From Willa, With Love

by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

  I hesitate, but since clearly the Sivlers confided in Mum, and Mum surely will discuss this with Riley, I tell him about Mrs. Sivler having breast cancer.

  Riley sets down his coffee. He looks at me with a confusing expression.

  “What?” I say.

  “That’s one of the reasons we came back here,” Riley says.

  “What’s that?” I say.

  “I’m sure Mum is planning to tell you herself. She wanted everything to be happy this morning, her first day back, but …”

  I get this awful feeling. “But what, Riley. What?” And even before he says it, I know. “Mum has breast cancer, too, Willa.” My body goes cold.

  “She’ll be starting treatment next week.”

  CHAPTER 21

  One Hello, Two Good-byes

  Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.

  — Benjamin Franklin

  Mum has cancer? I am frozen solid with the shock of this.

  No, it can’t be. Not Mum. Just when she and Riley finally found each other and got married? Just when she’s come home here to Bramble?

  No, this just isn’t right. It’s just not fair. Do you hear me, God?

  Do you hear me?

  I picture Mum with Mrs. Sivler at church. Mum listening to Sherry Sivler so empathetically, then pumping her fist up in the air and getting Mrs. Sivler to do the same.

  Reason: That’s the right attitude. Be strong and fight.

  Willa: I know, but it’s Mum, Mum. …

  Reason: And what did you say to Ruby? You told her to be strong for her mother.

  Willa: I know, but it’s Mum…. Mum …

  Reason: You said with faith all things are possible. Who taught you that?

  Willa: Mum.

  Reason: Well, then?

  Willa: I will be strong and have faith and believe for Mum.

  Reason: That’s the spirit.

  When we get home from BUC, Will says he’s off to see Tina. He’ll be back soon. I wish he would spend this last afternoon with me, but I understand it’s a matter of the heart.

  Reason: Really, Willa? You understand about heart matters?

  Willa: No, Reason. I don’t. Don’t act so smug.

  I think about Joey. I think about Jess. I think I am horribly, hopelessly confused. I think there’s nothing I can do at the moment.

  I go to the kitchen. Rosie has Lilly with her. “Hey, little girl,” I say, bending down to pick up Lilly.

  “Will-wa,” she says, laughing. She kisses my cheek. She points to my eye and then pokes it. “Ouch,” I say, “that hurt.” “Lilly!” Rosie admonishes her daughter. Lilly giggles.

  “Sorry, Willa,” Rosie says. “She’s got this fascination with eyes lately.”

  “That’s okay.” I look at Lilly. “That hurt, Lilly. Boo-boo.”

  Lilly gets it. She looks remorseful. “It’s okay, Lilly. I love you.” Lilly hugs me. I hug her back. “When are you going, Rosie?” “Right after lunch,” she says.

  “Don’t leave until I get back,” I say, rushing out the door.

  “As if!” Rosie shouts behind me. “Crazy girl.”

  I bike fast to Sweet Bramble Books. Nana and Dr. Swammy are off today. Two of Nana’s best workers, Kristen and Amy, back home on Cape for the summer, are managing the store.

  “How’s college going?” I ask.

  Kristen is an English/Education major at Le Moyne in upstate New York. Amy is studying Health Care Administration at the University of Rhode Island.

  They fill me in on the highlights.

  “Won’t be long and you’ll be starting to look at schools, Willa,” Kristen says. “You’ll be a sophomore this year, right?”

  “She’s got time,” Amy says. “Junior year’s when you really start the process, but make sure you keep your grades up and participate in lots of clubs and sports and things.”

  “And community service,” Kristen adds. “Colleges are really big on that.”

  “I’m really big on that, too,” I say. I tell them about my From Cape Cod, With Love plan to leave free books in public places that will hopefully be passed on and on.

  “Great idea,” Kristen says.

  “Love it,” Amy agrees.

