Surprise Lily Read online

  Copyright © 2019 by Sharelle Byars Moranville

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Moranville, Sharelle Byars, author.

  Title: Surprise Lily / Sharelle Byars Moranville.

  Description: New York : Holiday House, 2019. | Summary: “Happily living on the family farm with just her grandmother, Rose’s world is irrevocably changed when her absent mother shows up out of the blue with a surprise baby sister for Rose”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019001264 | ISBN 9780823442645 (hardback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Family problems—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction.

  Toddlers—Fiction. | Grandmothers—Fiction. | Farm life—Fiction.

  BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Family/Multigenerational.

  JUVENILE FICTION/Lifestyles/Country Life. JUVENILE

  FICTION / Social Issues / Adolescence.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M78825 Sur 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019001264

  Ebook ISBN 9780823443994

  v5.4

  a

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Like the Lovells in this story, I grew up on a road where every farmhouse belonged to a Hawkins. While that hasn’t been true for many years, my great-grandparents’ home, the hub of this once all-family enclave, still houses the fifth generation. From my childhood, I remember waking up to the sound of coffee burbling through the percolator; I remember taking the first bite of biscuits and gravy every morning and watching the light shift in the sunroom as the day went by. I remember doing nothing much, yet having great adventures. I remember lying in the grass and staring up as swallows circled and dropped down the chimney one by one until the twilight sky was empty. I remember sleeping in the darkest of dark, in the quietest of quiet. Those are actually more than memories; they’re important touchstones of my life. This story is dedicated to the beloved people of that time and place.

  S.B.M.

  Lovell family tree for Rose’s fourth-grade oral report

  ·· one ··

  Rose

  ROSE threw on yesterday’s clothes and hurried downstairs. She’d stayed awake worrying about her oral report and then had overslept.

  In the mud room, she stepped into her boots, and ran along the lane to the barn. She waved at Ama—who the rest of the world called Tulip—as Ama was opening the chicken house door. Colorful birds flapped out, looking as groggy as Rose felt, and began their soft clucking.

  Rose squinted against the morning light bouncing off the barn roof and the grain silo. Myrtle, their border collie, ran to greet Rose with a quick kiss on her wrist. Ama called, “How are you this morning?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Rose said.

  “Ah,” Ama said, understanding. “You’ll do fine today.”

  She might. But it was going to be so hard talking in front of everybody.

  At the barn, Peanutbutter waited at the gate of her pen, dancing with eagerness. When Peanutbutter was born in March, her mama wouldn’t claim her. So Ama and Rose had carried the little calf to the barn and bottle-fed her and kept her warm and safe in a stall. She was a creamy tan color and had the softest eyes in the world, so they had named her Peanutbutter.

  Grabbing the shears that hung outside Peanutbutter’s stall, Rose said, “I’m hurrying as fast as I can.”

  Peanutbutter was old enough now that she had only an evening bottle. She ate fresh hay and dried calf food in the morning. There was an alfalfa pasture behind the barn and Rose cut a fistful of stems. She ran back to the pen and hand-fed Peanutbutter a few stems, then put the rest in the feeding tray.

  Because she knew what was coming when Rose reached for the coil of rope, Peanutbutter ducked away. But Rose caught her and tied one end of the rope to the break halter and the other to a post. Cows were not by nature gentle to people, but in two months, Rose would need to lead Peanutbutter around at the fair as her 4-H project.

  Peanutbutter yanked and tossed her head, but she’d learned that if she quit fighting, the break halter loosened, so she settled down and let Rose brush her and scratch under her chin. As she did every morning, Rose told her what a fine calf she was and how much she’d enjoy the fair.

  Rose left Peanutbutter tied while she cleaned and refilled the water bucket, cleaned the food bucket, and weighed out dried food. Then she praised Peanutbutter for being a very good girl and untied her. Before she left, she fed Peanutbutter a handful of pellets, letting the calf suck her fingers.

  “See you tonight,” Rose said, wiping her hand on her shorts. “Wish me luck.”

  * * *

  At the house, Rose washed her hands and face and brushed her teeth. Then, instead of changing into her usual clean shorts and T-shirt, she slid the hippie costume over her head. She draped the love beads she’d found in the attic around her neck. She put on her shoes, but this afternoon, before she stood and walked to the front of the room to give her oral report, she’d take them off so she’d look like her great-aunt in the photo.

  Last night, Ama had dampened Rose’s straight hair and braided it, and in bed Rose had tossed and turned with lumpy braids. Now she undid them and finger-combed her hair. She hoped her new style made her look kind of like Great-aunt Harriet Jane in the photograph—barefooted, wearing a flower child dress and love beads. Harriet Jane’s long blond waves streamed in the wind, the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

  Rose zipped the photograph and family tree and note cards into her book bag. She swung the bag over her shoulder and ran downstairs.

