Moon Over Manifest Chapters 23-24 Summary

Chapter 23

Reading and hearing all this sad stuff from the past is really bringing Abilene down, so she decides to have some fun in the present day.
She's jumping rope with Lettie and Ruthanne. (Bubblegum, bubblegum, in a dish…)
Abilene thinks about the little wooden doll that's on her windowsill now and how much she wishes that Jinx was actually her dad as a kid.
She doesn't understand why her dad isn't in any of Miss Sadie's stories. It is kind of weird, isn't it?
The girls keep trying to figure out who the Rattler might be, and finally, they decide to go to the post office to look around. Hmmm… spies at the post office? Well, maybe…
Abilene gets separated from them by accident, and ends up running from a bulldog onto an old lady's porch—with the old lady on it.
She's good at bumbling onto porches without noticing the people sitting there, huh?
She invites her to Shady's church service on Sunday—that's thinking on her feet—and then rejoins her friends.
They're spying on the mailman, who's sticking a secretive note into Velma T.'s mailbox. Oooh, someone's got a secret crush.
Then he sits down to take a telegraph message coming in.
Abilene can understand Morse code, so she knows it says stuff like "Miss you" and "Home soon."
She runs away, holding back tears, because she wishes her daddy would send her a message like that, too.

She runs to Miss Sadie's house, but the fortune teller is in a worse mood than ever and makes Abilene work inside—making sure she stays away from the garden shed.
But Abilene manages to get her telling her story again…