TEN

This recurring abandonment thing with Mama had turned annoying. I didn’t mind when it meant I got to stay home alone for a few hours—which I never got to do in Atlanta because either Peter or Clarissa were always around—but this time I felt like she’d thrown me right into that river and walked away before waiting to see if I sank or swam. So, I did what Mama did in times like this. I lied, cool as a glass of iced tea on a scorching afternoon.

“My bathing suit hasn’t come yet,” I said.

Lucy tugged my hand. “You can swim in your underwear.”

“Or not,” James said quickly. His ears turned near as red as his hair. “She doesn’t have to swim.”

Kendra yawned, big, like the whole idea of my coming with them bored her. “Maybe she just doesn’t want to go.”

“She’s coming,” Lucy announced. She slipped tiny, pale fingers into my hand and tugged. “The river is this way.”

And just like that, off we went.

By the time we reached the road, the others had caught up and were happily gossiping about Haily’s new bf. The mule’s giant hooves made nice clopping sounds on the road, one-two, three-four, one-two, three-four. Lucy had a ginormous smile on her face, like she’d won me as a prize. And I was going to the river.

We crossed a field with pale grass so high Lucy could have gotten lost if she hadn’t been holding my hand so tight. I think she was afraid if she let go, I would run back to the house to hide. She just might have been right.

Halfway across we stopped for the sisters to change places riding the mule versus walking. Lucy gave up her turn to hold me captive.

“Do you have a sister or brother?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Whaddya mean you don’t know? You have to know.”

“I guess because my daddy was away most of the time he and Mama were married.”

“You don’t have to have a father present to have a baby—don’t you know that?”

OMG.

James stared straight ahead and pretended not to hear. I stammered and stuttered, trying to think of what to say. Finally, I leaned down and whispered, “I still don’t know why.”

“Well, that’s dumb.”

Once the girls had switched places, James picked up the mule’s reins and started walking again. “Look out, Maggie,” he called over his shoulder. “She’s a pistol.”

“The mule’s name is Molly,” Lucy said. “Because a girl mule is called a molly and it’s easy to remember. Did you know that?”

“No, but it makes sense.”

“Did you even know this is hay growing in this field?”

“No.”

“You don’t know much about anything, do you?”

Kendra swung around and sat backward on Molly to face us. “It’s already been cut and baled this summer, Lucy. This is the leftover. And stop being rude. She’s new. You have to be polite to new people, remember?”

“She’s not new,” Lucy insisted. “She lived here before when she was little and now she came back. She was here before you, or me, or maybe even Sonnet, so there! Right, Maggie?”

Her expression was so hopeful, I couldn’t tell her I barely remembered anything, so it really didn’t count. I nodded just a tiny bit, hoping it was so tiny neither one of them would think I was siding with the other. No such luck. Kendra narrowed her eyes and swung around, turning her back to me.

The rest of the field crossing was uneventful, except when Molly raised her tail and deposited a big load of manure in my path. I squealed and sprang to the side, barely escaping my foot being planted in the middle of the hot, steaming pile. Biz laughed so hard she had to run ahead and find a tree so she wouldn’t wet her pants. If it hadn’t stunk so bad, it might have been funny in a welcome-to-Vermont kind of way, something I could laugh about with Irene later. But that mule’s manure was so rank, I gagged.

After the long walk, the sight of cool water spelled serious relief, a reminder that I had ignored any form of cross-country training and was more out of shape than I ever remembered. The river looked fresh and clean. There was a sandy place on the bank, and an old rope with a knot at the end hanging from a tree leaning over the water. If I’d had my bathing suit, I just might have gone in. Next time. If there was a next time. I sat down against the tree and fanned myself with a small branch of leaves.

Biz’s face looked like one of those cherries you get in a Shirley Temple, red and puffy. She blew the bangs off her forehead and stripped out of her clothes right in front of me, all the way to pink-flowered cotton underwear and undershirt. Her tummy stuck out, and her feet curved in awkwardly, the left foot more than the right.

“My feet were bunched up when I was in utero,” she announced, pulling a bathing suit on over her underclothes.

In utero?

She’d really just said that out loud? In Georgia, you never, ever discussed reproductive body parts outside of health education class. When I’d started my period, Mama’d handed me a book and a box of pads and asked if the teacher had already told me what to do. Even Irene and I never talked about the particulars, and we never, ever said anything about a woman’s uterus. Mama said that was between a lady and her doctor.

Everyone stopped getting ready to swim and waited for me to respond. Finally, Lucy spoke up. “She doesn’t know what that means. You have to explain things to her. She’s like from another planet.”

“I know what it means,” I said. “I just—”

“Okay, okay, that’s enough!” James clapped his hands. “Everyone in the water. Git!” He shooed them away and shrugged an apology.

“I do know what it means,” I said.

“I know. This is what it’s like to have a bunch of sisters, if you were ever wondering.”

“Is that good or bad?”

He tossed his T-shirt into the grass, then sat at the edge of the river, still in his shorts, and removed the silver leg. “Neither. Just is.”

Scooting down the bank, he pushed off into the water, the half leg kicking out just like the whole thing was still there. Biz and Lucy splashed and crawled all over him, laughing and carrying on. Kendra was the first to swing from the rope. She kicked her legs in the air and squealed, landing close to the bank on the other side. Sonnet didn’t swim, but kept a good distance between us. I leaned against the tree and let a long, slow breath out, listening to the sounds of them playing in the river.

Biz and Lucy tried to climb on James’s shoulders. He flung them off and flipped water in their faces. “Get you gone, you dwarfs, you beads, you acorns!” The girls laughed and doggie-paddled after him as he swam away.

“That’s from Shakespeare,” Sonnet said, her eyes trained on whatever she was doodling. “The dwarfs, beads, and acorn part. Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s their favorite.”

Sunlight flickered and danced and wove its way through the canopy of leaves. A tiny beam of yellow bounced off James’s leg where he’d left it near me in the dirt. I leaned close to get a better look just as Biz scrambled up the bank. She wiped water out of her eyes.

“He wasn’t born like that,” she said. “It was amputated.”

I sat up quickly. “Oh, I wasn’t—I didn’t mean to be nosy.”

“It’s okay, everyone wants to know. Well, everyone who isn’t from here, because everyone here already knows. It was an accident.”

“I’m sorry.”

Biz shrugged. “He likes it because he got the prosthesis.”

She said it slow, like I was too dumb to understand: p-r-o-s-t-h-e-s-i-s.

“I see.”

“Johnny Austin bought it for him.”

My heart fluttered two extra beats. “My Johnny Austin?”

She tipped her head to the side and looked at me with curiosity. “Sue and Kori couldn’t afford one. Those are my moms. Sue and Kori, with an i. So Johnny Austin bought it for James.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m happy he did that.”

“We are, too. But now he’s dead. I guess you know that at least.”

She spun around and plunged back into the water. I was left alone except for Sonnet, whose pencil kept working the page.

Biz was right. At least I knew that much. But the question growing bigger in my mind was, just how much did I not know?