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Cristy didn’t know what she deserved, but she did know what she felt. Last night had been difficult. Samantha’s mother, Georgia, had arrived with Samantha’s precocious daughter. Georgia was more reserved than Samantha, an attractive middle-aged woman, fit and trim. The cinnamon color of her hair was probably real, since she had a redhead’s pale skin. Her eyes were nearly the same warm brown as her hair, and while she had a nice smile, it only rarely appeared. Cristy, who knew she was feeling particularly vulnerable, had sensed that Georgia was watching, even judging her. In response she had tried to melt into the background.
Edna, on the other hand, was much like her mother, warm and open, even thoughtful in a way Cristy hadn’t expected of a twelve-year-old. Her maturity and natural warmth had made Cristy shrink even further into herself. She’d been afraid to accept the obvious offer of friendship. By the time she’d excused herself to go to bed, Cristy had felt like a heifer at the county fair. Admired, petted and sadly counting the hours until she was sold for hamburger.
In her head she went over the weekend schedule, which Samantha had explained during their trip here. Last night only Samantha’s little family and Cristy had stayed at the house. Samantha had cooked spaghetti and made a salad, and Cristy had been able to eat very little of either. Sometime today another of the five trustees would visit, too. A woman named Harmony would be up after breakfast with her baby daughter, Lottie.
Harmony was a little younger than Cristy and lived on a farm at the foot of Doggett Mountain on the road down to Asheville. She helped the couple who owned it with everything from child and animal care to tending a half-acre vegetable garden. Lottie had been born three months ago and officially was named Charlotte Louise after the woman who’d bequeathed them this land. Cristy didn’t know anything else about her, except that Samantha seemed to think they would quickly become friends.
Cristy was already counseling herself to make sure that didn’t happen.
She dreaded the day ahead, but she dreaded tomorrow even more. Tomorrow she was supposed to drive to the house where her own baby was waiting for her. And what would she find when she got there? What new and terrible things would she learn about herself?
There was a soft knock on her door, and she bolted upright. Her heart was pounding. “Yes?”
The door opened a crack, and Samantha, in a gray track suit, peeked in. “I just made a pot of coffee and I brought you a cup if you’re interested.”
Cristy didn’t know what to say. She hesitated, then she nodded thanks. “But you don’t have to wait on me.”
“I wanted some, and I figured you’d be up early because I hear that’s what you’re used to.”
Cristy couldn’t remember ever being served coffee—or anything, for that matter—in bed. As a child she’d been required to go to the table for meals even when she was sick. Her mother had been a big proponent of “cleanliness is next to godliness,” and had waged a constant battle against crumbs and spills.
And Jackson? Jackson had seen bed in a completely different light.
Samantha crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, turning the handle of a pottery mug so Cristy could grasp it. “I added sugar and cream. I figure if you don’t normally drink it with both, you won’t mind it this once. But if you do drink it this way, you’d hate it black.”
Cristy could feel herself smiling. “I only started drinking coffee in Raleigh. It was the best way to get going, but I always add everything I can.”
“This is part decaf, so you won’t get going too fast, but that’s all my mother will drink.”
“Edna looks so much like you, but you don’t look like your—” Cristy stopped herself, aware she might offend Samantha.
“Like my mom? I know. People are usually surprised. They want to know if I’m adopted, but I’m not. My father was half African-American, half Korean. So I’m an all-American mutt.”
“You’re a showstopper.”
“It took me some time to love myself, but I’m happy to be me.”
“That must feel good.”
“It’s something you have to work at.” Samantha got up. “Everybody’s stirring, but take your time. We’re not on a schedule. There’s cereal and toast for breakfast, and plenty of fresh fruit. Just help yourself whenever you’re ready to come down. If we’re not around, we’ll be off on a walk. Mom loves wildflowers, and she brought her guide. It’s a little early in the spring at this elevation, but she notes dates and location when she finds something new. We’ll probably be scouting the woods for spring beauties and trout lilies.”
Cristy watched her go, the mug of coffee warming her hands.
* * *
Everybody was already downstairs before Cristy dared take a shower; then she spent what was probably too long in the bathroom, luxuriating in hot water, privacy and no one telling her that time was almost up. She washed her hair and combed it away from her face. Her hair was longer than she’d worn it before prison, inches below her shoulders when it was wet, but she’d had no desire to let another inmate in “cosmo,” the cosmetology courses at the prison, sharpen their skills on her. Curly hair was difficult to cut and manage, and she hadn’t wanted to end up feeling worse about herself than she already did.
