Absolutely Truly, Page 2

  I tried to act normal, and I tried to focus on my classes, and I made an effort to get involved, the way my mother’s always urging me to do whenever she catches me moping after one of our moves. I continued swimming, and I even joined a bird-watching club, ignoring Mackenzie’s snarky little comments about my bird obsession.

  Which isn’t an obsession. Not really. Well, okay, maybe a little bit.

  It didn’t help that Mackenzie had suddenly become interested in boys. And not just boys in general, but one boy in particular: Cameron McAllister, seventh-grade star of Austin’s Nitro Swim Club. All my cousin wanted to talk about was how cute he was, how funny he was, and how she was pretty sure that he liked her back.

  Crushes were the furthest thing from my mind. It was all I could do just to get through each day. In spite of my efforts to blend in and be normal, underneath I was anything but. Underneath, I was “Hi-my-name-is-Truly-and-my-father-just-lost-his-arm-in-the-war.” I thought about Dad all the time. I couldn’t help it. I wondered if he was scared when the bomb exploded. I wondered how he felt about losing his best friend. And I wondered if he’d ever be able to fly again.

  The one thing my father loves more than anything else in the world, except maybe us, is flying. Being a pilot was his life. Would he still be able to fly, with just one arm? I had so many questions.

  And then he finally came home, and my life turned upside down again.

  CHAPTER 3

  “J. T., what are you thinking?” I overheard Mom ask as my father hung up the phone in the kitchen. He’d been back in Texas less than a week. “They made it very clear they want you, despite—you know, everything.”

  “A one-armed wrestling coach?” Dad scoffed. “That’s about as useful as a one-armed pilot. It wouldn’t be fair to the team in the long run, and I don’t need their pity.”

  “That’s just pride talking and you know it. You have plenty to offer.”

  My brother and I, who were doing our homework at the dining room table, looked at each other wide-eyed. We probably weren’t supposed to be hearing this conversation.

  “Did Dad just turn down UT?” Hatcher whispered.

  “Um, I think so,” I whispered back.

  “That can’t be good.”

  The whole reason my parents had decided to settle in Texas—besides the fact that my mom’s family was there—was because my father had two job offers lined up. The airline he was going to fly for was based out of Austin, and on top of that, the University of Texas had offered him a part-time job as an assistant wrestling coach. Dad had been an all-star wrestler for the Longhorns, recruited out of high school on a scholarship, and UT was where he’d met Mom. After college, he’d joined the army, but he and his former coach had stayed in touch, and when UT heard he was retiring, they’d jumped at the chance to add him to their coaching staff.

  All of this was before Black Monday, of course. Since the injury, my father’s plans for flying had been dashed. Apparently commercial airlines aren’t exactly lining up to hire one-armed pilots.

  And now it looked like his wrestling days were over too.

  Dad wouldn’t reconsider, despite Mom’s pleas. Lieutenant Colonel Jericho T. Lovejoy has a stubborn streak.

  After that, he turned into Silent Man. He barely went out, and none of us kids quite knew how to act around him. We’re used to Dad either barking orders or joking around, but while the barking continued, the joking did not. Our fun-loving father seemed to have vanished into thin air. He still got up every morning, still shaved, still got dressed in khaki pants and a white shirt, his usual off-duty uniform. But he rarely wore his prosthesis—the hook at the end of it scared Pippa—so one shirtsleeve was usually empty, and there was an emptiness to the rest of him too. Mom tried to make up for it by being extra cheerful, but by Halloween, her upbeat attitude had wilted, and she was looking strained and pale.

  And then Gramps and Lola showed up.

  The two of them arrived unannounced in early November, a taxi having deposited them on our doorstep one evening just as we were finishing dinner.

  “We thought it would be fun to surprise you!” Lola told Dad, giving him a hug. She stepped back and looked him up and down, then patted his good arm. “You’re looking well, J. T. Much better than when we saw you in Maryland.”

  My grandmother turned and spotted me. “Truly!” she cried, flinging out her arms.

