No one is talking to her which is good because it means I can talk to her.
“Hello Apple Templeton,” I say politely.
“Monday Mitchell.” She makes a little smile which might mean happy to see me or might mean almost anything else. I cannot tell. “Glad you could make it.”
“You are?” I ask.
She looks surprised and like she does not know what to say but decides on “Sure.”
“Is it because of what I have brought you?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” She smiles more now. She might be happy someone brought her something. Or she might be laughing at me. “What have you brought me?”
I take the Elm/Hickory Grove folder out of my backpack and hand it to her. She looks at it, and her face gets yellow, but not in a good way, and I can tell that she can tell from the label what I could not, which is what is in the folder.
“I was looking for this,” she says, but she is not looking at me when she says it and might not even be talking to me.
“I know,” I say because I do.
“You do?” She looks up at me so my eyes look away. “How?”
“Omar told us you were looking through his files but did not find what you were looking for.” This is not a lie. Omar did tell a whole bar full of people including my mother and my sister that Apple Templeton was looking through his files and did not find what she was looking for. But it is sort of a lie in that it is not the whole truth or even the part of the truth that led us to this folder. That truth is hard to understand though, even for me, and might get my mother or sister in trouble, which I know would not be fair, so I do not tell her that part.
Her eyes looking for my eyes have tears in them. “Why are you giving these to me?”
“Because it is not accurate to say they are yours, but they are closer to yours than anyone else’s.”
She nods, and she hugs the folder, and she says, “That is very, very kind of you, Monday.”
So I say, “You are welcome,” which is polite, and then I turn around to leave, but then she asks me another question.
“Did you read them?”
“Yes,” I answer. “Many, many times.”
She nods and seems like she will not say anything else and then she says, “Are they bad?”
And I am surprised so I look at her to see what she means so she looks away because her eyes do not want to look at my eyes any more than my eyes want to look at hers. I do not know what to say so I do not say anything.
“My father didn’t know what was going to happen.” Her voice is very quiet.
“Lie,” I say.
Tears fall out of her eyes so she rolls them up to the painted-over ceiling of the Children’s section like it is still covered in rainbows and clouds. “He didn’t know it was going to be that bad,” she says. Then she adds, “This bad.” Then she adds, “What happened after my father sold the land wasn’t his fault. Our family wasn’t even here anymore.”
“Then why do you want the letters?” I wonder.
She nods like I have asked her a yes-or-no question to which the answer is yes. “People might not understand if they read them. They might not believe that what happened had nothing to do with my family.”
“Truth,” I say for they might not. As an example, I do not.
“Dad was just doing his job. Buying and selling land. That’s what he did. He didn’t know the chemical was poisonous or that it would get in the water or what would happen if it did.”
“He said effluvia,” I tell her. “He said he did not trust Duke Templeton. He said he was glad his family would be far away from Bourne when the plant opened.”
“It wasn’t his job to protect you,” Apple says.
“Truth,” I say for it was not his job.
“Maybe he wasn’t perfect,” Apple says, “but he did the best he could.”
“For himself,” I say, “and for you, his family, it is accurate to say he did the best he could. But not for us. For us he could have done much, much better.”
“Truth,” she whispers. Then she says, “Thank you, Monday. I hope you win tomorrow.”
“Because you want to go home?” I ask, for I have learned that home is not just where you live. Home is also where you want and need and are meant to live. Home is also the people who are there with you, who are the people who will help you live, who are the people who will do the best they can, not just for themselves, but for you, their neighbors and friends, as well.