Back in her room she sorted through her new clothes. In addition to the jacket, Samantha had paid for two outfits a size smaller than she’d worn before NCCIW, and now she changed into the most casual, jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. By the time she was ready to go downstairs, the hike was about to begin.
“We can wait if you want to come along,” Georgia said, after greeting her with a nod and one of her rare smiles. “We’re in no hurry.”
“You go ahead. I’ll eat, if that’s all right.”
“It wouldn’t be right if you didn’t eat.” Samantha finished zipping a light jacket. “Make yourself at home. If Harmony and Lottie arrive, introduce yourself.”
Preparations complete, the trio left, and the house was suddenly silent. Cristy realized they had just sauntered off and left a convicted felon in their house alone. Of course, what would she make off with? Crockery from the kitchen? Pillows on the sofa? It wasn’t the kind of place where valuables were kept. She supposed they’d felt perfectly safe.
And wasn’t that a thought unworthy of all the generosity they had shown her?
The kitchen was well equipped with sensibly arranged basics. Cooking utensils standing in a wide-mouth canning jar beside an electric stove. Knives on a magnetic strip along the wall, pots and pans hanging from an iron rack overhead. A cupboard was filled with canned goods and jars. Another held staples, mixing bowls and measuring cups, and brightly colored dishes were visible on open shelves. Cooking wasn’t one of the things she did well. She had worked in the kitchen at the prison, but her job had involved scrubbing and cleaning after others did preparation. She had never asked to be moved up the line. She had carefully avoided any job that required following a recipe.
An open box of Cheerios waited on the table beside a half carton of fresh blueberries. She poured some of both into a bowl and added milk from the refrigerator. There were bread and butter on the table, too, but she carefully put them away.
She ate and cleaned up, enjoying both. The kitchen was a cheerful place that looked freshly painted. She liked the pale lemon color and the framed vintage pictures of women on one wall that looked as if they had come from old magazines. Someone had added words, decals in flowing script, as if in comment. She wondered what they said. She tried to sound one out but after a moment gave up with a shrug.
She knew she should probably do something useful while the others were gone, something to show she was going to be a tenant they could count on, but the house was dust-free. She peeked outside, then ventured out to the porch, but even that didn’t need sweeping. She perched on an old metal glider and gave a tentative push with her feet. It creaked cheerfully, and she settled against mismatched cushions to slide back and forth.
On the porch she didn’t feel as overwhelmed as she had yesterday on the walk. She felt contained by the pillars and roof, even protected. She wondered when or if she would begin to feel like the woman she’d been before prison. Back then she had loved to hike. Outdoors, with a million different things to look at and examine, she had felt just like everyone else. When she had lived behind the shop she’d regularly brought home leaves, pretty stones, moss-covered sticks, and arranged them on her bedside table or her living room shelves. Sometimes she had used her finds in arrangements when a client had wanted something more natural or interesting than a dozen red roses or daisies dyed blindingly bright colors that Mother Nature had never considered. Betsy had encouraged her to find her own style.
She would tramp the woods again, she supposed. She would do a great number of things in the years to come. Unfortunately those days seemed far in the future.
She heard a car and got to her feet. A pale green SUV came into view, a small one, but it took the steep driveway with ease and came to a stop next to Georgia’s and Samantha’s cars. As she watched, a young woman got out, blond hair swinging over her shoulders as she opened the rear passenger-side door and leaned in. A few minutes later she emerged with a small bundle and a bag she slung over her shoulder. A large shaggy golden dog emerged next; then together they started up the wide terraced steps to the house.
Cristy wasn’t sure how to greet this visitor. She knew this had to be Harmony. The baby—who was certainly at the center of the warmly wrapped bundle—was carried tenderly against her chest.
Cristy rose and went to the porch steps, but not down them. The dog had stopped at the bottom to sniff the bushes. “Hi,” she said shyly. “Are you Harmony?”
“That’s me. You must be Cristy.”
Cristy smiled, although it didn’t feel natural. “Do you need help?”
“I have everything. I don’t need much for a day. Just wait until she has to have her favorite toys and blankets and food and whatever else these little tyrants require. I guess we edge slowly into that, and mothers don’t notice some little person has turned them into a pack animal.”
