The Postcard by Tony Abbott

Author:Tony Abbott [ABBOTT, TONY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV000000
ISBN: 9780316033541
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2008-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Why I just followed her, I couldn’t tell you, but after three blocks we were at the Mirror Lake Public Library.

“Marnie saw Nick here, in the first chapter,” I said. “It’s cool that it’s still here.”

“We go to the best spots,” said Dia.

The library was a funky old building on one edge of a park with a lake in the middle. It looked like a Spanish mission and was cool inside, and quiet. A couple of old men were reading newspapers in big chairs, while some were just sitting and staring. A white-haired lady in a sweater the color of pistachio ice cream was unshelving books, peering at their covers over her glasses, and reshelving them.

Dia marched to the reference desk, where a young woman looked up from her computer screen. “Can I help you?” she said.

“We’re wondering if this old house is still around,” said Dia. She read out the address.

The woman hummed to herself as if she had heard the address before, got up, tugged a box off a nearby shelf, and emptied a stack of brochures on the desk. Her frown evaporated when she found what she was looking for. “I thought so. It’s called the Monroe-Davis House. Sometimes known as the Awnings. It’s from the early 1900s. It’s owned now by the St. Petersburg Historical Society.”

“Can people get in to see it?” I asked.

“Wednesday to Saturday, noon to three,” she read.

“Noon?” I said. “But, I’ve got to —”

“That’s fine,” Dia said to the librarian as she pulled me outside to the steps.

“But it’s only ten-thirty,” I said. “I can’t waste that much time —”

“You won’t. I’ll show you the Pier. Where Nick wanted to meet Grandma? You gotta see it.”

I couldn’t believe it, but she started walking, and I followed her. We walked toward the water, went all the way across the blazing hot white bridge to the Pier, limped back, walked along the bay, then turned north into narrow streets paved with dark bricks. It was a real hike, especially in the heat, and we had to stop for water bottles twice, but Dia convinced me it made more sense than finding a bus stop and waiting to make connections. A little over an hour after we’d left the library we were standing under big trees shaggy with Spanish moss at the corner of Beach Drive and 17th Street.

Number 1630 was a big square white house with a red tile roof under the shade of tall, mossy oak trees. A low iron fence circled the yard. Like most houses I’d seen, the yard was fairly small, and the house was close to the street, but it was big. Nearly every window — and there were dozens of them — was shaded by a large white awning trimmed in red. The water breezes kept the awnings inflating with air as if they were breathing.

“The Historical Society,” Dia said, reading a sign on the front lawn. “We’re visiting Fang’s house, T-Bone. We totally lucked out.”

T-Bone?

We unlatched

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