Marta's Meanderings

WaterBrook Press; Original edition (September 7, 2010)

Jane

Upper West Side, Manhattan

ONE

The mantle clock was exquisite even though its hands rested in silence at twenty minutes past two.

Carved—near as I could tell—from a single piece of mahogany, its glimmering patina looked warm to the touch. Rosebuds etched into the swirls of wood grain flanked the sides like two bronzed bridal bouquets. The clock’s top was rounded and smooth like the draped head of a Madonna. I ran my palm across the polished surface and it was like touching warm water.

Legend was this clock originally belonged to the young wife of a Southampton doctor and that it stopped keeping time in 1912, the very moment the Titanic sank and its owner became a widow. The grieving woman’s only consolation was the clock’s apparent prescience of her husband’s horrible fate and its kinship with the pain that left her inert in sorrow. She never remarried and she never had the clock fixed.

I bought it sight unseen for my great aunt’s antique store, like so many of the items I’d found for the display cases. In the year and half I’d been in charge of the inventory, the best pieces had come from the obscure estate sales that my British friend Emma Downing came upon while tooling around the southeast of England looking for oddities for her costume shop. She found the clock at an estate sale in Felixstowe and the auctioneer, so she told me, had been unimpressed with the clock’s sad history. Emma said he’d read the accompanying note about the clock as if reading the rules for rugby.

My mother watched now as I positioned the clock on the lacquered black mantle that rose above a marble fireplace. She held a lead crystal vase of silk daffodils in her hands.

“It should be ticking.” She frowned. “People will wonder why it’s not ticking.” She set the vase down on the hearth and stepped back. Her heels made a clicking sound on the parquet floor beneath our feet. “You know, you probably would’ve sold it by now if it was working. Did Wilson even look at it? You told me he could fix anything.”

I flicked a wisp of fuzz off the clock’s face. I hadn’t asked the shop’s resident and unofficial repairman to fix it. “It wouldn’t be the same clock if it was fixed.”

“It would be a clock that did what it was supposed to do.” My mother leaned in and straightened one of the daffodil blooms.

“This isn’t just any clock, Mom.” I took a step back too.

My mother folded her arms across the front of her Ann Taylor suit. Pale blue, the color of baby blankets and robins’ eggs. Her signature color. “Look, I get all that about the Titanic and the young widow, but you can’t prove any of it, Jane,” she said. “You could never sell it on that story.”

A flicker of sadness wobbled inside me at the thought of parting with the clock. This happens when you work in retail. Sometimes you have a hard time selling what you bought to sell.

“I’m thinking maybe I’ll keep it.”

“You don’t make a profit by hanging onto the inventory.” My mother whispered this, but I heard her. She intended for me to hear her. This was her way of saying what she wanted to about her aunt’s shop—which she’d inherit when Great Aunt Thea passed—without coming across as interfering.

My mother thinks she tries very hard not to interfere. But it is one of her talents. Interfering when she thinks she’s not. It drives my younger sister Leslie nuts.

“Do you want me to take it back to the store?” I asked.

“No! It’s perfect for this place. I just wish it were ticking.” She nearly pouted.

I reached for the box at my feet that I brought the clock in along with a set of Shakespeare’s works, a pair of pewter candlesticks, and a Wedgwood vase. “You could always get a CD of sound effects and run a loop of a ticking clock,” I joked.

She turned to me, childlike determination in her eyes. “I wonder how hard it would be to find a CD like that!”

“I was kidding, Mom! Look what you have to work with.” I pointed to the simulated stereo system she’d placed into a polished entertainment center behind us. My mother never used real electronics in the houses she staged, although with the clientele she usually worked with—affluent real estate brokers and equally well-off buyers and sellers—she certainly could.

“So I’ll bring in a portable player and hide it in the hearth pillows.” She shrugged and then turned to the adjoining dining room. A gleaming black dining table had been set with white bone china, pale yellow linen napkins, and mounds of fake chicken salad, mauvey rubber grapes, and plastic croissants and petit fours. An arrangement of pussy willows graced the center of the table. “Do you think the pussy willows are too rustic?” she asked.

