The Year the Swallows Came Early by Kathryn Fitzmaurice

Author:Kathryn Fitzmaurice
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780061972621
Publisher: HarperCollins

BURNED TUNA MELTS

“You could’ve done it yourself. It’s not that heavy.” Frankie stepped back and stretched his arms up. We’d slid the box into the middle of the kitchen floor. The smell of burned tuna melts and lemon-scented dish soap hung in the air. Mama, who’d taken over the routine cooking, had made sandwiches while home from the salon on her lunch break. She left them on a paper plate for me with a note saying, “Bon appétit. According to your horoscope today, good things are in store.”

The frying pan lay in the sink unwashed. Drops of water splashed in threes from the faucet. Drip, drip, drip. Drip, drip, drip. Something Daddy had never got to fixing.

“I thought the box would be heavy because it’s so big,” I told him. “Let’s open it.”

It took us a few tries with the scissors to cut it open. Masking tape and years of heat waves had glued the seams shut, protecting what was inside.

When we finally peeled it away, the odor of dust and old paper came into the room, circling around us.

“What’s this?” Frankie grabbed a yellowish crumpled piece of paper the size of a dollar bill. It was very wrinkled but looked like someone had tried their hardest to smooth it out. Like maybe they’d almost thrown it away but then thought, No, this belongs in here after all.

“It looks like an article about her life,” I told him, thinking that it was probably the closest I would ever come to knowing her.

Frankie looked it over. “It says that she lived in New York, that she had one daughter, a granddaughter, and a great-granddaughter…. That’s you.” He looked up. “It also says she wrote a lot of books.” He stopped and gave the article to me.

I looked at the picture of her. She was not smiling, but she looked real smart, and I wondered if I would look like that someday when I was older.

I put the article on the kitchen table and we unpacked the rest of the box. An envelope fell to the ground next to my legs. In perfect cursive handwriting, it read, “To: Eleanor Robinson.” For a second I thought it must have been for her, but then I realized it was for me.

“Open it,” Frankie said. “It’s addressed to you.”

“I know,” I answered, thinking how Frankie always got things before I did. Inside was a letter written in the same handwriting. “It must be from her.” My heart pounded.

“Well, what does it say?”

I stood up. I held the letter with both hands, like the words might have been written by a past president. “I’ll read it to you.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.