The Sweetness of Salt

by Cecilia Galante

  “I couldn’t have done it without you, Jules.” She put her hand over mine.

  I smiled. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to.”

  A small crowd had gathered in front of 149 Main Street. I recognized many of the faces—Mom, Dad, Walt, Lloyd, Jimmy, Aiden, Miriam, Greg, the lady from Dunkin’ Donuts, even the guy from the delicatessen, still dressed in his white apron and biker shorts. And Zoe, who was on my right, wriggling with excitement, and Milo, who was holding my left hand. They had come up last night, as a surprise.

  But there were some unfamiliar faces too, people I had never seen before. And I thought for a moment how unlucky they were, to see the beautiful building before them with its new roof and freshly painted siding, its new porch with a sturdy set of steps, and its freshly landscaped lawn, complete with rhododendron bushes and lilies-of-the-valley. They probably took for granted that the place had always looked like this.

  It was the rest of us who were lucky, the ones who had witnessed the building before its renovation; the ones who had stayed in the broken-down mess of a thing until it turned into the proud, durable structure in front of us now.

  And I was one of them.

  The crowd erupted into cheers as Sophie and Goober appeared on the front steps. Sophie ducked her head shyly as the applause grew, but Goober beamed out at the crowd and hopped up and down. After a moment, the crowd quieted and Sophie lifted her head.

  “Thank you all for coming today,” she said. “I’m so excited to be opening this beautiful little bakery, which, as some of you may know, is a lifelong dream of mine. And as long as I don’t mistake the flour for the salt, I think you’ll be very happy with some of the things that I have to offer you.”

  Sophie’s face eased some more as a loud ripple of laughter came from the street. Goober began to swing her mother’s hand back and forth between them. “I could never have gotten here, though, without the help of my friends,” Sophie said. Her eyes began to tear up as she looked over at Walt, Lloyd, and Jimmy. I bit my lip. “The Table of Knowledge!” Sophie said, extending her arm, as the crowd cheered again. “Without whom this place would never have come together.”

  She brought her hands to her mouth, forming a little steeple with her fingers. I could tell she was trying not to cry. I got a little teary myself. Walt, Lloyd, and Jimmy had outdone themselves over the last month or so, working every day until late at night until the place was finished. It was still as much their house as it was Sophie’s. Or so I liked to think.

  “And my sister,” Sophie said. “My little sister, Julia, who came all the way up from Ohio and stayed with me all summer until we got this place done.” Her voice was strong. “Julia,” she said. “I love you so much.”

  I waved to her and cried as Milo squeezed my hand.

  Sophie bent down and whispered something to Goober. Everyone laughed as the little girl raced off the porch and stood anxiously next to a small sign covered with a black cloth. “Okay, Goober!” Sophie said. Goober reached up and pinched the edge of the cloth with two fingers. “When I count to three!”

  “One! Two!” The crowd roared with her. “Three!”

  Goober snatched away the cloth.

  And there, in the sunlight, stood the Three Sisters Bakery.

  I sat as close to Milo as the seat belt would allow. It was not close enough. His right hand was between us, holding mine tightly, while he steered with his left. I could smell the peppermint Cert between his teeth, and the heat from his skin warmed my palm.

  “That bakery is gonna go through the roof,” Zoe said, popping up from the backseat. She leaned her long arms down between us and looked at me. “You know that, don’t you? Your sister is sitting on a total gold mine.” She shook her head and adjusted the barrette in her hair. “And I’m totally, totally digging the name.”

  I grinned and glanced at her. “I still can’t believe you two surprised me like this.”

  “We wouldn’t have been able to, if your parents hadn’t told us,” Milo reminded me.

  “Yeah, how about that?” Zoe said, scooting forward a little more. “I almost shit a brick when your mother called. I thought for sure she was going to ream me out about something. And then she tells us about the whole deal about the opening, and that we could follow them up if we wanted to!”

  Milo raised his eyebrows. “It was pretty nice of them.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. “They’re good parents,” I said.

  “Man,” Zoe said. “I woulda paid a million bucks to be a fly on the wall during the conversation you had with them about Pittsburgh.”

  “It wasn’t nearly as dramatic as I’m sure you would have liked it to be,” I said, grinning back at her. “Besides, they both calmed way, way down after I told them about Plan B. They’re meeting us there, too, by the way.”

  “Plan B isn’t exactly shabby,” Milo said. “Speaking of which…” He pointed out the window to a sign on the highway: WELLESLEY COLLEGE—4 MILES.

  I shuddered with joy. I still didn’t know what my dream was, but I knew this was going to be the first of many steps toward finding it. Deciding to apply to the college of my choice, enlisting my major tentatively as art history, and taking out loans might not have been as practical as accepting a free ride and prelaw, but in a way, it felt like standing in a kitchen with a head full of ideas. More important, it was me.

