Goodnight June: A Novel Read online

  Praise for The Last Camellia

  “This tale has it all: an English garden, a brooding lord of the manor, and a story that bestselling author Jio deftly unveils as fast as you can turn the pages.”

  —Coastal Living

  “Jio infuses her haunting story of love and loss with an engrossing mystery that will linger long after the final page.”

  —Romantic Times

  “The images of the flowers, the landscape, and the manor house are vivid and make for a tantalizing read.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “An engaging story of two generations trying to move forward despite the powerful pull of the past. A thoughtful examination of history’s ability to haunt the present and the power of forgiveness to set things right.”

  —Booklist

  Praise for Blackberry Winter

  “Terrific . . . compelling . . . an intoxicating blend of mystery, history, and romance, this book is hard to put down.”

  —Real Simple

  “Ingenious . . . imaginative.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “Blackberry Winter never loses momentum. . . . Jio’s writing is engaging and fluid.”

  —Mystery Scene

  “A fascinating exploration of love, loss, scandal, and redemption.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This novel will enchant Jio’s fans and make them clamor for her next offering.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, “A Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2012”

  “There’s no doubt that anyone who picks up this book will instantly fall in love with it and the author.”

  —Brodart

  “Sarah Jio’s writing is exquisite and engrossing.”

  —Elin Hilderbrand, bestselling author of Silver Girl

  Praise for The Bungalow

  Pulpwood Queens Book Club, Official Selection 2012

  “The Bungalow is my favorite book of the year.”

  —Jen Lancaster

  “Jio’s first-person, Hemingway-ish writing style, like her The Violets of March (judged by Library Journal as one of the Best Books of 2011), is a pleasure to read. . . . Jio has done a superb job of pulling together the themes of friendship, betrayal, and endearing love. These keep us engrossed in the novel to an unpredictable conclusion.”

  —The Historical Novels Review

  “Unabashedly romantic . . . thanks to Jio’s deft handling of her plot and characters. Fans of Nicholas Sparks will enjoy this gentle historical love story.”

  —Library Journal

  “A captivating tale.”

  —Booklist

  “A heartfelt, engaging love story set against the fascinating backdrop of the War in the Pacific.”

  —Kristin Hannah, author of Home Front

  Praise for The Violets of March

  A Library Journal Best Book of 2011

  “Feed the kids before you settle in with journalist Sarah Jio’s engrossing first novel, The Violets of March. This mystery-slash-love story will have you racing to the end—cries of ‘Mom, I’m hungry!’ be damned.”

  —Redbook

  “A gem . . . True escape fiction that can take you away.”

  —WGBH-TV

  “Masterfully written.”

  —The New Jersey Star-Ledger

  “In a sweet debut novel, a divorcee visiting her aunt on gorgeous Bainbridge Island, Washington, finds a diary dating to 1943 that reveals potentially life-changing secrets.”

  —Coastal Living

  “The right book finds you at the right time. The Violets of March will become a source of healing and comfort for its readers.”

  —The Costco Connection

  “In The Violets of March, debut author Sarah Jio beautifully blends the stories of two women—one of the past, one of the present—together to create a captivating and enthralling novel of romance, heartbreak, and redemption.”

  —Times Record News (Wichita Falls, Kansas)

  “Jio’s debut is a rich blend of history, mystery, and romance. Fans of Sarah Blake’s The Postmistress should enjoy this story.”

  —Library Journal

  “[An] endearing tale of past heartbreaks and new beginnings. The story’s setting and sentiment are sure to entice readers and keep them captivated page after page.”

  —Romantic Times

  “A perfect summer read for an escape into a fictional character’s challenges with the charm of a local Northwest setting.”

  —425 magazine

  “Refreshing . . . lovable.”

  —First for Women magazine

  “Mix a love story, history, and a mystery and what takes root? The Violets of March, a novel that reminds us how the past comes back to haunt us, and packs a few great surprises for the reader along the way. “

  —Jodi Picoult, author of Sing You Home and House Rules

  A PLUME BOOK

  GOODNIGHT JUNE

  Michelle Moore

  SARAH JIO is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Violets of March, a Library Journal Best Book of 2011; The Bungalow; Blackberry Winter; The Last Camellia; and Morning Glory. She is also a journalist who has written for Glamour; O, The Oprah Magazine; Redbook; Real Simple; and many other publications. Jio’s novels have become book club favorites and have been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in Seattle with her husband and their three young boys. Learn more about her at sarahjio.com or facebook.com/sarahjioauthor.

