Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry by Susan Vaught Read Free Book Online Page A

worry she was going to launch into another lecture about age-appropriate relationships with the opposite sex.
    Thank goodness she didn’t. I wanted to keep my eyes clamped tight, but it was making me carsick, so I watched as Mom turned again, this time to move past Ole Miss’s signature building, the Lyceum, with its six white columns gleaming in the morning sunlight. She angled us down the road toward Bondurant Hall, then said, “You think Avadelle might be on her way to talk to Creative Arts Camp?”
    â€œWhat? No! I mean—” My pulse leaped like I’d seen a zombie. Oh, no, no, no. That would be horrible. Like, the worst thing ever in my summer camp life, if you didn’t count when I was eight and fell asleep with honey on my fingers atSardis Lake Swimming Week and woke up covered in fire ants. “Um, I hope not.”
    â€œWell, Night on Fire was an amazing book. Can’t deny her talent.”
    I grabbed the handle over my head with my right hand and held on like I might get sucked into a black hole. “She throws whiskey bottles at squirrels and people, Mom. Awards or not, I don’t think anybody’s going to invite her to speak at a camp with kids.”
    â€œDani. Stay civil. Remember, not our—”
    â€œCircus, yeah, I know. Thank gosh her daughter is a lot nicer, and not responsible for creating Mackinnon.”
    Worm Dung was the spawn of Avadelle’s youngest child, her son, one of the town’s doctors. I couldn’t blame Naomi Manchester, Avadelle’s daughter, one of the booksellers who worked for Square Books, for his existence. The car slowed to a stop in the parking lot next to Bondurant Hall, and Mom waited for me to give her a kiss. I did, then grabbed the backpack with Grandma’s papers in it and got out of the car. Mom started to put the car in gear, then stopped and kept looking at me. “I always hoped Avadelle and Ruth might patch things up before your grandmother passed. It’s hard to think about best friends never speaking to each other again.”
    My hand froze on the edge of the door, and my mind danced across Grandma’s tear-streaked face.
    I wrote it down . . .
    Grandma and Avadelle had been good friends, maybe best friends, just like Indri and me (not thinking about Worm Dung, not not not). Then they stopped speaking. That’s what everyone said about the Magnolia Feud—and all anyone knew, even Dad. He told me Avadelle and Grandma had dinner on Wednesday evenings at six o’clock, every week when he was a younger kid. Then, a month or so after Avadelle’s first novel came out, the dinners stopped. Something about that world-famous book seemed to have punched their friendship dead in the nose. Journalists had been analyzing the book for decades, trying to guess what secrets were hidden in those pages, what started an argument so bad it never ended.
    Grandma wouldn’t talk about it, and Dad said he didn’t have the guts to ask Avadelle anything about anything, then or now. Thirty years in the military, three wars, and Dad was more scared of that old woman than bullets or drill sergeants.
    I wrote it down. Grandma might have been talking about her spat with Avadelle, right? About whatever happened between them to cause the feud.
    I kept the smile on my face so Mom wouldn’t worry, and knew, finally, that even if my grandmother wasn’t really gone, I should read the rest of what she wrote to me, to help her pass in peace.
    Oh God.
    What if I had to face down the Wicked Witch of Ole Miss? What if I found out something I needed to talk about with her? And Worm Dung . . . never mind.
    â€œHave a good day, Mom.” There. That sounded all cheerful, right?
    Mom grinned. “You and Indri don’t get up to too much mischief, okay?”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    â€œAnd promise you’ll walk straight home if I run late?”
    â€œPromise,” I said,