Emilie, my baby sister, who had almost died trying to come into this world, gurgled at me. I bent to kiss her tiny puckered mouth. Then she gave me the sweetest cherub smile, and I laughed while my mamma wept and my grandmother wiped tears from the corners of her eyes.
Our lives were going to change in so many ways I could hardly take it in. I reached up to touch the raised line of skin along my scar, tears filling my eyes. I wanted it to shrink. I wanted it to go away. But miracles could happen. Maybe I was dwelling on it too much. Torturing myself. Wanting to suffer when I didn’t need to.
Grandma Kat let out another cry. “There’s something else!” she said, moving aside the mound of old coins.
Underneath the bags of old coins was a beautiful old-fashioned mirror. My grandmother held it up to the sunshine, and light reflected off the gilded edges and the glass smudged with age.
“Look at this gorgeous handle, Larissa. It’s not very big, but ladies used to keep these on their dressing tables. I wonder if a woman, not a man, buried this box.”
“It appears that way, doesn’t it?” Mamma said. “Burying not only the coins, but the silverware and this mirror. This mirror must have been valuable to want to hide it. The woman didn’t want to lose her precious possession to wartime scavengers.”
“I think you’re right, Maddie,” Grandma Kat said. “There must be some way to find out who buried these things and what happened to her. Here, Larissa, why don’t you hold the mirror?”
The curved oval with the dainty handle was just big enough for the reflection of my face. Wisps of hair fell across my eyes in the old glass. Slowly, I pushed the hair away. Prickles ran down my neck. The girl who had owned this was my ancestor. How old was she, and what was her name?
I’d always had a love/hate relationship with the stuff in the store. Mostly junk, I always figured. But sometimes there were true treasures. Like this mirror. Family heirlooms from the past — antiques — took on new meaning.
My whole life changed again, the past and present colliding once more.
I took a breath, turning the handle between my fingers so I could see my profile better. Sudden, happy tears bit at my eyes as I realized that the scar was fading and shrinking. It was still there, but not so huge. Not so ugly anymore. Maybe the scar wasn’t as horrible as I’d always thought, just as Grandma Kat and Miz Mirage had told me.
As Daddy always said, the scar showed what I’d been through. What my family had endured. It proved our strength and our love. The scar was part of me and always would be, helping to make me into the person I was becoming, but still only a small part of who I was deep inside.
“Can I keep this mirror?” I asked as I gazed into the glass, barely recognizing myself anymore.
Grandma Kat kissed the scar on my cheek. “Yes, Larissa, you keep it. I hope it always reminds you of just how beautiful you are.”
There was one thing I was still curious about as I rocked back on my heels under the shade of the cypress grove. “Do you know what happened to Uncle Edgar? Did Miss Anna ever say?”
“She did, actually,” Grandma Kat said. “He was her favorite uncle and drove every woman in the parish crazy with his handsome looks and exciting travel stories. But when he came back to Louisiana for the last time, he finally married a woman by the name of Sally Blanchard. They had only one child, and I’d have to look up the genealogy records to remember if it was a boy or a girl; I can’t recall at the moment. He took Miss Sally as a bride, to Paris. They had a flat on the Seine, but they also spent their days traveling to Africa and South America and sailing the South Pacific.
“Finally, Uncle Edgar built Sally a villa in the countryside and that’s where they spent their last days. Together and very happy indeed.”
Three days later, the telephone rang. I jumped a mile high, bumping my head on the shelf I was polishing with lemon oil.
It was a blistering July day. Shelby Jayne and I had big plans for a sleepover. We were going to cook outdoors while the blue bottle tree shimmered in the bayou breeze.
Shelby said she also had some fancy finger sandwiches her grandmother taught her how to make, and I was bringing ingredients to create Sophie’s decadent brownie recipe.
We planned to stay up late, watch movies, and play with Mister Possum Boudreaux and Miss Silla Wheezy, Shelby’s cats. Miss Silla was going to have kittens soon, and Mamma said I could pick the best of the litter. She’d finally consented to letting me have a pet — but not a pet as big as a German shepherd like Beau.
Tomorrow I had a lunch date with Alyson Granger at Verret’s Café. A lunch date — like we were teenagers. I was hoping Alyson and Shelby would one day be friends, too. I had so much to tell both of them.
The phone kept ringing and nobody answered it.
Finally, I glared at the bank of telephones on the back wall. One of the old pink Princess phones from the 1980s was jiggling like there was an earthquake. Slowly, I walked over, swallowing hard. I lifted the receiver to my ear. “Hello?”
“It’s you, Larissa!” the girl cried out in relief. “I wanted to try to call you one last time, and I got it to work.” Her voice quieted. “You did it. You followed the fireflies and found the clues. You saved your family, and you should be proud.”
All at once, my ears started ringing in a very peculiar way. I finally recognized the voice. The voice that had started everything. The voice that kept me searching and questioning and never giving up. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it earlier. Probably because it wasn’t a little girl’s voice, but a girl who was growing up. A girl more sure of herself, stronger. A girl who was happy.
Understanding dawned on me in a dozen different ways. “You’re the person who moves things around the store at night. Not because you’re a ghost, but because you live here, in the future. Time does slip in a parallel dimension, the past, the present, and the future. That’s why you said you had to be so careful about not changing history. You were the one who put the note inside the doll so I would know for sure what I had to do.”
“I knew you could do it all along.” She paused. “Have you ever thought about calling your old phone number, just to see if your younger self might answer?”
