Chapter 26
March turned to April. As the days got longer, the ice melted into mud season, and The Crew started to venture out a little more.
“I am starting to feel my fingers again.” Mary had never gotten used to the cold.
To take advantage of the warmer weather, Dot mapped out walking routes and used Manhattan landmarks as a guide to explain how far each was.
“Imagine going from the High Line at The Standard up to the Javits Center and back. Or, if you want something longer, we could do one that’s like going from Columbus Circle, up and around the Great Lawn, and over to The Plaza.”
“And then we have brunch?” Harper asked.
“Yes. With endless mimosas,” Dot replied.
“Then I’ll do either one. Mary, you choose.”
“The Plaza. I had to take the bar exam at the Javits. Awful.”
AROUND THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD, yellow daffodils and orange tulips sprung from the ground, and the pink cherry blossoms, dogwoods, and redbud trees punched through with bursts of color.
Gradually, then suddenly, there were more people outside their homes, getting their spring and summer landscaping in place. Cedar Fallers took great pride in their yards.
Everyone waved at them as they passed by.
“Nice weather, eh?”
“Beautiful day!”
“Have a good walk!”
The Crew wasn’t used to this much friendliness, but after dropping their initial suspicions, they enjoyed it, waved back, and even hollered return compliments.
“Gorgeous flowers!”
“Pretty tree!”
“Love the porch swing!”
As much as she welcomed the warmer weather, Harper’s allergies acted up terribly. She carried tissues everywhere she went.
“Bless you!” Dot and Mary called out to her throughout the day.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s nothing.” She refused to complain about allergies when there were so many other problems in the world. She avoided allergy medicine, because it made her sleepy and wired at the same time, and she wanted to stay sharp to write.
While Dot was busy from morning to night with the election, and with Mary working remotely for the law firm, Harper had to figure out how to keep busy.
She’d never had so much free time and sometimes—well, most of the time—she didn’t feel motivated to write.
She’d read in his book On Writing that Stephen King wrote every day, no matter what and even when he didn’t feel like it.
So, needing a kick in the rear, she took his advice to heart and found a routine that worked well for her.
She got up around 7 a.m., poured herself a coffee that Dot or Mary had brewed, and read the Daily Skimm and Apple News on her phone.
After that, she put her phone in the closet to avoid distractions and took her laptop up to a loft area in the house where she wrote for a few hours without interruption.
On some days the words flowed out of her imagination and onto the page. On others, she would stare at the blinking cursor for a while hoping that an idea would come to her. All in all, she was making some progress. But she still didn’t feel confident enough to share her pages with anyone.
At noon, Harper would stop writing and go for a walk. She’d take her laptop in her backpack and headed to Curds and Whey for a Cedar Falls Classic smoothie—banana, cacao nibs, peanut butter, and vanilla protein powder—or a superfood bowl with beets, crisp chickpeas, and blackberries.
After lunch, she’d often pop into the Democratic offices where the For the Win team was parked until the election to chat up Dot, Fletcher, and Rose.
Then she’d stroll down Main Street and stop at the bridge to watch the creek flow by for a few moments, before she made her way to the Sin Bin.
Once there, she’d set up in the back corner to write for a couple more hours.
She liked the afternoon hum of the place. It helped to have something going on around her. She still wasn’t used to the small town quiet.
And, if she was being honest with herself, she enjoyed seeing Tommy Taylor.
She’d steal glances of him over her laptop screen when she was sure he wasn’t looking.
And while he gave her space to write at his bar, he’d occasionally catch her eye and stop to talk.
She liked chatting with him. He was easy company, and so different from Kai the surfer who had been charming but, looking back on it, way too self-absorbed.
Tommy made her feel . . . happy. And she found herself spending more time at the Sin Bin. She’d met a few of the regulars and they’d call out to her, “Hey, Harper—how’s the great American novel coming along?” She’d blush and wave them away but felt the early excitement of making new friends.
On Wednesdays, Harper took over the children’s reading hour at Reader Falls Bookshop.
The Jankowskis loved having her around, and the number of parents and children coming to the store noticeably grew.
So did sales. Harper chose books that she loved as a child, including Charlie and the Octopus, The Pigeon Wants a Puppy!
, The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking, Eloise, and all the Beverly Cleary books about Ramona and Beezus.
Kids begged their parents to buy copies of these books so they could take them home, and the parents preferred buying books over candy or video games. Anything to get them off their screens.
In the evenings, Harper made dinner with Mary and Dot, or they chose a new local place to try.
Her favorite was a new farm-to-table place called the Butter Half.
She loved the roasted chicken with baked apples, cauliflower puree, and the raspberry crumble.
And ever since she tried milk at the farm, she’d been letting herself have cream in her coffee and the occasional scoop of butter pecan.
It turned out that Tommy was right—she wasn’t lactose intolerant.
She was glad to shed that label and limitation.
She was feeling comfortable in her own skin. That was new for her.
Life in Cedar Falls was being good to Harper Lee Adler.
ONE WEDNESDAY, TOMMY texted her.
“Hey! Will you be at the Sin Bin tomorrow?”
“I was planning on it. What’s up?”
“I have something to show you.”
“Can’t wait!”
Harper tried to write the next morning but kept thinking about Tommy. What could he possibly want to show her?
She got to her perch at the bar around two in the afternoon, her usual time. She kept looking up at the door every time it opened, expecting to see Tommy. The suspense was killing her.
