Yard Sale - 5 minutes freewrite (Day 109)

She never took the bus home after the weekly visit with Chloe. She needed that one hour walk to clear up her thoughts and put on her happy face.
Chloe was in a bad shape and the worst part was you couldn't even say she was going downhill fast. That would have been a relief, but no, Chloe was lingering in that awful place, painfully aware it was the last place she'll ever live in.
The road home was pleasant, as it wasn't yet too hot to walk all the way down the quiet streets where hardly a car ever passed.
Miriam was smoking on the sidewalk, as if she couldn't smoke inside her own garden. Well, that was her place of business, after a fashion, and she did not want to inconvenience her potential buyers. The bright orange Yard Sale hung on the fence as usual. All in the neighborhood knew Miriam wasn't actually selling her own stuff, but things she salvaged from the trash or bought in second-hand shops, but nobody bothered the sweet old lady to tell her what she was doing was sort of illegal.
She wasn't in a mood for chat today, so she just nodded to Miriam and went on her way. Maybe next week. That's what she always told herself.

A couple of weeks after Chloe's funeral, she found herself on those streets again. She realized she missed those quiet walks. She missed Chloe, too.
Miriam was busy taking out some books from a box and placing them on the table in neat rows. She couldn't resist the temptation so she wandered inside the yard. Mostly classics - well, she already had plenty of classics. She was about to leave when she spotted the tattered and weirdly familiar cover of 'Robinson Crusoe'. How she'd loved that book when she was a teenager. She picked the book, trying to remember if she still had a copy. Hard to tell, most of the books retrieved from her parents home were still stored in a couple of boxes in the basement.
On the first page of the book, some faded words, she couldn't make out. She fished for her glasses in the purse and put them on:
"Happy sweet 16, dear Chloe. Love, Jane."

Written as part of the 5 minutes freewrite challenge created by @mariannewest!