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Back The Silence of the Library
Chapters (50)
  1. COVER
  2. PRAISE FOR TITLES BY MIRANDA JAMES
  3. ALSO BY MIRANDA JAMES
  4. TITLE PAGE
  5. COPYRIGHT
  6. DEDICATION
  7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  8. ONE
  9. TWO
  10. THREE
  11. FOUR
  12. FIVE
  13. SIX
  14. SEVEN
  15. EIGHT
  16. NINE
  17. TEN
  18. ELEVEN
  19. TWELVE
  20. THIRTEEN
  21. FOURTEEN
  22. FIFTEEN
  23. SIXTEEN
  24. SEVENTEEN
  25. EIGHTEEN
  26. NINETEEN
  27. TWENTY
  28. TWENTY-ONE
  29. TWENTY-TWO
  30. TWENTY-THREE
  31. TWENTY-FOUR
  32. TWENTY-FIVE
  33. TWENTY-SIX
  34. TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. TWENTY-NINE
  37. THIRTY
  38. THIRTY-ONE
  39. THIRTY-TWO
  40. THIRTY-THREE
  41. THIRTY-FOUR
  42. THIRTY-FIVE
  43. THIRTY-SIX
  44. THIRTY-SEVEN
  45. THIRTY-EIGHT
  46. THIRTY-NINE
  47. FORTY
  48. AFTERWORD
  49. LETTER TO THE READER
  50. SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM BLESS HER DEAD LITTLE HEART

“Carrie loved the books so much,” Melba went on, “that she was determined to meet the woman who wrote them. Carrie was adopted when she was about six months old, and she had no idea who her real parents were. If her adopted mama and daddy knew, they never told her, and she was never able to find any records.” She paused for a breath. “Carrie said she got it in her head that Mrs. Cartwright was her long-lost mother. She was too young to understand, of course, or even think about the fact that those books were being published twenty years before she was born. You know how kids can be when they want something to be true hard enough, they don’t always think logically about it.”

What Melba told us made Carrie Taylor’s story even more heart-wrenching. I could feel for that little girl who wanted so desperately to know her biological mother and to escape from a life of poverty.

“So Carrie wrote to Mrs. Cartwright.” Melba paused. “I think she wrote in care of the publisher maybe. Anyway, she mailed her letter and waited. And waited. And waited. She kept reading the books over and over till they were about to fall apart.”

“Did someone give her the books?” I asked. “It doesn’t sound like her parents could afford to buy them for her.”

“They couldn’t,” Melba said. “One of the teachers at school felt sorry for her and gave them to her.”

“Did she ever get a letter back from Mrs. Cartwright?” Kanesha asked.

“About thirteen months after she mailed her letter.” Melba shook her head. “I read it once, the first time Carrie showed it to me, I guess it was. Mrs. Cartwright apologized real nice about answering so long after Carrie wrote to her, but she said that she had moved a couple of times during the year and the post office had trouble keeping up with her and forwarding the mail.” She shrugged. “That sounded kind of fake to me, but what do I know? Carrie was so thrilled to get the letter she didn’t care. She wrote back to Mrs. Cartwright, and this time got an answer right away. But in that second letter Mrs. Cartwright told her she was going to live overseas and didn’t know exactly where she’d be, so she didn’t have an address to give Carrie.” Melba shrugged again. “That really was a brush-off, I think, but Carrie was only twelve, I guess, and she believed every word of it. She wrote one more letter back to Mrs. Cartwright but it was never answered.”

“Was it the letters from Mrs. Cartwright she considered her prize possessions?” Kanesha asked.

Melba nodded. “They were real valuable to her, but do you think they were worth any money? Surely they weren’t worth somebody killing her for, were they?”