A Sweethaven Summer Read Online Free PDF Page A

script.
    Why had Mom never spoken of this town? Sweethaven was a blip on the map at the center of the layout. A small gold star marked the spot in Michigan, north of her home in the Chicago suburbs.
    She flipped to the last page.
    Summer 1987. Broken Circle
.
    A Polaroid photo had been stapled to the left-hand side of the page. A sheet of notebook paper with her mother’s handwriting had been stapled to the right-hand side. A painted collage background told her that Mom had certainly crafted this page. Campbell ran her index finger over the familiar cursive. Even her mother’s handwriting comforted her. She leaned in closer to the page. Her pregnant mother, frozen in time, stared back at her.
    She looked so young. Only seventeen, her belly round like a basketball stuffed under a too-small shirt. Her long brown ponytail hung to her shoulders. She held the camera in one hand and took the photo of her reflection in a long mirror.
    Campbell scanned the words on the page, and realized it acted as her mother’s good-bye.
    She’d never seen a picture of her mom pregnant. Mom said her grandma wouldn’t allow any to be taken. The shame had been too great. Not something to celebrate. Translation:
she
wasn’t something to celebrate.
    Campbell lifted it and a dried, brown-edged, yellow rosebudfell out. Had her father given her mother this rose? Had the two of them been kept apart in a tragic, Romeo and Juliet kind of way? She flipped through the pages searching for any mention of a boy’s name. Nothing.
    But this scrapbook was incomplete. What about the other pages? The pages the other women had? Would they connect the dots and spill the truth?
    Campbell didn’t have to look far to find the identities of the other three girls. The second page stretched across two sheets of worn cardstock. At the top, the title:
The Circle
. Underneath were four columns, with a photo of each girl in front of a cottage with a different house number and a brief introduction.
    Mom stood on the porch of a steep-roofed cottage wearing a terrycloth one-piece shorts outfit and a wild ponytail. Campbell zeroed in on the handwritten note beside the photo.
My name is Suzanne Carter but my real friends call me Suzy-Q. I am one of the founding members of the Sweethaven Circle and spend my summers in this cottage, located on Juniper Drive. We just started coming to Sweethaven this year after my grandmother passed away. She left the cottage to my father. I like Bazooka Joe bubble gum, White Rain hairspray, and I’m obsessed with Michael J. Fox. (He’s so cute!) If I hadn’t met the other members of The Circle, Sweethaven would be totally lame. Oh, and I’m starting eighth grade in the fall. (Gag!) At least I’ll have the summer to look forward to!
    Yours Sincerely
,
    Suzanne Marie Carter
    Campbell smiled at the thought of her mom as an almost eighth grader. She had no idea then how short her life would be. Only forty-two years.
    The other introductions were similar. Jane Anderson had been coming to Sweethaven her entire life. She had other friends but made mention of her “kindred spirit” Suzanne—someone who understood her better than anyone else. Her “regular home” in Iowa wasn’t nearly as interesting. Lila Adler lived in Macon, Georgia, but traveled all the way north to Michigan to “give Daddy time away from the real estate business.” And Meghan Barber, a redhead with bright freckles across her nose and cheeks, had only recently moved to Sweethaven full-time. “To escape the ‘dangers’ of Nashville and because my mom made me.”
    These girls had been close to her mother. They’d watched her grow up. More importantly, they knew her when she’d made that terrible mistake…the one that led to Campbell’s conception. Those girls—women now—had known Campbell’s grandparents. They might even know who her father was.
    Guilt shook her. Would it hurt Mom to know she was already thinking about finding her father? Only hours after her