuster • New York
Visit us at
simonandschuster.com/kids
authors.simonandschuster.com/Heather-Vogel-Frederick
Also by Heather Vogel Frederick
Absolutely Truly
The Mother-Daughter Book Club
Much Ado About Anne
Dear Pen Pal
Pies & Prejudice
Home for the Holidays
Wish You Were Eyre
Mother-Daughter Book Camp
Once Upon a Toad
The Voyage of Patience Goodspeed
The Education of Patience Goodspeed
Spy Mice: The Black Paw
Spy Mice: For Your Paws Only
Spy Mice: Goldwhiskers
Hide and Squeak
A Little Women Christmas
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Heather Vogel Frederick
Jacket illustration copyright © 2017 by Charles Santoso
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Frederick, Heather Vogel, author.
Title: Yours Truly / Heather Vogel Frederick.
Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2017] | Series: A Pumpkin Falls mystery | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Summary: When someone tries to sabotage the maple trees on her friend Franklin’s family farm, Truly Lovejoy rallies the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes to investigate. | Sequel to: Absolutely Truly
Identifiers: LCCN 2016031402| ISBN 9781442471863 (hardback) | ISBN 9781442471887 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Mystery and detective stories. | Families—Fiction. | Farm life—New Hampshire—Fiction. | New Hampshire—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Mysteries & Detective Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / General (see also headings under Social Issues).
Classification: LCC PZ7.F87217 Yo 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031402
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