Cristy didn’t know what to say. The last time she had been near a baby, it had been her own. She had never been particularly comfortable with children, and the smaller they were, the less comfortable she was. This one seemed particularly small.
Harmony dropped her bag beside the glider and sat down. “Join me? Or are you in the middle of something?”
“I was just...” She thought about what to say and discarded “worrying.” “Enjoying the view,” she said instead.
“It’s so lovely here. I come whenever I have the chance, just to breathe. The air down below’s just fine, and I live out in the country. But there’s something about the air higher up.” She nudged the blanket away from the baby’s face and cradled her tiny head in the crook of her left arm. “Lottie here seems to like it, too. She’s always quieter, but maybe it’s the trip. All those twists and turns probably put her in a trance. And Velvet—that’s the sniffer down there—loves to find out what critters passed this way in the night.”
Cristy peeked at the baby. She had a sweet little pointy chin and surprisingly long eyelashes, like feathers against her cheek. Her hair was the palest brown, not quite blond like her mother’s, and there wasn’t much of it, just enough to be seen.
“She’s lovely,” Cristy said.
“Especially when she’s asleep, although now that she’s beginning to smile, I think she could win a beauty contest.”
“When do they start to smile?”
“Little smiles really early, but at about three to four months they last longer, and she smiles when she’s responding to something she likes.”
“She’s three months?”
“Thirteen weeks.”
The baby opened her eyes and blinked a few times, as if she was trying to focus. Then she closed them again, as if all that blinking wasn’t worth the effort.
“She’ll wake up for sure in a little while,” Harmony said. “And she’ll be hungry. She’s always hungry.”
“I’ve never spent much time around babies.”
Harmony nodded. “I never had, either. I did a little babysitting and didn’t like it. It’s different when it’s your own. Marilla—she and her husband, Brad, own the farm where I live—she says she didn’t like children at all, not one bit, until she had her first. Then she fell madly in love. She has two adorable little boys, and I’m with them so much I’ve fallen in love with them, too.”
Cristy wondered if this was just the way things happened. Would she feel that way after she spent time with Michael?
“It sneaks up on you,” Harmony said, as if she were reading Cristy’s mind. “But it must have been hard for you to have your son taken away after he was born.”
Cristy wasn’t surprised Harmony knew her circumstances. “Sure,” she said, with little conviction in her voice. “Only I knew from the start I wouldn’t be able to keep him with me.”
“That seems wrong. You should have been allowed to bond with him.”
“And then have him taken away?”
Harmony met her eyes. “I’m sorry. You’re right. And maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, only I wanted you to know maybe I understand a little of what you had to go through.”
As nice as Harmony seemed, Cristy doubted that.
“I need a glass of water and a bathroom break. Would you like to hold Lottie while I’m gone?”
Cristy didn’t want to, but she knew Harmony was offering her a gift. Her own son wasn’t there to hold, but she could hold Harmony’s daughter, a substitute to practice on. And didn’t offering the baby show that Harmony trusted her, ex-con and all?
She nearly said no, but she knew staying here might be dependent on the goodwill of all the trustees, including Harmony. She held out her arms.
Harmony carefully transferred the baby. “She should sleep right through this.”
Cristy was surprised at how light the baby felt, and how sweet the little bundle smelled. She adjusted the blankets so that Lottie’s face was clear of them.
“Nothing feels quite like a sleeping baby,” Harmony said. “I’ll be right back.”
Cristy hoped so. Because sitting here, holding Harmony’s baby daughter, was the last place on earth she wanted to be. Nearly the last. Because the real last place would be at her cousin’s house holding Michael.
* * *
The day didn’t drag. Cristy had to admit that much. The others returned from their walk, and everyone worked on lunch together, which was clearly intended to be the big meal of the day. They had leftover spaghetti and salad, a vegetarian minestrone that Harmony had brought along, homemade bread and jam, courtesy of Harmony’s employer Marilla Reynolds, and brownies that Edna and Samantha had baked, claiming unconvincingly that they’d just wanted to take the chill off the kitchen.
Everybody took turns holding the baby, who was clearly a favorite. Everybody cleaned up, as if they’d done this enough to know how to work together. Harmony fed her daughter and rocked her to sleep, with the dog, who treated Cristy like a long-lost friend, asleep at her feet. Samantha set up her computer on the kitchen table to do a little work. Edna and Georgia played Monopoly, first inviting Cristy, who declined and took a nap instead.