She wanted me to say yes so I did.

“I think so, too,” she said. “I think we should swap these out for that vase of Gerbera daisies you have on that escritoire in the shop’s front window. I don’t know what I was thinking when I brought these.” She reached for the unlucky pussy willows. “We can put these on the entry table with our business cards.”

She turned to me. “You did bring yours this time, didn’t you? It’s silly for you to go to all this work and then not get any customers out of it.” My mother made her way to the entryway with the pussy willows in her hands and intention in her step. I followed her.

This was only the second house I’d helped her stage, and I didn’t bring business cards the first time because she hadn’t invited me to until we were about to leave. She’d promptly told me then to never go anywhere without business cards. Not even to the ladies room. She’d said it and then waited, like she expected me to take out my BlackBerry and make a note of it.

“I have them right here.” I reached into the front pocket of my capris and pulled out a handful of glossy business cards emblazoned with Amsterdam Avenue Antiques and its logo—three As entwined like a Celtic eternity knot. I handed them to her and she placed them in a silver dish next to her own. Sophia Keller Interior Design and Home Staging. The pussy willows actually looked wonderful against the tall jute-colored wall.

“There. That looks better!” she exclaimed as if reading my thoughts. She turned to survey the main floor of the townhouse. The owners had relocated to the Hamptons and were selling off their Manhattan properties to fund a cushy retirement. Half the décor—the books, the vases, the prints—were on loan from Aunt Thea’s shop. My mother, who’d been staging real estate for two years, brought me in a few months earlier when she discovered a stately home filled with charming and authentic antiques sold faster than the same home filled with reproductions.

“You and Brad should get out of that teensy apartment on the West Side and buy this place. The owners are practically giving it away.”

Her tone suggested she didn’t expect me to respond. I easily let the comment evaporate into the sunbeams caressing us. It was a comment for which I had had no response.

My mother’s gaze swept across the two large rooms she’d furnished and she frowned when her eyes reached the mantle and the silent clock.

“Well, I’ll just have to come back later today,” she spoke into the silence. “It’s being shown first thing in the morning.” She swung back around. “Come on. I’ll take you back.”

We stepped out into the April sunshine and to her Lexus parked across the street along a line of townhouses just like the one we’d left. As we began to drive away, the stillness in the car thickened, and I fished my cell phone out of my purse to see if I’d missed any calls while we were finishing the house. On the drive over I had a purposeful conversation with Emma about a box of old books she found at a jumble sale in Oxfordshire. That lengthy conversation filled the entire commute from the store on the seven-hundred block of Amsterdam to the townhouse on East Ninth, and I found myself wishing I could somehow repeat that providential circumstance. My mother would ask about Brad if the silence continued. There was no missed call, and I started to probe my brain for something to talk about. I suddenly remembered I hadn’t told my mother I’d found a new assistant. I opened my mouth to tell her about Stacy but I was too late.

“So what do you hear from Brad?” she asked cheerfully.

“He’s doing fine.” The answer flew out of my mouth as if I’d rehearsed it. She looked away from the traffic ahead, blinked at me, and then turned her attention back to the road. A taxi pulled in front of her, and she laid on the horn, pronouncing a curse on all taxi drivers.

“Idiot.” She turned to me. “How much longer do you think he will stay in New Hampshire?” Her brow was creased. “You aren’t going to try to keep two households going forever, are you?”

I exhaled heavily. “It’s a really good job, Mom. And he likes the change of pace and the new responsibilities. It’s only been two months.”

“Yes, but the inconvenience has to be wearing on you both. It must be quite a hassle maintaining two residences, not to mention the expense, and then all that time away from each other.” She paused but only for a moment. “I just don’t see why he couldn’t have found something similar right here in New York. I mean, don’t all big hospitals have the same jobs in radiology? That’s what your father told me. And he should know.”

“Just because there are similar jobs doesn’t mean there are similar vacancies, Mom.”

