Traveling Light
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PRAISE FOR
THE ART OF ARRANGING FLOWERS
“There is art and beauty in this story that will linger after the final scene.”
—Debbie Macomber, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Girl’s Guide to Moving On
“An expertly penned and tender tale about the blossoming of hearts amidst the storms of loss and grief.”
—Richard Paul Evans, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Mistletoe Inn
“Captured my heart on the first page . . . A beautiful novel filled with tender wisdom and unforgettable characters who understand love, loss, and the alchemy of just the right flowers.”
—Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author of The Lemon Orchard
“A beautifully wrought story about friendship and the redeeming power of love . . . Ruby’s journey is as uplifting as it is inspiring, and will leave you with a contented sigh and a hopeful heart.”
—Karen White, New York Times bestselling author of Flight Patterns
“Branard is a masterful storyteller who understands the human heart and all its trials, tribulations, and joys . . . A pure delight to read.”
—Darien Gee, international bestselling author of An Avalon Christmas
“Ruby Jewell is an enormously compelling character . . . [This] is a rare blossom of a book, delicate and lovely, that will stay fresh in my memory for a long time to come.”
—Marie Bostwick, New York Times bestselling author of From Here to Home
ALSO BY LYNNE BRANARD
The Art of Arranging Flowers
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2017 by Lynne Hinton
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Branard, Lynne, author.
Title: Traveling light / Lynne Branard.
Description: First Edition. | New York : Berkley, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016038072 (print) | LCCN 2016043428 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101989043 (paperback) | ISBN 9781101989050 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Romance / Contemporary.
Classification: LCC PS3602.R34485 T73 2017 (print) | LCC PS3602.R34485 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038072
First Edition: January 2017
Cover photos: VW Beetle © Andy Walsh / Getty Images; landscape © Martina Roth / Shutterstock Images
Cover design by Sandra Chiu
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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I dedicate this story of what it means to travel light
to the many terminally ill patients
who served as my teachers when I worked
as a chaplain with hospice.
You taught me how to let go
of the many burdens I tend to carry.
You taught me that this journey on earth
is swift and full, and that I must learn
where to pay attention and where not to linger.
Thank you for the lessons.
I hope you have found that final journey
that we will all take to be easy and light.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
On this journey of publication, I travel light because I am surrounded by such smart and capable people who, for whatever reason, have agreed to pilgrim with me. Thank you to Sally McMillan, the agent who transitioned a long time ago to being my friend. You have never said no to me. Thank you to Jackie Cantor, the editor every writer dreams about. Thank you for thinking my stories should move to the printed page and for making sure they get there. Thank you to Sheila Moody, the copy editor, who takes so very seriously the work of fact-checking and smoothing out every bumpy sentence. Thank you to all the staff at Berkley, Bethany and Lauren and all the others; your belief in this book, your support of the story, has carried it to this moment of fullness. Thank you also to Alissa Searby for first bringing the story of “finding a box of ashes” to my attention and for being such a rock star.
On this journey of life, I travel light only because I am surrounded by kindness and love. Thank you to my family and friends who graciously haven’t gotten sick of me and chosen a different path, pace, or partner. I am not easy, I realize, so the persistence and care, the delight and support I receive on a daily basis, sustain and energize me. I can be my best self because of this love. You bear witness to the Divine for me, and I am eternally grateful.
And finally, to my husband, Bob, this journey would mean nothing without you beside me every step of the way. I love you. You and Carmella are my favorite traveling companions on the interstate as well as on the highways and byways of life.
The open heart is not heavy
And love’s hold is never tight
To get to where you want to go
You must travel light.
