The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society Read Online Free Page B

is three.” Frances points toward the garage. “GO.”
    Noah trudges out the door with Brady on his heels. Frances stares at the destruction in their wake. She loves her sons, but this supposedly typical-boy behavior is too much. She sees Mei Ling’s picture in a frame on the boys’ dresser, and feels herself soften once again.Already Frances feels back in balance, no longer outnumbered by all the testosterone in the house.
    “You and me,” she says, rubbing her foot. She touches the frame gently. “Tea parties and dress-up. We’ll show these boys how it’s done.”

Chapter Three
 
    Connie checks the kitchen clock, then quickly unties her apron and washes her hands. She has a few minutes before their day officially starts and she’s done as much as she can for now.
    She hurries upstairs, then quietly opens the door to her bedroom and slips inside. Before Madeline bought the tea salon, it had been a B&B so Connie’s room is more of a suite than a room, with a small sitting area and a nicely appointed private bath. It’s included in her pay, which is more than she received at the laundromat where she was an attendant for almost five years. There’s a tiny window alcove where Connie curls up every morning to write in her journal. Sometimes she’ll go out on the small balcony and sit in one of the wrought iron chairs and gaze at the backyard where they’ve renovated the gardens and added outdoor seating.
    But now she kneels on the floor by her bed and lifts the bed skirt. She reaches underneath until her fingers curl around a handle. She pulls out a suitcase, old and battered. She presses buttons on either side of the handle and the latches pop free.
    Inside is the familiar musty smell of mothballs and time. It’s mostly empty since Connie has moved her clothes into the armoire andantique dresser, her belongings having found a place in this space Connie gets to call her own. All of her belongings, that is, except this. A plastic folder that’s cracked along the seam and held together with a thick rubber band. Connie pulls off the elastic, snapping herself in the process. Her wrist is stinging as she opens the folder and pulls out a series of photographs.
    Connie at four, Connie at eight. Connie at the state fair with blue cotton candy stuck in her hair. Connie selling Girl Scout cookies. Connie with her father at the swimming pool, water streaming down her face as she grins atop her father’s shoulders. She was ten there. A year later he would die of a heart attack, slumped over his desk at home, the ink from his fountain pen smeared across a sheet of paper.
    There is only one picture left. Connie at thirteen. She’s at a petting zoo, flanked on one side by a small herd of Boer goats, and on the other, her mother.
    Connie touches the photo, runs her fingertips along the goats, the outline of her mother’s face. Connie looks for a hint, for a sign of whatever her mother must have been thinking. In the picture her hands are on Connie’s shoulders. They’re both wearing Bermuda shorts and sandals, sleeveless shirts, broad sun visors, a smile for the camera. Connie had no idea what was going to happen next, a mere few days after their return home. She found the empty bottles of sleeping pills first. An accidental overdose, they said.
    Connie was put with one foster family after the next. None of the families she stayed with were all that terrible, but they weren’t that wonderful, either. The first family ignored her mostly, and Connie probably would have stayed there if they hadn’t been arrested for lottery mail fraud. The husband in the next family was a chain smoker and Connie would feign lying on the floor, her hands around her neck, pretending to choke. “Get this damn girl out of here!” he’d bellow to his wife. Connie didn’t last there long. The next family had other children who treated Connie like dirt but Connie didn’t care anymore. They didn’t know her, didn’t have any idea what was