Elizabeth Church - All the Beautiful Girls - An uplifting story of freedom, love and identity

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018

Copyright © 2018 by Elizabeth J. Church

Cover design by Anna Morrison

Cover photograph © Getty Images / The LIFE Picture

Collection / Gordon Parks

Elizabeth J. Church asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008267933

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008267957

Version: 2018-02-01

Dance, when you’re broken open.

Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.

Dance in the middle of the fighting.

Dance in your blood.

Dance when you’re perfectly free.

—Rumi

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Lily Decker

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Ruby Wilde

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

Lily Decker

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Lily and Sloane

Santa Fe

Author’s Note

About the Author

Also by Elizabeth J. Church

About the Publisher

The line of Aunt Tate’s jaw was fierce and unyielding, like a hammered steel length of railroad track, but her eyes were soft and puffy from furtive crying. “You can keep what you can carry,” she said and handed eight-year-old Lily a cardboard box. Lily stared into the shadows of the empty box as if it held answers to all of the mounting uncertainties that frightened her.

It was June 1957, and Uncle Miles and Aunt Tate were in Lily’s house in Salina, Kansas, picking through things like crows at the town dump. Lily wanted for them to leave everything the same as it was before, not to move her father’s copy of Andersonville from the nightstand or her big sister Dawn’s toothbrush and pink pajamas with the elephants that danced and wore silly hats. Mama’s dresser scarves should not be folded and packed in a box, and her hat with the white netting should not be wrapped in tissue paper and tucked away for Aunt Tate ’s church bazaar. Lily’s whole life was disappearing—all of her history, everything that fixed her feet to the earth and held her safe.

“C’mon, honey,” Aunt Tate said, trying to prod Lily into action. “The longer we stay here, the more it’s going to hurt. Let’s just get this over and done with, all right?” Aunt Tate clumsily patted Lily’s shoulder and picked up a box she’d packed for Uncle Miles to load onto the back of his pickup. “Get a move on, Lily,” Aunt Tate said, this time firmly, and then headed down the hallway.

There was no place Lily wanted to be, to stay, other than home. This home. Her home. But, standing in the middle of her former life, Lily realized she didn’t have a choice. She looked at her bed with the deep purple bedspread, the curtains Mama had made with the purple fringe running along the hem. Her stuffed animals, still sitting in a row on top of her pillow, just as she’d left them in her Before Life. Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy, the gingerbread man with the nap rubbed into nonexistence by her love. The deliciously soft pink bunny rabbit that had appeared in her Easter basket one year. The desk her father made that was just her size with a cabinet door she could open and close. Her red leather jewelry box with the mirror inside the lid and the ballerina that twirled on one toe while a tinkling, silvery bell played “Frère Jacques.”

When Lily had asked Aunt Tate what would happen to the house and everything in it, Aunt Tate said, “That’s for the adults to decide.” Lily knew better than to push her luck, and so she let it be.

Dangling her legs in her apple-red pedal pushers, Lily sat on the edge of her bed and picked up the pink rabbit, tugging gently on his long satin ears. The things she wanted to put in the box wouldn’t fit. Her family couldn’t fit. The only home she ’d ever known could not be wedged within those four cardboard walls. Her swing set, the toy telephones she and Dawn used to call each other. The familiar view out her bedroom window, the way the leaves on the elm tree turned their silvery backs to the breezes just before a rainstorm. Her parents dancing in the living room while Brook Benton sang “Love Made Me Your Fool,” his voice rumbling smooth and low on the hi-fi; her father’s hands threaded into Mama’s thick gold hair; Mama’s full-skirted pastel dresses. The cool, apricot-colored satin lining of Mama’s best coat, and how it smelled of ripe pears and wisteria. No one was going to call Lily Scallywag —not anymore. And Lily couldn’t fold and pack Dawn’s skinny ankles turning cartwheels or her sister’s voice reciting the endless “Paul Revere’s Ride” until Lily wanted to scream. Nothing fit, including Lily. Lily no longer fit anywhere.