Charlotte Figg Takes Over Paradise Read Online Free

attic from my softball days. I played second base for the Clifton Canaries right up until I married Herman and he told me that playing ball was for children and my trophies did not belong in the living room. I packed the trophies with newspapers and tucked them securely between two boxes of kitchen items.
    Midge said she would help pack but she never showed up. Maybe Midge's gallbladder attacked her again. It usually did when there was work to be done. But that was okay. There wasn't much packing left to do after I decided she probably wasn't coming. Just clothes, some books—most of which I never read front to back—and my plate collection. My favorite came clear from Paris and had a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night on it. I forget how I came to acquire it. Herman might have gotten it on one of his business trips. Anyhoo, I packed everything I cared to pack. When we finished, I served James and his friends cherry pie and cold milk, which they ate sitting on the floor in my empty living room.
    Lucky and I planned to set out for Paradise early on the morning of Tuesday, March 5.
     

     
    We stopped to say good-bye to Midge at a quarter past seven that morning. I pulled the loaded-down Galaxy into Midge's driveway, but I had never pulled a trailer before and the back driver's side wheel snagged on Midge's mailbox and yanked it out of the lawn, taking a bed of roses, two cast-iron garden gnomes, and six feet of lawn with it. The lamp I had shoved into the backseat, minus its shade and bulb, poked a hole through the convertible roof.
    "My gnomes," Midge cried. "You killed them."
    "My roof," I cried. "Herman will kill me." But then my eyebrows arched and I felt better. Even Herman's bluster could not reach me now.
    I climbed under the little trailer and recovered two twelveinch gnomes with white beards and red jerkins. "They're alive, Midge. Just a bit soiled. A good hosing will take care of it." I handed them to Midge. "I'm sorry. I'm trying to get used to driving a car again, and one with a trailer wobbling behind, for goodness sake. Not as easy as it looks when you see them whizzing past you on the highway."
    "It's okay." She sniffed.
    Midge and I stood in the cold for a few minutes. She clutched the gnomes to her chest. "Now, you're sure about this," she said. "Change is always hard, especially when you're used to the same."
    "The same?"
    "You know, the same voices, smells, the same way of doing things day to day. And now that's changing. I just thought it might be hard."
    "But change can be good too, right?"
    "Sometimes." She clutched her gnomes to her chest. "I only want what's best for you. Lord knows you deserve it after all you endured."
    I felt the corners of my eyes crinkle as I smiled. Midge knew more than I thought she did. "It will be. I can't wait to see my new home in Paradise."
    After we pulled the brass floor lamp from the backseat and sealed the hole with about six yards of duct tape, we said our final good-bye.
    "I'll miss you," Midge said.
    "I'll miss you too."
    "You're sure you want to do this?"
    "I am. It just . . . it just feels right." I took a deep breath and turned the key in the ignition.
     

     
    The road to Paradise was paved with asphalt. I had written out the directions on a piece of notebook paper that I had to keep referring to in order to stay on course.
    It wasn't long before I saw a sign for the Jack Frost Ski Resort. "Lucky, I am so excited. Did you see that sign? This is where we get off the turnpike. Start looking for the Paradise Trailer Park. It's supposed to be not far from the exit." I felt my spirit soar like I was riding the Wildcat Coaster on the Ocean City Boardwalk.
    I had driven about thirteen miles when I saw a sign for Shoops Borough. I glanced at my directions, "This is it, Lucky. Mr. Wrinkel said I need to drive through Shoops and look for a sign to Bright's Pond and then right after that we'll see another sign for Paradise Trailer Park."
    Shoops was a big small town. We