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I pedal hard, tears rolling across my temples as the wind blows them out of my eyes. I hate her, I repeat with each rotation of my pedals. I hate her! I hate her! I hate her!

  I don’t think, I just ride at the edge of the road until I’m winded, then I stop the bike, straddle it, and wait for my lungs to stop heaving. While I’m resting, I see a mailbox with gold stick-on letters that spell out the name Bickett. As soon as I catch my breath, I pedal to the mailbox and turn down the long drive that runs alongside it.

  Anger sure does make a person brave—or stupid—I think, when my legs don’t hesitate for even one millisecond after I see Henry Bickett’s beat-up pickup sitting in the drive.

  Nordine is in her garden, wearing a straw hat that looks like it was confiscated from the head of Scarlett O’Hara. I let my bike clank to the ground and head over to her.

  “Hi, Mrs. Bickett,” I say. Her white hair isn’t curled today, and it hangs around her head like pulled lamb’s wool. She’s not wearing makeup either, and her cheeks have round brown splotches on them. Somehow, though, she still manages to look pretty.

  Nordine is holding a bucket with yellowed fronds spilling over the sides, and a large carrot dangles from her other hand like a headhunter’s trophy. “Hello,” she says. She seems confused about who I might be, but she’s not staring at me in that same vacant way that she did on the day Grandpa Sam drove into her garage.

  “Look at this. It must have frozen last night,” Nordine says, looking down at a row of plants dripping with string beans that are scabby and shriveled. It’s frozen many nights in the past two weeks, actually. “All these beans, ruined.” She lifts the carrot in her hand, “These are still good, though,” she says, as she uses her foot to part the fuzzy leaves that are only partially hiding a few pumpkins and squash.

  I know from what I’ve read that those in the earlier stages of Alzheimer’s can slip in and out of dementia, and even though Nordine can’t remember me (which is understandable, considering the circumstances under which we first met), her comment about her garden tells me that—at least for the time being—she’s standing in the house of coherency, so I know I’d better start knocking. And fast.

  Nordine hands me the carrot she’s holding. “You can have that one … uh … I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

  “I’m Lucy McGowan,” I say, looking at the cold, dirtcoated carrot and not quite knowing what to do with it. “Sam McGowan’s granddaughter. We’re in Timber Falls to take care of him because he’s not doing so well. Sam used to be your boyfriend, didn’t he?” I don’t know what makes me speak so bluntly—maybe my lingering anger at Mom, or maybe my desperation to leap through this window of opportunity before it slams shut—but I can’t seem to stop the bluntness any more than I could keep from blurting out the news about Peter’s visit. “I know he used to love you,” I say. “Maybe still does.”

  Nordine Bickett steps closer to me. “He does?”

  My words work like the strokes of a spatula across cake icing, filling in the furrows on Nordine’s face so that she looks younger. “Of course he does. He told me so himself.”

  Nordine smiles, but her eyes gather a few tears too.

  I wonder if I’m making bad karma by lying, but then I remind myself that Oma says that intention plays some part in karma too. And if she’s right, then I’m probably safe, because what’s so bad about a kid trying to find her dad and giving somebody trapped in a mental fog a little sunshine?

  “Sam was my sweetheart,” Nordine says. She looks first to the north and then to the south. “I can’t recall where the school was now. Isn’t that silly? I grew up in this house and walked there every day as a child, but I seem to have forgotten.”

  Nordine plucks at the collar of her worn work shirt, her sparse eyebrows dipping in worry.

  “It’s okay. Lots of people are poor with directions. Mrs. Bickett, I’d like to know more about my grandpa Sam. I didn’t know him at all until we came here, because we moved away from Timber Falls when my brother and I were babies. I know the two of you were close, so I am hoping you’ll tell me some things about him, since you knew him for so many years.”

  Nordine gives me that oh-that’s-nice look that people absentmindedly give someone when they’re not really listening. “Would you like to go inside for a glass of lemonade?” she asks.

  I tell her yes, and I offer to carry the carrot bucket to the house.

