The Red Velvet Box

By Christine Keleny

It is 1954 and Katherine Gale has just turned thirteen, though she likes it when people say she looks older. But no matter what year it is, when you’re thirteen, you still don’t like cleaning your room, having to sit next to your younger brothers, or go visit your elderly Grandmother. Katherine and her mother, Ruth, are about to do just that.

Grandma Blanch is eighty-four and getting forgetful, so it was decided she has to move soon and Ruth needs help sorting through Grandma’s things. Katherine only has younger brothers, so she gets volunteered for the task. What Katherine and her mother don’t know is that Grandma Blanch needs more help then they realize, and Katherine, unwittingly, discovers how to do just that. What Katherine doesn't expect is that she gains a new friend in the process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christine Keleny
• Release date: Oct 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9780980052947

Christine Keleny

Christine is an award-winning author, reader, editor, book designer and publisher. She loves writing and helping others publish the book of their dreams through her publishing company: CKBooks Publishing. Christine also teaches workshops at local libraries for both youth and adults and at a youth writing and publishing summer school class. You can find all of her books at christinekelenybooks.com. That is also where you can sign up for her Readers’ Group.

Book preview

The Red Velvet Box

By Christine Keleny

Published by CKBooks

Copyright 2012 by Christine Keleny

Smashworks Edition - License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and you did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

-----------------------------------

Discover other titles by Christine Keleny at Smashwords:

The Rose Series

Rosebloom

A Burnished Rose

Rose From the Ashes

*

Memoir of Willie Lee Triplett

Living in the House of Drugs

To my Grandmothers: Dearie and Christine.

God rest their souls.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

About the Author

Chapter 1

Katherine Rosemary Gale, if you don’t get down here this instant…

My mother’s voice was serious now. If the tone hadn’t convinced me that I couldn’t stall any longer, then the use of my proper name did. At least she didn’t call me Katie, I said to myself. Katie is so childish.

I rolled my eyes, closed my newest issue of Seventeen Magazine, and stuffed it in my pink vinyl overnight bag, the one with the picture of the white poodle on one side being led by the bottom half of a very fashionable girl in a dark-pink poodle skirt.

I wished with all my might that this was just an overnight trip, but it wasn’t; it was four whole days. Father had already taken my suitcase down to the car. It was an ugly, old, brown cardboard thing that didn’t match anything I owned. Mother didn’t seem to realize the importance of matching accessories; they really made the woman. It is one of the first things I had promised myself I would get once I was on my own.

This trip was a Thanksgiving vacation ritual. When Dad made his annual fishing trip to the great north woods, mother and us kids went south to visit my mother’s mother, Grandma Blanche, in Galena, Illinois. It wasn’t until two years ago, when Ronnie turned six and John was eight, that my brothers got out of going with us to Grandma’s and started going fishing with Dad. Lucky ducks!

I had even tried to convince my parents that I needed to go with Dad this year to keep the boys from fighting. They were always fighting, and since I was the oldest and had just turned thirteen, I was the official babysitter. Unfortunately, neither of them had gone for it.

Every year I dreaded this trip out of my already short Thanksgiving vacation, but it was going to be even worse than usual this year. Grandma Blanche had turned eighty-four this last spring, and she was starting to forget things. Mom had decided that Grandma needed to move out of her small home of fifty years, so the main goal of our trip was to help Grandma go through her things. And she had a LOT of things. It wasn’t going to be fun.

Sitting on my bed, I thought back to my attempt at getting out of this trip and tried to figure out where I had gone wrong.