By late afternoon everyone was ready to go, but they suggested a walk around the grounds first, just to stretch their legs before the trip back down the mountain.
Cristy didn’t want to go, but again, she felt obligated. She’d felt tense and out of place all day, but now that everyone was about to leave, she felt more so. What would it be like to be here alone? She didn’t know her neighbors and wasn’t even sure how to find them, despite a map Edna had drawn. She had her car, but there was nowhere to drive. And if she left, would she be able to find her way back? Especially in the dark?
They walked toward the barn again, Harmony carrying her daughter in a soft baby carrier strapped in front of her so Lottie was facing out and could watch the world go by. At a fork in the path they turned and started up a rise.
“It’s time to plant the spring garden,” Harmony said, “but between the baby and the garden at Marilla’s, I don’t see myself doing much here.”
“What have you planted down at Capable Canines?” Georgia asked.
“Marilla raises service dogs,” Harmony explained. “That’s the name of the kennel. In fact, Velvet produced several good litters of puppies for her, then I took her when Marilla retired her.”
“Maddie has one of Velvet’s puppies,” Edna said. “Vanilla.”
“You’ll meet Maddie and Taylor soon,” Samantha said. “They’ll be up to visit.”
Cristy was just as glad they hadn’t come today. She was already overwhelmed.
Harmony answered Georgia’s question. “Peas, lettuce and we just put in a whole plot of potatoes. Also onions, carrots. I guess that’s it so far. We’re still working on it. Marilla’s doing some of the work now. She’s improving fast. She’s just using a cane.”
“Marilla was in a car accident,” Edna explained.
They stopped at an area fenced with both rails and chicken wire, and Samantha opened the gate. The area was spacious, much larger than the word garden had conjured for Cristy.
“Wow.” She stepped in after the others. The garden wasn’t exactly abandoned. But clearly nothing had been done inside this fence for some time. “They must have grown a lot of their food here.”
“Charlotte said she and her grandmother grew and canned most of what they ate,” Harmony said. “She wasn’t much of a gardener after she left here, but Ethan—he’s Charlotte’s husband—made sure the house and land were rented and taken care of. The tenants kept up the garden.”
Cristy thought this was the most peaceful place on the property. Maybe it was the fence that separated her from all that space beyond it. But in here she felt comfortable, even safe. She could feel herself relaxing.
“What are you going to do with it?” She wasn’t sure where to aim the question. Everyone seemed to think and answer in turn.
“I think it’s a work in progress,” Georgia said. “Without much progress.”
“I could help.” Cristy heard herself volunteer without thinking about it, but as the words emerged, so did enthusiasm. “I haven’t done a lot, but when I was little I helped a neighbor with her garden. She paid me in Hershey bars and potato chips. It was our secret.” She smiled a little.
“I’d be glad to come up when I can and help you get things started,” Harmony said. “But it’s going to need to be tilled. Maybe some manure worked in. I’ll ask Marilla. She’ll know. I bet she’d come up and give us advice.”
“Don’t count on me,” Georgia said. “Plants wither when they see me coming.”
Samantha warned Edna to be careful of snakes in a tangle of blackberry brambles in the corner where she was exploring. Then she joined in the conversation. “I’ll do what I can, but it won’t be a lot of help, I’m afraid. I’m swamped at work.”
“Taylor and Maddie might help,” Harmony said. “But maybe this year we can just do a small piece of it, to get things started.”
Cristy was way ahead of that, envisioning a thriving garden, vegetables, herbs and, best of all, flowers. All kinds of flowers for bouquets. Flowers she could sell to make a little money.
“I’d like to try,” she said. “It would give me something to do while I’m here. When I’m not looking for work,” she added, afraid they would think she was planning to take advantage of them.
“Don’t worry about that right away. There aren’t a lot of job possibilities around here,” Samantha said. “Just use this time to figure things out, if you can. Get yourself settled in. If you want to do some work in the garden because it sounds like fun, please do. We’d better get back. We’ll walk you to the house and get our things.”
As the others chatted, Cristy kept to herself. All day she’d wished for silence and space, but now that they were leaving, she was gripped with fear. What would it be like to live here without company? There were locks on the doors, and a telephone. There was even a television set, although reception was nonexistent, but there was a DVD player.