  In the kitchen, she poured a tiny bit of coffee into a cup and filled it with milk. She dropped two English muffin halves in the toaster and waited for them to pop up. The Westminster clock at the foot of the stairs chimed the quarter hour. They needed to leave soon.

  The house was so quiet Rose could hear the ticks of the toaster heating. When the muffin was done, she buttered the halves on a paper towel and gulped her coffee, then went to meet Ama and Myrtle on their way back from the chicken house with a wire basket of eggs.

  Before Ama took her half of the muffin, she slid her phone out of her jeans pocket. “Smile!” she said.

  She snapped a picture of Rose, then turned the screen for Rose to see.

  Rose took the phone and studied her image. She didn’t look like herself. She looked older. She looked like her family—like the famous Lotus Lovell, aka Great-aunt Harriet Jane. And later she was going to stand in front of the whole class with naked feet and crazy hair. The kids would laugh. This was a terrible mistake. Like water going glug, glug, glug out of a bottle, her oral report went glug, glug, glug out of her head. Why hadn’t she worn regular clothes and reg
ular hair?

  “What’s wrong?” Ama said.

  “I forgot my report,” Rose said in a small voice, giving back Ama’s phone.

  Ama hugged her shoulders. “Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

  Rose, her appetite gone, tossed the rest of her English muffin to Myrtle.

  “What are you doing today?” she asked Ama as they got in the car.

  Ama’s face lit up. “Can you believe cutting hay? The weather gods are smiling. We haven’t made hay this early for a long time. Hopefully, we can get a second cutting off that ground this year. Which means more to sell this winter.”

  “Don’t forget to leave a patch for Peanutbutter.”

  “I won’t.”

  They rode in silence after that, Ama probably planning the details of her day as Rose took her note cards out of her backpack, her hands trembling. She hated the way her hands shook when she was nervous. She’d felt so confident last night. She’d memorized exactly what she was going to say until it was perfect. The note cards were just for show and because the teacher said she had to have them. She didn’t need them. Or she hadn’t needed them. But now, even when she looked at the cards, the flow of words wouldn’t come back.

  She put the cards away and studied the family tree she and Ama had made.

  Great-great-grandmother Belle had been beautiful and died tragically young, leaving her heartbroken little girl behind. The angel in the cemetery, standing taller than the other markers, was in Belle’s honor. The fancy bed Belle bought for her daughter, Clara, had been passed down through the Lovell girls and Rose still slept in it.

  Clara had grown up to have five daughters and cherished them like rubies. Of those five, Harriet Jane had run off to San Francisco and become Lotus Lovell, the famous hippie artist who had died young from cancer. Phoebe and Mona, almost like twins, had grown up and lived happily ever after until Aunt Phoebe died before Rose was born. Aunt Phoebe had been Uncle Thomas’s mother. Aunt Mona had children and grandchildren too and most of that family lived in Florida. Annie, who, according to Ama, had been the best big sister in the world, was now a pediatrician living in Portland, Oregon. Tulip had become Ama—the polestar in Rose’s sky. And Ama and Rose farmed the land Lovells had owned in Southern Illinois for over a hundred years.

  Rose had thought about leaving Iris, her mother, off the family tree because Rose wasn’t going to talk about her in the report. She was mainly going to talk about Harriet Jane aka Lotus. But a family tree should be accurate, so she and Ama had included Iris. Plus, if she hadn’t, some kid might have pointed it out. Everybody at school knew she had a mother. Some of the kids’ parents had even known Iris in high school. And now and then, people said mean things like how her mother was a druggie who’d abandoned Rose when Rose was a baby. But Rose ignored them because she truly didn’t care. She had everything she needed or wanted. Ama and Myrtle. A big farmhouse full of family and history. Bottle calves. Cows, ponds, pastures, and woods. The sun, the moon, the stars. Her kingdom reached as far as her eyes could see and as high as the sky could reach.

  ·· two ··

  Clara

  1936

  AWAKENED by birdsong, Clara sat up and looked out the window. The big cloudless sky was turning pink.

  Beyond the well and beyond the garden, the door of the outhouse opened and her daddy stepped out. Tall and big-shouldered, he came toward the house in his bib overalls. His first name, Franklin, was the same as President Roosevelt’s, which Clara thought fitting. He could be president of the United States if he had time. The garden gate squeaked as he opened it.

  Clara had planted many of the things growing in the garden. She’d scattered carrot seeds, as fine as sugar, hoping the wind didn’t carry them off before she got them covered. She’d poked puckered-up pea seeds into the dirt an inch deep, every two inches. It had been hard to stay straight. Her daddy said the pea patch looked like ruffles instead of rows. She didn’t understand why straightness was so valued.

  She went out in her nightgown barefooted. Each morning, they watered the garden while the plants were still fresh from the night air.

  Her daddy had let out the chickens and they clucked and pecked for bugs in the grass.

