“Here?” I ask, moving Mr. Herron’s hand farther to the right. He is on his knees next to me, trying to “see” where he wants his plants positioned.
“Too far.” He frowns, stretching his hand in the opposite direction. “They can’t be too close to the parfaits or they just shrivel up and die.”
Last week, Mr. Herron called me at home and asked me to come over. He said he had something he wanted to discuss with me. Something of utmost importance. I was nervous going over. It was going to be bad, whatever it was. He probably had a speech planned, something about how he respected Ma, but that he just couldn’t have a criminal working in his house anymore. I drove too fast on my way over, sped through a stop sign on his street.
He was sitting in the kitchen when I came in, a plant on the table in front of him. Next to the plant was a small envelope, the back of it sealed shut.
I sat down at the table, put my hands in my lap. “Hey, Mr. Herron. I’m here.”
Instead of answering, Mr. Herron moved the envelope toward me.
“What’s this?”
“It’s for you,” he said. “Open it.”
I opened it, sure I would find a final check, maybe with a little extra added on so that we could part without any hard feelings. Instead, I caught my breath as a sheaf of one hundred dollar bills fell out. It was at least five thousand dollars. “What’s this?”
“I told you,” Mr. Herron said. “It’s for you.”
“But I didn’t earn this money. There’s no reason—”
“You gonna earn it.” Mr. Herron sat forward slightly. The edge of a leaf brushed his cheek; his unseeing eyes roved over my shirt. “You gonna use it for school. For nursing school. It’s just to start off, now. Get you rollin’. You know, an old man like me don’t get very many opportunities to do something again for someone who needs it.”
“You think I need it?”
“Yeah. You bust your butt every day, taking care of your mother and your son. I know it ain’t easy. I’ve heard you upstairs, crying a few times.”
I looked down at the table.
“Nothin’ to be ’shamed of,” Mr. Herron said. “Nothin’ at all.” He nodded. “It’s not the cryin’ that bothers me. It’s the being stuck. Not being able to do nothing about it. You hear me? I can do something about this, Bird. I can help try to make things a little easier. ’Sides, I want to see what you can do with yourself, girl, once you get planted. Just like that bird of paradise.” He grinned broadly, turning his head in the direction of the plant. It was still upright and, somehow, despite the rains and the forty-degree temperatures, a single bud was perched on the end of one stalk. “I’s lookin’ forward to seein’ you bloom, girl. I really, really am.”
Now, I watch as Mr. Herron’s papery fingers press the dirt around his parfaits, wonder why, out of all the ways he could spend his time, he chooses this. Dirt, and seeds. Flowers and stems and roots and weeds and sometimes even flowers.
“How about over here?” I ask again, maneuvering his hands toward the left.
He shakes his head.
“Where, then?”
“Hold your horses, missy. I’s trying to map it out.”
I sit back, study the small flowering bush in my hand. It’s some kind of zinnia, according to Mr. Herron. A hardy plant that won’t require too much attention. I look at the petals, the perfect, spiraling formation of them, how the leaves along the stem follow a staggered pattern, one beneath the other, so as not to block the sunlight. And I think about all the moments happening right now in the world, the strange, beautiful dichotomy of them: a star spinning in space, a child pulling on a winter hat. The transparent wings of a bumblebee, the cut of a knife, a mother gazing at her newborn baby. Silence after screams, and the kindness of a stranger. The beating of a heart, and the stopping of another.
How brave we are to continue loving each other among the ruins; how strong a choice to decide to go on when death has seemed the only option.
“Okay, right here.” Mr. Herron taps the ground exactly where I previously placed his hand. “Here’s the place. Start diggin’. And then put that puppy in real gently. Nice and soft, y’hear? Like a baby.”
“I got it, Mr. Herron.” I pick up the shovel, stick it into the rich earth. “Don’t you worry. I got it.”
THERE’S NOTHING REMARKABLE about my drive home afterward. I wind through the same familiar streets, brake at exactly the same stop signs I’ve been looking at all my life, even pause at the same spot on the bridge, so that I can look out and see the water. But when I pull into the little apartment on Vine Street, six blocks away from Ma, and hear Angus shrieking in the backyard as she pushes him on his brand-new tire swing, it feels remarkable suddenly.
Extraordinary, even.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my editor, Emily Krump, who believed in this book from the beginning. And to the loves of my life, my children, Sarah, Sophia, and Joseph, who sustain and lift me up every day. Thank you, angels.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the author
* * *
Meet Cecilia Galante
About the book
* * *
Behind the Book
Read on . . .
* * *
Have You Read? More from Cecilia Galante
About the author
Meet Cecilia Galante
CECILIA GALANTE, who received an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont, is the author of eight young adult novels and a children’s chapter-book series. She has been the recipient of many awards, including an NAIBA Book of the Year, and an Oprah’s Teen Read Selection for her first novel, The Patron Saint of Butterflies. She lives in Kingston, Pennsylvania, with her three children.
