Free The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel by Lisa Wingate

Gals do the cookin’ and the cleanin’ and hire out sometimes, too, soon as they’d get old enough. Time comes to go sit at a school desk, eat food somebody else cooks up for us, we’re thinking we’re on a luxury vacation. That right, LaJuna? That’s what your Aunt Dicey tells you, sure enough?”
    LaJuna ducks her head, reluctantly mutters, “Yes’m.” She shifts uncomfortably, pulling a sheet off her ticket pad.
    Granny T is wound up now. “I’m her age, I’m workin’ the farm, or in the orchard, or in this restaurant with my grandmama. And I’m going to school, and hired out to one of the Gossetts to watch her babies after the school day and in summers. Time I’m eleven years old, younger than this girl, even.” Behind LaJuna and me, the checkout line is building. “By eighth grade, I’ve got to quit. Crop doesn’t make that year, and there’s bills to pay down to the Gossett Mercantile. No time for school. I was smart, too. But we can’t go live under a tree. Home might not be fancy, but that’s home and we’re glad to have it. Grateful for everything we got, all the time.”
    I stand in stunned silence, letting that sink in. Just the concept of a kid…what, thirteen or fourteen years old…having to quit school to help earn a living for the family…it’s horrifying.
    Granny T motions LaJuna to the other side of the counter, hugs her around the shoulders. “Now, this one is a good girl. Gonna do all right. What’d you need, darlin’? How come you’re standing here, not seeing to your tables?”
    “I’m on break. Got my tables all taken care of.” LaJuna extends a ticket and a twenty-dollar bill toward the counter. “Ms. Hannah ask me to bring this up so she didn’t have to stand in line.”
    Granny T’s mouth straightens. “Some people always got to have special privileges.” She processes the ticket and hands LaJuna the change. “You go give this back and then you have a break.”
    “Yes’m.”
    LaJuna slides around the corner, and it’s obvious that I need to move along, as well. Impatient noises and toe-taps have begun increasing among the customers behind me. On a whim, I spring for a piece of banana cream pie from the dessert case. I don’t need it. I shouldn’t spend the money, but it looks so good. Comfort food, I tell myself.
    “That old house you live in,” Granny T offers as we settle up. “It’s been passed down since the judge died, like everything else. Judge’s two older sons, Will and Manford, got the Gossett Industries mill, the foundry, and the gear plant north of town. Judge’s youngest son died years ago, left behind a son and a daughter. Those two children inherited the big house and the land that would’ve gone to their daddy, but the girl, Robin, she’s passed away since—sad thing, her just thirty-one years old. Your landlord is her brother, Mr. Nathan Gossett, Judge’s grandson, but he won’t be fixin’ that roof. He lives down to the coast. Got him a shrimp boat. Leased out the Goswood land, left the rest to rot. That boy’s the rambling one. Can’t be bothered about none of it. Lot of history in that old place. Lot of stories. Sad thing when stories die for the lack of listenin’ ears.”
    I nod in agreement, feel the whip-sting of my own family ties flapping in the wind. I don’t know beans about my familial history and couldn’t recite an ancestral story if my life depended on it. I’ve always tried to tell myself I don’t care, but that statement from Granny T hits home. A blush creeps up my neck, and I hear myself blurt out, “Would you be willing to come talk to my classes sometime?”
    “Ffff!” Her eyes widen. “Did you listen at me while ago when I told you I didn’t make it past the eighth grade? You’ve got to have the banker, and the mayor, and the manager from the foundry come talk to these kids. Folks that’s amounted to much.”
    “Well, just…please think about it.” An idea blooms in my head, unfolding as if