The Beginning Read online

The way Edna had felt since the doorbell rang.

  She blinked twice so she could see as she worked her way down the first page, and somehow despite her broken heart by the end of the third paragraph she was no longer sitting in a desperately quiet apartment wondering how she might keep on living. Rather she was in Aunt Polly’s farmhouse grinning at the mischievous ways of young Tom.

  A little like her own Tom had been back when he was in grade school.

  When she finished the first chapter she kept reading, too caught up in the story to stop. Not until well after midnight did she close the book and set it on her bedside table. The next day at the mercantile she couldn’t stop thinking about Tom and Huckleberry Finn and the trouble the two boys were getting into. The trouble they had survived, the plotting and planning of trouble yet ahead.

  She could hardly wait to get home and pick up the book.

  The story so captured her she forgot to eat until darkness fell outside, and when she finished the book in the wee hours of the morning she realized something she hadn’t expected. Something other than Tom Carlton had consumed her for two full days.

  The next afternoon when she was finished at the mercantile she hurried to The Bridge before the little shop closed. A sweet mix of rich coffee and worn leather filled the air and surrounded Edna. Donna was working at the counter again, and this time Edna walked up and gave the woman a hint of a curious smile. “How did you know?”

  “Know what?” Donna’s eyes were warm like before, warm and deeply concerned.

  “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. How did you know that’s what I needed?”

  “You said you were still at the sad part of your story. Tom Sawyer takes people out of their story and into his.”

  “The name. Tom.” She didn’t want to explain all of what happened, but she had to share this much. “That was my husband’s name. He . . . was killed in Vietnam.”

  Sorrow welled up in Donna’s eyes and after several seconds she came out from behind the counter. “Edna . . . I’m sorry.” There was no hesitation now, no formalities between them. Donna hugged her and after a while she stepped back. “Whenever you want to talk about it, I’m here.”

  “Thank you.” Edna sniffed. “I finished the book.”

  “Already?” Donna waited.

  “I loved it. I was there on the river with them, sneaking around at night and slipping into the back of the church during the service.” As she spoke, Edna’s heart didn’t feel as empty. “As long as I was reading the book, I . . .”

  “You didn’t notice your own story.” Donna’s eyes said she understood on a personal level.

  “Exactly.” Edna glanced at the shelves behind her. “I need another book.” She turned and looked again at the gentle store owner. “But I’d like to hear your story first.”

  Donna’s half smile was colored in a sadness that clearly still lived inside her. “Let’s sit in the living room.” The coffeepot was plugged in behind the front counter, quaint ceramic mugs stacked beside it. Donna poured them each a cup, gave one to Edna, and led the way to the worn leather sofa. They sat on opposite sides, facing each other. Donna took a slow breath, and for a long time she only waited, as if she were digging around in the basement of her heart for details she’d put behind her. A place where maybe she kept the story so she could get through the day.

  Edna could certainly relate to that.

  “It all started when I met Charlie Barton.” This time her sweet smile touched her eyes. “I guess you could say God used Charlie to rescue me.” She settled her shoulder into the sofa. “Before him my life was a nightmare.” Her words came like a slow-motion flashback in a movie. She told of a childhood and adolescence marked by pain and loneliness, her parents’ drug abuse and their early deaths.

  No wonder she felt rescued when Charlie Barton came into her life.

  Donna talked about Charlie’s love of books and how his father wouldn’t let him read. “Cement work was the only option as far as his dad was concerned. The two haven’t spoken in some time.”

  Edna nodded, understanding. “That is sad.”

  “Actually . . . no.” Donna narrowed her eyes and stared out a distant window at the back of the store. “The sad part is coming.”

  Edna took a sip of her coffee and felt her stomach tighten. She waited, determined not to interrupt the story again.

  Donna went on about how she and Charlie got married and started life on their own—without any family. “We found out we were expecting much sooner than we planned.” She looked at her hands folded on her lap, as if she were gathering strength for this next part. “Even so, we were happy. We didn’t have family supporting us, so we figured God was letting us start one of our own.”

  She told about how smoothly her pregnancy had gone. But everything changed when she went into labor. Quiet tears slid down Donna’s cheeks as she recounted the frightening medical emergency, the loss of her baby girl, and the reality that she could never have children.

  Edna didn’t realize until the end of the story that she was crying, too. Because she wasn’t alone in her pain, in her sadness. People walking through the grocery store, and shopping at the mercantile, and even running a bookstore all had their own pain. Their own sad part of their story. She gave Donna’s hand a squeeze, and let silence surround them for a minute. The two might be strangers, but they were not strangers to heartache.

  They had that in common.

  “So . . .” Edna kept her voice quiet, reverent, “you and Charlie moved to Franklin and opened The Bridge.”

  “Yes.” Donna wiped the tears from her cheeks. She drank her coffee and seemed to wait while it worked through her. “God gave us this store. Here . . . we’re finding our way back to happy.” She put her hand on Edna’s shoulder. “By putting books in the hands of people like you.”

  “Hmm. That’s beautiful.” She waited, not wanting to rush this time between them. “Thank you. For sharing.”