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About the book
Behind the Book
Although I drew from various experiences in my life while writing this novel, including single-motherhood and a volatile mother-daughter relationship, the one that stuck out most vividly was something that had nothing to do with me at all. In October of 2003, a convicted felon from our neighborhood, accused of murdering two drug dealers and then burning and burying their bodies in his back yard, escaped from prison. According to reports, he and another man somehow managed to tie their bedsheets into a rope of sorts and then lower themselves out of a seventh-floor jail cell window. The accomplice, who went first, slipped and fell halfway down, fracturing both hips. The murderer, who tossed a mattress out the window, made it safely all the way down and, without a backward glance at his injured cellmate, disappeared into the night.
The police believed that the felon would try to return home, so for three day our little town was gripped with fear while he was on the loose. My own dreams were haunted with images of running into this man, and my daily activities, which I’d used to embark upon without a second thought, were colored within a whole new context. I imagined stumbling into him on my morning run or while headed to the local mini-mart for milk. What if he appeared suddenly while I was filling the tank of my car with gas, or when I was stopped at a red light? He would most likely be exhausted, filthy, starving, maybe even injured. What would he say? What would he do?
It was that three-day pocket of possibility that I remembered most vividly when I decided to center my next book around a woman who accidentally found herself enmeshed with an escaped prisoner. The sheer panic of that time period came back full force as I began to craft scene after scene around the two characters. And then of course, the writer’s imagination took over and I allowed myself to go deeper. What if the main character actually knew the escaped convict? And what if she knew him through some vividly shared past experience that she felt indebted to him for? Would such a thing motivate her to help him get away? Or wouldn’t it matter?
One of the reasons I write is to try to understand how people’s minds work, why they do what they do, especially in certain unusual s
ituations. Why might one person choose to go right, while someone else opts for left? Why not up? Or down? And how much of how we were raised and what we were taught influences those decisions?
I think the history I gave Bird, including a dead father and a critical mother, not to mention her rape and resulting child, played a huge part in her decision to do what she did. But I also think that becoming James’s accomplice had less to do with the idea of repaying a debt than it did with wanting to be with someone who, maybe for the first time in her life, saw her for who she was and loved her anyway. I think really seeing someone might be the biggest gift we can give one another in this lifetime.
Including ourselves.
Read on
Have You Read? More from Cecilia Galante
THE INVISIBLES
* * *
Brought together by chance as teenagers at Turning Winds, a home for girls, Nora, Ozzie, Monica, and Grace quickly bond over their troubled pasts and form their own family, which they dub The Invisibles. With a fierce loyalty to each other, the girls feel that they can overcome any obstacle thrown their way. Though the walls they’ve built around themselves to keep out the rest of the world are thick, they discover one night, when tragedy strikes, that there are cracks in their tight-knit circle.
While Ozzie, Monica, and Grace leave after graduation to forge a fresh start, Nora decides to stay behind in Willow Grove. Now, fifteen years later, she’s content living a quiet, single life working in the local library and collecting “first lines”—her favorite opening lines from novels. But when Ozzie calls out of the blue to let her know Grace has attempted suicide and is desperate for them to reconvene, Nora is torn between elation at seeing the women who were once her most cherished, trusted friends and anxiety over the unresolved conflicts that will most certainly surface.
As the women gather and reminisce, the truth about their lives comes to light. And when The Invisibles decide to take the road trip they always dreamed of, they will be forced to reveal their deepest secrets and confront the night that changed them forever.
“With heart, wisdom, and a quartet of unforgettable protagonists, Cecilia Galante deftly examines the ways in which the sense of community created by profound friendships can act as a salve on even the deepest of wounds. Gripping and heartrending, The Invisibles will—warning!—keep you up into the wee hours, hungry for just one more page.”
—Meg Donohue, USA Today
bestselling author of All the
Summer Girls and Dog Crazy
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Praise
“With heart, wisdom, and a quartet of unforgettable protagonists, Cecilia Galante deftly examines the ways in which the sense of community created by profound friendships can act as a salve on even the deepest of wounds. Gripping and heartrending, The Invisibles will—warning!—keep you up into the wee hours, hungry for just one more page.”
—Meg Donohue, USA TODAY bestselling author of All the Summer Girls and Dog Crazy
“In The Invisibles, Cecilia Galante artfully reminds us that even the most carefully constructed facade doesn’t stand a chance against the healing power of true friendship.”
—Zoe Fishman, author of Balancing Acts
“Cecilia Galante tells a difficult story with sensitivity and grace . . . Fraught with pain but quietly hopeful, The Invisibles is a moving tribute to the strength of female friendship.”
—Shelf Awareness, starred review
“Galante’s first adult novel is one of letting go of your past, allowing others to love you and, above all else, forgiving yourself. For readers who like a story of healing and the power of friendship.”
—Library Journal
“Galante displays the same sensitivity and insight shown in her children’s and YA fiction . . . in this moving story of reconciliation and renewal.”
—Booklist
“[A] lovely, poignant book about female friendships and making your own family . . . a compelling, powerful summer read, The Invisibles is a page turner that is perfect for a rainy beach day.”
—Times Leader
Also by Cecilia Galante
The Invisibles
Credits
Cover design by Owen Corrigan
Cover photograph © Angela Auclair / Getty Images
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE ODDS OF YOU AND ME. Copyright © 2017 by Cecilia Galante. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition January 2017 ISBN 9780062434869
ISBN 9780062434852
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The Odds of You and Me Page 32