  Also by Sarah Jio

  The Violets of March

  The Bungalow

  Blackberry Winter

  The Last Camellia

  Morning Glory

  PLUME

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014

  Copyright © 2014 by Sarah Jio

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Jio, Sarah.

  Goodnight June : a novel / Sarah Jio.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-101-62003-8 (eBook)

  1. Aunts—Death—Fiction. 2. Estates (Law)—Fiction. 3. Letters—Fiction. 4. Brown, Margaret Wise, 1910-1952.—Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. gsafd I. Title.

  PS3610.I6G66 2014

  813'.6—dc23

  2013039109

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise for Blackberry Winter

  About the Author

  Also by Sarah Jio

  Title Page

  Copyright
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  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from The Violets of March

  For my sister and dearest friend, Jessica Campbell

  Everything that anyone would ever look for is usually where they find it.

  —Margaret Wise Brown

  Author’s Note

  Do you remember the first time you read Goodnight Moon? While many discover the book as a child (with more than fourteen million copies sold, it’s delighted countless children around the world since its first printing in 1947), I was only vaguely familiar with the story until I received a copy as a baby shower gift. I remember the first time I read it to my eldest son, Carson, when he was a baby. We both became instantly fascinated with the tale—a lullaby, really—about a little bunny going to sleep. At the end of each day, I found it so calming to read those pages (which I soon memorized). Night after night, it was a comfort to return to the “great green room.”

  My two younger sons soon joined in our nightly read. All three have a favorite page, and each adores looking for the mouse. Over the years we’ve come to affectionately call the story Moon Book. (My littlest, Colby, can’t pronounce the word book, so he calls it Moon Cook.) And it’s fair to say that Goodnight Moon has become as irreplaceable in our home as it has in our hearts.

  I once wrote a humorous parody of Goodnight Moon for Parenting, which went on to be one of the most popular pages on the magazine’s website. Clearly, more than a half century after its publication, Goodnight Moon continues to speak to us.

  When I come to love a book, I tend to want to learn about its author. So, I set out to research the life of Margaret Wise Brown. I wanted to know more about the vivacious, beautiful children’s book author who penned more than one hundred stories before her untimely death in 1952, when she was just forty-two years old.

  I read everything I could get my hands on about Margaret, and in my research, I found that we have a lot in common. She was restless and goal oriented, just as I am (two traits that make for a productive yet sometimes tortured writer). She was also, like me, a dreamer. A rabbit-shaped cloud in the sky might inspire a new book, just as a canoe ride to a little island near her home in Maine could provide the muse for a brand-new series.

  Margaret was fiercely creative. And in reading about her life, I know that she must have felt, as I do, creativity can be a force of (human) nature. Margaret wrote of stories coming from every direction. Some mornings, upon waking, she’d jot down ideas for new books she had dreamed about overnight.

  When your brain works in this way, it can be both exciting and crazy-making. (Imagine being halfway through a first draft of a novel, when characters from a new book begin whispering in your ear relentlessly—this is my life.) My novelist friend Carol Cassella, who also happens to be a doctor (overachiever, no?), calls this state, half jokingly, a “chronic illness.” Good or bad, it seems that Margaret and I have this in common.

  While vulnerable as a kitten in matters of love, Margaret was also a smart and often shrewd businesswoman who looked after her interests in publishing, along with the interests of her illustrator friends, never settling for second best.

  I love this about her. She was both spirited and determined, yet she was also a gentle soul and a loyal friend. She was impulsive, too. One of my favorite stories about Margaret involves her spending the entire sum of a royalty check on flowers, hundreds of them. She’s believed to have bought the whole cart on a New York City street; she then decorated her home with flowers and threw a party for her friends.

  It’s no wonder Margaret Wise Brown left such an impression on the world, but because of her sudden death, she left secrets, too. Nobody really knows, exactly, the true inspiration for Goodnight Moon. Margaret is believed to have written the story in the period of a single morning at Cobble Court, her New York City cottage. So I began to imagine what could have been the glimmer of the idea for the iconic children’s book, and, like Margaret, I let my imagination take me away.

  Soon, my characters were whispering. There was June Andersen, a thirty-five-year-old New York City banker whose high-stakes job is taking a toll on her health; and her great-aunt Ruby, who has left her life’s work, the legendary Seattle children’s bookstore, Bluebird Books, to her beloved niece. The bookstore is full of secrets, and in it June discovers letters between her aunt Ruby and the late Margaret Wise Brown—letters that detail a beautiful friendship that may have had a profound impact on the author.