She tapped the steering wheel. “Yes, but your father said . . .”

“I know Dad thinks he might’ve been able to help Brad find something on Long Island but Brad wanted this job. And no offense, Mom, but the head of environmental services doesn’t hire radiologists.”

She bristled. I shouldn’t have said it. She would repeat that comment to my dad, not to hurt him but to vent her frustration at not having been able to convince me she was right and I was wrong. But it would hurt him anyway.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I added. “Don’t tell him I said that, okay? I just really don’t want to rehash this again.”

But she wasn’t done. “Your father has been at that hospital for twenty-seven years. He knows a lot of people.” She emphasized the last four words with a pointed stare in my direction.

“I know he does. That’s really not what I meant. It’s just Brad has always wanted this kind of job. He’s working with cancer patients. This really matters to him.”

“But the job’s in New Hampshire!”

“Well, Connor is in New Hampshire!” It sounded irrelevant even to me to mention the current location of Brad’s and my college-age son. Connor had nothing to do with any of this. And he was an hour away from where Brad was anyway.

“And you are here,” my mother said evenly. “If Brad wanted out of the city, there are plenty of quieter hospitals right around here. And plenty of sick people for that matter.”

There was an undercurrent in her tone, subtle and yet obvious, that assured me we really weren’t talking about sick people and hospitals and the miles between Manhattan and Manchester. It was as if she’d guessed what I’d tried to keep from my parents the last eight weeks.

My husband didn’t want out of the city.

He just wanted out.

Siloam; 1 edition (September 7, 2010)

EATING HABITS OF

THE NEXT GENERATION


Eating Habits and Our Future



How Has an entire generation of hefty eaters changed the face of the world? By starting young. And once again, this unflattering trend originated in America. In the United States, 17.1 percent of our children and adolescents―that's 2.5 million youth―are now reported to be either overweight or obese.


As a result of childhood obesity, we are seeing a dramatic rise in type 2 diabetes throughout the country. And because of the connection obesity has with hypertension, hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol), and heart disease, experts are predicting a dramatic rise in heart disease as our children become adults. The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) reports that overweight teens stand a 70 percent chance of becoming overweight adults, and that is increased to 80 percent

if at least one parent is overweight or obese. Because of that, heart disease and type 2 diabetes are expected to begin at a much earlier age in those who fail to beat the odds.2 Overall, this is the first generation of children that is not expected to live as long as their parents, and they will be more likely to suffer from disease and illness.


If you do not take charge of your food choices for yourself, at least do it for your children. Children follow by example, by mirroring the behavior of their parents. Don't tell them to make healthy eating choices without doing it yourself. I'm sure most of you love your children and are good parents. But ask yourself: Do you love your children enough to make the necessary lifestyle changes? Do you love them enough to educate them on what foods to eat and what foods to avoid? Do you love them enough to keep junk food out of your house and instead make healthy food more available? Do you love them enough to exercise regularly and lead by example?


If you answered yes to those questions, it is important that you not only take action right now but also that you make changes for them that last a lifetime.


But let me be honest; this is not an easy fight when it involves your children's lives. As the little boxes of information on this page illustrate, the culture in which your children are growing up is saturated with junk food that is void of nutrition but high in toxic fats, sugars, highly processed carbohydrates, and food additives. Consuming these foods has become part of childhood.


You can do it, but you must be prepared to stand strong! That's why I am ecstatic that you have picked up this book. I believe you now hold a key to truly changing your life and your children's lives.




Stand Strong!

If you're planning on taking a stand against this garbage-in, garbage-out culture, expect some opposition from every front. During the course of a year, the typical American child will watch more than thirty thousand television commercials, with many of these advertisements pitching fast-food or junk food as delicious “must-eats.” For years, fast food franchises have enticed children into their restaurants with kids' meal toys, promotional giveaways, and elaborate playgrounds. It has obviously worked for McDonald's: about 90 percent of American children between the ages of three and nine set foot in one each month.