CONTENTS
Praise for The Art of Arranging Flowers
Also by Lynne Branard
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Readers Guide
About the Author
chapter one
THE only thing I remember about Mama was how she was always moving. Years before the small tumor grew, the mania finally linked to the cancer in her brain, Mama never stopped moving. I think it wore Daddy out, but I loved it. I loved her. The way she danced while she cooked our breakfast, pancakes delivered to the table as if she were a rock star shimmying to the final notes of the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden,” the way she lifted my sister from the crib, twirling her the whole time with me straddling her foot, clinging to her leg. She would sweep and sing, stopping just long enough to clutch the broom like a diva with her microphone. She’d change the furniture in the living room, giving us new hiding places for another round of hide-and-seek, and she would strap both of us in the backseat of that old station wagon and drive to the ocean or south to White Lake or even all the way to Asheville and the cold, foggy Blue Ridge Mountains and their twisting, curvy roads. She could not stay still.
Of course, I never knew she was sick or exhausted. I never knew that the dancing and the spinning and the driving and the darting from one place to another were symptoms of illness. I thought she was immortal. I thought I was the luckiest child alive to have a mother always buying new paint sets and giving us long rolls of white paper to decorate, a mother who seemed to know the most beautiful spots for girls-only picnics, a mother who was able to balance on her toes while she hung the sheets on the line in the backyard, calling us to come and smell the sunshine caught in the wide stretch of fabric. I thought the movement and the action were simply a part of the great adventure of life, of childhood; and I woke up every morning wondering what she had planned for that day and how she would dance my sister and me through every minute of it.
And then, one day in the spring of my fifth year, she simply stopped moving. She stopped dancing and spinning and changing the pictures on the walls and cleaning the house from ceiling to floor, finding coins and sliding them into our palms, telling us they were gifts from angels; and suddenly everything I knew about being a child—every step, every movement, every lift and twirl—came to an abrupt and unexpected halt. Everything just stopped. The music, the dancing, the laughter, the games, the unlimited extravaganza of our imaginations, all of it seemed to freeze in time, all of us standing in the wake of her death, paralyzed by our loss.
And now, thirty years after she died, I realize I haven’t moved an inch since then. At the age of five I sat down in my life; I took my mother’s place in raising my sister and caring for my father and keeping the house neat and clean with only scant movements and no flair and I never stepped away. Until now. Until I pulled open the big overhead door on that storage unit in Wilmington and pilfered through the cartons of driftwood and the bins of tools and the baskets of rope and the stacks of boating magazines, blankets, and camping equipment, all the way to the back, and found the box. The box I see now placed in the passenger’s seat of Faramond, my old Volkswagen Bug that Daddy bought for me at my high school graduation, giving me the permission to leave which I did not take. The box of ashes with a business card and a receipt from the Serenity Mortuary in Grants, New Mexico, taped on top. This box of ashes that is now sending me away from my home. This box of ashes that is finally making me move.
Exactly nine weeks ago I entered my name and random bid in the storage war meant to be a promotion for a television station in Raleigh. I had seen the reality show that was being imitated by WRAL. I had watched the winners strutting behind the chain-link fences, over to their newly claimed vaults, opening the doors and finding all kinds of meaningless junk and often wonderfully unexpected treasures. I watched as they found buyers for their eighteenth-century antique tables, their glass trinkets, and their refurbished wooden trunks and highboy chests. I saw their eyes light up as the cash register tallied their sales and the money changed hands; and so without too much thought I turned on my computer, found the registration site, stuffed a cookie in my mouth, and typed in my name, Alissa Kate Wells. I gave my phone number and address and casually put in a bid of one month’s salary, gross, not net, from my job at the Clayton Times and News, where my father is my boss. I hit send on the top of the Web page and in a few days forgot I had even done such a thing.
When the e-mail arrived saying I had won the contents of a storage unit at the Affordable Storage Facility in Wilmington, North Carolina, I thought it was spam, unwanted advertising. I was just about to hit delete when I remembered the contest. Suddenly I recalled the evening I’d heard about the promotion and how I had just gotten off the phone with my sister, Sandra, and how I walked over to the pantry, opened another box of Girl Scout cookies, the snickerdoodles, the ones Daddy buys but doesn’t like, went back to my computer, and entered the WRAL storage unit bidding war.
