The Twelfth Child (Serendipity #1)(30)



“Oh, look-y here,” Isaac’s mama said and turned the baby toward the snow globe. “Ain’t that pretty?” she oohed and aahed for a bit and finally, the baby quit screaming. “He’s all wrapped up in watching the snow,” she told Abigail. “Keep shaking that thing, will you, honey?”

Abigail shook the globe again and as Isaac watched the swirl of snow his little arms and legs pinwheeled with delight. “Ain’t that something? Just look how he’s taken to that thing.” The woman moved Isaac closer to Abigail and he reached out for the snow globe. “No, no, sweetie’,” she said, “you can’t have it.” Isaac obviously didn’t like hearing the word no because he stiffened his legs out and bucked so hard that he knocked Abigail’s most prized possession from her hand. It happened in a split second, so quickly there was no time to grab hold of the globe; yet in that brief moment Abigail thought she heard the fair-haired girl scream as her tiny world splintered against the metal floor.

The woman’s eyes about popped out of her head. “Oh, Good Lord,” she exclaimed, “Isaac has never done a thing like that! He didn’t mean it. He’s real sorry! Isaac!” she snapped, yanking the baby back onto her lap, “You better be sorry!”

Isaac started wailing all over again.

Alongside Abigail’s feet there was a rivulet of water draining out into the aisle. She bent over and rescued the little girl who had lived inside the globe for more years than anyone knew. The glass world was shattered and bits of make believe snow scattered about; there was also a small chip in the Christmas tree but, the little girl was in one piece. Abigail brushed bits of glass from the figurine then folded it into Livonia’s lace hanky and tucked it inside of her purse. In doing so she noticed the figurine’s smile seemed brighter than ever—like Abigail; the little girl was about to discover a new world.

Isaac was still screaming when Abigail got up and moved to the seat across the aisle. She took out the Harper’s Bazaar Magazine that Will had gotten her in Lynchburg and started leafing through the pages. The man sitting alongside her had an oversized sack of sandwiches in his lap.

“Want one?” he asked and offered out the sack.

“No thank you,” Abigail replied, remembering the politeness Livonia had drummed into her head.

“I’ve got plenty. Cheese. Baloney. Apple butter.”

“No thank you,” she repeated and turned back to focusing her attention on the flapper dress in Harper’s. She narrowed her eyes and squinted at the picture until she could see her own face on the flat-chested model.

“How about an apple; or some homemade cookies?”

Homemade cookies, now that was a thing Abigail couldn’t resist. “Well,” she said, “perhaps a cookie.”

The man reached beneath his seat and hauled up an even bigger bag. “Go ahead,” he said, “help yourself to a handful.”

Abigail stuck her hand into the sack and pulled out two big round oatmeal cookies. “Umm,” she said, “my favorite.”

“Me, I like cheese sandwiches. Could eat twenty of them, I suppose.” As the man chomped down on the sandwich he was holding, a sizable chunk of cheddar spit off and dropped into his beard. The man seemed not to notice. “Where you headed?” he asked Abigail.

“Richmond.” She smiled broadly. “I’m going to work with an almost famous woman who writes poetry!”

“Well, now. Ain’t that something! You want more cookies?”

“Uh-uh.” Abigail shook her head but her eyes got fixed on the piece of cheese in the man’s beard. No matter how vigorously he chewed or talked, the cheese didn’t let go. If it had been her papa, she would have reached up and brushed it away; but this man was a total stranger. She tried to focus on something else, so as not to be rude. “Where you going?” she asked.

“Parkerton. I got family in Parkerton.”

Abigail had never heard of Parkerton, but imagined it to be quite a distance away, judging by the amount of food in the man’s sack. Before she had a chance to inquire about the actual whereabouts, the conductor came through the car yelling, “Parkerton, next stop.” He called it out twice because of Isaac’s wailing.

“Time for me to go,” the man said. He clambered over Abigail’s satchel and squeezed into the aisle. As the train rolled to a stop, he reached into his bag and pulled out two more oatmeal cookies. “Hang onto these,” he said, “you’ll be hungry later.”

After he left, Abigail quickly slid over into his seat because it was alongside a window. As soon as she’d settled in, she took the hem of her dress and began polishing up the glass so she’d be certain to see all there was to see.

As the train rumbled through Brownell County, she kept her nose pressed to the glass, watching bean fields and apple orchards whiz by. Here and there she’d spot a farmhouse or a town smaller than Chestnut Ridge but mostly it was endless acres of farmland. After two hours of watching long stretches of green Abigail leaned back in her seat and took out Miss Ida Jean Meredith’s pink envelope.

She reread the letter over and over again, each time trying to imagine what it would be like to live in Richmond. She pictured dwellings of every shape and size; from a townhouse so tall a person would have to stretch their neck to see the roof, right down to a tiny cottage ringed with roses. Abigail Anne had the ability to do that—draw pictures inside of her head instead of taking a pencil to paper. Once she’d settled on the image of a wide-spread house with the veranda painted the yellow of a sunflower; she started picturing what Miss Ida Jean Meredith would look like. First she envisioned a tall woman with a crown of silver hair; but that was too severe so she changed the image to a more rounded woman with ample breasts and cheeks as rosy as a ripe peach. Although unable to put her finger on exactly what was wrong, Abigail sensed that neither of those pictures were right. She finally fashioned a Miss Meredith that looked a lot like Livonia—which seemed to work surprisingly well.

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