Finders Keepers Read Online Free PDF Page B

understand he’s a bachelor. He probably does grill a lot.”
    “He rented an office with Sawyer-the-lawyer,” he went on, referring to the local attorney. “He’s an architect, do you know? I think he’s a nice man, but he told me he’s going to tear down Grace’s house in a month or maybe two. Can you believe it?”
    “Oh, Boompah!” Elizabeth pressed her hand to her lips. This was awful. Bad enough to lose the mansion, but the constant presence of workmen and heavy machinery would affect her business. And the noise would be horrendous.
    “I think,” Boompah said, “that you better go right over to Sawyer-the-lawyer and talk to the Chalmers boy, Elizabeth. You better tell him you don’t want him to tear down the mansion.”
    “I already told him. He won’t listen.”
    “You better fight him, Elizabeth.”
    “But I don’t want to fight anybody. I just want peace and quiet. I want things to stay the way they are.”
    “Guess what, Boompah, we’re going to get a daddy,”
    Nick announced, taking the bag of stale cakes from his mother and peering inside. “We have to find a daddy with green eyes and black hair so I can draw my tree.”
    “Nick, go sit on the swing. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
    “Oh, bother!” The child, whose favorite character was Winnie the Pooh, stomped away. “Bother, bother, bother.”
    “In this town, Elizabeth, you are the one to fight,” Boompah said firmly. “You are young and brave, and you love Ambleside. It’s not only this man who wants to tear down Chalmers House. There are others. I hear them in the market. They talk about building a mall on the edge of town. They talk about parking lots. They talk about big offices and new subdivisions to attract the people from cities to move here. That Chalmers boy is only the first. If you don’t stop him from tearing down Grace’s house, more will come. More old houses will fall. Ambleside will soon be just like a big city, and our town will be no more.”
    Elizabeth knew what Boompah was talking about. Lately a wave of enthusiasm for revitalizing the town had swept through Ambleside. Phil Fox, who was up for reelection in November, was behind the talk of malls and parking lots. But how could one woman stand up against such a tidal wave of public opinion?
    “You better go talk to that Chalmers boy,” Boompah repeated. “Go see him at Sawyer-the-lawyer’s office tomorrow. He’ll listen to you. He likes you.”
    “He likes to irritate me. And I can’t see him tomorrow. I’m going to an estate sale in Russellville.”
    Boompah shook his head as he bid his farewells and ambled away. Clearly he considered Elizabeth a coward of the first order for her unwillingness to do battle with Zachary Chalmers. But why should this be up to her? Why?
    “Boompah could be my grandfather,” Nick said as his mother settled into the swing. “I could put him on the tree near my daddy.”
    “Sweetheart, you can’t put just anybody you want on your family tree. You write down the names of people who are related to you. Look at Grace’s old Bible.” She picked up the worn book from the table nearby. She had intended to spend some time reading it, but a shipment of sachets had come in. And then there had been a box of candles to price. And then … there was always something, wasn’t there?
    Opening the book, she turned through the crinkly, gold-edged pages, hoping the family tree could help her explain the concept to Nick. Near the middle, she located the slick paper on which marriage records and family milestones had been recorded. Though the writing on the chart was too small to read easily, a glance told her that most of it had been left blank.
    “You dropped the letter.” Drawing his mother’s attention from the chart, the child hopped down from the swing and scooped up a note that had fallen from the Bible. He handed it to Elizabeth. “What does it say?”
    A ripple ran down her spine as she studied Grace Chalmers’s