  When we get to the door, it’s hanging open and clanking sounds are coming from inside. Henry Bickett grumbles a few obscenities, and Nordine stops and turns to me. “Why don’t you wait out here, dear, in the lawn chair. I’ll bring out our lemonade.” I slip the carrot she gave me into the bucket and hand it to her.

  I wait at the bottom of the steps. “Who?” Henry asks, his voice twice the size of him. And then, “That kid out there, that’s who! What in the hell does she want?”

  There’s more mumbling and grumbling before Nordine appears from the house carrying one glass of lemonade. She hands it to me.

  “Thank you. Aren’t you having any?” I ask.

  She looks down at her hand, as though she expects another glass to be there.

  “Should we get you some too?” I ask. She doesn’t answer, though. She just starts strolling toward two lawn chairs sitting under a large maple, so I follow her.

  I’m glad that Nordine is walking ahead of me when I take a sip of my lemonade, because I have to spit it out. Not only does it have no sugar in it, but it’s gone rancid. I don’t think Nordine sees me, but in case she does, I half shout, “Eww, a bug flew into my mouth.”

  Nordine sits quietly, her eyes occasionally darting toward the house, where, from time to time, Henry’s head butts up against the screen door to gawk at us.

  “He jumped Richard Marbles because he bullied his girl, Louise Treder, in the parking lot. Shoving her so hard that her thigh banged into the bumper of his truck, and she cried out,” Nordine says.

  “Henry did?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “Sam did. He pinned Richard down to the ground and told him that if he was going to get his nose out of joint and shove around some tiny slip of a girl, he’d gladly give him a hand. He punched Richard so hard that his nose is still cocked to one side today.” Nordine rests her hand on her bony chest as she laughs.

  “When did he do that?” I ask.

  “Last Friday night, at the dance.”

  Of course I’m surprised, but not for the reasons Nordine Bickett would think I am, if she were truly thinking. I’m surprised because the same boy who defended a girl who was being shoved later went on to become a man who shoved his wife’s skull through a wall.

  Just as I open my mouth to ask her a question, Henry Bickett comes out of the house, carrying a wrench the size of his forearm.

  He starts toward the garage, then stops and turns. “You ain’t got time to be sittin’ around gabbin’, woman,” he says, like it’s the 1800s and he’s in the hills. “The rest of those carrots aren’t going to get themselves out of the ground. You gonna let them go to hell like you did the rest of the garden? Huh? You’d best get at it while you still have the wits to do it.”

  Henry Bickett spits a wad of tobacco on the grass, then glares at me. I glare right back at him. “Who’d you say you were?” he asks.

  “Lucy,” I say.

  “Lucy who?”

  “Just Lucy.”

  He stares at me. Hard. Then his eyes squint until they look shut. “You were with that bunch that came to get McGowan out of my garage, weren’tcha?” He jabs the wrench toward the garage, where plywood is still tacked over the door. “You can tell that son of a bitch that if that damn door isn’t fixed by the end of the week, I’m comin’ for him.” Then he stomps off, his bowed legs and porcupine hair so comical that nobody in their right mind could be afraid of him, which explains why Nordine is.

  “He’s not a very nice man,” I say to Nordine, after he disappears behind the garage, where a rusted tractor sits in a group of half
-assembled junky cars. I look at her and ponder what in her past made her a woman who found herself attracted to such mean men.

  “He’s got his ways,” Nordine says.

  “My grandpa had his ways too,” I say.

  Nordine looks confused, but I’m not sure if it’s confusion about what I just told her or the Alzheimer’s coming back to cloud her brain.

  “Sam and I are going to get married,” she states, and my question is answered.

  I sigh. “Um, you can’t do that, Mrs. Bickett. You’re already married. To Henry.”

  Nordine gets up without saying anything and walks to the house like a sleepwalker, leaving me sitting in the metal lawn chair, wondering if she’s coming back.

