The Smell of Other People's Hou - Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock Page 0,55

also didn’t pretend that her dad wasn’t involved with my family in some way. Did she know about my parents? Did her dad talk to her in ways that Gran never talked to me? Or did she piece it together the same way I did—by watching her dad stop by every other week under the guise of being neighborly, bringing a fillet of salmon one day, some venison jerky another.

Gran would smile at him and exclaim over his generosity. Then she’d slide him a crisp white envelope with cramped handwriting, the address too small to read from a distance. He would tuck it into his Carhartt vest pocket and tip his hat to Gran respectfully. After a while I guessed it might be for Mama, because who else did Gran know? The look on Dumpling’s face told me I’d probably guessed right.

“Do you think your dad might be okay with delivering a note from me, too?” I asked.

“I can ask him,” she’d said with a shrug. But I could tell by the way she looked at me that she knew it was no small favor.

“Ruth, your mom isn’t well. I don’t think she would have left you and Lily if she could have helped it.”

“Did your dad say that?”

She just nodded, but her eyes wouldn’t meet mine. Nobody admits to talking about other people behind their backs; it’s just not done.

When the bus arrived, I gave her the blue note and climbed on board. “Bye, Ruth.” Her voice was so soft. It floated up the steps behind me like a tiny bird.

At a truck stop somewhere near the Canadian border, I turned seventeen all by myself. I used my emergency money that Gran gave me knotted up in the corner of a handkerchief to buy a Hostess apple pie as a birthday cake. The baby seemed to like it, or at any rate it woke up and played me like a bongo from the inside for the next few hours. I guess I wasn’t truly alone on my birthday after all.

—

Now my thoughts about Dumpling squish right up against my anxiety about the impending birth. I’m tired of thinking only of myself, but I’m tired of worrying about Dumpling, too.

To keep myself busy, I ask if I can help out more in the kitchen. Sister Agnes still scares the pants off me, but I’ve learned that her bark is worse than her bite. Today she tells me that the abbess is having a private meeting and we should make scones and use the nice cups for tea.

I head out to pick blackberries for the scones—the bushes are loaded down and I pick my way through the woods overlooking the river. I sometimes feel like I imagined Hank being here in these woods, except that when I braid my hair the red ribbon isn’t tied to the bottom of it anymore.

I’m deep inside my own head when a lime-green Gremlin drives up and parks in front of the abbey, alerting me to the fact that I’ve been daydreaming again. These must be the abbess’s guests, and Sister Agnes is probably champing at the bit for the blackberries.

As I come through the woods, a man and a woman are getting out of the car. He is tall and wearing a plaid shirt like a lumberjack. She has fiery red hair and is wearing a springy dress with a peach cardigan that clashes a tiny bit with her hair. They look nice. She’s carrying a bouquet of bluebells in a glass bottle. I think of Hank again, and I can’t help but smile to myself. More proof that he was really here. (I couldn’t have made up that part if I tried.)

There has been a stream of visitors like these over the past few weeks, although it seems that Sister Agnes finds a lot of things for me to do every time guests arrive. Keeping me and my belly hidden is proving more and more difficult every day.

I slip through the back door of the kitchen, where Sister Agnes is waiting. “What did you have to do? Grow them yourself?” she barks.

Sister Bernadette is preparing a tray with a white hand towel and three bone-china cups and saucers dotted with crimson flowers; she winks at me behind Sister Agnes’s back.

“Shall I carry the tray in?” I ask, wiping the smile right off her face.

“Oh no, dear. I can do it,” she says.

“I need you to go hang these towels on the line anyway,”