custody. I’d been forced to pull her and the other mamas aside and tell them that the church was known by the younger townie boys as the “sex church.” The mamas and I had a long, plainspoken discussion about that, and about what it meant to the church’s young women in the eyes of the world. It had been a come-to-Jesus meeting for real and sure, and, while they were still speaking to me, the mamas weren’t happy.
Mud hadn’t noticed me drive up. She looked free and happy and adorable and gangly, just like all the other girls at middle school. I sat in the car and watched my sister run, long bare legs in the early fall sunshine. The springer spaniel, Cherry, was totally focused on her, desperate to please her master. In that moment, I knew that no matter how bad things got with Esther and no matter how badly my sisters fought, and no matter how hard and expensive it was to get full custody of Mud, it was all worth it. Having Mud here and safe and no longer in the sights of the churchmen was worth anything and everything. I was close to getting full and permanent custody. Just one more hearing. Just a few more thousand dollars in legal fees. And Mud would be free.
I got out of the car and carried my gear, the potted tree, and the bud vase up the steps to the porch and inside. The new air conditioner was purring, keeping the house at a steady seventy-six degrees. The air smelled of cleaning supplies and fresh paint from the remodeling that had only recently been completed. There was a fresh loaf of pumpkin bread on the kitchen table. I put my gear beside it. The house was spotless. No dust on the tables or my desk. No cat hair under the edge of the sofa. No dirt where an animal rubbed against a doorjamb. No dog hair on the sofa. No dirty dishes. Not a single thing out of place. It looked like . . . like Esther’s place. Too clean. Too perfect.
Also, no mouser cats were in sight. And no Esther. Except for the faint squeals from outside and the AC unit, the house was silent.
Quietly, I put my things away and used the downstairs bath. It had been remodeled, with white tile everywhere, a new sink and cabinet, new flooring, and even an exhaust fan to suck the moisture out. The bath smelled of Clorox and it sparkled. My toothbrush, comb, brush, and hair dryer were lined up perfectly. There was pine cleanser in the toilet. No hair or leaves were on the floor. I sighed. Esther had clearly been in a cleaning frenzy. A common reaction to trauma.
I carried the death and decay–stinking clothes to the back porch to put on a load of wash. Someone had started a stew in the slow cooker that was sitting on the gardening table and it smelled fabulous.
Out back Mud and her dog were running and jumping. My twelfth year had been so very different. With a rush, I remembered the utter relief of moving here, away from the Colonel, away from danger, but also away from everyone and everything I knew. The loneliness. The homesickness. There had been no carefree moments like Mud was having. It was all different for her. Cherry raced through a succession of hoops and Mud squealed with delight.
I started the wash, lowered the machine’s lid, and stepped into the day’s last warmth. Mud squealed even higher in pitch and raced to me, grabbing me into a bone-crushing hug. She had gotten so tall. Gingerly, I hugged her back, not quite understanding why there were tears in my eyes.
“Come see the greenhouse!” She dragged me by one arm to the side and back of the house, as if I might try to get away. “I got all sorts of stuff growing.”
We left Cherry sitting woefully outside and entered the greenhouse, which was heated from the sun and muggy from the watering system. It was all built to church standards by Daddy, our true brother Sam, and the Nicholson faction in the church. Mud and I had planted lettuce and spinach and basil and green onions in its raised beds, along with a dozen aromatic and flowering herbs she had picked out herself. All were growing faster and taller and greener than they should have. “I been telling them to grow,” she said. “And they