  In the young children’s section, I find the board book versions of Goodnight Moon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. In the cooking section, I buy the nice hardcover copy of From Julia Child’s Kitchen. In the YA fiction section, I see a display with author David Almond’s latest release. I have Amy check. The book just came out this month. Chances are good Will doesn’t have it yet. He’s been so focused on his wild goose chase to find our birthfather, long since deceased, and now, more recently, on Tina.

  I write messages inside the books for Rosie and Will. Amy rings up my purchases and Kristen wraps them.

  Outside, I pass by the dollar store. That reminds me. I head inside.

  A clerk shows me the aisle where the blank books are.

  They have quite a nice selection.

  I buy enough for each of the guest rooms in the main house and a bag of pens so we can get started on the journal idea Mom and Sam agreed to.

  Back at Bramblebriar, I go to the kitchen to give Rosie and Lilly their going-away-good-luck presents.

  Lilly giggles at the covers and pokes the caterpillar’s eye.

  Inside Rosie’s cookbook I had written:

  Someday you’ll be as famous as Julia.

  The whole world will love Sweet Rosie’s Sweets.

  Your friend always,

  Willa

  Rosie cries when she reads this inscription. “I love you, Willa,” she says.

  “Love you, too, Rosie. Always.”

  Rosie’s friend Tara comes to pick up Rosie and Lilly.

  Rosie hugs Sam and they say good-bye.

  Rosie hugs Mom and my mother hands her an envelope.

  When Rosie opens it, she gasps. “But you paid me already, Stella,” Rosie says, shaking her head. She hands the envelope back to my mother.

  “No, Rosie. This is your bonus,” my mother says, refusing the envelope. “You deserve it. The Bennigan wedding was a hit because of your one hundred cakes.

  Sam and I insist that you take this gift with our gratitude and best wishes.”

  Sam puts his arm around my mother.

  I love my mother. The Braviar Queen. She’s got a big heart after all.

  Rosie wipes away tears. So do I.

  “Till soon, Willa,” she says.

  “Till soon, Rosie.” I kiss her good-bye.

  Lilly’s chewing on the corner of one of her new books.

  “Hey, don’t eat the caterpillar,” I say, and we laugh.

  Lilly points her finger at the caterpillar’s eye and says something. She turns the page and says something else.

  “Good reading, Lilly!” I say. “Good reading.”

  After Rosie and Lilly leave, I head up to Will’s room.

  The door is slightly ajar. I enter. He’s not there. His bags are packed. He’s made the bed—the sloppy way boys do, but at least he tried.

  “Spyin’ on me, are ya?” Will says, entering the room, making his voice sound like a pirate.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go,” I say, smoothing the quilt on his bed.

  “I wish I didn’t, either,” he says.

  “Will you come back?” I say.

  And then Mom and Sam are there in the doorway. They look sad but are trying to be cheerful for Will’s sake and mine.

  “We need to get moving, Will, if we’re going to get you to Logan Airport on time,” Sam says.

  Mom hands Will some bills. “Money for dinner,” she says.

  “Thanks, Stella,” Will says, “but I’m all set. One thing the gargoyles are good at giving is money.”

  “The gargoyles?” Stella says.

  Will and I laugh.

  “Private joke
,” I say.

  “Willa, here,” Will says. He hands me a Bramblebriar coffee mug filled with change. “For that jug you’ve got,” he says.

  “Thanks,” I say. “And this is for you.”

  He unwraps the present. “Thanks!” he says. “Something to read on the plane.” He opens the cover, reads the FROM THE LIBRARY OF label.

  “From Cape Cod, With Love, huh?” he says.

  “Yes,” I say. “When you’re done reading it, leave it in a public place back in London, some place where someone can pick it up and read it and pass it along….”

  “What a sweet idea,” my mother says. “But that’s a hardcover book. Are you sure you want to do that?”

  Will looks at me. I nod at him.

  “Oh, yes,” he says, “we’re sure. Right, little sister?”

  At the word sister, I can’t hold the tears back any longer.

  He hugs me. “There, there.”