  “Lola!” I cried back, flinging myself into them. We’ve always called her Lola instead of Nana or Grandma or anything like that. Mom says it’s because her name is catnip to kids, the way it rolls off the tongue, like “lullaby” or “lollipop.”

  “How’s my most beautiful eldest granddaughter?”

  I laughed. “You mean your only eldest granddaughter, right?”

  “You’re still beautiful,” she replied, kissing me on the cheek.

  When Lola says something like that, I almost believe her.

  Lola and Gramps are two of my favorite people in the whole world. They live in New Hampshire, where Dad grew up, and where they own a bookshop. We usually go to see them every summer, but this summer, because of the move and because of Dad’s injury, we didn’t make it there. Having them turn up in Texas was a nice surprise.

  The real surprise came the next morning, though, when they sprang the true reason for their visit on us.

  “We’ve joined the Peace Corps!” Lola announced at breakfast.

  We all looked at her like she’d said she was planning to take up belly dancing.

  “You’re kidding, right?” said my father.

  “It’s something we’ve always wanted to do,” Gramps explained.

  “Since when?”

  “There’s a lot about your mother and me that you don’t know, son,” Gramps said loftily.

  My dad’s hippie-dippie sister is usually the one to drop bombshells like this. Aunt True—who’s named after the original Truly Lovejoy, just like me—is always heading off to go trekking in Nepal or sea kayaking in Patagonia or volunteering in some third-world orphanage. She sends us postcards from all over. Our fridge looks like the United Nations made a house call.

  I looked at my grandparents, trying to imagine them in the Peace Corps. If they were birds, Lola would be a dove, small and serene. Gramps, on the other hand, with his piercing gaze, bushy eyebrows, and prominent nose—he calls it “the Lovejoy proboscis”—was more of a great horned owl. He was quiet like an owl too. Quiet like me. Gramps was the one who’d gotten me hooked on birding. Whenever we get together for a visit, he takes me on walks and tells me the names of all the birds we see. He sends me bird books every Christmas and every birthday, and he’s the one who got me started keeping a life list, which birders do to record all the different species they’ve spotted. His is about the size of a dictionary, though, while mine is just a few pages.

  Lola cleared her throat. “The thing is,” she continued, “we’ve decided it’s time to turn the bookstore over to the next generation. You’d be doing us a big favor if you’d consider taking the reins, J. T.”

  Gramps nodded. “Things haven’t been going so well, and we think the business needs a fresh approach. Your sister says if you’re in, she’s in.”

  Dad looked stunned. “Run Lovejoy’s Books? With True? In Pumpkin Falls?”

  “Unless you plan to pick it up and move it, yes, in Pumpkin Falls,” said Gramps, sounding a little testy. He’s very proud of our family’s connection to the town. There have been Lovejoys in Pumpkin Falls since before the American Revolution.

  My father swiveled around, pinning my mother with one of his signature Lieutenant Colonel Jericho T. Lovejoy glares. “Did you know about this, Dinah?”

  Mom bit her lip. “Well—”

  “It’s either turn it over to you and your sister or sell,” Lola said briskly. “We’ve been avoiding this for a while now, but it’s time to face facts. Not that selling would be the end of the world, but the bookshop has been in the family for nearly a hundred years.”

/>   Dad grimaced. “No pressure or anything, right?”

  My grandfather placed his hand on top of Dad’s remaining one. “Would you at least consider the possibility, son? Nothing would make your mother and me happier.”

  I could tell that running a bookstore with his sister wasn’t exactly on my father’s list of “Top Ten Things I Most Want to Do When I Grow Up.” For one thing, he’s not the biggest bookworm in the world, plus he and Aunt True don’t always see eye to eye on things. Hardly ever, in fact.

  At first, Dad flat-out refused. He said it was all a plot, hatched by Mom and his parents, and that he wouldn’t be backed into a corner, even if it meant selling the bookshop. But with no pilot job, and no coaching job either, what choice did he have? By Thanksgiving, it was a done deal. Our new house went on the market a week later, and the movers came right after New Year’s.

  And now here we were: stuck in Pumpkin Falls, in the middle of the coldest winter on record, moving into the house my father grew up in, in the town he couldn’t wait to leave.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Gimme a hand with the salad, Drooly?” Hatcher called from the kitchen a few minutes later.

