Main Street #1: Welcome to Camden Falls
Read Main Street #1: Welcome to Camden Falls Online
Authors: Ann M Martin,Ann M. Martin
Chapter 5 A Peek in the Windows
Chapter 8 Trouble at the Row Houses
Chapter 9 The Box in the Attic
Chapter 16 The Missing Necklace
Chapter 19 The Truth Comes Out
Flora, curled in the backseat of Min’s car, thought of all the orphaned children she’d read about in books — boys and girls without any parents, starting new lives in new places — and now she, Flora Marie Northrop, was one of them. Outside the window of Min’s Toyota, the scenery flew by, a blur of branches and green leaves, bits of clouds, patches of clear New England sky. Flora turned and poked her sister, hoping for a game, a joke, anything to relieve the monotony of this seemingly endless trip. But Ruby remained stubbornly asleep, one hand resting on a carrier that held their cat, King Comma, who was also asleep.
Flora sighed, sat up, and peered into the front seat. Her grandmother drove steadily, humming along to “An American in Paris,” the first selection on her
Gershwin Favorites
CD. Next to her dozed Daisy Dear, her plume of a tail sweeping back and forth across the seat as she dreamed a doggy dream.
Flora resumed her position between King and the window. She was nothing, she thought, like the orphans she had read about. For starters, most of them were British. And when they began their new lives, horrible things happened to them: They were sent to freezing, nasty orphanages where they lived in long rooms lined with flea-infested beds and were served only water and gruel for each meal. Either that or they had to go on grand quests for truth or power or lost family treasures, trekking through mist and mountains and muck, facing dragons and giants.
Flora and Ruby were not pale waifs shivering under threadbare blankets. Nor were they off on a glorious, romantic adventure. They were just Flora and Ruby Northrop, whose parents had died in a car accident and who were now going to live with their grandmother Min in Camden Falls, Massachusetts.
In the five months since the accident, Flora had discovered something that was fascinating and horrible at the same time: If she willed herself
not
to think about the accident, then she truly could put it out of her mind. This was harder than it sounded. It was like telling yourself not to poke a loose tooth with your tongue. But Flora could do it; she could put the accident right out of her mind if she gave herself the order. On the other hand — and this was what was most horrible and fascinating — when she wanted to remember the accident, as she did on certain days, then she could transport herself back to that awful, unforgettable night and recall it detail for detail.
It had been early on a frosty January evening, a Friday. Not quite dinnertime yet, but already night had fallen.
“Everyone hop in the car,” her father had said. “We’ll go out for pizza.”
Flora hadn’t wanted to go. Instead, she’d wanted to finish all of her homework then, right then, so she could have the entire weekend free.
“Oh, come on, Florrie Dorrie,” her father had said, which had made Flora cross because Florrie Dorrie was such a babyish nickname, and she was about to turn eleven. She
had
hopped into the car, but she was grumbling, which was unusual for her, and her bad mood did not improve when she heard her mother say quietly to her father, a smile in her voice, that Flora must be turning into a teenager already.
They drove slowly down their street, past the familiar houses, a soft snow falling that you could really only see in the headlights or streetlights. When they drove by Annika’s house, Flora had tried to look in the living room window, hoping for a glimpse of her best friend.
Then they had turned onto Maverick Way, a busier road than their own, and Flora’s mother had said, “Come on, let’s sing. Last chance for Christmas carols.”
Ruby, who was eight then, had thought this was a wonderful idea. Of course she had. Ruby loved to sing, loved to dance, loved to be onstage. “‘Winter Wonderland’!” she had cried, but before she could get the first word out, before anybody could say or do anything more, a truck traveling toward them, traveling too fast for a snowy evening, crossed over the centerline and thundered into their car. The next few moments were bright lights and crunching glass and tearing metal, but no screams — only Ruby’s startled “Oh!”
The rescue workers arrived quickly. They pulled Flora and Ruby from the backseat, dazed but unhurt, still buckled into their seat belts. The girls were taken to the hospital in an ambulance, just to be on the safe side. Their parents were taken in a second ambulance.
It wasn’t until later that evening that a police officer led Flora and Ruby to a small room in the hospital, handed each of them a teddy bear, and asked Flora if she knew the name of a person to call in an emergency. “Annika’s mother,” Flora had said, and discovered that her teeth were chattering even though she wasn’t cold. “Mrs. Lindgren.” When the officer asked about a relative, Flora had said, “Min. I mean, Mindy Read. That’s our grandmother.” And she had even been able to recall Min’s phone number, including the area code.
At this point, Flora’s precise memories became hazy. Who had collected her and Ruby from the hospital? And who had told them that their parents had died? Min? When had she arrived? Very late that night, Flora thought, but she wasn’t sure. All she truly remembered about the rest of the evening was that after she had learned her parents were gone, her mind turned numb the way her foot sometimes did in the middle of the night, and so a lot of things after that were unclear to her, even now.
There had been a funeral, of course, and Flora and Ruby had stayed out of school for a while, but eventually Min said they must try to get their lives back in order, which seemed impossible. There they were, Flora and Ruby, living in their own house, but with their grandmother and her golden retriever instead of with their parents. And nothing was the same, no matter how Min tried to make it so.
From the very start, Min, who was the girls’ legal guardian — it said so in the Northrops’ will — had told Flora and Ruby that she was going to stay with them in their house while they finished out the school year. “You’ll be right here on your old street with your old friends,” she had said. But she had also said that when summer came, they would be moving to Camden Falls. The town was Min’s home, after all. Her house, which had been in her family since long before she was born, was plenty big enough to accommodate Flora and Ruby and King Comma. It was the house in which Min and her husband had raised the girls’ mother and her younger sister. Needle and Thread, the sewing store on Main Street that Min owned and ran with her friend Mrs. Walter, was in Camden Falls, too. In other words, Min’s life was there. And as much as she loved her granddaughters, she couldn’t see leaving her home and moving to a strange town where she had, among other things, no friends and no work. Better to bring Ruby and Flora back to Camden Falls with her.
Flora had protested this decision quietly. Ruby had protested it loudly.
“
You
don’t want to leave
your
friends and
your
home, but you’re making
us
leave
our
friends and
our
home,” Ruby had exclaimed more than once in her most dramatic voice. “And
you’re
the
grown
-up.”
Min was patient. “I understand, Ruby,” she had said. “And I know you’re sad. I’m sad, too. We’ve all lost people we care about. I never dreamed I’d outlive my daughter. But we do have to move on. We have to make a life for ourselves, and I need to support you and Flora. That’s why I have to go back to Needle and Thread.”
Min was nothing if not practical. And busy. She was always busy. Which was why Flora, when she was very small, had started calling her not Gran or Granny or Grandma, but Min. Min wasn’t short for Mindy — it was short for “In a minute.”
“Come see my new hat,” Flora would say when Min was visiting.
“In a minute,” her grandmother would reply.
“Can you read to me?”
“In a minute.”
Flora’s name for her had stuck, and soon everyone called her Min. Now busy, practical Min was trying to settle down with her granddaughters. Since January, she had lived in their home with them and King Comma. She had mended their school clothes and gone to parent-teacher conferences and fixed meals and helped with homework. As often as she could, though, she had piled the girls and King Comma and Daisy Dear into the car and made the long trip back to Camden Falls. They would spend the weekend there while Min checked on her house and the store, and the girls selected the rooms that would be their bedrooms and talked to Mrs. Walter’s granddaughter Olivia, who lived next door.