  I don’t want to let him go. “Are you coming back?” I whisper in his ear.

  “Yes,” Will says. “I promise.”

  “Promise?” I repeat.

  “Promise.”

  I walk Will out to Sam’s car.

  “I told Tina the duke’s daughter thing was a fib,” Will says. “Couldn’t have her worrying about that while I’m away.”

  Oh, good, that’s right. Tina. Yet another reason for my brother to come back.

  “Bye! Bye! Safe trip!” Mom and I say as Sam and Will drive off.

  I go to my room and lie on my bed. What an unbelievable Sunday.

  One hello, two good-byes.

  My cell phone beeps.

  I check my messages.

  Two from Joey, three from Jess.

  Does that mean Jess likes me more?

  CHAPTER 22

  Heart-to-Heart

  My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.

  — Malcolm X

  Sunday night, five o’clock. I must have dozed off. I wonder what we’re doing for dinner? Sitting at my desk, I open my journal, From the Life of Willa Havisham, and begin to write about all that has been happening this past week … how in just one week of my life, it’s as if I’ve lived a whole year. Rosie going, Mum coming, Will going, Jess here, JFK gone; The S.’s getting engaged, such happy news; Mrs. Sivler and Mum both being diagnosed with cancer, such scary news …

  My mother knocks and asks if she can come in.

  “Sure, Mom.” I close my journal and slide it into a drawer.

  “Sam back from the airport yet?” I say.

  “No, but he should be here any moment.”

  My mother sits on my bed. “I have some news to share with you,” she says, and by the tone of her voice I can tell it’s not happy.

  More bad news? I don’t think I can take one single ounce more. I wonder if perhaps she and Sam had another miscarriage. I thought they had decided not to try and have another baby, but were going to adopt….

  “Ruby’s mother has breast cancer,” Mom says.

  “Yes, I know. Ruby told me.”

  “Oh, I see,” she says, looking relieved. “And do you also know that Mum …”

  “Yes,” I say. “Riley told me this morning.”

  “Nana shared the news with me,” my mother says. She lets out a long, sad sigh, shaking her head back and forth. “It’s just not right.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” I say.

  “I called both Mum and Sherry just now,” my mother says, “to let them know we are here for them, to drive to treatments, to run errands, cook, shop, whatever.”

  “That’s good of you, Mom.”

  “That’s what friends do,” my mother says. “As soon as I find out their radiation or chemotherapy schedules, Sam and I will help with driving and we’ll see that dinners are delivered to their houses during the weeks they are receiving treatments so that neither Mum nor Sherry will have to concern themselves with that.”

  “I told Ruby that I was here for her and to call me any time.”

  “Don’t wait for a call, Willa,” my mother says. “Make sure that you and Tina and the other girls check in on Ruby regularly and let her talk when she needs to, and plan some cheerful outings to take her mind off her worries.”

  “Good idea, Mom. I’ll call Tina and everybody.”

  My mother looks around my room. She clears her throat. She turns to me. “Okay, now,” she says, locking my eyes in hers. “How about you? How’s my daughter doing?”

  “Okay,” I say, a bit unsettled. It’s seldom that my mother and I ever have a heart-to-heart. She’s always so busy. At least we do have running together.

  “I’m so sad that Will had to go.”

  “I know,” Mom says. “Me, too. Such a fine young man.”

  “I was hoping you and Sam might adopt him.”

  “Adopt him?” Mother says. “But he has family in England, Willa.”

  “His grandparents are horrible,” I say. “They live in a castle with tons of servants, but they didn’t know what to do with a teenage boy, so they shipped him off to boarding school and —”

  “Are the grandparents the gargoyles you and Will were talking about?”

  “Yes!” I say.

  Mom laughs. “Gargoyles. That’s funny.”

  “It’s not funny for Will,” I say.

  “No,” she says. “I’m sure it isn’t. I feel so bad for the boy. No mother. No father. But at least now he has a sister.” She smiles and brushes a loose strand of hair off of my forehead. “And a wonderful sister at that. I’m sure you’ll see him again soon. Maybe we can even plan for a trip to London.”

