A Summer of Sundays (25 page)

I picked it up.

Immediately I recognized the smiling face of Lee Wren beneath a wide-brimmed gardening hat. She wore green gloves dusted with dirt and held the delicate roots of a flower in her hands—a daisy.

My heart thumped. I pressed the photo to my chest.

“All right,” Ben said, emptying the contents of the pouch onto the board. He took a white pawn and set it in place. “You want to be black?”

My mouth went dry. “This is a picture of Lee Wren, isn’t it?”

His eyes drank in the picture. He took it from my hands. “Yes.” Ben set the picture down, glanced at it again, then continued setting up his pieces. “She was always beautiful.”

“You knew Lee Wren really well, didn’t you?” I whispered.

He dropped one of his pawns on the chessboard and reached again for the picture. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this.”

Afraid that if I made any noise everything would disappear, I held my breath.

“Lee was my best friend,” he said. He smiled up at us. “And she was my wife.”

I looked wide-eyed over at Jude, whose own eyes were the size of two York Peppermint Patties. Yes, I’d heard Ben right.

All the pieces started to fit together. The letters, the manuscript, maybe even the tapes.

“It sounds so strange to say that out loud, especially because we took such pains to keep it secret. But I know I can trust you two.”

“Why was it a secret?” The question came out before I could stop myself.

“When her book was finally published it was an instant success. She found the publicity unbearable. We had been friends since we were little and I loved her from the moment I laid eyes on her. But after high school, I left, traveled around the world. She stayed here for a bit and then eventually moved up to New York City. We kept in touch and occasionally she would come for a visit. After her book won the award, she became even more private than me, so reporters knew they’d only be asking
in vain. But she never wanted to get married.” He smiled. “I guess I wore her out in the end. I moved up to New York, to show her that I’d do anything for her. We got married with just the two of us and the justice of the peace. We didn’t tell anyone, though I know people suspected. When she got sick …” He stopped and coughed into his hand. “When she got sick … she wanted to come back here, to Alma. But obviously with her health she didn’t want anyone to know she was back. ‘There’ll be visitors night and day, and our house will be filled with banana bread,’ she said. ‘And you know how much I hate banana bread.’ So I brought her back here, and because everyone knew me as the nonsocial type, no one even bothered the doorstep. We lived here for a little while before she died.” He swiped at his eyes and stared at his pieces on the board.

It was hard to believe what I was hearing.

“I think about her every moment of every day. But it’s been a long time since I’ve talked about her.” He cleared his throat. “I still miss her. She was almost like a fairy—a mythical little thing that you were afraid would vanish if you held on too tight. But she had a good right hook.” He rubbed his jaw as if he had just been punched.

“She punched you?”

He smiled and nodded. “Oh, yes. Hated my guts when we first met. She didn’t like being wrong. I didn’t care too
much, not when it came to her, so most times I’d let her be right. But when she got sick it was a different story. ‘You’ll live a lot longer,’ I told her. She shook her head and smiled sadly. When she passed away a few weeks later, I was so mad at her for being right. Hated that she was right.” His voice had slipped to a barely-there whisper.

“And now you put a daisy by her grave?” Jude asked.

Ben Folger slipped the picture inside his shirt pocket and patted it gently. “Every morning.” He looked up at both of us. “Please, don’t speak a word of this to anyone. I would rather it remain just like it always has … unknown.”

“Why don’t you want anyone to know? I mean, you were married to a famous author!”

“I was married to a woman named Lee, and our love was big and real and that’s all that matters. People knowing about it doesn’t change a thing.”

I looked into his face but didn’t answer. Thankfully, the dinner triangle ringing from across the field saved me. I started down the steps, leaving Jude still sitting in front of the chessboard.

My chance had finally come.

CJ
called to me as I walked up the driveway. “You can try out your grave after dinner, Sunday. I worked on it all afternoon and I think it’s deep enough now.”

“Gee, thanks.” I walked up the stairs, stored my backpack in my room, then went to the table. But knowing about Ben and Lee and the letters made it almost impossible to concentrate on anything anyone was saying. I did say
yes
to something that Dad had asked, and
stop
to CJ, who was flinging something across the table. But I didn’t know what Dad said or what CJ was flinging.

Oh well.

After I put the dishes away and wiped off the table, I avoided Bo’s calls for me and dashed up to my room. Carefully taking the tape recorder out of my backpack, I slipped one of the tapes inside and pressed
PLAY
.

“—and I was living with my aunt and uncle at the time.”

I pressed
STOP
, then I pressed
REWIND
and listened to the whirring sound as the tape zipped backward.

