Yours Truly

  I froze. “Um, he’s okay, I guess.”

  “He’s kind of cute, don’t you think?”

  The barred owl is most often found in mature forests, I read, keeping my eyes glued to the page. Whatever had prompted this, I was not about to take the bait.

  “Of course Cameron’s hair is blonder, and he has blue eyes, not brown like Calhoun’s, but still, Calhoun is definitely cute,” my cousin continued. “And I can’t believe his name is Romeo!” She sighed. “That’s so romantic.”

  Clenching my teeth, I read on: The barred owl’s typical call sounds like “Who cooks for you! Who cooks for you-all!”

  “Hey, did you notice the socks Belinda Winchester is knitting?”

  This time I looked up. “Huh?”

  “Belinda’s socks—they’re purple. Guess we know who those are for, right?”

  Mackenzie clearly had romance on the brain. I shook my head and returned to my book.

  Owls can find their prey without even seeing it, thanks to hypersensitive hearing. At certain frequencies, an owl’s hearing is ten times more sensitive than that of humans.

  Right then I would have been happy not to hear anything at all. Especially not my boy-crazy cousin.

  Mackenzie sighed, finally taking the hint. “Fine. I’ll read too.” Kneeling in front of my bookcase, she ran a finger over the titles that lined its shelves. “Sudoku, birds, sudoku, birds. B-O-R-I-N-G, as Annie Freeman would say.”

  “S-O-R-R-Y!” I quipped in reply. “Didn’t you bring anything from home?”

  “Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure my mother stuck something in my suitcase at the last minute in case I wanted to read on the plane. I totally forgot.”

  She went over to my closet and opened the door. A moment later I heard her rummaging through her luggage, and then “Yes! Thank you, Mom!” This was immediately followed by a loud thud, and then “Whoa!”

  “Whoa what?” I asked, looking up again.

  “Whoa, as in you’d better come over here and take a look at this!”

  There was an urgent note in Mackenzie’s voice. I put my book down and crossed the room. My cousin was squatting by her suitcase, holding a fat hardcover book. Looking up at me, she asked, “Do you have a flashlight?”

  “Um, maybe with our camping gear out in the garage or something. Why?”

  “I need a light.”

  “Hang on a sec.” My cell phone was charging on my desk. Grabbing it, I switched on the torch app and went back to the closet.

  “Don’t point it at me, you dork, point it at the floor!” my cousin protested, shielding her eyes.

  “Sorry.” Redirecting the beam, I saw that the corner of one of the wide wooden floorboards was sticking up at an odd angle. “That’s weird.”

  “I know, right?” Mackenzie said. “When I dropped my book, it just popped up like that.”

  I knelt down beside her and poked at the floorboard’s raised edge, trying to work my fingers under it. No luck. Then I pounded on the other end, trying to see if that would jostle it loose, but it still didn’t budge.

  “Do you have something we can pry it up with?” my cousin asked.

  Returning to my desk, I grabbed my letter opener. “Be careful with it, okay? It was a Christmas present.”

  She spotted the carved owl on the handle and smirked. “You are such a bird nerd!”

  I don’t mind it when Mackenzie teases me. Most of the time, anyway.

  Inserting the point of the letter opener beneath the floorboard’s raised corner, she carefully slid the slim blade in all the way to its hilt, then levered down on it gently. The floorboard inched up.

  “Do it again,” I told her, setting my cell phone down. I poked my fingers underneath the lifted edge as she continued to push. The top of the floorboard was worn smooth from centuries of use, but the underside was rough. I hoped there wasn’t anything lurking beneath it. Like spiders, for instance.

  This was no time to be squeamish. I redoubled my efforts, and my pulse quickened as I felt the board start to loosen. I told myself not to be silly. I told myself that this wasn’t one of Lauren’s Nancy Drew books. There weren’t any such things as secret compartments.

  Mackenzie pressed down again, and I gave one last mighty tug at the floorboard, tumbling back as it suddenly shifted and came loose in my hand. I scrambled up onto my knees and leaned over to peer into the open space that had been concealed underneath. Mackenzie did too, and our heads banged together with an audible crack.