  I wait for what seems a good ten or fifteen minutes, and just as I’m about to get up and follow her inside, she comes out the door. She has a box that says Sorel Boots cradled in her arms and a photograph pinched between her knobby knuckles. “What do you have there?” I ask. “May I?” I set the glass of sour lemonade on the grass, making sure to tip it a bit first so some spills out, then I slip the picture from her fingers. It is black and white, worn at the scalloped edges, and creased down the center. In the photograph is my grandpa and Nordine, both of them young. Grandpa is good-looking, I suppose, his grin stretched across his face, his arm wrapped around Nordine, who stands as small as a child under his arm, her hair frizzed around her upturned, heart-shaped face.

  “He’s a handsome man,” she says. That comment alone tells me that Nordine has no recollection of the broken garage door or the man in diapers who clunked into it.

  I hand her back the picture, and she holds it with both hands, as though it is just as heavy in weight as it is in memory.

  “Mrs. Bickett,” I say bravely. “I know that you and my grandpa Sam were, well, close over the years. So that means you might know something about my mom, Tess, and my real father. Do you remember Sam talking about his daughter, Tess? Did he tell you anything about her after she came back from California?”

  Her eyes glaze over. “Sam’s in California?”

  “No. His daughter went there. About fifteen years ago.”

  “I don’t have a daughter,” she says. “I have a boy.” She’s obviously struggling to recall his name.

  I take the photo from her hands again and point to Grandpa Sam. “No. Him. He had—he has—a daughter. Her name is Tess. She left Timber Falls to go away to college. And she came back pregnant with me and my twin. Did my … did Sam … tell you anything about that? Did he tell you about the father of her babies?”

  Nordine’s face is blank in the shade of her hat’s wide brim, her eyes shadowed by her disease.

  I sigh, knowing that I’ve lost her. “What do you have in the shoe box?” I finally ask her.

  She looks down at her lap as though she only now realizes that there’s a box resting on her legs. “Oh, let’s see, shall we?” she says.

  When she makes no move to do it herself, I reach over to lift the lid from the box. Whatever is inside is wrapped in grayed tissue paper. The kind that is dotted with colored glitter. The glittery specks cling to my fingers when I peel the paper back.

  “It’s a marionette puppet!” I say.

  I pull the puppet from the box and it clanks like wooden wind chimes. The puppet is a boy, his head large and full of wooden curls, his body thin and gangly and dressed in homemade pants and a button-up shirt. He is about a foot tall and carved from pale wood that is scarred with nicks and gouges from the point of a knife. His wooden head is lolled to his chest, and when I pick it up and see his big, sad eyes—a sharp contrast to his full, smiling lips—I say, “Ohhh,” out loud.

  “Did Sam carve this?” I already know the answer. Even though it’s carved crudely, unlike his birds, I can feel the same thing in it that I felt from them, only there’s more sadness seeped into this wood, along with a whole lot more anger. So much so that I’m convinced that even Milo could feel it if he held it.

  “It’s him,” she says. “His name is Sammy.” And then she makes her voice deeper, rougher, and she says, “Always a puppet. Always a puppet.”

  Nordine Bickett gets up again, the photo floating to the ground as she wanders to the center of the yard, her head tilted back. She moves in slow circles, her face searching. I get up, the puppet in my arm, and hurry to rescue the photograph from the grass. I hand it to her and she stares down at it as though she doesn’t know what it is. “I know my school is around here,” she says.

  The clanking of Henry’s hammer against metal stops, and I don’t know what to do, because I don’t want Nordine’s husband coming and seeing the picture or the puppet. Nordine lets the picture slip from her hand again, then she wanders back inside, leaving me standing there when Henry Bickett appears from the side of the shed. I have a split second to react before he looks up, so I slide the photograph into my pocket as I’m turning away from him and I stuff the puppet up my windbreaker.

  Henry glances at the empty lawn chairs, the shoe box alongside one and the glass tipped on its side alongside the other, then he looks at me suspiciously. He goes over and picks up the box, peering inside, rustling the tissue paper, then carries it back to me. “What’s this?”

  “A shoe box,” I say. “Your wife brought it out.”

  “What was in it?” he asks.

  “Nothing.” I don’t even feel bad lying to him, even if it means a little bit of bad karma later.