Finally, around three, Tommy arrived, carrying a medium-size cardboard box from one of the bar’s vegetable deliveries.
“Hey, Harper,” he called to her.
“Hi, howdy, hello.”
“Would you mind coming back to the office? I need to set this down back there.”
“Sure.” She shut her laptop and decided she could leave everything at her high top. She’d never risk that in the city, but Cedar Falls was a different kind of place.
She walked past the bathrooms toward the Sin Bin’s back offices. Paperwork was strewn everywhere. Tommy certainly didn’t ascribe to Dot’s clean desk policy.
On the wall across from his desk chair was a bulletin board pinned with order forms and schedules.
A Packers’ calendar hung on the wall next to his computer.
She took a glance and saw “Harper” written in blue and underlined twice on that day’s date.
Her eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat. But she pretended not to have noticed.
“What’s going on? You sounded so mysterious on the phone,” she said.
He set the box on top of the papers on his desk. “Before you say anything, let me explain.”
She nodded and ran her closed index finger and thumb across her lips to zip them shut.
“Last night, after closing the bar, I was in a hurry to get home. When I was backing out of the parking lot, I almost hit a small dog.”
Harper’s eyes widened. “Oh no!”
“It jumped out and almost went under my tires. Poor little thing was very skinny, and her fur was matted. Looked like she’d been homeless on the streets for a while.”
“Is she okay?”
“I took her to the emergency vet. They say she needs medicine and someone to take better care of her. They think she’s around two years old.
Some sort of tiny doodle mix. She wasn’t wearing a collar and there’s no chip to tell us who she belongs to.
I’ve put up some flyers around town and posted on Facebook to see if anyone lost her, but so far no one has come forward. ”
“Oh goodness.” Harper pointed to the box. “Is she . . . in there?”
“She is. And this is where I need your help.”
“Sure, what can I do?”
“Well, you’ve seen how crazy it can get in here. And with my hours, I can’t take proper care of her. So, I wanted to ask . . . just until we can find her a permanent home . . . do you think you’d be able to look after her?”
Harper’s hands went to her chest. “Me? Oh wow. I mean, yes, of course.” She immediately wondered if Dot and Mary would be okay with this. But she could deal with them later. “Can I see her?”
Tommy carefully lifted the lid of one of his supplier’s ventilated cardboard boxes that he was constantly breaking down for recycling.
Inside the container was a very small, freshly bathed dog, curled up on a soft teal fleece blanket.
She had short cream-colored fur that looked like she’d been knitted by Harper’s grandmother back in Brooklyn.
The dog opened one black eye, seemed to smile at Harper out of the side of her mouth, and then snuggled back into her bed.
“Oh, she’s the cutest!” Harper couldn’t get over it. Her heart melted. She put her hand on the dog, who was so warm and cozy in her makeshift bed. She felt the gentle push of the dog’s rib cage as she breathed.
“Isn’t she? I just can’t take her to the shelter. I’m afraid of what may happen to her there.” He picked the dog up and held her to his chest. “I’d take her out to the farm, but you saw my mom’s Labs. Ray and Floyd play so rough.”
“How long do you think it’ll take to find her owners?”
“Hopefully not long. And if no one steps forward, I’ll think of a plan B.”
He didn’t have to ask her twice. “I’ll do it,” she said.
“Thanks, Harper. I’ll make it up to you.”
“Oh, it’s no problem at all.” Harper rubbed her nose with the hand that had been petting the dog.
“I wish I knew her name. I’ve just been calling her ‘the dog.’”
“I think that works for now.” Harper sneezed. And sneezed again.
“Bless you.” He handed her a bag from It’s a Dog’s World pet store. “Here’s some food for her. And I got two small bowls, one for water and one for food, and a leash. Packers swag, of course. And a stuffed lamb chop toy, but she didn’t seem interested in it.”
“She’s probably just out of sorts.” Harper took the supplies. “I’ll take her back to the house with me now.” She barely got the sentence out before she sneezed again.
“Bless you. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine! It’s just allergies, nothing to worry about.”
But inside she knew that she’d be sneezing on the hour if she took care of this dog. She decided it was worth it. For the dog. And for Tommy.
She reached down and picked the dog up and held her paws cradled to her chest. The dog blinked a couple of times, but then stretched and settled down.
“Thank you, Harper.”
“Ah-choo!”
“And bless you.”
“Thank you,” she said, laying the dog back in her box and pulling a tissue from her pocket to blow her nose.
The dog was still sleeping, and Harper thought it was best to let her. The box was too big for her to carry several blocks. And she didn’t want to ask Tommy for a ride since he was already serving customers.
She considered her options while she carried the dog back into the bar and to her table where she’d left her laptop and backpack.
She pulled out a cloth tote that she always carried in case she needed an extra bag for her shopping.
Then she placed the pup’s rear at the bottom of the bag, with her little face sticking out of the top, eyes wide open now.
“I think we’re set,” she said to Tommy.
“Hold on, I gotta take a photo of this.” Tommy grabbed his phone and took a few different angles. “You two are adorable.”
Harper latched on to that compliment and said goodbye to Tommy. They agreed to catch up later so she could say how everything was going when she got home.
Then Harper left the Sin Bin and carried her new charge down the street toward Maple Avenue, the bag gently hitting her hip with each step.
“What am I supposed to call you, little one?” Harper asked. She only got a blink in reply.
“We’ll have to come up with something better than that.” Harper sneezed, patted the dog’s head, and started for home.