  One hundred percent me.

  That night, as the five of us were sitting around the table inside the fancy Japanese restaurant Mom and Dad had taken us to for my eighteenth birthday, Milo looked up at Dad.

  “Do you mind if Julia and I go for a little walk?” He dropped his eyes nervously. “I just…I want to tell her…”

  Mom leaned forward, putting her hand on his wrist. “Go ahead,” she said softly. “We have plenty of time before the cake.”

  She and Dad exchanged a look as Milo and I stood up, and Dad nodded slightly.

  “Don’t be too long!” Zoe called out as we made our way to the door. “I’m not exactly on a first-name basis with these people, you know!” She looked over at Mom and Dad, held up a can of Dr Pepper, and grinned. “Just having a little fun, guys. Just having a little fun.”

  It was dusk. Downtown Wellesley was abuzz with Saturday nightlife.

  “So this will be home for a while,” Milo said. “This and your dorm room, of course. Which, by the way, I have to say I am glad we’re done with. I didn’t think we’d ever get your computer hooked up. I thought your Dad was gonna lose it when we had to start all over again—for the third time.”

  I smiled. “He’s a big fixer-upper kind of guy. He gets frustrated if it doesn’t come together right away.” I paused. “He’s learning, though. And you two worked well together.”

  Milo nodded. “Rachel seems nice.” He looked at me. “You like her, right?”

  I shrugged. “So far.” My roommate had seemed nice. A little nerdy, like me. Quiet. A biology major. Awed by my shot glass collection. She had already asked where she could get a tiny bowl like the one Aiden had made for me.

  “You’re gonna do great,” Milo said, slipping his hand into mine. I looked up at him briefly and smiled as the warmth of his fingers traveled up through me.

  “You are too.”

  After waiting until the last possible moment, Milo had finally decided to attend Boston University, which had not only offered him a scholarship but had one of the best English programs in the country. He was going to major in creative writing. It didn’t hurt that I would now be only twenty minutes away.

  He shrugged. “I hope so.”

  “You will. And you’ll come here? To visit me?”

  Milo stopped walking and turned to face me. We were still on the sidewalk, facing Washington Street. I glanced at the couple walking toward us on my right, and then at the girl wearing a tight, bra-like top coming closer on our left. But Milo didn’t seem to see any of them. Instead, he cupped my face in his hands, holding it the way the sky holds the moon.

&nb
sp; “Julia,” he whispered. He bent his face toward mine and kissed me so gently that my knees buckled. “Always.”

  Everything around us fell away—the street with its throng of cars, people rushing by, even the storm clouds swirling overhead—as Milo lowered his face again and, holding the back of my head with his hand, pressed his lips against mine.

  acknowledgments

  Thank you—always—to my family: my husband Paul and my beautiful children, for being so supportive of the long hours I sometimes need and the meals I occasionally skimp on because of those hours. (Let’s hear it for pancakes!) I love you all so much.

  My editor and publisher, the luminescent Melanie Cecka, took this project on despite the amount of work it still needed. For taking the leap of faith, as well as seeing me through to the end, I remain eternally grateful. Special thanks also to Caroline Abbey of Bloomsbury, for all her hard work and attention to this book, as well as the incredible arts and graphics team at Bloomsbury for devising such a beautiful cover. You’re the best!

  For finding this book—and all of my books—a home away from home, I am forever indebted to my agent and true friend, Jessica Regel. You stand out far above the rest. I am so lucky to have you.

  I had lots of help along the way, especially when it came to getting the facts about Poultney, Vermont. To that end, I would like to extend my appreciation to Kitty Galante, who is without a doubt Poultney’s most ardent fan; my dearest friend, Kemi McShane (who checked on the maple syrup statistics at least three times); and all the fabulous patrons at Perry’s Main Street Eatery, especially the Table of Knowledge. (Let’s hear it for creamed chipped beef!)

  Roland Merullo gave me invaluable advice when I was stuck, something that I return to again and again. Thank you, friend. Rachel VanBlankenship read at least eight drafts of this book—and found new ways to encourage me every time. You’re one in a million, girl.

  My final—and most important—debt of gratitude goes to someone I met only once. Let me explain:

  Two-thirds of the way into this book, I lost it. Literally. My bag, which contained my bright blue flash drive (which contained the only draft of the book), was stolen out of my car. In less than five minutes, my wallet, driver’s license, a small chunk of money, my high school students’ grade books (all 109 of them), and 256 pages of the newest novel I had promised my agent had disappeared. I wept and ranted, swore and cursed. I called the police department and filed a report. Over the next two days, I wrote down as much of the plot as I could remember (not as easy as one might think) and all the bits of dialogue I could still place. (Again, not so easy.) I prayed to Saint Anthony, patron saint of lost things. And I made a promise to myself to back up everything I wrote in the future on my hard drive.

