Greetings from Nowhere by Barbara O'Connor

Author:Barbara O'Connor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Published: 2012-01-12T05:00:00+00:00

Aggie

Aggie put a red X through the day on the calendar. A bad day, she thought.

Everything had happened so fast. Clyde Dover had only arrived yesterday. Why was he in such an all-fired hurry—making lists and yakking with that inspector and driving her down to the bank to sign more papers? Why couldn’t they just slow down a little bit?

Signing her name on all those papers over at the bank had made her head hurt and her stomach queasy.

Agnes Duncan.

Agnes Duncan.

Agnes Duncan.

Over and over again.

Each time feeling worse than the time before.

And then Agnes Duncan on the very last page and the Sleepy Time Motel wasn’t hers anymore.

Aggie shuffled around the office in her bedroom slippers. She tidied up the postcards and straightened the stack of maps and then she noticed something. Down at one end of the counter. A pair of sunglasses. Some pens. A yellow folder with Motel scrawled on the front with a black marker.

Clyde Dover’s folder.

Aggie switched on the lamp with a shaky hand. A jacket hung on a peg behind the counter. A denim jacket that wasn’t hers and wasn’t Harold’s.

Clyde Dover’s denim jacket.

“Well, now …” she said.

She pulled back the dusty curtains and peered outside. The Sleepy Time Motel sign glowed in the darkening sky.

“Well, now …” she said again.

She went outside to sweep the sidewalk in front of the office.

“Hey, Aggie.”

Aggie looked up to see Loretta running toward her.

“Willow said you sold the motel,” Loretta said. “How come?”

Aggie dropped into the lawn chair by the door. “It’s a long story and a short day,” she said.

“Oh.” Loretta sat beside her, swinging her legs, slapping her bare feet against the sidewalk.

Aggie took a deep breath of the cool night air. She watched the lights flick on down in Kirby’s room. She admired the glow of the Sleepy Time Motel sign. Then she sat back and listened while Loretta told her all about Dollywood. About the rides and the wigs and all. Every now and then, she reached into her pocket to feel the little china horse that Willow had given her.

“And I bet my other mother tried on a wig, too, don’t you?” Loretta said.

Aggie nodded. “Most definitely,” she said.

“Her name was Pam.”

“Really?”

“Well, maybe …” Loretta clapped her hands at a mosquito that flitted around in front of them. “Or Patsy,” she said. “Maybe Patsy.”

Aggie was glad to have Loretta sitting there next to her, swinging her legs and jangling her bracelet and chattering on and on about her other mother in that happy way of hers.

And so it seemed like that bad day was going to end as a good one.

Or at least a not-so-bad one.

But then Clyde Dover came over and asked Aggie for a key to the office.

A key for him.

A key so he could lock up, since, you know, his stuff was in there now.

And the whole time Aggie was looking for that spare key that she knew was in the junk drawer somewhere, he was rambling on and on about all the things he was going to change.

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