New Girl in Little Cove by Damhnait Monaghan (book club suggestions TXT) 📗

and despite the chill in the air, I felt a heat rising in me. Doug leaned in and then, thwack! A snowball hit the back window of my car hard. I jerked my head, driving it up into Doug’s face.

“Oww,” he said, moving his hand quickly to his mouth.

A second snowball hit the car, and I got out in time to see two boys holding each other’s sleeves for balance as they slip-slid their way down the road, their laughter ringing in the night.

Doug got out and slammed the passenger door. “Gave me a fat lip,” he complained.

“Sorry.” I scooped up some snow so he could hold it to his mouth.

As we reached Patrick’s front door, I wondered whether Doug had been about to kiss me. Would I have kissed him back? And what about Geri?

20

At that time of year, it seemed that the main perk of being a teacher, apart from the generous holidays, was the Christmas gifts. Finally, I had my very own “World’s Greatest Teacher” mug, not to mention perfumed soap, Christmas decorations, homemade jam and all the chocolate I could eat, which was a lot.

I slightly overdid it on Christmas Eve, eating an entire box. I slipped from the loveseat to the floor, cradling my stomach. “It was the Turkish delight,” I wailed into the silence. A new year was just around the tinsel, and I’d learned much since September, although clearly not when to stop eating chocolate.

Eventually, I felt well enough to crawl along the floor and turn on the Christmas lights. I snuggled under Lucille’s quilt and admired my short, fat Christmas tree, decorated simply with white lights and red bows. I turned out all the other lights and lay in the dark, watching the fairy lights twinkle.

Sparsely placed around the base of the tree were three items: a big box from Australia, an envelope from Sheila, and a squat and clumsily wrapped package that someone had left on my desk on the last day of the term. Sheila’s envelope had arrived two weeks ago, but I’d managed to restrain myself from opening it. It would be weird not seeing her over the holidays, maybe even weirder than not seeing Mom.

I stared at the presents, looked away, then looked back again. Those gifts were begging to be opened. After a short moral struggle, I decided that, since it was already Christmas Day in Australia, I was within my rights to open Mom’s gift.

I tore open the brown postal wrapping, pausing to smile at the Christmas paper featuring Santa on a surfboard. Then I dug through the tissue until my hand hit something hard.

I wrapped my fingers around it and raised it in the air. It was a boomerang. I laughed until my stomach hurt more than it had from the Turkish delight. Dad would’ve laughed at this gift, too. I was also pleased with the symmetry of the gifts Mom and I had chosen. She’d sent me a symbol of Australia and I had mailed her a piece of Newfoundland in the form of Lucille’s rug. The package still hadn’t arrived the last time we’d spoken, but I was hopeful that when she called me on my Christmas Day, she would have received it.

When I put the boomerang under the tree, my fingers brushed against Sheila’s envelope and I swear it seemed to open itself, although it was me who pulled the card out. Sheila’s message was brief: “Your present will arrive on Boxing Day. Please be home to accept delivery.”

This would not be a problem, since I had no plans to speak of.

It seemed silly to leave the last package sitting all alone under the tree. And as I turned it over, I noticed a label: “For my fiddle girl.” Ah, Phonse. It was a homemade cassette tape. I stuck it in my boombox and almost immediately recognized the tune Eddie Churchill had whistled as he changed my tires. “Sonny’s Dream,” he’d called it. I listened as Sonny’s mother begged him not to leave her.

When the song ended, I pressed rewind.

Sonny’s lamenting mother didn’t sound like the women I knew. Lucille, so proud of her daughter, Linda, teaching in Labrador; Cynthia’s mother, so supportive of her scholarship hopes; and even Mrs. Piercey, who wanted something more for Calvin.

I listened on repeat until I knew every word of “Sonny’s Dream” by heart. When I stopped pressing rewind, the tape moved to the second track and I smiled as “Sweet Forget Me Not” filled the room. The singer was nowhere near as good as Beverley, whose voice had astonished me that night in Mardy. I carried the boombox up to my bedroom and fell asleep listening to the music.

Mom’s call woke me on Christmas morning. She exclaimed over Lucille’s rug, then said she’d spent her Christmas Day at the beach.

“How was that?”

“Odd,” she said. “But also, wonderful. Different.”

We caught up on each other’s news and exchanged book recommendations. We kept it light, neither of us mentioning how much we missed Dad.

“You’re not spending today on your own, are you?” Mom asked.

“No,” I assured her. And I wasn’t. I would have the best company: Mr. Red Wine, Ms. Paperback and my very dear friends Cashews and Chocolate.

After we hung up, I made myself a toasted bacon and cheese sandwich for breakfast and drank gallons of coffee. I tried not to think about Dad’s grave under a shroud of snow with no visitors. And really, as far as I was concerned, Dad’s spirit wasn’t there in the ground. It was in books and music and birds. Still, something drove me to bundle up and explore the deserted cemetery behind my house.

Most of the headstones were faded and covered in lichen, which peeked out from beneath the snow. One read simply, “Dear Mother.” Others gave incredibly detailed biographical information. Many people had drowned or been lost at sea; I thought of Lucille’s husband and Doug’s father. On the gravestone of two brothers killed at Beaumont-Hamel, I