Chapter 1
Every summer when I was a kid, my mom and dad and older brother and I piled into the family car and headed north to visit my aunt Frances. It was a long drive from Dearborn up to Chilson, and it was even longer if road crews were working on I-75, shutting down lanes of traffic and creating backups that ran for miles. This was when my dad would mutter, "There are four seasons in Michigan. Fall, winter, spring, and construction."
At five years old, I hadn't grasped what he was talking about, but at nearly thirty-five, I had a much better understanding of the concept.
"This project wasn't supposed to start until after the Fourth," Julia said, glaring at the brake lights lined up ahead of us.
I glared along with her. "When I called the road commission last week, that's what they told me." I rolled my shoulders in an attempt to loosen my neck. As a six-year resident of northwest lower Michigan, I'd lost my tolerance for sitting in traffic five and a half years ago.
This wasn't anything close to the gridlock of southeast Michigan, but time spent waiting for the oncoming lane of cars to get through and our side to get waved forward was time the bookmobile wouldn't be able to spend with its patrons. The Chilson District Library Bookmobile carried me, aka Minnie Hamilton, Julia Beaton, my part-time bookmobile clerk, roughly three thousand books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, puzzles, board games, and video games and-
"Mrr," Eddie said.
And the bookmobile also carried Eddie, the black-and-white cat who had followed me home from a walk through the local cemetery a little over two years ago. At the time, I had not been a cat person, but it hadn't taken me long to become attached to the furry little guy. I'd dutifully placed ads in the paper for a lost cat, I'd talked to cemetery neighbors, and I'd called area veterinarians and the local animal shelter. No one, thankfully, had come forward to claim my new buddy, and we'd been fast friends ever since.
But like any relationship, we'd had our ups and downs. A definite down had been the day Eddie had managed to sneak aboard the bookmobile's maiden voyage. That had not boded well for my relationship with my then-boss, Stephen, who had been a stickler for any and all rules, one being no pets in the library, of which the bookmobile was an extension.
Eventually it had worked out, and now Eddie was a permanent fixture on the bookmobile, to the point that he got Christmas cards from elementary school classrooms, adult foster care homes, and other librarians. I tended not to tell him about his fame-he already had such a good opinion of himself that I hesitated to inflate his ego any further-but I had a sneaking suspicion he knew.
Julia put her feet on top of Eddie's carrier, which was strapped to the floor on the passenger's side, and toyed with the end of her thick strawberry blond braid. "If this keeps up, we're going to miss the next stop altogether."
She spoke with a slight drawl that hadn't been there last time she'd talked. Julia, now in her early sixties, had grown up in Chilson and left for the bright New York City lights right after high school graduation. A few decades and a suitcase full of Tony Awards later, she and her husband had come home, and she'd been bored to tears within weeks. She'd taught an acting class at the local community college, but teaching wasn't her strong suit, and when my aunt Frances had mentioned a job on the bookmobile, Julia had marched on over to the library and essentially begged me to hire her.
We'd hit it off straightaway, and the deal sealer had been when she'd met Eddie and instantly started talking to him as if he could understand her, which was exactly how I talked to him.
The newfound drawl indicated that she was playing a role. It could have been one she'd played, one she hadn't, or one that had never existed. Some days I tried to guess; other times I gave it up as a lost cause. This time around was a mystery, but I'd known her long enough to guess what she was thinking. "Do you know a way around?"
A wide, slow, Grinch-like smile curled onto her face. "Why, yes, I do." She pointed left, to a northbound road that quickly disappeared around a curve and up a hill.
I studied it. "I'm not driving the bookmobile on some narrow asphalt road that turns into a gravel two-track that peters out into loose sand where we'll get stuck and need a huge tow truck to yank us out."
Julia looked at me with puppy dog eyes. "You wound me, Minnie, truly you do. But that's Dozier Road. Isn't that the route you laid out?"