I felt fireflies fluttering at my insides as I listened to her. I couldn’t say another word because I’d finally figured out what had been happening all along.
“I can’t talk anymore,” she said softly. “But I think you know why.”
“Yes —” I put a hand on the wall to keep from falling over. “It was silly to think this was some sort of joke when everything came true.”
“It never was, Larissa. You know that already. And you know the truth.”
“Yes,” I whispered. “But — but — can you tell me how old you are?”
“Almost sixteen,” she answered. “We’re living in the new house on the island now, so I had to call while you still lived at the antique store. I’m not sure you ever really needed me to call, but I did just in case. Because not calling meant Emilie might have died. And Mamma. Maybe you, too.”
“You mean ME,” I choked out. “Because — you are really me.”
The girl never acknowledged that I had guessed correctly at last. There was only silence as the connection was cut and she was gone, the telephone cord dangling unplugged in my hand.
I replaced the receiver, sinking to the floor. I touched my cheek, the thin line of the white scar. It was still there, but I didn’t notice it so much anymore. It was finally fading. Fading like all sad and sorrowful things finally do when there’s hope.
The girl on the phone was me all this time. Four years from now I would somehow figure out a way to telephone the past — to make sure that there was a future.
A future that was filled with so much light and possibility — and Mamma and Emilie — a future where I was surrounded by everything and everyone I loved.
I’m dedicating this book to my baby brother and his sons, because this is the story I struggled to write in fits and st
arts and pieces here and there during his final six-month fight with brain cancer. A story of family and history and the generations of love that link us all together. Kendall was a huge book lover his entire life, as well as guitarist, singer, and songwriter, who organized his first band in high school and later, on board the various naval ships where he served as Chief Electronic Technician. He got to travel the world and loved it, but mostly he wanted to be a husband and father, and looked forward to retiring and making his family his first priority. I adored listening to his navy adventures and travel stories, and will miss those and his music most of all.
My love goes especially to my husband and my sons, as well as my brothers, sisters, in-laws, nieces, nephews, and my mother for all the encouragement and support you’ve given me as I pursued this writing dream for so many years — um, make that decades.
I’m blessed to work with exceptional book-loving people, and I want to thank Tracey Adams, Josh Adams, Quinlan Lee, and the Adams Lit family for being my cheerleaders, confidants, and friends, and for keeping me sane during all the highs and lows of drafting, revisions, copyedits, marketing, new ideas, and craziness. I’m blessed and pure lucky to have you all in my corner.
Thank you, Lisa Sandell, for always knowing just how to lift me up and spur me on to do my best work. You are a generous editor and an inspiring friend in my life.
Special thanks and love go to Carolee Dean, my long-time writing partner, friend, and a writer of unaccountable talent. Thank you for more than a decade of lunches and chats, brainstorming and cheers.
Thank you to the Scholastic team who works so hard on my behalf: editorial assistant Jennifer Ung, associate editor Jody Corbett, copy editor Monique Vescia, production editor Starr Baer, and book designer Elizabeth B. Parisi. Every single time I open up the first copies hot off the press, I’m stunned and transfixed by how gorgeous every single book is, inside and out.
I’d like to shower hearts on the huge Scholastic Book Fair and Book Club teams around the country, working so hard to bring my books to schools, kids, and readers. Thank you to the Fairs and Clubs editorial team for loving all the story ideas Lisa and I have sent across your desks.
Wow, Erin McGuire, I think you’ve outdone yourself this time on the cover artwork. It’s dazzling and perfectly magical.
Last of all, thank you, dear readers all around the world, for your emails and kudos and love. It’s an honor to know my books make a difference in your lives, and it’s a privilege to write for you.
Kimberley Griffiths Little is the author of The Healing Spell, Circle of Secrets, and When the Butterflies Came, as well as a dozen short stories that have appeared in numerous publications, and the critically acclaimed novels Breakaway, Enchanted Runner, and The Last Snake Runner. She is a winner of the Southwest Book Award, the Whitney Award, and has been included in the Bank Street College Best Books of the Year list.
She grew up reading a book a day and scribbling stories, while dreaming of seeing her name in the library card catalog one day. In her opinion, the perfect Louisiana meal is gumbo and rice, topped off with warm beignets, although crawfish étouffée runs a close second.
Kimberley lives in a solar adobe house near the banks of the Rio Grande in New Mexico with her husband and children.
ALSO BY
KIMBERLEY GRIFFITHS LITTLE
The Healing Spell
Circle of Secrets
When the Butterflies Came
Copyright © 2014 by Kimberley Griffiths Little
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Little, Kimberley Griffiths, author.
The time of the fireflies / Kimberley Griffiths Little. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: When Larissa Renaud starts receiving eerie phone calls on a disconnected phone in her family’s shop, Bayou Bridge Antiques, she finds herself directed to the river bank near her house, where a cloud of fireflies takes her on a journey through time to learn the secrets of her family’s past — and save their future.
ISBN 978-0-545-16563-1 (jacketed hardcover) 1. Family secrets — Juvenile fiction. 2. Families — Louisiana — Juvenile fiction. 3. Time travel — Juvenile fiction. 4. Fireflies — Juvenile fiction. 5. Louisiana — Juvenile fiction. [1. Secrets — Fiction. 2. Family problems — Fiction. 3. Family life — Fiction. 4. Time travel — Fiction. 5. Fireflies — Fiction. 6. Louisiana — Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L72256Ti 2014
813.6 — dc23
2013027396
First edition, August 2014
Cover art © 2014 by Erin McGuire
Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi
e-ISBN 978-0-545-63406-9
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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