  “Ouch!” we both said, sitting back on our heels.

  “You go first,” Mackenzie told me, rubbing her forehead.

  Wincing, I reached for my cell phone again and shined it into the shadowy crevice. There was something tucked into the far corner. A small bundle of some sort, wrapped in a piece of faded fabric and bound with a knotted leather cord.

  “What is it?” Mackenzie could hardly contain her excitement.

  “I don’t know.”

  Reaching in cautiously, I lifted it out and felt its edges. “A box of some kind, I think?” I shook it, but whatever it was didn’t make a sound.

  We carried our discovery over to my bed, where there was more light. Mackenzie sat down beside me, bouncing a little on the edge of my mattress. “Open it!” she urged, sounding like Pippa.

  “I’m trying!” I replied, working at the age-stiffened knot.

  “It’s silk, I think,” my cousin said, reaching out and brushing the faded fabric with a finger. “Looks like it was a pretty shade of light blue once. Who do you think it belonged to?”

  I shrugged. “It’s probably Aunt True’s. This used to be her room.”

  The leather knot finally came loose. Unwinding the cord from around the bundle, I peeled back the fabric.

  “It’s a book,” I said, disappointed. When you find a secret compartment in your room, at least a tiny part of you can’t help expecting gold and jewels and buried treasure of some sort.

  Smallish but thick, the book was bound in dark blue leather worn around the spine and edges. The word “DIARY” was stamped on the cover in faded gold, along with the initials T. L. in the bottom right-hand corner.

  “See?” I told my cousin, pointing to the letters. “True Lovejoy. It’s my aunt’s.”

  “We probably shouldn’t open it, then,” said Mackenzie. “I mean, since it’s her diary and everything.”

  “Yeah. It could be really personal, or embarrassing.”

  We sat in silence, staring at it.

  “Maybe just a peek?” Mackenzie said finally. She gave me a hopeful glance.

  I chewed my lip, considering. “A peek,” I agreed, and opened the cover.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Whoa,” whispered Mackenzie. “It’s not your Aunt True’s.”

  We stared down at the date on the diary’s first page: January 1, 1861. The flesh on my arms prickled. The book I was holding in my hands had been hidden away for over a hundred and fifty years!

  I traced the words on the inside front cover: Property of Truly Lovejoy.

  “This was hers!” I told my cousin, my voice rising in excitement. “The original Truly’s—the one I was named after!”

  “You mean the one in the portrait?” Mackenzie’s blue eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

  “I can prove it,” I told her. “Come on.”

  She followed me out into the hallway, where I flipped on the light and pointed to the framed document hanging on the wall nearby. “See? That’s her passport. Check out the signature at the bottom. It’s exactly the same as in her diary.”

  My cousin compared the two. “But her last name isn’t Lovejoy,” she said, squinting at the faded writing on the passport. “It’s—”

  “Becker. I know. She got the passport in Germany, before she came here and met Matthew. And see? Her real name was Trudy, remember I told you that? And about the immigrations officials who misunderstood and wrote it down wrong in her official papers, so she got stuck with Truly?”

 
Mackenzie smiled at me. “And so did you.”

  My name has always kind of bugged me, but as I stood there holding the diary in my hands, something changed. Blue, I thought, looking down at the faded leather cover and the scrap of fabric it had been wrapped in. Goose bumps again. The original Truly had liked blue too. She was a real living, breathing person, not just a face in an old portrait. For the first time, I felt a flicker of kinship with my ancestor.

  “So she arrived here in America in . . . let’s see”—Mackenzie struggled to make out the faded writing on the framed passport—“September 1860. And by New Year’s Day in 1861, just three months later, she was already married to Matthew? Wow, that’s what I call a whirlwind romance! It really must have been love at first sight, just like your grandfather told you.”

  “What are you guys doing?”

  We swiveled around. Our voices had drawn my sister Lauren from her room.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. Too quickly. Lauren may just be a fourth grader, but she’s not stupid.

  “Doesn’t sound like nothing.”

  “I was showing Mackenzie the original Truly’s passport.”

