Greetings from Nowhere by Barbara O'Connor Page B

we oughtta ask Aggie to stay at the motel instead of going to live with her cousin in Raleigh?” Willow closed her eyes and waited.
    Nothing.
    She glanced at her father.
    He kept his eyes on the road.
    Willow could feel her heart beating. Thump. Thump. Thump.
    She tried to send a mental message over to her father.
    Say yes.
    Say yes.
    Say yes.
    But when her father answered, he didn’t say yes.
    He said something mean.
    â€œWillow,” he said, “you can’t give a home to every stray dog in this world.”
    Willow felt a wave of mad run through her from the tip of her pink plastic sandals to the top of her head.
    â€œAggie’s not a stray dog!” she hollered, making her father jump.
    He pulled the truck over to the side of the road and turned to face her. His jaw twitched. His eyes narrowed.

    â€œThe motel doesn’t belong to Aggie anymore,” he said. He ran his hand over his buzz-cut hair. “The motel belongs to us.”
    â€œBut Aggie lives there,” Willow said.
    â€œShe has a new place to live now.”
    â€œShe won’t like it there.”
    â€œYou don’t know that, Willow.”
    â€œUh-huh.” Willow nodded. “Besides, she knows a lot about motels. And she can help us do stuff. And she—”
    â€œWillow.” Her father set his face in that hard way that told Willow he was through talking.
    Then he pulled the truck back into the road and stared ahead like Willow wasn’t even there.
    Â 
    Â 
    As soon as they got back to the motel, Willow jumped out of the truck and ran over to the picnic table. She climbed up on it and sat down, hugging her knees. She wished she were back in Hailey. If she were back in Hailey, she would go out to the little patch of weeds that used to be the flowers that Dorothy grew. She would stay there forever and never talk to anyone except for maybe Maggie, once in a while.
    Willow looked up at the sound of someone walking across the gravel parking lot.
    Crunch, crunch, crunch.

    Aggie waved an envelope.
    Ugly sauntered along behind her.
    â€œThis came for you today,” Aggie said, handing the envelope to Willow.
    Willow clutched the envelope with both hands. “It worked!” she said. “The cobweb worked!”
    She reminded Aggie about how Dorothy believed that if you walked into a cobweb, you’d get a letter from someone you loved. Then she told Aggie about the cobweb in the garden.
    â€œWell, I’ll be …” Aggie said.
    Willow opened the envelope and peered inside. More envelopes. She dumped them out onto the picnic table. Along with the envelopes was a scrap of paper torn from a spiral notebook.

    Dear Willow,
    These letters came for you. I hope you are doing good and that you like that motel. I am fine. It has been hot here. Maggie says hi.
    Love,
Grannie Dover

    Willow picked up one of the envelopes. There on the front was her mother’s loopy handwriting, just like on the calendar.

    Willow’s stomach fluttered with excitement. “It’s from Dorothy!” she said, clasping the envelope against her heart.
    Aggie grinned. Then she looked up at the sky and said, “Thank you, Harold.”
    Â 
    Â 
    Willow read every letter twice.
    Each one started the same way:

    Dear Willow,
    I miss you so much …

    Each one ended the same way:

    I love you very much.
    Mama

    Willow folded the letters carefully and tucked them back inside the big envelope. Then she ran across the parking lot to where Aggie sat outside the office.
    She told Aggie everything that Dorothy had written in the letters.
    How she was down in Savannah with her sister Sarah, in a house next to a church where Sarah’s husband was the preacher.

    How she was working in a doctor’s office, answering the phone.
    How she missed Willow more than anything and thought about her every day.
    Aggie put her hand on Willow’s knee. “Ain’t that nice?” she said, giving Willow a