Finding Libbie Read Free Page A

of a shock, dear. It was something none of us talked about. But now there’s no reason for you not to know. Let’s take the box downstairs, and you can look through it while I make some coffee.”
    Emily covered the box and followed her grandmother downstairs, dazed. She sat at the table and started pulling photos from the box and examining each one. One was of the couple sitting in a canoe, smiling playfully at each other on what looked to be Lake Ogimaa. The girl was wearing a two-piece swimsuit with a netlike cover-up and Jack was in his swim trunks. Even in black and white, Emily could tell they were deeply tanned. There were more pictures from prom, and a few of her uncle Larry—her mother’s brother and Jack’s best friend—clowning around with the couple. Another showed Libbie and Jack smiling happily, standing in front of a cottage. Reaching deeper into the box, Emily pulled out ripped up pages that looked to be from a photo album. When she peered closer, she saw that they were wedding photos of her father and Libbie. Some of the pages were torn, as if they’d been ripped angrily from the album. Why?
    Emily glanced up at her grandmother as she set a mug of coffee in front of her. “Dad was married before,” she said, hardly believing her eyes. She gazed down at one of the photos in her hand. It was her father in a tuxedo with tails, and Libbie wearing a lovely satin wedding gown with lace sleeves and a long train that swirled around her feet. Both she and Jack were smiling happily at the camera. Emily returned her gaze to her grandmother, who’d sat down opposite her. “They look so happy.”
    Bev sighed as she looked at the photo in Emily’s hand. “They were happy, dear. So happy that there was no possible way for anyone to predict it would end as it did.”
    “What happened?”
    Bev lifted the photo of Jack and Libbie in the canoe and gazed at it, looking as if she were trying to remember a long-lost memory. Finally, she set it down and looked into Emily’s eyes. “You know that your father loved your mother dearly, don’t you, Ems? He wouldn’t be grieving so if he hadn’t.”
    Emily nodded. “I know he did.”
    Bev nodded. “Well, your mother was eight years younger than Jack, and she was Larry’s baby sister. The boys really didn’t have much to do with her since they were so much older, unless they’d let her tag along every now and again. Libbie, she was the same age as Jack, and they’d known each other since kindergarten. But it was the year he turned seventeen that Jack’s eyes were drawn to Libbie Wilkens, and he saw no one else after that.”
    “Libbie was a Wilkens? One of the rich Wilkenses?”
    “Yes. Her parents owned half the businesses in town, what little bit of town we had here in 1968. Of course, they’d been handed down businesses from their parents and grandparents, but her father had built up their legacy even more. They owned the grocery store, hardware store, a furniture store, one of the dime stores, a building supply store, and even half of one of the two banks in town then. They lived in a lovely home on the north end of the lake, where Libbie had friends over every sunny day all summer. And it was that summer, between their junior and senior years, that Jack fell head over heels in love with Libbie.”

CHAPTER TWO
    JACK AND LIBBIE
    1968
    Jack stared across the high school gym at Libbie as she danced in Bill Driscoll’s arms. She looked like an angel as she glided across the floor in a white dress. The full chiffon skirt that fell just below her knees billowed as she moved. Her long blond hair was pulled up into a loose chignon with tendrils curling down around her face and neck. She was the most beautiful girl at the prom, and every boy wanted to dance with her. Jack wished he could pull her out of Bill’s arms and dance with her all night, and he was plotting exactly how to do so at that very moment.
    “Hey, at least pretend you’re with me and stop