  Lauren’s gaze fell on my hand. The one holding the diary. She didn’t miss a trick.

  “And I, uh, thought she might be interested in seeing my life list too,” I added quickly. The fib was the only thing I could think of on the spur of the moment. Fortunately, the notebook I kept my list of birds in was about the same shape as the diary, if not the exact same color.

  And, fortunately, my sister fell for it.

  “Oh,” she said, immediately losing interest. Lauren loves animals, but she’s not at all into birding. She turned to go.

  “Maybe we can all do something tomorrow, like play a board game,” said Mackenzie.

  Lauren brightened. “That sounds like fun!” And skimming lightly down the hall, she gave my cousin a quick hug. “Night, Mackenzie.”

  “Night, Lauren.”

  My sister returned to her room. Her message couldn’t have been clearer if she’d spoken it aloud: no hug for the mean big sister. I felt a pang of guilt, followed swiftly by annoyance. The thing was, I wasn’t deliberately trying to be mean. I just didn’t get to see Mackenzie very often, and I didn’t want to have to share her. Was that so awful?

  Back in my room, Mackenzie and I sat down on the bed beside each other again and opened the diary.

  “Look at her handwriting!” my cousin marveled, carefully turning the pages. Yellowed and brittle, they were covered with elegant cursive. “Nobody writes like that now.” She looked up at me. “How about we read it out loud?”

  “Okay.” I turned back to the first page. Some of the words were in German, but I did the best I could:

  January 1, 1861

  Liebes Tagebuch—Dear Diary,

  Mother Lovejoy gave me this diary for Weihnachten—[this word had been crossed out, and “Christmas” carefully entered in its place]—in hopes I will use it to practice mein Englisch. I promised her I would write as often as I could. Today begins my new life as Mrs. Matthew Lovejoy. We were married heute Morgen—[again, the words were crossed out and “this morning” added in their place]—by Reverend Josiah Bartlett of the First Parish Church.

  “Hey,” I told Mackenzie, looking up. “That’s the same church my grandparents belong to—the one with the steeple!”

  “Cool! Don’t forget you promised to take me up there too.”

  “I won’t.” I turned my attention back to the diary.

  How I wish my own Mutti had been here for my wedding! I miss her so. Matthew says I am very brave, traveling so far from home, but this morning I don’t feel brave at all. Only full of Heimweh.

  “What’s ‘Heimweh’?” my cousin asked, frowning.

  “We’re going to need a German-English dictionary,” I told her. “Maybe we can get one at the bookstore tomorrow, or the library.”

  But I do so love my husband! And I will learn to love Pumpkin Falls, and it will become home too. This Matthew promises me.

  Deine Truly

  Yet another cross-out through the final two words, which had been replaced with “Yours, Truly.”

  “Poor thing, she sounds really homesick,” said Mackenzie.

  “No wonder!” I tried to imagine myself in my ancestor’s shoes. She was only a year older than my brother Danny, and she’d left her family and her country and had just gotten married to someone she’d known for only a few months.

  Mackenzie sighed dreamily. “Isn’t it romantic, though?”

  I made a rude noise.

  She elbowed me. “Keep reading!”

  I looked down at the diary. “We should probably show it to my mom and dad,” I said reluctantly. “Since it’s a family heirloom and everything.”

  Mackenzie made a face. “You’re probably right. Maybe we could wait until tomorrow, though?”

  I was quiet for a moment. For one thing, the minute word got out about the diary, Lauren would be all over it. Something this old—and something she could read, to boot—would be like catnip to my bookworm sister. And if it were valuable, my parents might want to stick it in a museum or a safe deposit box. Mackenzie and I might not ever get another chance to look at it.

  There was a knock on the door, and I reflexively stuffed the diary under my pillow.

  “Girls?” My mother poked her head in. “I saw the light under your door. Morning’s going to come early, and you have swim practice. I think you should call it a night.”

  Neither my cousin nor I said a word about the diary. We just nodded and climbed into our beds.

  “Good night, then.” My mother turned off the overhead light and blew us each a kiss, and we each pretended to catch it. It’s a Gifford bedtime ritual.

