I let Sam stay at school until the end of extended day. I’d already paid for it and, considering the things that had been happening, he was safer at school than he was at home.
My parents arrived soon after I picked up Sam. I saw them pull into the driveway and alerted Sam. He already had his new train ready and waiting to show my father.
My mother came bearing gifts. “Just a little something.” She dipped toward me so I could look inside the leather tote she was carrying. The little something turned out to be some cheese straws, a gallon of sweet tea, and container of pimiento cheese.
She winked. “I know you never have any.”
I didn’t. Hadn’t. Not for a number of years. I kissed the cheek she offered as I took them from her.
“So I thought I might as well bring my own.” She smoothed her hair as she glanced around the room, raising a brow when she noticed the galaxy of stars on the ceiling.
I didn’t want to hear her thoughts on those. “I’ll run these into the kitchen.”
Sam was already well into telling his grandfather about his new train.
Out in the kitchen, I set the tote on the floor and put the cheese and sweet tea in the fridge. When I lifted out the package of cheese straws, I saw— “Mom? Mom!”
“Georgia Ann?” Her reply came floating from the living room.
“Mom? Come here!” Right now!
She appeared a moment later. “Sugar pie?”
I gestured toward the tote at my feet.
She came over to peer down inside it.
“Did you know that was in there?”
“The gun? Well . . . you can take the soldier out of the army, but you can’t take the army out of the soldier.”
“Mom!”
“Your father has a permit to carry.”
“And I have Sam. What were you planning to do with it?”
She lifted a slender shoulder. “Take it with us when we leave.”
“But why did you bring it here?”
“With the world the way it is? You just never know.”
“Do you always take—” Parents! “You know what? I’m going to put it here.” I stretched up toward the refrigerator and placed her bag on top of it. “And when you go, you’ll take it, and you won’t bring it back.”
She smiled. “All right.”
“I mean it.”
She went back to Sam while I took a few moments to get myself together. Deep breaths; some ice cold water patted on my face. Once I had myself under control, I rejoined them. My father had already shed his sports coat and was playing with Sam’s new train.
But my mother wasn’t having it. She’d taken out her phone. “Come on, everyone. I need a picture for Instagram. And the blog. And Facebook.”
She gathered us together. Then she stood back from us, hand on hip. “Tsk. Georgia Ann, does your child not have any socks to wear? Samuel, go find something to put on your feet!” She shooed him off to his room. “And comb your hair while you’re there!”
Once Sam came back, dressed to her standards, she took a selfie. And then another. And then—
“Mom! Seriously.” She was annoyingly techie. But she ran a military-spouse support website and spent a good part of every morning clicking through the apps on her phone, visiting the sites and pages of all her acolytes in the military community and leaving comments.
My father was fiddling with the wheels of Sam’s new train. “When did Sam get this?”
“Saturday. Mr. Hoffman brought it for him.”
My father’s brow rose. “To the house? Because it seems like the wheels are already a little loose.” My dad cupped a hand to Sam’s shoulder. “But it’s no problem, buddy. Nothing a screwdriver can’t fix.” He glanced over Sam’s head at me.
“Downstairs. In the toolbox beneath the workbench. But—” I stepped toward them, offering to take it.
My father pushed to his feet with a groan. “Don’t worry about it. We can do it, can’t we, Sam?”
Sam had taken the train from my father and was clutching it to his chest.
My mother intervened. “Georgia Ann, you never answered my question from before.”
I dutifully turned toward her as my father and Sam went to fix the train. “Which question was that?” There were lots of questions she’d asked that I’d never answered.
“The confirmation hearing. What are you planning to wear?”
That question. I caught myself mid–eye roll.
“Because you just know, sitting right behind him, that we’ll be on television the whole time. I’ve already made an appointment for us at a spa downtown. I’m going to have them give you just a little trim. I was thinking a couple inches off the bottom and some more layers. With hair like yours, layers are the only thing that help. And I really need you not to frown while we’re sitting there.” She pointed at me. “Like that. It makes you look like you’re scowling. And everyone will see you and they’ll wonder why. Just—” She paused, remolded her features into a look I could only label angelic. “You can do that, can’t you? I know you can.”
“I, um . . . Alice! She needs to go for a walk.”
At the sound of her name, Alice lifted her head from her paws.
I nodded toward the door. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Her ears flicked forward. She stared at me as if questioning my sanity. She’d already been for a walk earlier. A really long one.
I had to grab the leash and walk over to her in order to clip it to her collar. And then I had to plead with her to get up.
“You sure she wants to go?” My mother asked the question with a frown as she stared at me over the top of her reading glasses.
“She’s going. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. Then we can all go out to dinner. My treat. How’s that sound?”
Before she could say anything else, I slipped out the door.
The wind had picked up. And with the sun’s decline, it had turned frosty. In my haste to get away, I hadn’t thought to grab a hat or gloves. In retrospect, it might have been better to stay and deal with my mother. We turned left, away from the school, at the end of the block. It took us past Mrs. T’s house.
I hadn’t thought about Mrs. T in forever. She’d lived in a bungalow that was the same era as ours. She was big on walking, and her route took her past our house in both the morning and the evening. Soon after we first moved in, she’d decided that Sean was her personal project. She baked him cakes and knitted him sweaters and recorded television shows for him about the Dalai Lama on her VCR. She flirted with him outrageously. It wasn’t difficult to understand why. When Sean smiled, it was like Christmas and the Fourth of July combined.
After she let it slip that her ninetieth birthday was fast approaching, Sean had started checking in on her in person every Friday, to see how she was doing, to make sure she was okay. We discovered she made a mean martini. And played a competitive game of Nertz. And just like that, Friday-evening cocktail hour at Mrs. T’s had begun.
She’d passed away several years before Sean died. Her son had rented the house out for a while, then decided he could make more money by selling it. Her old house with its tattered garlands of Tibetan prayer flags and its collection of stone Japanese lanterns had been torn down during the summer and a new mini mansion was being built in its place.
As we reached her lot, the last of the contractors’ mud-splattered pickups was pulling away.
Mrs. T wouldn’t have liked the McMansion. I stood there for a moment, trying to take it all in. It was too big. It was too much. Alice must have sensed my inattention, because she bolted toward the front yard, pulling her leash from my grasp.
“Alice!”
She ran up the front steps and disappeared into the house.
“Alice!” I picked my way through the debris that was strewn around the front and climbed up onto the porch.
I pushed the door open wider and put a foot to the threshold. Took a listen.
Heard nothing.
Slipping inside, I closed the door behind me, then stood in what would eventually be the front hall. “Alice!”
A whimper came from a room off to my right.
“Alice?” I walked into it.
A yelp came from the room beyond.
“Alice, what have you—”
At the back of the house was a great room with soaring ceilings and a full wall of windows that provided a view into the backyard.
Alice was there, lunging at a construction worker who was trying to calm her.
I jogged toward him, trying to explain myself. “Alice! I just— Sorry. Alice—stop! I know we’re not supposed to be here, but my dog got away and— Alice, sit!”
Alice sat, but her tail kept thumping.
The construction worker took off his hat and tucked it under an arm.
I reached for the handle of the leash. “I’m sorry she jumped—”
He put a hand to his sunglasses and pulled them off.
“—all over—” All the air left my lungs. I gasped. Felt my knees buckle. “Oh my—”