The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,19

on top of pencils. I’ve always had a thing for office supplies; untouched notebooks and new pencils have always made my heart go pitter-pat. As a kid, erasers were my particular favorite. When I saw a bin near the shop door, I stuffed a bunch into my pocket and ran.”

“Hmm . . . ,” Calvin murmured. “Doubtless you’d had a premonition about your future career as a journalist and the need for making massive numbers of corrections.”

“Failed journalist,” I reminded him.

I paused to shove the last exquisite bite of a sausage, egg, and pimento cheese biscuit into my mouth. I didn’t buy Calvin’s justification that the walk from Upper King Street to our appointment in Harleston Village would burn off the calories, but the biscuits were irresistible, as was the city I had left so long ago.

Downtown Charleston is compact and parking is scarce, so residents tend to walk everywhere, just like they do in New York. But there’s a different vibe here. For one thing, you don’t see a whole lot of palm trees in Manhattan. But Charleston is far enough south to allow nearly every tree, shrub, or flower known to man to flourish. Charleston prides itself on its gardens as well as its architecture. The buildings are older and shorter, the scale more human, and the styles more interesting than in most of Manhattan—at least to my way of thinking. Having practically invented the historic preservation movement, Charleston remains at its forefront, ensuring that the unique character of the city remains intact. Maybe that’s why people walk more slowly here, because there’s so much to look at? Though I suppose humidity also plays a part.

“Everybody in Charleston knew everybody else back then,” I said, licking the last traces of pimento cheese from my fingers before going on with my story, “and the shop owner phoned Calpurnia to rat me out the second I bolted. She was standing on the steps, waiting for me when I got home, and marched me right back to the store to return the loot and apologize. So humiliating. That was the last time I took something that didn’t belong to me.

“Well,” I confessed as we reached a corner, “except that USB drive with copies of all my old columns. I slipped it into my pocket when the security guard was looking the other way. But I feel like that really was my property.”

“Nice to know you haven’t lost your touch,” Calvin said. “So Calpurnia saved you from a life of crime?”

“Among other things,” I said. “If a kid has at least one person who they know is crazy about them, they usually turn out okay. Calpurnia was my one person. She was the only grown-up I knew who still remembered what it was like to be a child.

“Once, my science teacher assigned me a project to find a hundred different bugs, and Calpurnia was so excited about helping me. I’ll never forget her, crawling around the garden on all fours in the dark after a rain, shining a flashlight into the bushes and searching for centipedes.” I smiled, remembering the grass stains on the knees of her slacks. “She didn’t just make me feel loved, she made me feel important.”

“Do you look like her?” Calvin asked.

I shook my head. “Oh, no. She was beautiful. Really beautiful. Especially when she was young. Long, light-brown hair with a just a little bit of wave, amazing cheekbones, full lips, blue eyes with the longest lashes you’ve ever seen, and incredible eyebrows. Everybody used to say she looked like a young Lauren Bacall.”

“Well, you’re beautiful.”

I am not beautiful.

Don’t get me wrong, apart from my pointy chin, I mostly like how I look. My hair is medium brown, thick, and straight. I wear it in a blunt cut to my jawline, an attempt to draw attention away from the too-pointy chin. My eyes are brown too. My skin is fair and, so far, devoid of major wrinkles. My nose has a sprinkling of freckles, which I like. Overall, I would say that I am attractive enough for all normal purposes. Possibly even kind of cute. But I’m not beautiful and never was, so I let Calvin’s comment pass.

“When’s the last time you saw Calpurnia?” he asked.

“Not long after my father died—liver failure,” I explained. “Sterling was a high-functioning alcoholic, able to hold it together during the day, enough so he could teach classes, but on nights and weekends . . .” I sighed. “He was just so