As I waited, I pulled out the manuscript and flipped to where I had left off the night before:

I jumped as the
REWIND
button popped up. Mark had gone to the city to visit her! Just like Ben had done with Lee Wren. Setting the manuscript down, I pressed
PLAY
and held my breath. Maybe this is where I would find the proof I needed. I turned up the volume and listened, straining to hear words over the gentle rustle of papers, the scraping of a chair, the clatter of the tape player being moved. A sigh.

“I can’t remember exactly where I left off the last time. Oh well. The manuscript is coming along. It’s completely terrible, but I hope I’ll be able to clean it up enough to give it to Ben. I just want this story to be perfect for him.”

Ben. Ben Folger! The manuscript!

Get ready,
New York Times
, Sunday Fowler has a story for you!

“All right,” the voice said. “Well, let’s see. He left after graduation and I didn’t see him for a while after that, though I did get letters from him every now and then.”

As I listened, I realized that the manuscript wasn’t a story at all. At least not a made-up one.

It was her life.

I grinned, clutched the manuscript to my chest, and flipped over onto my back, staring at the ceiling. This was even better than I had hoped!

I kissed the first page. Glancing at the clock, I realized that I couldn’t call the newspapers or TV stations until tomorrow. I pulled out the other cassette and slipped it into the player, too excited to wait till I had finished the first. I listened to Lee Wren as she described her time in New York, how Ben came to visit her more and more every year, how she decided to marry him, and how she felt when she knew she was returning to Alma for the last time.

It was somewhere around this point that, exhausted, I drifted off to sleep.

I WAS
startled awake by Bo. “Wake up, Sunday,” he said through a yawn. “Come on, wake up.”

I blinked my eyes open, remembering my discovery the night before. “ ’Morning, Bo.” I pushed myself up, only then realizing that I wasn’t in my pajamas or under the covers, and that the lamp beside my bed was still on. I saw the tape recorder, tapes, and the manuscript spread around the bed. “What happened? What did you do, Bo?”

“Nothing. I came up last night and you were already sleeping with all this … stuff everywhere. I tried not to mess it up. I just got underneath the covers. You were snoring awful bad and I hardly had any room at all.”

“Are both the tapes still here, all the pages to the manuscript?” I quickly gathered everything.

“I told you I didn’t do anything,” Bo said. “You made the mess, not me.” He hopped down off the bed and stomped to the door. “You’re grouchy.”

I reached out for him. “No, Bo. I’m … I’m just tired, and well, I’m doing something really important.”

“Important?” he said, walking back over and sitting on my lap. “What is it?”

“I can’t tell you right now, but you’ll find out soon. It’s big, though. Something that’ll finally get me recognized.”

“What’s ‘recognized’?”

“Being noticed.”

“I notice you.”

I kissed him on his cheek, which smelled a little like toothpaste. “I know. Now, let me get dressed. I’ll be down in a minute. We’ll eat breakfast, then go find Jude. Okay?”

Bo hopped out of my room. I closed the door behind him and dressed quickly. What a night! Today Jude and I would call the newspapers and TV stations. I’d tell Ben Folger what I’d found, and then maybe we’d all go out and celebrate. Of course, I couldn’t tell my family yet. They’d find out when the rest of the world did. This was one time that Sunday Fowler was not going to be forgotten.

An hour later, I took a seat on Jude’s bed. “You won’t believe what I found out.” I told him about the tapes and the manuscript and how the story was really Lee Wren’s. “Isn’t that exciting? This is it! Finally.” I fell back onto his bed.

“Yeah, cool.”

I sat up and stared at him. “Yeah, cool?” Unzipping my bag, I pulled out a piece of notebook paper. “I made a list of newspapers and television stations that we’re going to call to announce something huge and all you can say is ‘yeah, cool’? Jude, we’re going to be famous.”

Jude’s face sort of twisted up. He looked like he was forcing himself to be excited. “I don’t know, Sunday. Ben didn’t really want anyone to know anything. Remember?”

“Yeah. About him being married to Lee Wren. But I’m not going to tell anyone about him. I’m talking about Lee Wren’s life. The life that no one knew about, written by her. And if they find out about him, it doesn’t really mean that he’ll be in the limelight or anything.”

“I’m just not sure,” Jude said. “He obviously knew about the letters and tapes and the manuscript.” He shrugged. “He might’ve wanted to keep them private. Maybe Lee Wren did, too.”

What was he saying? “You mean I shouldn’t tell the newspapers about this? I shouldn’t tell the world about Lee Wren’s manuscript? This is my chance to not be meaningless anymore.”

“You’re not meaningless,” he said softly. “You just think that because—”

“Whatever,” I snapped. “Besides, I’m planning on
going over to let him know about everything. I could just let him find out all on his own!”

“Sunday, I’m not—”

“Forget it.” Tears stung my eyes.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. It’s just that … maybe you should think about it a little more. Let’s just go back to your house. You can decide what you should do—”