  On the third day, I received a phone call from the police department. They gave me the name and phone number of someone who had found my bag in a ditch. It had been rummaged through, and it was wet, but the caller said that it looked as if everything was still in there. I drove to the address like a bat out of hell. A shoeless older man, dressed in a blue flannel shirt and jeans, opened the door. He had a lazy eye and a garbled voice. His name was Thomas. He walked every morning across the mountain behind his house and then back again. Yesterday—he pointed to my bag—he had found this. I leaped toward it, yelping, and pawed through the contents. Every single thing was in there—except the bright blue flash drive.

  I turned to Thomas, desperate, and begged him to take me to the place on the mountain where he had found the bag. If I could just look around myself…maybe the flash drive had fallen out. Maybe, somehow, I could find it. Thomas—who I guessed to be in his late seventies—had never heard of anything called a flash drive. He had no idea what one looked like. But he said he’d take me. He had a red beat-up truck. Between us, chunks of foam peeked out from beneath the split upholstery and Doritos bags littered the floor. We drove eight or nine miles along a rutted, desolate road without talking until he finally stopped and pulled over.

  It should be noted here that later on, as I relayed this chain of events to a few family members and got to this part of the story, they gasped and shook their heads. What was I thinking, getting into a strange man’s car and driving up the side of a mountain on a deserted road? I could have been murdered! Chopped up into a million little pieces! And no one would have ever found me! In hindsight, I guess they were right. But at the time all I could think was this: my book was out there. Somewhere. And I had to find it.

  We got out of the car. The sky was a sheet of white above us. It was so cold that I could see my breath. I wrapped my arms around my waist and ducked against the wind. In my haste to get to Thomas’s house, I had run out without my winter coat. Thomas pointed to the ditch running along the left side of the road. It was filled with decaying diapers, rusted doorknobs, Burger King bags, and split tires. There was even an iron buried under a pile of weeds. Side by side, we looked for a tiny, ChapStick-sized instrument, kicking garbage over with our feet, pawing through mounds of dirt and leaves. After twenty minutes, I was shaking so badly from the cold that I told Thomas we had to go back. By then, something had resigned itself within me. I had my skeleton of retrieved notes back at the house. A few salvageable pieces of dialogue. As hard as it was going to be, I would just have to start over.

  I said good-bye to Thomas, thanked him profusely for everything, and went home.

  I worked until very, very late that night, trying to get the story started again. It was a laborious, agonizing process, made even more difficult by the fact that Julia and Sophie seemed to be a hundred miles away. My head was crowded with other things, namely an old man who took long walks and didn’t speak very much. I stopped trying to find the girl’s voices that night and began to write about him instead.

  Two days later, the police called me again. Someone named Thomas had found something of mine and wanted me to call him. Dumbfounded, I made the call. “It’s blue,” Thomas said. “And I don’t know for sure, but it might be.”

  My husband insisted on going himself this time to retrieve the item. Twenty minutes later he returned, my flash drive in hand. He said Thomas had told him he’d looked every day on his walk until he’d finally spotted it, beneath a thin pane of ice in the ditch. He’d stomped on the ice until it broke, and then fished it out. There was no way the material on it was still retrievable. Except that when I plugged it into my computer, it was. The whole book was still there, as intact as it had been before.

  I still don’t know Thomas’s last name. And I doubt that we will cross paths again in the foreseeable future. But Thomas is in this book. He became the inspiration for Jimmy, who, like Thomas, takes long walks and speaks only when spoken to.

  I think the story is better for having him in it.

  I know I am.

  ALSO BY CECILIA GALANTE

  The Patron Saint of Butterflies

  Copyright © 2010 by Cecilia Galante

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  First published in the United States of America in November 2010

  by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children’s Books

  E-book edition published in November 2010

  www.bloomsburyteens.com

  Lyrics on page 170 from “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Galante, Cecilia.

  The sweetness of salt / by Cecilia Galante. — 1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: After graduating from high school, class valedictorian Julia travels to Poultney, Vermont, to visit her older sister, and while she is there she learns about long-held family secrets that have shaped her into the person she has grown up to be. ISBN 978-1-59990-512-9 (hardcover)

  [1. Secrets—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. Family problems—Fiction. 4. Self-perce
ption—Fiction. 5. Poultney (Vt.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.G12965Sw 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2010003477

  ISBN 978-1-59990-650-8 (e-book)

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Add Card

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Two

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40