Goodnight June: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

and run my hands along the emerald-green walls of the bookstore. The color of pine trees, Ruby always said. The paint is peeling in places, but it’s hard to tell, as the walls are covered with framed artwork. A painting of a cow jumping over a moon hangs beside a signed black-and-white photo of Roald Dahl. He wrote, “To all the children of Bluebird Books, never stop imagining.”
    I pull back the faded old green-and-yellow-striped drapes. Once billowy and grand, they are dusty and sun bleached now, tattered at the hem. I smile to myself remembering the time Aunt Ruby showed me a photograph of a circus tent as her inspiration for the drapes. I flip the light switch and the crystal chandelier overhead strains to light the room. It’s missing a lightbulb, or twelve. I make a mental note to replace them.
    I walk to the back staircase and climb the steps to Ruby’s apartment above the shop. It’s small, but the high ceilings and exposed brick walls make it feel bigger, grander somehow. And even though I know it’s been several months since Ruby passed, the place has a lived-in feel, as if she might have made eggs and toast this very morning before leaving for a walk around Green Lake. The toaster’s still plugged into the wall, a teakettle sits at attention on the little stove, and the faucet drips quietly into the sink.
    I peer through the doorway of the little room off the kitchen where Amy and I used to stay. The two twin beds are still there, as well as the little nightstand. The porcelain lamp with its vintage tassel-trimmed shade holds court on the mahogany side table. I weave my way to Ruby’s bed, through a path lined with boxes of assorted memorabilia and stacks of books, some piled as high as me. The familiar crimson velvet coverlet is pulled taut, perhaps painstakingly so, as if the last time Ruby made the bed she was expecting company. I run my hand along the soft fabric, threadbare at the center, where she sat for so many years, propped up reading a book like she always did after she closed the store at five each evening. She’d wait until eight to eat dinner, “fashionably late,” she’d say.
    I study a familiar throw pillow and my eyes well up with tears. I cross-stitched a pink rose on it when I was ten and gave it to Aunt Ruby for her birthday. She kept it all these years. She looked at it every day when she woke up and when she laid her head down each night. Did she think about me? I didn’t mean to, but I forsook Ruby along with the rest of my past when I left Seattle. My heart beats faster. I can no longer suppress the emotion I feel. “Oh, Ruby,” I cry. I feel my chest constrict as a draft of cool air seeps in from the old double-hung windows. I shiver as I glance down at the nightstand, where there’s a small mahogany jewelry box, a framed photo of me and my sister, and Ruby’s old oval locket on its gold chain. I remember it dangling from her neck so long ago. My sister and I would ask her what she kept inside it, but she’d always give us a secret smile and tuck it back beneath her sweater set. “When you’re older,” she’d say. But we never did get the chance to look inside.
    I pick up the necklace and fasten it around my neck, but I won’t open the locket. No, I don’t deserve to see what’s hidden within. I’ll wear the necklace, and it will be my reminder of Ruby from this point forward. I’ll never forget her. And I’ll keep her secret hidden away. I’ll guard it.
    In the style of Ruby, I tuck the necklace beneath my sweater, and then beside the jewelry box I notice a white envelope inscribed “June” in script that is unmistakably Ruby’s. I sink to the bed and tear open the flap.
    My dear June,
    If you’re reading this, I have passed. I knew the end was growing near. So I prepared this place for you. They’re taking me to the convalescent home. My God, me in a convalescent home. Can you imagine?
    I stop reading, and wipe away a fresh tear, hearing Ruby’s playful