Jubilee July's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

The next address on her list belonged to a friend she had not seen in eleven years. Jubilee walked there with the satchel pressed against her hip. She knew the rule for this house before she knocked. A vague card would not work twice. If she stood on the step with nothing but a date and a tree, the door would close. She needed proof that the day would be worth the drive. The house sat back from the road behind a low hedge. The blinds were down in every window. The front door was shut tight, and a folded flyer stuck out of the mail slot from days ago. Jubilee stopped at the bottom step. She did not knock yet. She set the satchel on the walk and opened the flap. She laid out the lemonade bottle, the tin of butter tarts, and the notes she had written for each friend, one beside the other on the stone. Last, from the front pocket, she pulled the four drafts of the note she had written for the man she had drifted from. The pages were curled and smudged, scribbled over in two colors of ink, corners worn soft from handling. She set them down too, in order, so the worst one sat on top. She knocked. Footsteps came slow to the door. It opened a hand's width. Jubilee did not start with the date. She pointed to the spread on the walk. She said the lemonade was the kind they used to split on the curb. She said the butter tarts were from the bakery near the parlor. She said she had written four versions of one note because she was scared of getting it wrong, and she was showing the drafts because she wanted her friend to see the work, not the polish. She said the others had notes too, and she was carrying every one of them to every door herself. Then she said the date and the tree, and she stopped talking. The door opened the rest of the way. Her friend looked at the drafts on the stone for a long moment, then at Jubilee. The answer was yes, with a condition. Her friend would come if Jubilee could get one more confirmed first. No one wanted to be the second person under the tree with only Jubilee waiting. Jubilee said she understood. She packed the satchel, left a clean copy of the invitation in her friend's hand, and walked back to the road. One yes in her pocket. A condition tied to it. Two friends still unfound, and the yes would expire if she could not deliver a second name before her friend changed her mind.