moment, Gracie turned and gave Darlene a quick hug.
"Thank you for everything today. You are the best sister I could ever hope for. Thank the kids for my laptop. Tell Caleb he is a lifesaver for loading it. Give me a thirty-minute head start, and then tell James and the girls I'm already gone."
"I will. Love you, Gracie. Call me when you get stopped for the night. I need to know where you are, and where you're going. I don't want to be worrying about you."
"I promise," Gracie said, and slipped out. She wanted to get home, change clothes, and load up.
As she was going out the back of the dining hall, one of the church ladies handed her a little sack.
"We know you're leaving Sweetwater. We'll miss you, but Godspeed, sugar. Here's a little something to take with you on the road."
"Thank you," Gracie said. "Dinner was delicious. Please thank everyone for me. I will miss you all, but life's been waiting on me for a really long time, and I'm already playing catch-up just to get started."
And then she was out the door.
Minutes later, she passed the city limit sign, heading west toward home. The ten miles seemed shorter. Looking in the rearview mirror as she drove, she could almost imagine the road rolling up behind her—giving her no other options but to keep moving forward.
The highway ahead of her was long, straight, and flat, and she saw home long before she reached it. One turn to the left, and she was on the driveway and headed to the house. She slid to a stop at the front porch and hurried inside, then went straight back to her bedroom to change.
She'd left out one of the new pairs of jean shorts and a blue t-shirt, and quickly changed, then packed her new laptop and what she'd been wearing, turned off the fan, and began carrying suitcases from the house to her car. The old quilt went in next, then the box with sheets and towels, and finally, her grandmother's cuckoo clock.
She locked the car, then went back into the house and headed for the old roll-top desk.
She dug out her mama's will, the key to the safety deposit box, the extra house keys, and carried it all to the kitchen table. Once she added her own house key to the pile, she was done. Now all she had to do was wait for the rest of them to show up.
She turned on the box fan in the kitchen, got the last cold Coke out of the refrigerator, and walked out on the back porch to toast the vista before her.
"To Dunhams, good and bad," she said, took a long drink, then sat down in the porch swing to await their arrival.
James was the first to notice Gracie was gone and looked straight at Darlene.
"Is Gracie already gone?"
Darlene shrugged. "Likely."
"Why didn't she say something?" he asked.
"Say what? You've already heard what she said here. If you want to hear the rest of it, go home."
James glared at her, red-faced and angry, and began looking for his sisters, but Darlene didn't care about his attitude or him. Her job here was over, so she gathered up her things and left. She'd done everything she'd come to Sweetwater to do, and now she wanted to go home. Even if it would be way up into the night before she got there, she just wanted to be gone from this place. So, she went back to her hotel and checked out. She was southbound on her way back to Houston, while James, Daphne, Joel and Mamie all headed for the farm.
They talked nonstop all the way until they took the turn off the highway toward the house. At that point, shock set in.
"What the fucking hell happened here?" James muttered.
"We're about to find out," Joel said.
As they got out, they noticed Gracie's car was full of luggage, and the front door to the house was ajar.
Heat hit them as they pushed the door inward.
"Oh my God! Why is it so hot in here?" Daphne cried.
And on that question, Gracie walked into the living room.
"Because the central air died four years ago. No money to fix it. Come into the kitchen. There's a box fan."
And then she turned her back, leaving them to straggle behind her, eyeing the worn furniture, the limp curtains, and a faint and gathering layer of dust on everything.
James was already shedding his sport coat and tie, and so