  But while I wanted this to be a story inspired by Margaret’s life and her artistic genius, I also wanted my character June to take center stage. This is, after all, her journey. It takes courage to be vulnerable, to face a rocky past, and to attempt to start over again, to love again. June will have to figure out if she can do that, and when the bookstore falls into financial peril, the fate of Ruby’s precious Bluebird Books is in June’s hands. Will she save the place and its secrets? Will she save herself?

  Margaret Wise Brown left this world twenty-six years before I was born. And while our paths never crossed, I often think about what it would have been like to meet her, to sit down over a cup of coffee (or maybe a lunchtime cocktail, as Margaret may have liked) and discuss the writing life, cottontail bunnies, the three little bears sitting on chairs. All of it. I’d tell her about this novel I’ve written, and hope she’d be pleased. We’d laugh and tell stories, and I’d share how my four-year-old, Russell, is enamored with her book The Sailor Dog. We’d talk about the plight of brick-and-mortar bookstores in the digital age, and the challenge of keeping children loving literature when television and video games and other shiny new things have such allure. I’d compliment her on the flower cart stunt (if only I had the guts to pull off something like that), and I’d thank her for being such an inspiration.

  Simply put, just to be in her presence, I’d be over the moon.

  —SJ

  Chapter 1

  New York City

  May 3, 2005

  Everyone has a happy place, the scene that comes into view when you close your eyes and let your mind transport you to the dot on the globe where life is cozy, safe, warm. For me, that place is the bookstore, with its emerald green walls and the big picture windows that, at night, frame the stars twinkling above. The embers in the fireplace burn the color of a setting orange sun, and I’m wrapped in a quilt, seated in a big wingback chair reading a book.

  “June?”

  I open my eyes quickly, and the stark white walls beyond my hospital bed reset my frame of mind to reality. The thin sheet draped over my body is stiff and scratchy, bleached one too many times, and I shiver as a nurse places her icy hands on my wrist.

  “Didn’t mean to wake you, honey,” she says, fastening a blood pressure cuff around my arm.

  I stare at the tattoo on her forearm, a butterfly with a lot of pink and purple detailing, as she squeezes the black pump between her fingers. I immediately thank my seventeen-year-old self (profusely) for not actually going through with that wraparound dolphin ankle tattoo I was once this close to getting. A moment later she rips open the Velcro and frowns. “High,” she says. “T
oo high for a woman your age. Dr. Cater is going to want to talk to you about this.”

  I see the disapproving look in her eyes and I want to blurt out, “I’m a vegetarian! I run marathons! I haven’t even had dessert in two years!” But my cell phone chimes, and I pick it up quickly. It’s a text from my boss, Arthur.

  “Where are you? Thought you were working on second-quarter reports tonight?”

  I feel my heart beat faster and I take a deep breath. He doesn’t know I’m in the hospital, of course. No one does. And no one will. The nurse begins to speak, and I hold up my hand for silence, then sit up to compose myself before hitting Reply. “Got sidetracked with another project,” I type. “Will be in asap.” The project, of course, is this pesky health condition of mine. If my body would just cooperate.

  I look up at the clock on the wall: It’s after eight. I was admitted at noon with high blood pressure—dangerously high, the ER doctor said. “Am I having a heart attack?” I asked. I’ve been having symptoms for at least a month, but at a business lunch today—me, and eleven men in suits—I had to excuse myself. I felt dizzy, nauseated. My hands tingled. I couldn’t let them see me like that, so I lied and said I had to go back to the office and put out a fire. Except I didn’t go back to the office. I got into a cab, and I went to the emergency room.

  I fidget with the IV in my arm that’s slowly administering blood pressure medication. This isn’t supposed to happen when you’re thirty-five. I eye my bag on the chair across the room anxiously. I need to get out of here.

  As I stand up, the door opens and an older man in a white coat appears. He’s frowning. “And where do you think you’re going, Ms. Andersen?” Although in place of my name I imagine him saying “missy.”

  I don’t like his tone, even if he is a doctor, even if his ultimate goal is to save my life. “I’m feeling better,” I say, still fiddling with the wire attached to my arm. “I have an important project at work that I have to get to.”

  The doctor walks closer and sets my chart down on the table beside my bed. He’s obviously in no hurry to have me discharged. “What’s it going to take?”