It's All Part of the Plan

Fast-food establishments spend billions of dollars on research and marketing. They know exactly what they are doing and how to push your child's hot button. They understand the powerful impact certain foods can have. That is why comfort foods often do more than just fill the stomach; they bring about memories of the fair, playgrounds, toys, backyard birthday bashes, Fourth of July When your kids can't visit the Golden parties, childhood friends . . . the list goes on. Advertisers have keyed into this and products―most of which are brought learned to use the sight of food to stimulate the same fond childhood memories.


School Cafeteria or Fast Food Franchise?

When your kids can't visit the Golden Arches, it comes to them. Fast-food products―most of which are brought in by franchises―are sold in about 30 percent of public high school cafeterias and many elementary cafeterias.



An Alarming Trend in Children's Health



By teaching your children healthy eating habits, you can keep them at a healthy weight. Also, the eating habits your children pick up when they are young will help them maintain a healthy lifestyle when they are adults. The challenges we face are imposing. The state of children's health today is, according to recent measures, at its most dire. The rise in rates of complex, chronic childhood disorders has been well profiled. Here are some concrete examples of the current state of children's health:


Cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease in children.5

Obesity is epidemic.

Fifty percent of children are overweight.6

Diabetes now affects 1 in every 500 children. Of those children newly diagnosed with diabetes, the percentage with type 2 (“adult-onset”) has risen from less than 5 percent to nearly 50 percent in a ten-year period.

Asthma is the most prevalent chronic disease affecting American children, leading to 15 million missed days of school per year. Since 1980, the percentage of children with asthma has almost tripled.

Approximately 1 in 25 American children now suffer from food allergies.

From 1997 to 2007, the prevalence of reported food allergy increased 18 percent among children under the age of eighteen years.

One in 6 children is diagnosed with a significant neurodevelopmental disability, including 1 in 12 with ADHD. Autism affects 1 in 150 U.S. children, an extraordinary rise in prevalence.

Babies in one study were noted, at birth, to have an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants present in their umbilical cord blood.


These statistics are sobering indeed, and perhaps the most sobering is the rise in childhood obesity. Why? Obesity plays a part in several other chronic illnesses that are also on the rise among children. And there's an unwelcome side effect―more kids are being put on prescription medications for obesity-related chronic diseases. Across the board, we are witnessing increases in prescriptions for children with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and asthma. There must be a better way.


Top Three Tips for Parents


1. Lead by example. Your child will have an extremely difficult time making healthy eating choices and exercising

regularly if you don't consistently show him or her how.

2. Take baby steps that lead to lasting changes. If your child is overweight, avoid diets that promise instant

3. Take your time as you replace your child's old habits with healthy ones. This goes hand in hand with tip #2.


You're in this for the long haul. It takes time to adapt to a new lifestyle. Be patient as he or she adjusts to the new eating habits and activities that you will be introducing.


What we need now is an absolute paradigm shift. No longer are the “one drug, one disease” solutions of the past appropriate. These are times that demand out-of-the-box thinking. That's where this book can help. If your child is overweight or you want to lower his or her risk of becoming overweight down the road, there are many positive, natural ways you can address the situation. In this book, Dr. Cannizzaro and I provide you with information and ideas to help you help your child.



Understanding Childhood Obesity


Now that we've shared the bad news about the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States, let's make sure you really understand the terms overweight and obese. Many people have a general sense as to how these words are different, yet in recent years the delineation has become clearer. Various health organizations, including the CDC and the National Institutes

of Health (NIH), now officially define these terms using the body mass index (BMI), which factors in a person's weight relative to height. Most of these organizations define an overweight adult (twenty years of age and older) as having a BMI between 25 and 29.9, while an obese adult is anyone who has a BMI of 30 or higher.12 For children and teens, BMI is measured differently, allowing for the normal variations in body composition between boys and girls and at various ages.

For ages two to nineteen, the BMI (or BMI-for-age) is pinpointed on a growth chart to determine the corresponding age- and sex-specific percentile.


