The Sweetness of Salt (23 page)

“Julia,” he whispered. He bent his face toward mine and kissed me so gently that my knees buckled. “Always.”

Everything around us fell away—the street with its throng of cars, people rushing by, even the storm clouds swirling overhead—as Milo lowered his face again and, holding the back of my head with his hand, pressed his lips against mine.

acknowledgments

Thank you—always—to my family: my husband Paul and my beautiful children, for being so supportive of the long hours I sometimes need and the meals I occasionally skimp on because of those hours. (Let’s hear it for pancakes!) I love you all so much.

My editor and publisher, the luminescent Melanie Cecka, took this project on despite the amount of work it still needed. For taking the leap of faith, as well as seeing me through to the end, I remain eternally grateful. Special thanks also to Caroline Abbey of Bloomsbury, for all her hard work and attention to this book, as well as the incredible arts and graphics team at Bloomsbury for devising such a beautiful cover. You’re the best!

For finding this book—and all of my books—a home away from home, I am forever indebted to my agent and true friend, Jessica Regel. You stand out far above the rest. I am so lucky to have you.

I had lots of help along the way, especially when it came to getting the facts about Poultney, Vermont. To that end, I would like to extend my appreciation to Kitty Galante, who is without a doubt Poultney’s most ardent fan; my dearest friend, Kemi McShane (who checked on the maple syrup statistics at least three times); and all the fabulous patrons at Perry’s Main Street Eatery, especially the Table of Knowledge. (Let’s hear it for creamed chipped beef!)

Roland Merullo gave me invaluable advice when I was stuck, something that I return to again and again. Thank you, friend. Rachel VanBlankenship read at least eight drafts of this book—and found new ways to encourage me every time. You’re one in a million, girl.

My final—and most important—debt of gratitude goes to someone I met only once. Let me explain:

Two-thirds of the way into this book, I lost it. Literally. My bag, which contained my bright blue flash drive (which contained the only draft of the book), was stolen out of my car. In less than five minutes, my wallet, driver’s license, a small chunk of money, my high school students’ grade books (all 109 of them), and 256 pages of the newest novel I had promised my agent had disappeared. I wept and ranted, swore and cursed. I called the police department and filed a report. Over the next two days, I wrote down as much of the plot as I could remember (not as easy as one might think) and all the bits of dialogue I could still place. (Again, not so easy.) I prayed to Saint Anthony, patron saint of lost things. And I made a promise to myself to back up everything I wrote in the future on my hard drive.

On the third day, I received a phone call from the police department. They gave me the name and phone number of someone who had found my bag in a ditch. It had been rummaged through, and it was wet, but the caller said that it looked as if everything was still in there. I drove to the address like a bat out of hell. A shoeless older man, dressed in a blue flannel shirt and jeans, opened the door. He had a lazy eye and a garbled voice. His name was Thomas. He walked every morning across the mountain behind his house and then back again. Yesterday—he pointed to my bag—he had found this. I leaped toward it, yelping, and pawed through the contents. Every single thing was in there—except the bright blue flash drive.

I turned to Thomas, desperate, and begged him to take me to the place on the mountain where he had found the bag. If I could just look around myself…maybe the flash drive had fallen out. Maybe, somehow, I could find it. Thomas—who I guessed to be in his late seventies—had never heard of anything called a flash drive. He had no idea what one looked like. But he said he’d take me. He had a red beat-up truck. Between us, chunks of foam peeked out from beneath the split upholstery and Doritos bags littered the floor. We drove eight or nine miles along a rutted, desolate road without talking until he finally stopped and pulled over.

It should be noted here that later on, as I relayed this chain of events to a few family members and got to this part of the story, they gasped and shook their heads. What was I thinking, getting into a strange man’s car and driving up the side of a mountain on a deserted road? I could have been murdered! Chopped up into a million little pieces! And no one would have ever found me! In hindsight, I guess they were right. But at the time all I could think was this: my book was out there. Somewhere. And I had to find it.

We got out of the car. The sky was a sheet of white above us. It was so cold that I could see my breath. I wrapped my arms around my waist and ducked against the wind. In my haste to get to Thomas’s house, I had run out without my winter coat. Thomas pointed to the ditch running along the left side of the road. It was filled with decaying diapers, rusted doorknobs, Burger King bags, and split tires. There was even an iron buried under a pile of weeds. Side by side, we looked for a tiny, ChapStick-sized instrument, kicking garbage over with our feet, pawing through mounds of dirt and leaves. After twenty minutes, I was shaking so badly from the cold that I told Thomas we had to go back. By then, something had resigned itself within me. I had my skeleton of retrieved notes back at the house. A few salvageable pieces of dialogue. As hard as it was going to be, I would just have to start over.

I said good-bye to Thomas, thanked him profusely for everything, and went home.

I worked until very, very late that night, trying to get the story started again. It was a laborious, agonizing process, made even more difficult by the fact that Julia and Sophie seemed to be a hundred miles away. My head was crowded with other things, namely an old man who took long walks and didn’t speak very much. I stopped trying to find the girl’s voices that night and began to write about him instead.

Two days later, the police called me again. Someone named Thomas had found something of mine and wanted me to call him. Dumbfounded, I made the call. “It’s blue,” Thomas said. “And I don’t know for sure, but it might be.”

My husband insisted on going himself this time to retrieve the item. Twenty minutes later he returned, my flash drive in hand. He said Thomas had told him he’d looked every day on his walk until he’d finally spotted it, beneath a thin pane of ice in the ditch. He’d stomped on the ice until it broke, and then fished it out. There was no way the material on it was still retrievable. Except that when I plugged it into my computer, it was. The whole book was still there, as intact as it had been before.

I still don’t know Thomas’s last name. And I doubt that we will cross paths again in the foreseeable future. But Thomas is in this book. He became the inspiration for Jimmy, who, like Thomas, takes long walks and speaks only when spoken to.

I think the story is better for having him in it.

I know I am.

A
LSO BY
C
ECILIA
G
ALANTE

The Patron Saint of Butterflies

Copyright © 2010 by Cecilia Galante

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

First published in the United States of America in November 2010
by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children’s Books
E-book edition published in November 2010
www.bloomsburyteens.com

Lyrics on page 170 from “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Galante, Cecilia.
The sweetness of salt / by Cecilia Galante. — 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: After graduating from high school, class valedictorian Julia travels to Poultney, Vermont, to visit her older sister, and while she is there she learns about long-held family secrets that have shaped her into the person she has grown up to be.
ISBN 978-1-59990-512-9 (hardcover)
[1. Secrets—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. Family problems—Fiction. 4. Self-perception—Fiction. 5. Poultney (Vt.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G12965Sw      2010 [Fic]—dc22      2010003477

ISBN 978-1-59990-650-8 (e-book)