Once I arrived in Wilmington to claim my prize, it was an hour before I found the box of ashes. Later I called the funeral home located in the small mining town west of Albuquerque, trying to find the family that belonged to the person whose remains had been placed in a small wooden box with a butterfly carved on top, and ultimately abandoned in a storage building in North Carolina. And it was two weeks later that I packed my hatchback Faramond with bottles of water and my last box of snickerdoodles; called Millie to watch Old Joe, my blind cat, and water the boxes of pansies that I had just planted around my grandmother’s house, now mine, on Tree Street; and helped Casserole get in the back, holding his hip and pushing him in so that his three legs didn’t tangle on the suitcase or the bags of groceries I’d stowed there.
I called Daddy last night to tell him I was taking my vacation, the days I hadn’t used now accumulated to over four months. We talked about the early rains and whether the Democrats were going to lose control of the House and then I told him.
“Dad, I’d like to take a trip.”
“Yeah, to Paris? Idaho? You want to go fly-fishing with me?”
“I need to go to New Mexico.”
“Not much fly-fishing there.”
“I need to return something I found.”
“What?” he asked, and I told him about winning the contest, about all the stuff I’d found in the storage unit and carried back to the house, how I’d crammed it all in my garage with plans to do something with it later.
Then I answered the question. I told him what I’m taking back to New Mexico.
“Ashes,” I said. “A box of someone’s remains. I found them and I want to take them back to where he lived.”
“You need me to go?” he asked.
“Nope, it’s just for me,” I confessed.
And then, there were just a few moments of silence until he asked me if I had trained Dixie on how to set the copy, reminded James William when to call for the advertising, and showed Ben how to size and crop the photographs. After I answered yes to his questions about the state of the newspaper, he just told me to have a good time. And that was it. No seasoned reporter’s questions of when, where, how, and why. No employer’s diatribe about the mess I was leaving him with. No interest in what the ashes meant to me. He just poured out a long breath the way he always did when he was stumped about a story and told me to call when I got to where I meant to go, keep a quart of oil in the car, watch the engine light, and have a good time.
And just like that, I am heading west to a place most people in my hometown don’t even know is a state in our fine union to deliver the remains of a man that no one has claimed. I have along with me my
trusty companion, Casserole, a little-bit-of-everything mutt that showed up at my door nine years ago; a box of motor oil; a hundred dollars’ worth of drinks and snacks; a map, even though James William showed me the new MotionX GPS Drive app that I could purchase on my phone; and these ashes. I loaded up and I’m ready to go. I am driving away from the only place I have ever lived, listening to Mick Jagger, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. I am alive and moving.
As I pull out of my driveway and down to the corner where I make a turn to get onto Interstate 40, I imagine my mother dancing, smiling down from wherever she is, watching me. For some reason, I think she must be proud.
chapter two
“YOU use regular for that, right?”
He is beside me before I even turn off the engine. Tall, skinny, his thin black hair slicked back into a ponytail, he leans in, his face just above the top of the window I rolled down for the late-morning breeze after the sun came up. The name Buster is sewn on a patch pinned to the top left pocket of his long-sleeved denim shirt, and I can see the edge of a tattoo trailing beneath the collar. He is smiling and his eyes never leave my face. He does not take note of anything else in my car and it’s easy to see that he is used to minding his own business.
“Credit?”
I nod. “Yes to both questions,” I answer. “And use the low octane.”
I glance around. It’s surprising in this day and age to have someone show up to pump my gas, and at first I think maybe I have mistakenly stopped at a full-service venue and will be paying more for the assistance.
“There’s no charge for the service,” he explains, clearly used to the surprise of his customers.
I smile and hand him my card.
“No knocking?” he asks, stepping back and turning to the pumps.
“No knocking,” I reply, demonstrating my understanding of the language of a car mechanic. Low octane means the engine is running smoothly and a higher grade of gasoline isn’t necessary.