Almost Paradise
Page 16
Dearest Ruby Clyde,
I have done everything in my power to keep you from being an orphan like Oliver Twist. The rest is up to you.
Love always, ER.
P.S. When you are ready to have birthdays again, start with A Tale of Two Cities. It is the story of an innocent man who gives his life for someone he loves.
Joe Brewer carried the box of books to the car. I took Mother’s letter outside, where she stood on the porch. I handed her the letter from Eleanor Rose. She took it and read it to herself, then she read it to me.
Dearest Barbara,
Please forgive me for shutting you out of my life. We waste our lives for reasons that, looking back, seem so small, so wasteful. We throw out love because it doesn’t reach the level of perfection that we demand. At the first pain, we run, but we must walk through pain to find our way back to love.
Love begets love, even if the love is in small flawed pieces.
Ruby Clyde taught me about pieces of love. Let her teach you also.
What happened to that child is enough to bring a grown man to his knees. She will tell you, in time, about hearing the gunshots at the gas station. About being alone under the stars with no hope. She has walked through pain like a tiny soldier. It is time for her to find what’s left of her childhood in a peaceful place.
All she has wanted from us was complete love, but we could only give her pieces of it. Maybe pieces of love is all that we can give one another. Maybe pieces of love must be enough for all of us. But it feels like Ruby Clyde has given me more and that is why I gave my freedom for her, my whole love so that she can have a mother.
Can you take care of her now, Barbara, for both of us? Will you?
Your sister, your twin,
Eleanor Rose
My mother lowered the letter and looked at me. “Yes, I can take care of you. I can and I will.” Shading her eyes with one hand, she looked out past the peach orchard to the sunlit hill and said, “This is your day, Ruby Clyde.”
* * *
I am sitting in the backseat of Joe Brewer’s car. We are headed east. There’s a big wide river in St. Louis—the Mississippi. I crossed it once, when I was asleep, the night Catfish drove us west. I plan to be awake this time to see the water flowing from the north, from towns I have never seen, water swirling in a muddy rush south toward the Gulf of Mexico where it will mix with salt water and spread across the whole entire world.
A Tale of Two Cities (one of the books by Mr. Charles Dickens) is open on my lap. Eleanor Rose wrote in the front: This is the story of a man who gave his life for love. Please know, Ruby Clyde, that it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.
I turn the pages and read the first lines of the book:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope …
Eleanor underlined those last words—the spring of hope. I flip through and see that she underlined many passages and made notes to me in the margins. I close the book and look at the road ahead. In time, I know I will read her pieces of love to me, but not now—later, when I am ready again for birthdays.
Acknowledgments
There is an invisible daisy chain of people who took Ruby Clyde’s hand along the path from my imagination to the book you are holding.
I thank each one: Ruby Clyde Henderson for jumping onto my page; the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and my workshop leaders Richard Bausch and Jill McCorkle; my friend Rita Bourke and all the past and current members of the Nashville Writers’ Alliance; and the independent editor Rebecca Faith, who helped me prepare the manuscript for submission to agents.
A special thanks to the summer intern at MCA, Raven Diltz, who actually pulled Ruby Clyde out of the slush pile and passed her to the team: Maria Carvainis, Bryce Gold, Martha Guzman, and especially the brave and wise Elizabeth Copps, who promptly sold my book to Farrar Straus Giroux.
I have the deepest gratitude for Susan Dobinick and Margaret Ferguson, who saw the heart of the story and freed it from the mess I had given them. And the rest of the FSG team: Kristie Radwilowicz, the cover designer; Karen Ninnis, the copy editor; and Heather Job in publicity.
And the bookseller, librarian, teacher, or friend who brought this book into your life. And finally I thank you for reading it. You are the daisy that makes the entire chain worthwhile.
Thank you one and all. It was not easy, but this perfect daisy chain transformed all the detours, disasters, failures, and frustrations that are unavoidable in this life, especially the creative life.
About the Author
Corabel Shofner is a wife, mother, attorney, and author. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English literature and was on Law Review at Vanderbilt University School of Law. But before that she was a terrible student, seriously spacy, and wants all students to keep trying. Her shorter work has appeared in Willow Review, Word Riot, Habersham Review, Hawai’i Review, Sou’wester, South Carolina Review, South Dakota Review, and Xavier Review. Almost Paradise is her first novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Text copyright © 2017 by Corabel Shofner
All rights reserved
First hardcover edition, 2017
eBook edition, November 2017
mackids.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Shofner, Corabel, author.
Title: Almost paradise: a novel / Corabel Shofner.
Description: First edition.|New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.|Summary: When twelve-year-old Ruby’s mother goes to jail, Ruby finds her Aunt Eleanor, an ornery nun with some dark secrets, who Ruby hopes will help free her mother.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016038518 (print)|LCCN 2017018123 (ebook)|ISBN 9780374303792 (ebook)|ISBN 9780374303785 (hardback)
Subjects:|CYAC: Mothers and daughters—Fiction.|Single-parent families—Fiction.|Aunts—Fiction.|Nuns—Fiction.|Prisoners—Fiction.|Cancer—Fiction.|BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General.|JUVENILE FICTION / Law & Crime.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.S5178 (ebook)|LCC PZ7.1.S5178 Alm 2017 (print)|DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038518
&nb
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eISBN 9780374303792