  “Good night, Aunt Dinah,” said Mackenzie.

  “Good night, Mom,” I echoed.

  The door closed behind her. The diary stayed where it was.

  “Just until tomorrow,” I whispered to Mackenzie.

  CHAPTER 11

  The alarm on my cell phone jangled me awake. I stretched a leg out from under the covers and poked a toe at the nearby air mattress, nudging the lump that was Mackenzie.

  “Go away,” the lump mumbled.

  “Up and at ’em!” I said in my best imitation of Lieutenant Colonel Jericho T. Lovejoy. I sprang briskly out of bed and flipped on the overhead light. “Daily doubles await!”

  Mackenzie groaned. “I plead jet lag!”

  “Don’t you want to wow Mr. Perfect with your new flip turn?”

  She cracked open an eyelid. “Who’s Mr. Perfect?”

  I grinned at her. “Pardon me. I mean Cameron McAllister.”

  At the sound of her true love’s name, Mackenzie sat up and rubbed her eyes. “I was just dreaming about him.”

  I made a gagging noise, and she threw her pillow at me. I caught it and grinned. “Last one downstairs is a rotten egg!”

  Except for that long, scary stretch of months after Black Monday, when my father had a serious case of the doldrums, as he puts it now, I’d rarely known him not to be up before I am. For as long as I could remember, he’d been an early bird, and this particular morning was no exception.

  “Morning, ladies,” he said, glancing up from his coffee and newspaper as my cousin and I entered the kitchen.

  “Morning, Uncle Jericho,” Mackenzie replied, yawning.

  My father gestured toward the fridge. “Power smoothies await.”

  “Thanks.” I dropped a kiss on top of his head.

  My father was big on making sure that the athletes in the family ate right, and that included a little something before early-morning practices. Even when we didn’t feel like it, he insisted. Sometimes it was just a banana with a swipe of peanut butter; sometimes it was an energy bar; this morning it was a smoothie.

  “How about I drop you off on my way to the bookshop?” my father offered. “It’s been a busy few days what with all the tourists, and I want to get a jump on things.”
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  The three of us were quiet on the short ride to town. Neither Mackenzie nor I brought up the subject of the diary, which was still in its hiding place under my pillow. I stared out the window, wondering if Pumpkin Falls had looked much different back when the original Truly had lived here. Probably not.

  The last remnants of winter were rapidly melting away, and rivulets of muddy water swirled across the streets. It wouldn’t be long now before the migratory warblers returned, along with the chipping sparrows and Baltimore orioles and evening grosbeaks. I made a mental note to work up a list of the spring birds that I should be watching for.

  “Work hard, ladies,” my father said as we pulled up in front of the pool.

  “Always do,” I replied as Mackenzie and I got out.

  He gave us a thumbs-up and drove off.

  I groaned when I saw the workout posted on the whiteboard. We’d be working hard, all right—Coach Maynard had seen to that.

  “I hate speed intervals,” Mackenzie grumbled as we started warming up.

  “No kidding,” I said. “Especially first thing in the morning.”

  Lucas sidled up to us, his face as red as if he’d just finished a set of sprints. He flashed my cousin a shy smile. “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself,” said Mackenzie.

  I didn’t bother replying. What was the point? Lucas wasn’t talking to me anyway.

  Along with the rest of our teammates—the ones who had remained in Pumpkin Falls for Spring Break, at least—the three of us grunted our way through the required sets of warm-up crunches and planks.

  A few minutes later there was a short blast from Coach Maynard’s whistle as he emerged from the office. He seemed like his normal self; there was no mention of last night’s outburst at A Stitch in Time. I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up.

  “Let’s see how you two do against each other,” he said to Mackenzie and me, assigning us to adjoining lanes.

  Given our differences in height, you wouldn’t think it was fair to pit my cousin and me against each other, but once we’re in the water it actually balances out. Mackenzie’s so petite she’s like a water flea, zipping across the surface of the pool. But my long legs and arms give me an advantage too, and in the end our times are generally really close.