Previously Loved Treasures (Serendipity #2)(60)
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After Wilbur left the room Caroline sat there for a long time, thinking. It was after midnight when she closed the file she’d been working on and opened a new one.
At the top of the page she typed, “Untitled by Caroline Sweetwater.”
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I never knew I had a grandmother, she wrote, until one day the telephone rang and changed my life. It was near dawn when she saved the file and powered off the computer. Caroline climbed into bed still uncertain whether she had begun to write a novel or an autobiography. The story was without name or genre, but it had a heart as big as the house and spoke in the true voice of love.
She thought about Wilbur’s words again and decided to add him to the story. He would be the grandfather she never knew. Pleased with such a thought, Caroline began assembling all of Wilbur’s endearing traits and habits and that’s when she remembered the missing watch.
Tomorrow she would revisit the Previously Loved Treasures shop. After nearly a week Wilbur’s watch was still nowhere to be found and she had a lot of questions. Peter Pennington was generally a man with answers. He also had an uncanny ability to come up with whatever was needed. Perhaps hoping for a third replica of the watch would be asking the impossible, but then again maybe it wouldn’t.
Caroline
If yesterday you asked what I was writing I would have said a love story, but it would have been a lie. The book I’ve been working on for almost a year is nothing more than a bunch of romantic words tied together. It’s like a string of Christmas lights with a bulb missing. It’s only one bulb, but without it nothing else works.
Now I truly am writing a love story. It’s about Grandma. Before last night I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong with the story, but now I can it see it clear as day. Wilbur’s the one who helped me. He might not look like a romantic, but he is. It’s the snowy white hair that fools you. If you look past the hair and listen to Wilbur’s words, you’ll see he’s got the most beautiful heart imaginable. When he was talking about Grandma and how she was one of the most loving women he’d ever met, I noticed his eyes were a bit teary. I can tell he misses her, maybe even as much as I do.
Yesterday evening after he went back downstairs, I took the picture of Grandma and Big Jim and set it alongside my computer. It’s just a snapshot but it gives me inspiration, and if I look at it and squint Big Jim looks a lot like Wilbur. It would be real easy to imagine Wilbur being my granddaddy.
There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of Grandma. I keep wishing we could have had more time together. I guess that’s how life is—the bad things hang on forever and the good things are gone in the blink of an eye. I don’t know if it’s true or if it just seems that way because you miss the good things so much. I sure do miss Grandma. At least I can be here in her house with the people she loved. The residents, she called them. It’s funny but I can almost see a piece of Grandma stuck to every one of these people. Well, everyone except Rose and Sara, they don’t have Grandma stuck to them because they never knew her.
The truth is these people are more like family than any family I’ve ever known. Most families squabble about this, that, and the other thing, but not the residents. They have nothing but kind words for each other. Even Max. It used to be he was angry and withdrawn, but no more. Now he’s downright pleasant. Yesterday at supper, Harriet said something funny and Max laughed out loud. Up until then I’d never even seen him crack a smile.
With Rose cooking and Max being happy, I’m starting to believe things can actually work out, but I still miss Grandma.
The Wristwatch
It was after ten when Caroline opened one sleepy eye and peered at the bedside clock. She’d slept through breakfast and halfway through the morning. “Oh, dear,” she said, realizing that Rose had been left to handle things on her own.
It was nothing to worry about; Rose was magical in the kitchen. In less time than it would take for anyone else to assemble the ingredients, Rose could turn out a tray of biscuits golden brown and fluffy as air.
Caroline smiled a lazy smile and remained in bed thinking about the words she’d written last night. For a year she’d stumbled around the descriptions of love, dredging up adjectives like “passionate”, “adoring”, and “devoted”. In the one hundred-and-twenty-six pages she’d set aside there was a plethora of those words, but not once had she captured the truth of love. Then last night she found what she’d been searching for and was pleased with the words. They came together the way puffs of down come together to make a cozy comforter. As she’d sat in the chair rereading what she’d written she could feel the peacefulness of Ida’s presence, and it settled into her soul as if it was meant to be there.
As she climbed out of bed, Caroline touched her hand to the old wooden desk. Was it true? Were there stories locked inside the desk, stories that would in time be hers for the telling? There was a blurred line between the magical mystery and what could be nothing more than wishful thinking.
Today she would visit the Previously Loved Treasures shop and try to replace Wilbur’s lost watch. While she was there, Caroline would ask Peter Pennington for the truth of the desk. But before she did either of those things, she had something important to do. Holding the seven pages in her hand, she hurried down the stairs. Wilbur sat on the front porch alone.