  Most of the time I don’t mind it when my brother calls me that. It’s been his nickname for me forever. Tonight, though, I wasn’t in the mood. I barged through the door ready to let him have it, then stopped abruptly.

  “What?” said Hatcher innocently, batting his big brown eyes at me. He was wearing Mom’s favorite apron, the pink one with DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS on it, and he’d stuffed the top with dish towels to give himself a bust. A couple more wadded into the seat of his pants added an exaggerated bottom. He did a little dance, wiggling his rear end at me, and I couldn’t help it, I laughed.

  Which was the whole point, of course. Hatcher’s always trying to crack me up.

  Mom says that except for his hair color, he’s pure Gifford. Her whole family loves practical jokes, and telling funny stories, and they’ve all got these big, loud laughs just like Hatcher’s. My brother is the definition of happy-go-lucky. Nothing much bothers him, and he’s always looking on the bright side, just like Mom. “Cheerful as a sunflower,” she calls him.

  I, on the other hand—well, nobody’s ever called me a sunflower. Hatcher and I look a lot alike, with our freckles and brown eyes and stick-straight brown hair (his is shorter than mine, of course, thanks to Dad’s vigilance with the clippers), but that’s where the resemblance ends. He’s sunshine; I’m shadow. Like I said, I’m the quiet type. Except for the times when I stick my foot in my mouth, and when you wear size-ten-and-a-half shoes, that’s a whole lot of foot. Unfortunately, my foot spends a lot of time there. I’m kind of famous in my family for blurting out the wrong thing at the wrong time.

  Hatcher danced over and placed a colander on my head like a crown. “Duty calls, milady,” he warbled. “Prepare to wash and chop.”

  My smile vanished. Grumbling, I crossed to the fridge and started pulling out salad fixings. KP was my least favorite chore. The plan was for Hatcher and me to alternate weeks with Danny and Lauren, to help Mom out now that she’s going back to college. It’s always been her dream to be an English teacher, but between juggling all of us kids and our constant moves with the military, it was pretty much an impossible one. Now that we were finally putting down roots, she had decided to finish her degree. It’s really convenient for her, what with Lovejoy College being right here in Pumpkin Falls.

  The college was founded in 1769 by one of our ancestors: Nathaniel Daniel Lovejoy, my great-great-great-zillion-times-great-grandfather, who built this house and who looks down his Lovejoy proboscis at us from his oil portrait hanging over the fireplace in the living room. His wife, Prudence, whose nose is a normal size, stares back at him from her portrait above the piano. There are more Lovejoys scattered over the walls in other parts of the house too, so many that I can’t always keep track of their names. Nathaniel Daniel is pretty hard to forget, though. What were his parents thinking?

  Even Pippa thinks it’s a stupid name. “Nathaniel Daniel looks like a spaniel,” she sing-songed the first time she heard it.

  “When’s everybody due back?” asked Hatcher.

  I shrugged. “Soon, I guess. Mom said they’d be home for dinner.” Lauren and Pippa had gone along for the ride while she and Danny registered for classes—my mother at Lovejoy College, and Danny at the high school over in West Hartfield. Not only is Pumpkin Falls too small to have its own movie theater, it also doesn’t even have its own high school, which means Danny will have to drive himself nearly half an hour to school each day.

  My brother slid the lasagna into the oven and gave me a sidelong glance. “So, what’s the deal with the grade?”

  I made a face and sliced into a tomato. “I don’t know, Hatch. Ever since I found out we were moving again, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I tanked a couple of tests.”

  “Did you think Dad wouldn’t find out?”

  “I thought I’d beat him to the mailbox, that’s for sure.”

  “Moron,” he said, punching me in the arm. It was a friendly punch, though, and I gave him a rueful smile.

  By the time dinner was ready I was feeling a whole lot happier. My mood took a nosedive again a few minutes later, though, when Dad walked through the door, scowling.

  Mom was right behind him. “Mmm, that lasagna smells delicious,” she said, taking off her coat and hat and hanging them on a hook in the mud room.