  “She’s tetched,” he says, tossing the box back on the ground. “You get out of here now. No relative of Sam’s is welcome here.”

  “I want to say good-bye to Mrs. Bickett first,” I say.

  “Never mind that. She wouldn’t know you said goodbye anyhow. Now, beat it.”

  I pull the drawstring on my jacket and tie it tight to keep the puppet secure, then head to my bike. “And don’t come back. You hear me?”

  As I pedal home, I think about Alzheimer’s disease and how god-awful it is and how I hope Oma doesn’t get it. And I wonder if I shouldn’t go into medical research and try to find a cure, since it would be work dealing with the brain at least.

  When I reach our place, I want to ride right past it because I’m still upset with Mom. But I can’t. I have to pee, and besides, Mom is still in the trees and she rises when she sees me.

  I pull into the yard, toss my bike down, then dart for the house even though Mom’s yelling my name. I race up the stairs to the bathroom, but not before tucking the puppet and the photograph under my pillow.

  While I’m peeing, the door downstairs opens and shuts, and I know Mom has come inside to yell at me. I just step into the hall when I hear Oma say to her, “No, Tess. Leave her be. She’s at that age now where she’s going to have some outbursts. And this is really difficult for her. She was very attached to Peter, and you know how much she longs for a father figure in her life. Just let her be for now. Please?”

  “Let her be? I should be grounding her for a month for that little stunt.” My mouth turns as sour as if Nordine’s lemonade is still in it. I stomp into my room and slam the door. Then I open my laptop and click on one of Mom’s journal entries at random.

  chapter

  SIXTEEN

  I hate this house the most late at night, when Ma and the kids are sleeping and I can’t. I hate the sounds of Dad’s labored breaths and the eerie echoes from the past. The sights, the sounds, the smells—all of it—are enough to make me want to bolt out of here. But there’s nowhere to run but the trees, and it’s raining.

  I can’t believe I’m back here. I thought I’d left it for good.

  On what I was sure would be the last day I ever set foot in this house again, Mitzy drove me home so I could pack my things. It was raining then too.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay and help you pack?” Mitzy asked, her face tight with guilt when I opened the car door and the interior light clicked on. I reminded her that I was only packing one bag for now and tossing the few things I planned to take with
me in boxes for when I knew where I was going. I assured her that her helping wouldn’t get the job done any faster, since I’d have to keep pausing to tell her what I wanted packed and what I didn’t. “Just for moral support?” she said.

  The truth was, I did want Mitzy to stay for moral support, but how could I ask her to? She was one month away from getting married and starting tech school to become an X-ray technician. It was Brian’s birthday, and she had two bags stuffed with ingredients for spaghetti and meatballs and the lopsided chocolate cake she’d baked earlier sitting on the backseat. She was so wired with the anticipation of cooking him their first dinner together in their new home that she couldn’t keep her mind on much of anything else. So I told her to go. That I’d be fine. I reminded her that Marie was picking me up in two hours and that she’d come sooner if I needed her to.

  “Are you sure they’re keeping your dad overnight?” she yelled as we ran the empty boxes across the darkened yard, squealing because we were getting wet. Once we reached the shelter of the porch, I assured her that they were and told her to stop worrying. “Just go. I’ll be fine. Have fun. Screw your brains out.”

  “God, you’re awful!” she said, and I told her that apparently I am. Her face fell and she hugged me, telling me that I was the best.

  As she drove away in her five-year-old Grand Am, I envied her. Not because I wanted the life she was etching out for herself (marriage, a dozen babies, meat loaf once a week), but because she had a place to be, and a plan.

  It was strange walking into my house that night to gather my things. It was the house I’d grown up in. I knew every crack, every scuff, and every stain on the walls, and once I had even loved it. When I was very young, that is. Way back before I realized it was such a dump. Before Dad got mean, and Ma started drinking, and Clay walked out. Even after those things happened—even after I stopped loving it—it still felt like home. But not that night, as I stood in the doorway with my empty boxes and flicked on the kitchen light.

  The chair was still lying helplessly on its side, and the table was cocked so that one corner was butted against the counter.