Small Bones
Page 17
I don’t know how much time passed. Next thing I knew, Mrs. Naylor was with me. She stroked my head and said Ward had gone to get the baby. He’d make sure it got a decent burial. I understand now that by the time he got there, kids from the resort had arrived. He heard the commotion when they found you and hid in the bushes until they took off. He had no idea you were alive until he got you home.
Mrs. Naylor had to calm Len down, so Muriel drove me into town. She wasn’t much of a driver, but there was no one else to do it. She went off the road, and her husband had to come get us. Dr. Talbot was waiting at the back door of the hospital for me. He stitched me up, then called my father to say I had mononucleosis and would be staying in the hospital until I got my strength back.
The whole incident plunged Len into a terrible place—and for that I’m very sorry. I was young and foolish and too much in love to understand what I was doing.
Ward arranged a scholarship to get me out of Buckminster and, more important, away from Len. I regret he didn’t see fit to tell me the baby had lived—but I don’t blame him. A naïve mother, an ill father—Ward decided we were both better off not knowing. Mrs. Naylor had lived in Hope, so she knew about the orphanage. She believed they’d look after you well.
I understand they did.
Thanks to Ward, I was able to go to the University of Toronto and further my schooling. I graduated with a Bachelor of Education degree and taught for several years before I met and married a lovely man, Bob Urquhart. We have three little boys—Bobby, Lenny and Adair—and now, at long last, the girl I’ve always dreamed of.
Mrs. Naylor tells me you’re small and pretty. Ward tells me you’re smart and brave. (He’s amazed you managed to calm Len down enough to get him back to the house.) Muriel tells me you’re an excellent seamstress (although prone to daydreaming). Gunky tells me his son’s in love with you.
I look forward to falling in love with you too. When do I get to meet you?
Thinking of you,
Your mother, Lucinda
Thirty-Six
EDDIE TOOK ME to the Esquire Diner, but he wouldn’t come in with me, no matter how much I begged.
“No way I’m coming between a mother and her baby,” he said. “Could be dangerous.” Then he kissed me on the forehead and pushed me through the door.
The waitress said, “She’s in the booth at the back.”
It was a long walk.
All my life, I’d dreamed about my parents. Turned out my father wasn’t Steve McQueen after all. He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t famous. He was just a kind and gentle man who’d never really come home from the war. The little bit of fight he had left in him he’d saved for doing right by me. I was proud of him, even if some days he wasn’t sure who I was.
Still, as I walked through the diner, part of me hoped that my mother would live up to my fantasies, the ones I’d had when I was a kid. That she’d stand up in her sequined gown like she’d just stepped out of the pages of LIFE magazine and everyone in the Esquire would lower their cheeseburgers and whisper, “Oh my god, isn’t that…?” And I’d have a story to tell and a reason to be and proof, finally, that all those years of waiting and wondering and thinking of you had been worth it.
Lucinda stood up as soon as she heard me coming. She wasn’t much to look at—small-boned, pale, thick glasses—but she gasped when she saw me and put her hand over her mouth, then her arms around me, and she sobbed real tears into the crook of my neck.
Better than any fantasy.
VICKI GRANT has been called “a superb storyteller” (the Canadian Children’s Book Centre) and “one of the funniest writers working today” (Vancouver Sun). Before writing for young adults, she was an advertising copywriter, scriptwriter and television producer. She lives in Nova Scotia with her family. For more information, visit www.vickigrant.com.
For more Secrets:
iTunes.com/readthesecrets
Copyright © 2015 Vicki Grant
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Grant, Vicki, author
Small bones / Vicki Grant.
(Secrets)
Issued in print, electronic and audio disc formats.
ISBN 978-1-4598-0653-5 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-4598-0656-6 (pdf).—
ISBN 978-1-4598-0655-9 (epub).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1098-3 (audio disc)
I. Title. II. Series: Secrets (Victoria, B.C.)
PS8613.R367S63 2015 jC813'.6 C2015-901744-0
C2015-901745-9
C2015-901746-7
First published in the United States, 2015
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015935519
Summary: In this YA novel, Dot enlists the aid of a local boy in her search for clues about the parents who abandoned her as a newborn.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Cover design by Teresa Bubela
Front cover images by iStockphoto.com and Dreamstime.com;
back cover images by Shutterstock.com
Author photo by Megan Tansey Whitton
ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
www.orcabook.com
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