  “It helps.” She sniffed, and the healing she’d experienced was evident in her eyes. “I’m here. When you want to talk about yours.” She stood and nodded toward the rows of bookshelves. “Until then, let’s get you another book.”

  Edna was glad Donna didn’t push her. When she was ready to talk she had a feeling she would come here first. She and Donna walked a few aisles of fiction titles, more, Donna said, to give Edna a tour of the store. But the most natural next choice was an obvious one—The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

  And so began a string of good days that continued as long as Edna was reading. Huck Finn gave way to a breathless chase after the husky Buck in The Call of the Wild. She was caught with the schoolboys on the deserted tropical island in Lord of the Flies, and her heart ached on the Oklahoma plains as she finished The Grapes of Wrath. She fell in love with Don Quixote and Rhett Butler and Jay Gatsby, and she fought alongside Captain Ahab against the white whale in Moby-Dick. A whale that came to represent her fear and loss.

  With each new book she would share a cup of coffee with Donna at The Bridge, and gradually bits of her story, anecdotes from her childhood, came to the surface. After a few months of reading, Edna was a different person. She got out of bed easily and caught herself humming when she made her morning coffee. Missing Tom was still a part of every breath, but her devastating heartache no longer consumed her. Books were changing her life. But she didn’t consider the idea that they could do so much more.

  That they might actually heal her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Edna could see something different in Donna’s face as soon as she walked into The Bridge after work that day. It was summertime, and the city crowd from Nashville shopped Franklin’s Main Street. More people meant more hours at the mercantile, so Edna made it into her favorite bookstore only once a week or so. This was one of those days.

  Donna was waiting for her.

  She smiled. “I picked out your next one.” She pulled a book from beneath the register and set it on the counter. “It’s time.”


  Edna and Donna were friends after so many months, but this was the first time the shopkeeper had ever chosen a book for her ahead of time. “Okay.” Edna came closer and looked at the title. Little Women. She knew the story, of course, knew it was about a family of girls coming of age and she vaguely knew it was sad. That was the reason she’d avoided it. For all the books she’d allowed herself to get lost in, she’d avoided stories that dealt with great tragedy or loss.

  After all, she was still in the middle of her own.

  But looking at the cover, something about the book called to her. Little Women. She looked at Donna. Despite the time that had passed, she had never gone into detail about losing Tom. It was enough that her new friend had the facts. The rest of the story would come in time. When the thought of recounting it didn’t make Edna feel sick.

  Donna held out the book. “It’s about loss. I won’t hide the fact.” Tucked in her expression was a wisdom greater than her twenty-something years, a wisdom that could only have come from experience. Edna hadn’t noticed that about the shopkeeper before. “Read it . . . please.”

  Something in her tone left Edna no option. She began the book that night and immediately became part of the March family. As she traveled the chapters, her deep connection to the characters had her laughing one minute and touched the next. She could see where the story was going. Little Women had been around as long as Edna could remember. Some of her friends had to read it in English class, but Edna’s teacher had assigned an anthology of short stories instead.

  Not only had she missed this brilliant and beautiful story, but she had missed the reason it was sad. By the time she realized the inevitable tragedy just ahead, Edna was a fifth sister and sweet Beth was her best friend. As Beth’s frailty became more evident and her condition worsened, Edna read the book through streams of tears.

  After three days of reading, Edna sat beside Beth and watched her tender musical heart gracefully begin to slip away. When Beth drew her last breath, Edna wept uncontrollably, the way she had given way to sobs after Tom’s death. Questions railed against her soul. Why did people have to die? And why was it always the good ones, the kind ones like Beth and Tom? Why didn’t God take the liars and crooks first? She mourned with the March family, and somehow she felt they were mourning with her, too. Not only mourning their Beth.

  But mourning Edna’s Tom. The whole March family.

  At first she was angry at Donna for giving her the book. How could it ever be time to immerse herself in such a sad story? For a week she avoided The Bridge, avoided telling Donna how far back reading Little Women had set her. But the story stayed in her heart, calling to her, and a day after she finished it, she read it again. Faster this time. And one late night she came upon a line that took her breath away. Like a lightbulb turning on in Edna’s soul, something happened inside her. She read the line over and over again.

  Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.

  Suddenly Edna knew without any doubt that it had been like this for Tom. He had taken her love with him, and so when death called, he had been able to go. The God he loved had called him home, and he had gone easily. Because he could take Edna’s love with him.

  She closed the book and walked to her bedside table where she still kept Tom’s T-shirt. It felt soft in her hands, and she pressed it to her face. She hadn’t slept with it in a while. Whatever book she read at night had replaced her need for it. But now . . . now she breathed in the faint smell of him again. And deep inside her she felt the gaping wounds of losing him begin to heal.

  Tom still loved her. He carried her love with him.

  The next day she went to the department store and picked out a beautiful scrapbook. One with a textured canvas cover and a space in the middle for a single photo. Edna knew just the one that would work for the gift. Borrowing a camera from the owner of the mercantile, she took three pictures of The Bridge. She still didn’t go inside. That could wait until she finished putting together the gift.

