New Girl in Little Cove by Damhnait Monaghan (fun books to read for adults .TXT) 📕

for the tinned milk. She said she wasn’t hungry, but after a few minutes reached for a cookie. Their one-hundred-percent-irresistible success rate remained intact. She took tiny bites and chewed for ages between each bite, until the cookie was gone. Then she told me about the accident.

She said it had been foggy, but Eddie was careful, not driving too fast. “But the moose come out of nowhere, as they does.”

Apparently, Eddie slammed on the brakes, “Which probably saved us,” she said. Instinctively, she reached up and gently patted her goose egg.

“Were you wearing a seat belt?” I asked.

She tutted. “Course I was. It might’ve been a bit loose, but I was wearing it.”

She said Eddie hadn’t been wearing his. “He never does.”

“Will he be okay?”

She clasped her hands together as in prayer. “They wouldn’t say much because I’m not a relation. I expect Phonse will know. I’ll check with him when we gets back to Little Cove.”

I took that as a hint and cleared up, putting the tray on the kitchen table. Seeing the two kinds of milk side by side, I decided to pour fresh milk into a flask to bring to Biddy’s. I might be roughing it out there, but I wasn’t going back to tinned milk. A girl had her limits. At the last minute, I grabbed the cookie jar as well.

I drove slowly, partly because I was now terrified of hitting a moose—something I had never before even contemplated—and partly because of the potholes that jolted us on our journey.

Biddy’s house was unlocked. I readied myself to shove the door, but it glided easily open.

“Phonse is after fixing that door for me,” Biddy said as I followed her inside. It was dark and cold in the kitchen.

She sighed. “Fire’s gone out in the stove.”

“You sit down in the rocking chair,” I said. “I’ll light the stove.”

“There’s a knack to it,” she said. “She’s a temperamental old thing.” She gestured at the wood and kindling stacked neatly against the stove. “You needs a few blasty boughs.”

I took a quilt from the daybed and tucked it around Biddy. “I’m used to temperamental old things,” I said, smiling. “We have an old stove at our cottage back home that we use when the power goes out.”

With Biddy instructing me, I was able to get the fire going. The room quickly began to warm up.

“I could turn on the heat too,” I said.

“Heat?” said Biddy. “That is my heat. I never bothered getting anything else installed when the others around here did. I figured it was only me, and when the stove’s going, it’s warm enough. When I was a youngster, we used to take an old brick to bed that was warmed up on that very stove and then wrapped in a pillow case. Now I takes a hot water bottle. Progress,” she cackled.

“It must’ve been so different in Little Cove back then,” I said.

“In some ways, sure,” she said. “But lots is the same. Lucille and I in and out of each other’s houses. Annie and Flossie tagging along after us.” She frowned. “Those two used to be real trouble, but they came around in their widowhood.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ah, I’d best not tell tales out of school,” she said. Annoyingly.

I sat down at the kitchen table and we were both quiet for a minute. Biddy instructing me in how to light the stove had reminded me of the last time I’d been at our cottage. Dad had been lying on the sofa in front of the bay window, watching the wind move the trees and the rain pelt the lake. I’d been putting the finishing touches on a pizza, which Dad had requested, even though we all knew he wouldn’t eat any of it. Mom was in the bedroom working.

Then the power went out and we were immediately plunged into darkness. Mom came out and got the flashlight from the kitchen drawer. She held it over the stove while Dad talked me through how to light it. We’d even cooked the pizza on top of the stove and Dad had managed almost a whole piece, saying it was the best he’d ever eaten.

Mom and I couldn’t face going up to the cottage after Dad died. It had sat empty all summer, and then our handyman shut it up for the winter. But lately, I’d been missing it, and Sheila and I had made plans to spend some time there in the summer.

I got up to put more wood in the stove, then asked Biddy if there was anyone I should call. “Do you have a number for where your sister’s staying in St. John’s?”

“I don’t want them fussing and worrying when they’re meant to be enjoying themselves at the wedding. She’ll be home on Sunday and you can get home then.”

“Trying to get rid of me already,” I said.

Biddy asked me to call Phonse. “He might have some news about Eddie,” she said.

Tacked to the wall beside her telephone was a faded list of names and numbers. I noticed Lucille was at the top and Brigid Roche’s name had been scratched out. I found Phonse’s number, but there was no answer.

“He might be over in Mardy playing tonight I s’pose,” she said. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

We sat and chatted idly until Biddy said she was tired. I helped her undress, then settled her in bed, plumping pillows and adjusting quilts. Then I made her a hot water bottle. Her eyes were closed when I returned with it, but she opened them and smiled.

“I usually reads before I goes to sleep, but I don’t think I can manage it tonight,” she said.

“What are you reading?”

She pointed to the bedside table and I recognized the book immediately: Light a Penny Candle. I’d read it last year, enjoying the gentle writing and the story of two girls whose lives were entwined. I hoped Sheila and I would be friends for life the way Elizabeth and Aisling were, although preferably without