The Twelfth Child (Serendipity #1)(59)
“Then I’m the lucky man.” He locked his gaze into hers and smiled again.
It took Fred almost two hours to finish off the plate of fried chicken. He’d nibble on the tip end of a wing, then ask where Gloria was from; he’d chew a shred of coleslaw fifteen times then inquire as to what movies she liked; he’d order up another cup of coffee and ask if she liked to dance. In addition to the chicken combo, he ate two pieces of the celebration cake and drank twelve cups of coffee that afternoon. By the time he finally left, Gloria was so starry eyed she put a scoop of vanilla ice cream atop a grilled cheese sandwich and served a slice of apple pie with pickle.
That night she told Abigail, “I’ve met the man I’m going to marry.”
“Marry?” Abigail echoed with astonishment.
Gloria nodded.
Within a month, Gloria and Fred were keeping steady company. Before the year was out, they married and moved into an apartment building three doors down.
Abigail went back to living alone. Night after night she’d sit at the kitchen table reading, forgetting to make dinner, and filling herself with the promise that someday soon she too would meet the man of her dreams. At times she’d slip off to imagining the look of him – tall, sandy-haired, eyes the color of a summer sky, a voice so melodious that birds would cease their singing to listen. He’d love children and insist they have a houseful, three or four girls and a like number of boys. They’d live in a white clapboard house on the far edge of town, a house with a picket fence and rose garden. She even conjured up a rusty-hued Irish setter that in the evening would walk to the end of the drive waiting for his master to return from work.
Each morning Abigail set aside her imaginary family and went to work at the library. She unlocked the door at precisely nine o’clock and snapped on the lights, exactly the same way as Miss Spencer had for fifty years. She spent the early hours at the circulation desk, organizing, cataloging, stamping overdue notices and watching for the sandy-haired man to walk through the door – it would stand to reason that if Gloria’s future husband had wandered into ChickenCastle, hers would one day show up at the library. But it was mostly older folks who came, older folks and schoolchildren. Old men with thick eyeglasses and hearing aids sat for hours on end reading the Richmond Courier, white-haired women browsed books on gardening and quilting, students ran in and out quickly, interested only in the book they’d been assigned to read. “You might like to try Gone With The Wind,” Abigail suggested to a number of women, but they took a look at the thickness of the book and right away shook their head. “Why, it would take a year to read a book that size!” one woman commented, then she asked if the library had anything on the making of bundt cakes.
Some days Abigail sat behind the circulation desk for so long that her foot fell asleep and started prickling pins and needles – she’d shake it a few times and stomp a bit, then start off walking in and out of the stacks. At first she’d walk through Fiction, but the sight of all those wonderful stories going unread saddened her so she eventually switched over to History.
After two years of watching and waiting Abigail started to grow discouraged; she set aside tales of romance and started reading stories of women such as Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt. She read the free-spirited poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay and focused on the fact that women such as Pearl Buck and Margaret Mitchell had written best selling books. She resurrected the thought of becoming a novelist and bought a journal to make note of ideas for her first book. Heroine refuses to marry man she doesn’t love and runs away from home, Abigail wrote on the very first page; but that seemed rather lame in comparison to the adventures of Scarlet O’Hara, so she crossed it out and went on to the next idea. Heroine is dying and hero carries her outside for one final look at land she loves – also crossed out, too similar to WutheringHeights. After that, there was a run of ideas that went on for thirty seven pages, one thought after another, all crossed out. She was jotting down her thoughts for the story of an adventurous young girl and a wild horse, when a husky voice asked if the library had a city map.
Ordinarily she might not have bothered to look up, she might have simply gestured toward the back wall where such a map was displayed, but this voice lacked the shakiness of the old men and it lacked the high-pitched squeal of an adolescent boy, it was the rich round dulcet tone of a gentleman. Abigail raised her eyes and looked into the face of the handsomest man she’d ever seen. They stood eye to eye, him no taller than her. He had the look of Rudolph Valentino, dark eyes and slicked back hair. For a long time she stood there studying him and wondering why in the world she’d spent all those years looking for a man with sandy colored hair.
“City map?” he finally repeated.
“What street are you looking for?” Abigail asked, blatantly ignoring the map on the wall because she couldn’t bear to have him walk away.
“Oak Tree Road.”
“Oak Tree?” she echoed, but the thoughts running through her head had nothing to do with where such a location might be – she was busy taking note of the broadness of his shoulders. Finally, after she’d stared at him for so long that a person could easily assume the question had been forgotten, she answered, “I think that might be on the far side of town, past the railroad station.”
“That sounds logical,” he said. “What I’m looking for is a housing development that’s under construction.”