  When she picked up the finished prints, she chose one that seemed to capture the bookstore better than the others. She placed it carefully in the framed window at the center of the scrapbook cover and smoothed her hand over it.

  Perfect.

  Next, she opened the cover, and on the inside flap she wrote:

  Donna . . . Fill this book with the stories of old souls like me. People who sometimes need a place like this to bridge yesterday and tomorrow. People looking for a second chance. Thank you!

  She wrapped the gift and the next day she took it to The Bridge.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Edna was a little concerned.

  So much time had passed since she’d been to The Bridge that she wondered if Donna might be cool with her, distant. But as she stepped inside the bookstore, the shopkeeper’s smile was the first thing she saw. Immediately, Donna came from behind the counter and hugged her. For a long time she looked in her eyes, as if she were checking Edna’s heart for fresh scars. “You read it.”

  “I did.” Edna handed her the wrapped scrapbook. “This is for you.” She hesitated. “Before you open it . . . can we talk?”

  Donna only smiled and poured them each a cup of coffee. “I was expecting this.”

  How the young shopkeeper was so wise, Edna could only imagine. But as she took her cup of coffee and sat again with Donna on the sofa, her entire story spilled from her heart. They both cried when she got to the part about the doorbell ringing. When she finished, she looked at Donna for a long time. “You knew.”

  “Yes. God told me you needed that book.”

  Edna narrowed her eyes, puzzled. “God?” Not since Tom had she met someone who talked about the Lord like He was her friend. But He must have told Donna. The healing that had started in Edna’s heart made it impossible to question her friend’s certainty.

  “Our faith and this store . . . that’s how we survived.” Donna gave Edna a lingering side hug. “We prayed we’d meet people like you. Hurting people who needed God and a good book. So they’d have a chance to survive.”

  “People like me.” Edna understood now.

  “Exactly.”

  “After that day, October fifth, I didn’t think I’d survive. I thought—”

  “Wait.” Donna stared at her. “October fifth?”

  “Yes. The day I got the news about Tom.”

  “Edna . . . that’s the same day . . . the day our little girl died.”

  The truth of that took a long time to settle in, and for a good bit they were quiet, the air around them almost holy. Edna drank her coffee, marveling over the mystery and about Donna’s prayer and how God had answered it. She nodded to the package. “You can open it now.”

  “You didn’t have to . . .”

  “I wanted to do more.”

  Donna gingerly ripped the paper from the gift, and for a long time she just stared at the cover. She ran her fingertips over the photo, and after a few seconds one tear and then another hit the canvas.

  “It’s a scrapbook . . . I wrote you something inside.”

  Donna opened the cover carefully, and Edna watched her read the inscription. Finally she lifted teary eyes to Edna, and again she leaned close and hugged her. “Thank you. We don’t have anything like this. A way to track the names and faces God brings through the door.”

  Edna couldn’t help but think that in some ways the scrapbook would take the place of the baby books and yearbooks and family photo albums Donna and Charlie would never have. Donna seemed to be thinking the same thing, because once more she looked at the cover, and then she thumbed her way through the empty pages, as if she could see the way they might be filled in the years and decades to come.

  “It needs one thing. A picture of you beneath what you wrote.” Donna set her coffee cup down on an end table and hurried back toward the register. She pulled a camera from one of the adjacent cupboards. “Do you have your book? Little Women?”

  Edna grinn
ed. “In my purse.” She took it with her everywhere. Already she was on her third time through it.

  “Let’s see.” Donna surveyed the area. “Stay there. This is perfect. The light from the back window is straight on you.” Her tone was lighter, more full of life. “Hold your book like you’re reading it.”

  The woman’s enthusiasm was contagious. Edna found her copy of Little Women, crossed her legs, and held the novel open on her lap, opened to her favorite page, her favorite quote. It was the only one with the corner of the page bent over.

  Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.

  She felt a sad smile fill her heart and move to her lips. The quote would stay with her always. As she looked at it, she didn’t hear Donna taking the picture until it was over.

  “There. Years from now when I’m an old lady, that picture . . . that’s how I’ll always remember you, Edna.”

  “Donna, you won’t need to remember me. I’ll still be sitting in that chair reading whatever book you put in my hands.”

  Donna held up the camera. “I like that picture even better than the one I just took.”

  The next half hour passed quickly, and Edna had to get to work. When she stopped in a few days later, the scrapbook was on the counter for everyone to see. And the photograph Donna had taken was pasted in the scrapbook right where she said she was going to put it: beneath Edna’s words.

  Edna had a feeling that someday when she looked back, the scrapbook—and the picture of herself with her precious copy of Little Women—would mean as much to her as it would to Donna. Suddenly a realization hit her, one that filled her with indescribable joy.

  She had just now been thinking about the future! Not tomorrow or next week. But years from now. Thinking about it without fear or worry or dread. And without wondering how she was going to survive without Tom Carlton. Which could only mean one thing: Though she would never stop missing her husband, she was healing.