I had, indeed, planned to take Dozier around the construction zone, but hadn't found the time to make sure the road was bookmobile friendly. My last two months, and especially the last two weeks, had been so full I'd kept shifting reroute scouting to the next day. And the next. And the next. And now here we were. The location of today's stop was a one-time deal because the parking lot of the regular stop, a church, was being repaved. I'd scouted out our temporary location ages ago-it was little more than a wide spot on a dead end road-but checking the reroute hadn't popped to the top of my priority list.
Tapping my fingers on the steering wheel, I considered possibilities. The bookmobile was thirty-one feet long and weighed twenty-three thousand pounds. Which was big, but smaller than a lot of recreational vehicles, especially ones hauling a vehicle behind. As we sat there, listening to the twin dulcet tones of the bookmobile's motor and Eddie's snores, we watched a semi rig laden with rough-cut lumber trundle down the Dozier Road hill, around the curve, and air brake to a stop sign.
"That had to come from the sawmill," Julia said.
I leaned forward to look, and sure enough, the door of the truck's cab was labeled Palmer's Wood Products. Their sawmill was on the other side of the hills to our left, so there was a 99.9 percent chance the truck had come all the way down Dozier Road. The big vehicle roared past us and I would have sworn the driver was whistling a happy tune as he passed the long line of stuck-in-place cars.
Julia watched it go by. "If he did it, we can," she said confidently.
"Mrr!"
"Thinking," I murmured. The vote of a cat didn't count for driving route decisions, let alone the vote of a cat who couldn't possibly see what was going on because he was in a carrier on the floor. And technically Julia's vote didn't count either, because the bookmobile was my program, funded through my unexpectedly successful fund-raising efforts, and its operation was the responsibility of one Minnie Hamilton, all five foot and zero inches of me, along with my unmanageable curly black hair and total lack of fashion sense.
But Julia was right-if that lumber truck could make it, the bookmobile could. Though taking Dozier wouldn't help anyone reach the east side of Tonedagana County, which was the end point of our current road, it would get us to today's temporary stop.
And time was ticking away.
"We're doing it," I said, flicking the left blinker.
Julia whooped with delight. "An adventure! I'll tell Graydon you should get danger pay!"
"Please don't."
Graydon Cain had only been our library director since January. To date he was an excellent boss, but we would likely all be better off if he remained unaware of certain things. Julia and I had an unofficial rule that what happened on the bookmobile stayed on the bookmobile, and I fervently hoped the rule would be followed forever.
We bumped off the relatively smooth asphalt of the main road and onto the far narrower cracked asphalt of Dozier. I took a deep breath, loosened my grip on the steering wheel-because worrying about how this would play out wouldn't help anything now that the decision had been made-and asked, "What are you doing for the Fourth?"
Julia and her husband were without children of their own, but between them they had what seemed like zillions of sisters, brothers, and nieces and nephews, some by blood, others by tight bonds of friendship. Their circle was now expanding to include great-nieces and great-nephews, which meant I'd recently surrendered any hope of keeping track of names and exact relationships.
"Grilling in the backyard for twenty," Julia said. "No fireworks this year. Too many dogs and infants. How about you?"
"Not sure yet." Since I'd moved to Chilson, I'd spent the Fourth of July with my best friend, Kristen Jurek.
Kristen, who I'd met the summer I was twelve, was a force of nature. She owned Three Seasons, an outstanding restaurant that had been featured on more than one television show. The restaurant opened April-ish and closed October-ish, and then she took herself off to Key West, resting and tending bar until the snow melted. Complicating her life even more, she'd married Scruffy (not his real first name) Gronkowski a few weeks earlier, and since Scruffy was still working in New York with his famous television chef father, Trock Farrand (not his real name first or last), their living arrangements involved lots of plane rides.