  At the well, she pumped water, sending it gushing into a pail and splashing on her feet. The droplets rolled off onto the concrete curb. Curling her toes, she clung to the cool wetness.

  When two buckets were full, her daddy came and got them. “How are you this morning?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said, following with long-handled dippers.

  Should she mention what day this was, or should they pretend it was any old day?

  If her mother hadn’t died last November, she would have been thirty-two today, and they would have turned themselves inside out trying to make her happy. Clara had tried to honor her mother like the Commandments said, but her mother had shown in a hundred ways she hadn’t felt honored, so Clara’s efforts had been a fizzle.

  Her mama had pined away. That was what everybody in the family said. Poor Belle just pined away. It made Clara burn with shame because it meant they weren’t good enough to live for. There were a million preferable things her mother could have died from. Childbirth, consumption, lockjaw, rabies, appendicitis, drowning, a broken neck. Or she could have let them make her happy so she didn’t pine away. And if she’d let them make her happy and died of something normal, Clara would have been heartbroken. Then she would have been normal too. But she was an awful sinner because deep down she liked life better without her mother.

  Clara and her daddy normally talked while they worked. About things they’d done yesterday or were going to do today. But this morning they were quiet.

  Finally, her daddy said, “Just think about how happy she is in heaven now.”

  The heaven Clara heard about at church was nothing but a higher, shinier version of this life where you saw the same old people all the time. Her mother would pine away there too.

  “You know what I think?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Well, you know how Mama has those postcards from her friend Josephine—the one who travels and lives in foreign countries. And you know how Mama mooned over those pictures of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and all those statues of naked people. And how she never stopped going on about what a good time Josephine was having.”

  “Sure. Your mama wanted to travel. She didn’t bargain on hard times and being stuck out here with nothing to do.”

  “Well, I think Mama’s traveling. I think she’s living in an apartment in Rome above one of those cafés. And she and Josephine drink coffee and take long walks and talk to interesting people. I’ll bet Mama can even speak Italian now. That could be part of the mystery and miracle of what happens when a person dies. They can speak any language without having to learn it. I’ll bet she can speak Latin if she wants to.”

  Her dad groped for the bandana in his pocket and pretended to wipe away sweat. Clara went and leaned against his side.

  She waited, smelling the nose-twitching scent of wet earth where they’d poured water around the plants. She watched the sky. Rain would make everything better.

  Her daddy took away the bandana and looked down at her, his eyes red. “That’s a fine way to think of things, Clara. You’re a good girl.”

  No, she was not. She was just trying to make herself feel better for being a bad person.

  “I’m glad we were able to put that angel in the cemetery for her,” he said.

  She gazed into the distance as if contemplating how beautiful the angel was, when in fact she hated the thing. Everybody else’s marker was no higher than a yardstick, so the angel just made people talk more. Poor tragic Belle. Pined away.

  The bottle calf bawled, saying Don’t forget me! The sun was all the way up and the heat was beginning. Her daddy stretched his back. Watering the garden was ha
rder for him because he was so tall.

  When they finished, they did rock-paper-scissors to see who got to feed the calf. Her daddy won.

  “I’ll make breakfast,” she said.

  They walked toward the house, leaving the pails and dippers at the well. While they were there, her daddy dropped a bucket down on a rope and drew up a pail of water. Pump water tasted like metal. This water tasted so good it was hard to stop gulping. A puff of breeze blew her nightgown away from her sweaty body.

  As her daddy went to feed the calf, Clara washed her face and hands in the enamel basin at the kitchen window. She tried to scrub away the smell of the pump handle. Then she set the basin on the floor and stood in it. She wiggled her toes and rubbed one wet foot on top of the other, wishing she could stand there all day. But finally, she stepped out and dried her feet.

  In the yard, she dumped the basin on the lilac bush. The blossoms were scrawny, but they smelled good. She found the scissors and snipped a few and put them in a pale blue Mason jar. They were very pretty in that jar. She liked the way the water seemed to bend the twiggy stems. That was called refraction. She was just finishing fourth grade, but because all fifteen kids were in one room at school, she got to hear what the eighth graders were learning.

  She left the lilacs on the counter for her daddy to see. He might want to take them to her mama’s grave.

  She was finishing frying the bacon her daddy had brought in from the smokehouse yesterday when he came to wash up. She fried eggs and sliced bread off the loaf one of the aunts had sent over with one of the cousins yesterday. She smeared a little jelly on each slice and filled their plates.

  They ate in the porch swing, looking at the pasture and the woods beyond. Before they took their plates out, she had put water on the stove to heat.

  The porch was on the west side where it was cool in the morning. Her legs didn’t reach the porch floor, but her daddy rocked them back and forth.

  “After I do chores, we’re going over to Dad’s to get the new corn planter ready,” he said. “Everybody will be there. That’ll take our minds off what day this is.”