Almost There and Almost Not, page 12
It looked like glass, a little bit.
And like sunshine.
And like fresh-painted fingernails.
“Oh,” Aunt Monica said, which told me she thought it was beautiful too.
And I told her I’d made it and then I said, “May I?” which I think Eleanor would have approved of. Aunt Monica didn’t say anything, but she nodded, and I took the lid off my pot and rolled Milton’s ash bag up tight and slid it inside, and the whole thing fit perfect. Aunt Monica and I were sitting on the porch step by then, and I put the lid on the pot and set it in her lap, and she wrapped her good arm around it tight, sort of like she was hugging the Milton inside.
“You’re giving this to me?” Aunt Monica said. It was kind of like a whisper, really.
I nodded. “Maybe there could be a little bit of me around too,” I said.
“I don’t want a little bit of you around,” Aunt Monica said.
Which I knew right off was what she had been wanting to say the whole time we were in the car.
“I want all of you.”
I’ll admit it. That was a surprise.
“I want all of you,” she said again. “I mean, I want you to stay here. To live here with me. I want…” She’d set the envelope down on the porch step, but now she picked it up again and handed it to me.
There was not a single Eleanor letter inside.
But there were a whole lot of other papers.
I can read. I know you know that by now. Still, this time, even though I knew most of the words on the page, I wasn’t sure I understood what they meant.
“ ‘Legal guardianship,’ ” I read out loud.
“It means I’d like you to stay here,” Aunt Monica said, “while your dad is getting better. You know that’s what he’s doing, right? You know he left you with Isabelle so he could get better and be a better dad?”
I told her I did know that. And also that I didn’t. And so she explained everything, slow and gentle, about how my dad had gone to a treatment center to help him make better choices and how he would be there doing “sober living” for a while. And that while he was doing that, she hoped I would stay with her and let her be the grown-up in my life.
“Did he tell you that you had to do this?” I asked.
“I want to do this. I’ve wanted to since the moment you got here.”
I must have had one of my more skeptical looks on my face.
“Well. Not from the first moment. I wasn’t… I don’t know if you noticed, but I wasn’t at my best when you first got here. I was… asleep? But you woke me up. You made me remember there was something to be awake for.”
I didn’t say anything then, and Aunt Monica didn’t make me. She just nodded at the envelope again, and then she sat there with me while I read all the other papers, like the email from Miss Tenzing saying how I was a smart and caring girl who would thrive with attention. And the Official Meeting report saying all the things it had to say—which were mostly about my dad and not about me at all. And then there were the legal form papers that were only partway filled in.
“I was planning,” Aunt Monica said, “to visit Milton’s former law partner when we were downtown. He was going to help me fill in the rest. I hadn’t told you before because I wanted to be sure…”
The Official Meeting page was still on the top of the stack. “That I wasn’t going to be trouble,” I said.
“No! I wanted to be sure that I didn’t mess up any paperwork,” she said. “I wanted to make sure the court would accept me, that I wouldn’t lose you.”
“My dad knows about this?” I asked.
Aunt Monica nodded at the papers in my lap again, like there was more for me to read. I turned a few pages and saw that there was.
The very last page was a computer printout of a handwritten letter.
Handwriting I know like I know my own breath.
Dear Monica,
I have signed the papers and am returning them to you. This is not easy. I love that little girl more than anything in the world, but she deserves a stable place to be and I can’t give her that yet.
I wrote a letter to her right after I got here, explaining everything, but by the time I’d mailed it to Isabelle, California was already with you. I’ve asked Isabelle to forward it. We’ll see how long that takes.
You said I should call California or use that video chat thing, and I think you’re right. She deserves that. But in the meantime, would you tell her some things for me? Would you tell her I love her and that I’m working on being the dad she needs, but for a little while longer you’ll be the best adult in her life? You’ll help her make decisions and make sure she has all the things she needs?
I agree with you, she shouldn’t have to be an adult yet. She should be eleven, like you said. Let her know that, too, okay? And make sure she knows that I love her and that none of this is her fault? She’s the best kid, Monica. Make sure she knows that. The best kid that ever was. If she wants to talk with me, I’ll be here. And if she doesn’t, well, I can’t be mad about that, can I? I’ll wait. Tell her I’ll wait forever if that’s what she needs. I might not be there in West Bloomfield, Michigan, right now, but my heart is there, and I’m working on getting my mind and body there too.
What I’m saying is, right now I think California is exactly where she needs to be.
Sincerely,
Davis
I didn’t need to read my dad’s letter four times to understand it.
Read it five times anyway.
Aunt Monica didn’t say anything, but she stayed close enough for me to feel how she was there. How she is going to be there as long as I want her to be. How there is no one else she would rather be with.
You might not know this, but you can only sit side-by-side on a porch step with somebody hugging you for so long before your back starts hurting.
You can hold hands if you want to, though.
You can hold hands for a long, long time.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Kate Messner who read the first lines of Callie’s story on the day they appeared and continued reading no matter how many times her story dissolved and recomposed. Thanks are due as well to Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich for her insightful questions and unflagging encouragement, to the properly brilliant women of the Ladies Sewing Guild, and to the entire Vermont College of Fine Arts Writing for Children and Young Adults community.
This book exists because of the dedicated work of Reka Simonsen (the opposite of a peacock of an editor), cover artist Charles Santoso, and the entire team at Atheneum. I am grateful to my sneakily sentimental agent, Jennifer Laughran, who understands that every story has a little bit of the author in it.
Finally, thanks to Jack and Claire, my sunshine and chocolate shakes, and to Julio, whose hand has held mine from the start.
About the Author
LINDA URBAN has written many award-winning books for young readers, including the novels A Crooked Kind of Perfect, Hound Dog True, and The Center of Everything. For ten years she served as marketing director at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, California. Currently, she teaches in the Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has been visited by only one ghost, and he was not at all snooty. Visit her at LindaUrbanBooks.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text © 2021 by Linda Urban
Jacket illustration © 2021 by Charles Santoso
Jacket design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover © 2021 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Urban, Linda, author.
Title: Almost there and almost not / Linda Urban.
Description: First edition. | New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, [2021] | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: When her father goes away, eleven-year-old California “Callie” Poppy winds up with her eccentric Great-Aunt Monica and their ancestor, the once-famous etiquette expert Eleanor Fontaine, now a hypersensitive ghost.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020013315 | ISBN 9781534478800 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534478824 (eBook)
Subjects: CYAC: Great aunts—Fiction. | Ghosts—Fiction. | Etiquette—Fiction. | Letter writing—Fiction. | Dogs—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.U637 Alm 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013315
Linda Urban, Almost There and Almost Not