· Overweight is defined as a BMI at or above the 85th percentile and lower than the 95th percentile.

· Obesity is defined as a BMI at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex.


BMI is the most widely accepted method used to determine body fat in children and adults because it's easy to measure a person's height and weight. However, while BMI is an acceptable screening tool for initial assessment of body composition, please remember that it is not a direct measure of body fatness. There are other factors that can affect body composition, and your child's doctor can discuss these with you.

If you think your child may be overweight, start by talking to his or her pediatrician. (See the box on the next page for some suggested questions to ask your child's doctor.) After determining your child's BMI and targeting a healthy weight range for your child, make a plan together as a family. It's a good idea to include any regular caregivers in this plan as well. Set a goal for the whole family to get lots of exercise and eat a healthy, well-balanced diet. Keep reading for more ways to help your

family!


Wondering About Your Child's Weight?


Five Questions to Ask Your Pediatrician


I understand that you probably don't want to talk about the possibility that your child may not be at a healthy weight. To help make this as painless as possible, I recommend asking your doctor the following questions to get the conversation started.


1. What is a healthy weight for my child's height?

Your doctor will use a growth chart to show you how your child is growing and give you a healthy weight range for your child. The doctor may also tell you your child's body mass index (BMI). The BMI uses a person's height and weight to determine the amount of body fat.

2. Is my child's weight putting him or her at risk for any illnesses?

Based on your family history and other factors, your doctor can help you to determine what health risks your child may be facing. Overweight, inactive children with a family history of type 2 diabetes have an increased risk of being diagnosed with the disease. High blood pressure can also occur in overweight children.

3. How much exercise does my child need?

The National Association for Sport and Physical Education recommends at least one hour of exercise a day. Your doctor will be able to suggest specific ways to help your child, such as walking the dog, playing catch instead of video games, and other forms of activity.

4. Does my child need to go on a diet?

Although an overweight child's eating habits will probably need to change, I don't advise using the word diet because it focuses on short-term eating habits that are rarely sustainable for long-term health. Children (and adults) who become chronic dieters are setting themselves up for problems with their metabolism later in life. A healthier approach is to put your whole family on the path to a healthy lifestyle with gradual but permanent changes. The recommendations in this book are a great place to start.

5. How do I talk about weight without hurting my child's feelings?

Your child might be sensitive about his or her weight, especially if he or she is getting teased. Above all, the message must never be, “You're fat,” or “You need to lose weight.” Instead, it should be, “Our family needs to make better choices about eating and being more active so that we all can be healthy.”


Why Food Choices Matter


All men are created equal, but all foods are not! In fact, some food should not be labeled “food” but rather “consumable product” or “edible, but void of nourishment.” Living foods―fruits, vegetables, grains, seeds, and nuts―exist in a raw or close-to-raw state and are beautifully packaged in divinely created wrappers called skins and peels. Living foods look robust, healthy, and alive. They have not been bleached, refined or chemically enhanced and preserved. Living foods are plucked, harvested squeezed―not processed, packaged, and put on a shelf.

Dead foods are the opposite. They have been altered in every imaginable way to make them last as long as possible and be as addictive as possible. That usually means the manufacturer adds considerable amounts of sugar and man-made fats that involve taking various oils and heating them to high temperatures so that the nutrients die and become reborn as a deadly, sludgy substance that is toxic to our bodies.

Life breeds life. Death breeds death. When your child eats living foods the enzymes in their pristine state interact with his or her digestive enzymes. The other natural ingredients God put in them―vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, antioxidants and more―flow into your child's system in their natural state. These living foods were created to cause your child's digestive system, bloodstream, and organs to function at optimum capacity.

Dead food hit your child's body like a foreign intruder. Chemicals, including preservatives, food additives, and bleach agents place a strain on the liver. Toxic man-made fats begin to form in your child's cell-membranes; they become stored as fat in your child's body and form plaque in his or her arteries. Your child's body does its best to harvest the tiny traces of good from these deadly foods, but in the end he or she is undernourished and overweight.

