LITMIR.BIZ

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to decipher the spidery, old-fashioned handwriting with its flourishes and curlicues in faded blue ink. “First entry, 1837. December.”

      She grinned at her grandmother.

      Marvela reached into the cavernous depths of the green leather trunk. “Cool.”

      Cool? She threw her grandmother a fond look before turning her attention once more to the book.

      “Time period’s right for Quincy’s museum and the commemoration. But too early to explain the flags.” Linden thumbed to the last page. “Last entry is dated—huh?”

      Linden let out a gust of air. “1900. Perhaps a diary where she recorded only the milestones of her life. Maybe she’ll explain the flags, after all.”

      Marvela popped her head out from the trunk. “Did I tell you how much I like that young man of yours, Dr. Quincy Sawyer? I’m glad he’s going to be okay.”

      Linden cut her eyes at her grandmother. “He’s not my young man, Gram. Stop playing matchmaker. Been there, done that.” She tossed her head, sending a wave of tendrils tumbling out of her chignon. “Never again. And at my age . . .”

      Marvela snorted. “Twenty-nine. And just because of one jerk, you’re hardly too old to lock your hope chest away for good.”

      Graduates of Miss Ophelia’s, like Marvela, refused to understand in the twenty-first century, girls didn’t have hope chests. Or dream of love and take-your-breath romance in the crazy world of modern life.

      Especially not after an experience with someone like The Jerk.

      Marvela patted the side of the trunk. “Why, I bet this might’ve been Sarah Jane Hopkins’s own hope chest.” She gave Linden a sly, sidelong look. “And none of us are too old for romance.”

      She made a show of smoothing the non-existent wrinkles from her perfectly creased jeans. “Not even me. Why, at my advanced age,” Marvela drawled in that cultured Southern belle tone she learned at Miss Ophelia’s, “you never know what I’m liable to do.”

      Truer words had never been spoken. Linden fought the urge to smile.

      “’Cause,” her grandmother laid her French-manicured hand on Linden’s knee, “you never can tell what adventure might be just around the corner. When you least expect it—”

      “Like a tornado or E. coli?”

      Marvela rolled her eyes toward the rafters.

      Smothering her laughter, Linden stuck her nose into the pages of Sarah Jane Hopkins’s diary.

      ***

      “Like this, Eli.” Walker tossed the small, deer hide-covered ball into the air and lobbed his netted hickory stick, propelling the ball in the direction of Eli’s outstretched stick.

      “I’m open,” yelled Matt, another one of Walker’s stickball recruits. He sprinted forward, and then side-to-side dodging his opponents in the scrimmage match.

      Eli spun and leaped, stick stretched high, into the air. With a whoosh, he sent the ball careening through space, over the head of a charging player straining for the interception. Matt, fending off another player in this down-and-dirty Cherokee version of lacrosse, made a leap worthy of the great Michael Jordan. Catching the ball in his net, he shook off his impending foe like a coon dog shook off bath water.

      Walker, Eli, and their team cheered, hickory sticks stabbing the air, as Matt blasted the ball between their opponent’s goal posts to score. Amidst much jubilation, Eli and company performed a small victory dance with Matt perched atop their collective shoulders.

      The rest of Walker’s Boys Club crew leaned over, hands on their knees, drawing in great gulps of air as sweat dribbled down their bare backs. Walker ambled over and clapped a hand on the nearest teen’s shoulder. “Better luck next time, Owle.”

      Jake Owle straightened, mischief in his brown eyes. “Better luck if next time Matt Cornsilk’s on our side of the scrimmage.”

      Walker laughed. It was true. Matt Cornsilk possessed an incredible agility coupled with explosive bursts of speed.

      “I promise we’ll mix it up next time.” Walker caught sight of his mother, Irene Crowe, leaning against the chain-link fence that surrounded the high school baseball field they used to practice for the stickball tournament.

      Walker’s smile faded.

      He understood why she’d come. And it wasn’t to watch him coach Cherokee stickball.

      Walker angled as the guys gathered around for further instructions. “Great practice. Don’t forget we play Wolftown next Saturday.”

      Several of the guys groaned. “They’re big.”

      “And fast,” added Eli.

      Jake smirked. “Not as fast as Matt.”

      Matt ducked his head, but grinned and scuffed his big toe in the grass.

      Eli expanded his skinny chest and pounded his fist against it. “We’re big, too. Real Snowbird Cherokee mountain men, not like those city boys.”

      Walker’s lips twitched. “I hardly think Wolftown qualifies as a city, and those boys are as Cherokee as you or I. Anyway,” he pinpointed one or two of the boys with a look, “don’t forget to practice your drills this week.”

      The boys groaned again. He held up his hand. “They build stamina and increase cardiovascular performance.” More groaning, like he’d assigned algebra or something.

      “No pain, no gain, no trophy at the festival. See ya next weekend. Ten a.m. sharp. And . . .”

      The boys had already started to shake their heads. They knew what was coming.

      Because he said it every week.

      He planted his hands on his hips. “If any of you, lazy bums, ever have a hope of getting a girlfriend, I’m begging you, please

       . . . hit the showers.”

      The guys rolled their eyes.

      Eli, his smart-mouth second cousin, jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow. “Like why don’t you follow your own advice, Coach?” He held his nose. “How about you set a good example and show us how to catch one of them sweet thangs?”

      “Not going to happen, dude.” He nudged Eli with his shoulder. “Too busy babysitting you sissies.”

      The guys laughed and fanned out to collect their equipment.

      Matt, team captain, initiated the rousing war chant the boys composed when Walker formed the group three years ago. They believed it made them sound more Cherokee, fiercer, warriorlike and that the chant struck terror in the hearts of intertribal teams like the Choctaw group from Georgia.

      Fighting a smile—because the only thing their proud war cry accomplished was to disgust the fairer sex of all races—Walker strolled over to where his mother waited.

      Shaking her head, she handed him the Cartridge Cove Volunteer Fire Department t-shirt he’d left draped over the fence. “Yeah, son, why don’t you follow your own advice and provide your old mother some more grandbabies before I expire from this earth?”

      He hunched his shoulders as he slipped the shirt over his head. As if his indomitable mother would ever be old. Like many of their Cherokee forebears, she’d probably still be kicking up her heels at the ripe old age of a hundred.

      Not to mention, nagging him to his early death about this police thing.

      “You didn’t file an application with the Sheriff like you said—”

      “Like you said.” He poked his head through the neck hole and shrugged his arms into the sleeves. “I never said. You know how I feel about that subject, Ma.”

      Irene placed her hands on her hips in a familiar, if unconscious, imitation

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