Not that I could throw any housing stones. My own living arrangements were far from simple, especially this summer. For six years I'd moved every time the weather had turned. October through April I'd stayed with my aunt Frances in her elderly rambling house, but come springtime she cheerfully kicked me out to make room for her boarders and I happily went to Uncle Chip's Marina to live on the most adorable houseboat ever. Sure, it was tiny, but I had a relatively inexpensive lakefront abode, my summer neighbors were great, and the guys who hung out at the marina's office, the marina rats, were amusing almost all the time, even if their conversation did center on sports.
But now everything was different. This April, Aunt Frances had married her across-the-street neighbor, Otto Bingham, and moved into Otto's house. In May, our cousin Celeste had taken over the boardinghouse, and though Eddie and I were now on the houseboat, I wouldn't be moving back to the boardinghouse in October. Instead I'd be moving in with the funny and smart (and occasionally irritating) Rafe Niswander.
Though I'd met Rafe on Chilson's city beach ten minutes after I'd met Kristen, it had taken me more than twenty years to realize he was the love of my life. When he reminded me of what a slow learner I could be, I told him that things might have been different if he didn't have the regrettable habit of acting far stupider than he actually was. Rafe had multiple college degrees and was a fantastically good middle school principal, but from the way he sometimes acted, you'd think he'd have a hard time chewing gum while breathing.
But the real reason I hadn't understood how I felt about Rafe was I hadn't been ready. Now I was, and any day we got to spend together was a day worth remembering.
Julia cleared her throat in a way that sent a clear message she was about to ask something I wouldn't want to answer. "How's Katrina?"
My Rafe-induced smile dropped away. I tried to stifle a sigh, but was pretty sure I wasn't successful, because I heard Julia snort. "Katrina," I said, "is . . ." Then I stopped, since I didn't want to get too deep into family issues. "Did I tell you about her summer job search?" I asked.
Katrina was my slender seventeen-year-old niece, currently between her junior and senior years of high school, and the first of three children created by my brother and his wife. She was smart, funny, had lovely brown hair, and four Christmases ago had been thrilled to find herself taller than her aunt Minnie.
My brother and his family lived in Florida, and apparently they'd actually listened to my annual moaning about the lack of summer workers in Chilson, because a few weeks earlier they'd called about having Katrina come stay with me for the season.
I'd been delighted. How fun to have Katrina for the summer! I'd get to know her so much better! We'd develop a solid relationship that would endure to our old age, and who knew, maybe someday she'd want to move up here to the land of lakes and hills and life in the slow lane!
After numerous text messages, phone calls, and sending of photos showing the tight quarters in which she'd be living on the houseboat, the arrangements had been solidified and I'd fetched Katrina from the Traverse City airport two weeks ago.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Julia shake her head in answer to my job search question. "All you've said was that she was looking."
And looking was all she'd done for more than a week. First off, I'd encouraged her to apply at restaurants. "I've never worked in a restaurant before," she'd said. "No one will hire me."
"Just go in and apply," I said. "Every restaurant in Chilson has a Help Wanted sign in the window." Except for Kristen's restaurant. She paid her staff well and treated them like family, which was to say horribly, but she must have been doing something right, because they came back year after year. I said to Katrina, "Any restaurant will be happy to train you."
But she'd hesitated and delayed and balked and three days ago she'd announced that the smell of cooking food-any kind of food-gave her a headache.
Exasperation had blossomed in every cell of my body and my question of "Why didn't you say so in the first place?" was answered by a shrug and a sullen silence. Now, as I told Julia all of this, I was beginning to catch a glimmer of humor.
"The mysteries of the teenage mind are many," Julia said, smiling. "Kind of makes you understand why your brother and his wife were willing to part with their darling daughter for the summer, yes?"
I laughed. "Could be. But there are lots of retail jobs downtown." Though without tips, the pay wouldn't be nearly as lucrative. "She's applying at the toy store, Older Than Dirt, and Benton's. If none of those work out . . ." I shook my head. "There are other places. She's bound to find something."
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