“Your daughter’s looking for you,” Georgia said.
“She’ll find me. You look tired. Long day?”
“Not as long as yours. That was a lot of driving.”
“I’m whupped,” Samantha admitted. “And Cristy’s napping, I hope, unless Edna wakes her up.”
“She won’t. Unless she’s sleeping on the sofa?”
“No, I gave her the big room in the back. I figure she needs privacy, and if we’re coming and going in the next months, which we will be, she can shut herself in that room when she needs peace and quiet.”
“That’s what I would have done.” Georgia realized the sun was well on its way to setting, and she turned so they could start toward the house. “How did the trip go?”
“I’ll tell you all about it, but first I want to tell you something more important, something that was confirmed on the trip.”
Georgia verbalized her fears. “That the girl needs a lot of help? That she’s going to need supervision while she’s here, and we need to find somebody willing to do it?”
“She does need a lot of help, but not the kind you’re envisioning.” They had almost reached the car now, and Samantha stopped beside it. Georgia knew in a moment Edna would come running down the steps to find her.
“What kind of help?” Georgia asked.
“The kind you’re best at.” Samantha shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “I am absolutely sure that Cristy can’t read. I had my suspicions before, when she was in my class, but now it’s clear. She couldn’t read the menu when we ate lunch, so she pretended she wasn’t hungry. She couldn’t read the signs at the store when we shopped. If she reads at all, it sure wasn’t apparent today. If she’s ever going to get out of this hole she’s in, she’s going to have to learn how—and quickly.”
Samantha rested her hand on her mother’s arm in emphasis, not quite digging in her fingertips to hold her there, but close. “I think you know what I’m leading up to.”
“I’m afraid I might.”
“Nobody in the world has a better chance of teaching that young woman to read than you do. Please think it over. If we’re really going to help her, this is where we have to start.”
Chapter Five
CRISTY LAY ON one side and stared out the wide windows just beyond her bed. Mountains were forming in the midst of haze, cinder-gray peaks deepening slowly to a smoky purple as the landscape warmed. She knew the sun itself would emerge later in the morning, that the very mountains she was admiring would hide it from view until it burst forth in glory.
During her stay in Raleigh she had yearned for mountains. The world had seemed as flat as ancient explorers had believed, and she’d felt dizzied by that, as if the moment she ventured outside, she might slip off the rim.
Mountains anchored the earth, gave it form and definition. But sometimes, as now, they simply menaced the horizon. These mountains, whose names she didn’t know, reminded her she was a stranger in this house, this place, and that Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, would never be her mountain again.
She turned onto her back and stared at the slatted ceiling. She hadn’t known what to say when Samantha had led her to this room and told her it was hers for the duration of her stay. The room was the largest in the old house and the most private. Cristy had tried to tell her this felt wrong, discordant somehow, but Samantha had said that giving Cristy the biggest only made sense. She would be spending every day here, while the other women who were trustees or guests would come for only short stays.
Cristy wasn’t to worry. Didn’t she deserve to be treated well? And didn’t she deserve a little space and privacy after what she had endured?
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.”