  “Supermarket’s finest,” said Hatcher.

  She swooped in to kiss each of us on the cheek. “Sounds good to me. I think I’m going to like this new KP arrangement.”

  I gave my father a speculative glance. Mom was way too upbeat for someone who knew about an F plus. Maybe he wasn’t planning to tell her about my report card after all.

  My mother watched, her lips pressed together, as my father struggled with the zipper on his jacket. I could tell she wanted to help, but we’ve all learned to wait until asked unless we want to get our heads bitten off. It takes a lot for Dad to ask for help with anything.

  “Danny’s all set for tomorrow, and so am I,” Mom said lightly, squatting down to help Pippa with her zipper instead. “It’s kind of funny to think we’ll all be starting school together.”

  My little sister flung her arms around her. “You can come to my clathroom, Mommy,” she lisped, thanks to her missing teeth. “I’ll let you thit right nextht to me.”

  “Thanks, Pipster,” my mother replied, ruffling my sister’s curls. “I really wish I could—but I have to go to my school.” Straightening up, she glanced around the kitchen and frowned. “Where’s Lauren?”

  “Out in the barn,” Danny told her. Gramps and Lola’s house has a really cool old barn that they use as a garage. Gramps has his woodshop out there, and they turned part of the hayloft into an art studio for Lola. “She’s still in the car. She said she wanted to finish her chapter.”

  “For heaven’s sake, it must be ten below out there!” Mom exclaimed. “Get her in here, would you?”

  Danny went to do as she asked while the rest of us sat down at the table. When he and Lauren returned, we said grace and then dug in. I glanced over at my father now and then as we ate, bracing myself for the ax that I knew would eventually fall. We made it all the way to dessert without a peep about my report card.

  “Did we get any mail?” my mother asked as Hatcher passed around a plate of the Pumpkin Falls General Store’s famous maple walnut blondies.

  I froze.

  My father looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to tell her, or shall I?”

  I sighed. “Go ahead.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Go ahead, sir.”

  He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the envelope, then passed it wordlessly to my mother.

  “Truly,” said my mother, shaking her head sorrowfully when she spotted my math grade, just as I knew she would. “I’m so disappointed in you.”

&nbs
p; Hatcher kicked me under the table. I glanced over to see him tap his two forefingers under his chin. That’s our shorthand for “chin up.” I sighed again. What I really wanted to tell my mother was that it was all Dad’s fault, that he was the reason we’d had to leave Austin, which was why I hadn’t been able to concentrate on stupid pre-algebra. But I couldn’t say that, naturally.

  “I know, Mom,” is what I said instead. “I’m sorry. I promise I’ll try harder.”

  “You certainly will,” said my father, his voice as crisp as the creases in his starched shirt. “In fact, I’ve decided on a plan of attack.”

  Of course he had. Lieutenant Colonel Jericho T. Lovejoy is big on plans of attack.

  “I’ll tutor you until your grade is acceptable again,” he continued. “I’ll expect you at the bookstore by 1530 hours every afternoon after school.”

  1530 is military-speak for three thirty p.m. “But—” I began.

  He ignored me. “You can stay and help your aunt and me when we’re done with tutoring, then Danny can pick you up on his way home from practice.”

  “But—” I tried again.

  “We’re about to start inventory, and we could use an extra pair of hands,” he continued. He glanced down at his own left hand, which was awkwardly gripping his fork, and frowned briefly. “I’d enlist your brothers, but they’ll be too busy to help right now, what with wrestling season starting.”

  The table fell silent as he jabbed his fork into a bite of lasagna. Hatcher and I exchanged a glance. Wrestling was a sore topic these days. Before Black Monday, Dad had always helped coach Hatcher and Danny when he was home, but now—well, now he could barely even say the word.

  “But—”

  “No buts, young lady. That’s an order.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Lovejoy is big on orders, too.

  “What about swim team tryouts?” I burst out, unable to contain myself any longer. I did remember to add “sir,” though. Lola and Gramps had checked for me, and the tryouts were scheduled for the end of the month.