  Mom smiles as she looks around my room. Her gaze rests on my dresser. She nods at the CHANGE FOR GOOD jug. “You should see mine,” she says. “It’s filling up quickly. That was a great idea you had.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Oh, and,” she says, “Darryl showed me the journal that was in Mrs. Noonan’s room. She wrote such lovely things about the inn. So did Mr. Halloran. That was another great idea.”

  I tell my mother more about my latest idea … about sending my books out into the world … free … and hopefully starting a chain reaction…. Who knows how far they will spread.

  My mother’s lips quiver and she looks like she’s going to cry. “You never cease to amaze me, Willa. Truly. I am so very proud of you.”

  “Oh, and guess what,” I say. “Happy news! Mrs. Saperstone and Dr. Swaminathan are engaged and they’ve asked me to plan their wedding.”

  “Really? Wow. When are they getting married?”

  “Next Saturday.”

  “Next Saturday!” my mother shouts. “Obviously they aren’t expecting to have their wedding here at the inn.”

  “No, Mom,” I say. “They want a very modest, very simple affair.”

  “Oh,” Mom says, sounding disappointed. “Like what?”

  “Mum will do the service at BUC, of course, and then I am planning their reception in the garden behind the library.”

  Mom raises her eyebrows. “What about dinner and a band and …”

  “I’ll figure it all out,” I say. “Mrs. S. and Dr. Swammy are going to be calling all of their guests to invite —”

  “Calling them?” my mother says, grimacing. “No invitations?”

  “No,” I say, shrugging my shoulders, no big deal. “They are only inviting twenty or so close friends, and given the short notice, Mrs. S. thought a phone call would be the quickest and most personal way.”

  “Who’ll be catering it?” Mom says.

  “I haven’t figured that part out exactly yet, but Mrs. S. said she wanted a very simple buffet so I was thinking of asking the restaurants on Main Street to each send a platter of fancy finger foods, something with a literary theme….”

  “Finger foods,” my mother says. “What … no sit-down dinner?”

  My mother is getting flustered with all of this.

  “Relax, Mom
,” I say. “I’ve got it under control.”

  “But, Willa …” Then my mother stops. She smiles at me. She nods. “Okay, then. If you need any help, let me know.” She stands up. She looks at me. “Would you allow me to furnish the wedding cake, compliments of the Bramblebriar Inn, as a gift to the bride and groom? Hopefully, the new baker Sam hired will be starting this week.”

  “Sure, Mom, that’s so nice. Thank you.”

  “And what about a photographer?”

  “Mom … Mom, stop. I’ve got this. Are you forgetting that I grew up in the business? That I have more than a decade of experience in the field? That I am the daughter of the hottest wedding planner on the East Coast?”

  Mom laughs. “Just the East Coast?”

  My phone beeps. I glance down.

  It’s a new text from Jess. My heart flips.

  I think to tell my mother. To let her know how conflicted I am feeling about JFK and Jess … to ask for her advice …

  “Who’s the boy?” she says.

  “What?” I gulp.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” my mother says. She smiles at me. “With Joseph Kennelly away, I imagine there are other Bramble boys hoping for a date with my beautiful daughter.”

  Beautiful daughter? I let that slide.

  “Who was that boy at church this morning?” Mom says.

  I knew she saw me looking at Jess.

  “Isn’t he in that band that played at the dances you and your friends had in the barn to raise money for the library?”

  “His name is Jess. And yes, he’s in the band, the Buoy Boys.”

  “He’s very cute,” my mother says.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And so is Joseph,” my mother says.

  “Yes,” I say. “And it’s not just that they’re cute. They are both really nice and kindhearted and interesting and fun….”

  “And they both like you,” my mother says.

  “Yes.”

  “And you like both of them?” she says.

  I nod my head.

  “Well, what a lovely summer situation,” she says.