If you want your child to be a healthy, energetic person rather than someone bouncing between all-you-can-eat buffets and fast-food restaurants, take his or her eating habits seriously. Now is the time to help your son or daughter make the change to living foods.


Isn't it Really Just Genetics?

For every obese person, there is a story behind the excessive weight gain. Growing up, I would often hear it said of an obese person that she was just born fat, or he takes after his daddy. There s some truth in both of those. Genetics count when it comes to obesity. In 1988, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Danish study that observed five hundred forty

people who had been adopted during infancy. The research found that adopted individuals had a much greater tendency to end up in the weight class of their biological parents rather than their adopted parents. Separate studies have proven that twins who were raised apart also reveal that genes have a strong influence on gaining weight or becoming overweight. There is a significant genetic predisposition to gaining weight. Still, that does not fully explain the epidemic of obesity seen in the United States over the past thirty years. Although an individual may have a genetic predisposition to become obese, environment plays a major role as well. I like the way author, speaker, and noted women s physician Pamela Peeke said it: Genetics may load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger. Many patients I see come into my office thinking they have inherited their fat genes, and therefore there is nothing they can do about it. After investigating a little, I usually find that they simply inherited their parents propensity for bad choices of foods, large portion sizes, and poor eating habits. If your child is over weight, he or she may have an increased number of fat cells, which means your child will have a tendency to gain weight if you choose to provide the wrong types of foods, large portion sizes, and allow him or her to be inactive. But you should also realize that most people can over ride their genetic makeup for obesity by making the correct dietary and

lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, many parents forget that to make these healthy choices, it helps to surround a child with a

healthy environment.

“Give me the car keys.” Amy thrust her hand out.
“You didn’t get your international license. You can’t drive.”
“Watch me.”
Shawn laughed, digging in the pocket of his baggy, medieval trews. “I know you, Amy. You won’t jaywalk on a deserted street. I paid good money for this meal. I’ll be out when I’m done.” He flipped the keys at her, much harder than necessary.
She caught them in a neat overhand. “I will expect my grandmother’s ring back as promised,” she said in clipped tones, “or I will cause so much trouble in every possible corner of your life, you’ll wish you’d never thought up that idiotic story about tinagle connectors.” She threw the tartan down at him.
“I didn’t make….”
“Stuff it, Shawn. I saw Jim while I was waiting in the lobby. He almost died laughing, said there’s no such thing on a trombone. Thanks for humiliating me, on top of it. Maybe some day you’ll come clean about what you needed—make that wanted—the money for.”
“Hey, that’s not fair!” He jumped to his feet. “I needed that money! There was this big Scot. He was coming with his friends to beat the living daylights out of me!”
“Did you sleep with his wife? You probably deserved to be beaten to a pulp.” She shoved past him, glaring back from the arched doorway at the top of the stairwell. “I cannot believe I’ve stayed with you this long!” She spun on her heel. Her voice floated back up from the dark staircase. “I cannot believe I kept thinking there was something better in you!” He ran to the western wall to see her emerge from the tower into the courtyard. Mist swirled around her ankles. “Everybody told me there was nothing better there!” she shouted up at him.
“Bull!” he shouted back, leaning over the tower. “They love me!”
“You have no idea what they say behind your back,” Amy yelled. “Selfish, self-centered, obnoxious, loud! They’re just afraid of your temper. Arrogant!” She turned and stormed across the courtyard, tearing through tendrils of mist grabbing at her legs.
“I am not loud!” he bellowed.Here’s what critics are saying about Blue Bells of Scotland:

A noise. Ginger awoke, listened. The hum of a motor, the scrunch of tires creeping along the road outside the cabin. She reached over to her husband’s side of the bed. Empty. Where he was heading in the thin light of dawn, she didn’t know. Mike McNeil didn’t offer explanations for his comings and goings. She knew better than to ask.
She rolled back onto her pillow, wide awake now. She could see the black handle of Mike’s .38 at the edge of the closet shelf. Mike seldom strapped the gun to his belt anymore. He had made his point. She wouldn’t take it again and he knew it.
The light was still too dim to see the photos fastened with thumb tacks to the rough-sawn boards next to the closet. It didn’t matter. She pictured them in her mind. She and Mike had squeezed into the metal kiosk at a truck stop that day and posed fast, before their quarter ran out. Mike had just trimmed his beard. A good memory.
Birds chirped outside.
Time to rise. She rolled out of bed.
In the boys’ room, she stood over her sons and smiled. Casey’s feet hung off the foot of his bed. He’d hit a growing spell the day he turned thirteen. She kissed his forehead, then his brother’s.
“Wake up, both of you. Casey, I’m going to put a brick on your head or you’ll outgrow everything you own.” She laughed and gave twelve-year-old Jody a nudge.
In the next room, she built a fire in the woodstove to chase off the morning chill. Atop the stove, water for coffee heated in a blue enamel pot while the last of the oatmeal cooked in a dented stewer. The boys would have the oatmeal. She wasn’t hungry.
She laced up her boots and trudged up the hill to milk the cow while they ate breakfast.
An ordinary morning at the cabin in the woods where she lived with Mike and their two sons.
Nothing different or ominous, nothing to suggest that before noon on September 29, 2000, Ginger would make her escape. She forced a needle through pigskin for a rifle pad while each boy pulled on his one pair of jeans. Better pick beans today before the sun gets up in the sky. Summer didn’t like to let go here at the bottom of Tennessee, and this day would be hot by noon. She twisted her hair through her fingers, wishing she could pull it up off her neck. Or cut it.
Casey crossed the kitchen in two steps, gathered his homework under one arm, and dashed out the door. Knees, elbows and perpetual motion, he disappeared up the hill. Jody lumbered in from the bedroom and fumbled with his papers, a scowl on his face.
Still my little freckle-faced boy.
Jody and Casey had entered school for the first time this year, a small church school just across the state line in Alabama. She’d hoped they would like a regular school but so far it was a split decision. It was early, just three weeks into the school year. Plenty of time yet to adjust.
She gave Jody a quick squeeze before hurrying both boys toward her old Honda. They had ten miles to drive to school.
Mike spotted the blue of Ginger’s car in the distance as he returned home. He checked his watch and calculated when she would be back. At the cabin, he opened his Bible to Revelations and read until time to go. He tromped down their dirt road to the blacktop where he ducked into the trees to watch for her car. Leaning against a pine, he lit a Winston Gold, then another as soon as it burned to the filter.
The last time she left, he had watched her. He could see to the bottom of the hill where, that time, she’d stopped for a few minutes, backed up the road, then stopped again. She was trying to pick up a signal on that car phone, way out here.
He was on to her.
Ginger slowed to turn between two scrub oaks onto their road when she returned from the school. The galvanized metal gate stood open. Mike didn’t always padlock it now like he once did. He’d made that point, too.
This time her tires crunched against the road as she headed the quarter mile toward the honeysuckle vines and briars that hid the cabin. Mike didn’t want anybody in his business. If somehow anybody slipped past the padlock and wandered up the road, they could pass within thirty yards of the cabin and never know it was there.
They’d built the cabin back in 1996, when they had to vacate the rental house in a hurry. She and Mike sawed and hammered while the boys, young as they were, toted and hauled. Five hundred square feet divided into two rooms, board and batten sides, a tin roof. No electricity, no phone, by design.
Mike’s car sat in tall grass just off the road. She parked beside him and called his name when she got out of the car. No answer.
Backtracking down the road, Ginger walked to Trent’s tree, a young sycamore she had named in memory of her oldest son. She had first planted an apple tree for Trent, but ants made a bed at its base. When she poisoned the ants, she killed the tree. The sycamore was a sapling that came up in the compost pile. A smile spread across her face. The sycamore was thriving. She’d kept a close watch on it.
She hurried to the garden. Time to pick beans.