Friday night, Mae removed the last piece of bisque from the kiln and reloaded it with glazed pieces. It would take twelve hours for the pieces to fire and another twelve for the kiln to cool. She checked her watch. Nine thirty. No wonder she was tired. So much for glazing the bisqueware tonight. She could push through, but her favorite glaze was running low, and she definitely needed to be fresh to accurately weigh and measure the ingredients for a new batch.
She’d intended to take the weekend off but got behind on her orders when she drove into Pearl Springs Wednesday afternoon. With the craft market coming up, Mae needed to work in the shop tomorrow.
With one last look around the studio, she locked the door and walked the familiar path to her house. Her cell phone rang just as she reached the back steps. Her heart fluttered when Mark’s name came up, and she slid the answer button. “Did you talk to Dani Collins?”
He chuckled. “Hello to you too.”
“Mark!”
“Okay. Yes, I talked with her, and she’s actually in Cincinnati. Not only is she willing to take a DNA test, but she’s driving to Pearl Springs. She’ll be here Sunday.”
Driving. Here Sunday. Mae almost dropped her phone. Thank you, Lord. She took a big breath. “Did she say why she never came home to Pearl Springs?”
“From what I understand, she has no memory of living here and didn’t know she had any relatives other than her uncle and his wife who raised her. And she’d never heard of Pearl Springs or Russell County, Tennessee, before tonight.”
“Why doesn’t she have any memory?”
“You’ll have to ask her that. She was stunned by my call, so we discussed the most important things.”
It was hard to believe that if Keith took Danielle, he’d kept information about her Tennessee family secret, but he had to be the uncle who raised her. She would get her answers when Danielle arrived. “Thank you so much for believing me and not letting this go,” Mae said. “Do you know what time she’ll get here?”
“No. Like I said, my call kind of overwhelmed her, and she wasn’t certain when she’d leave. Something about a breakfast with a professor in the morning, and she may have other things she has to do. Who knows, she could be taking two days to drive from Cincinnati. At any rate, she’s supposed to call me before she gets here Sunday, and I’ll call you.”
After she hung up, it hit Mae—she would see Danielle in two days. It was more than she could wrap her mind around. She went inside the house to her office and picked up the spiral notebook on her desk. Every year, she started a new one and wrote something every day, usually about the prayers God answered. She couldn’t wait until morning to write about how her granddaughter would actually arrive in Pearl Springs in two days.
Tension eased from her shoulders as she poured her heart out on paper. Mae wasn’t worried that the DNA test would come back with a different result than the facial recognition. Her heart told her this was her granddaughter.
Just as she finished her entry with a prayer of thanksgiving, her phone rang. Morgan’s name showed up on the ID. She would probably be almost as excited as Mae.
She answered, and Morgan said, “I hope I’m not calling too late, but Ben and I were talking, and he agreed to bring me up on the ridge Sunday afternoon.”
Mae’s heart sank. She’d love to spend time with Morgan, but not that afternoon. “Could you come tomorrow?”
“Let me see.” A minute later she came back on the line. “Ben said he has appointments to show houses all day. Sunday isn’t good?” Morgan sounded disappointed.
“Danielle is coming home,” Mae blurted.
“What? Oh, Aunt Mae, that’s so exciting! Of course you don’t want anyone there when you first see her! We’ll do this another time.”
“Thanks for understanding. I can’t believe it’s happening after all these years.”
“So, she was the one in the magazine. How did you get in touch with her?”
“It’s complicated, and I’m too excited to talk about it tonight.”
“Okay, I understand. Well, I hope to see you soon so I can hear all about it.”
Mae agreed.
“Try to get some sleep,” Morgan said just before they hung up.
Sleep was all but impossible, and after fighting the bed most of the night, Mae gave it up at six and got up. Being awake and dressed wasn’t much better. After checking on her kiln, she thought about mixing the glazes, but Mae was too excited to concentrate on measuring out the ingredients. All she wanted to do was pace the floor.
At eight, she grabbed her mesh bag and staff and set out for the old poplar trees on the side of the ridge. A walk would calm her down. Even better if she found a few morel mushrooms for dinner Sunday.
She passed by a thicket with a path tunneled into it. Too small to be used by deer but big enough for the coyotes she sometimes heard at night. She took a deep breath, inhaling the different scents—pines, a hint of sassafras from the heartleaf plant buried under the brown leaves of winter, the decaying leaves themselves . . . this was just what she needed to keep her mind off Danielle’s arrival.
Mae had been so afraid her granddaughter might not want her life upended. She’d prayed hard that wouldn’t be the case ever since Mark brought it up. She checked her phone, thinking Mark might’ve heard from Danielle. Mae had checked MapQuest on the distance, and it was only a six-hour drive, even with stops. Maybe Danielle had changed her mind about waiting until Sunday and was arriving today. No service.
She might as well enjoy her time in the woods. Sunlight filtered through the spring leaves as Mae used her staff to steady herself on the climb, glad the poplars where the mushrooms grew were just ahead. Lately, she had tired easier and sometimes got a headache. Probably her blood pressure like her cardiologist Dr. Wexler had said last week, even though she’d disagreed with him.
She should rest a bit before she looked for the morels. Mae settled against the trunk of a huge poplar and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on her face. Spring had broken out all around her with wild rhododendron in full bloom. Overhead, blooms filled the poplar trees. This was her safe place, and she would never sell her land.
Her great-nephew, Ben, would have to wait until she was dead and gone before he got his hands on her property. And if Dani Collins was Danielle, he wouldn’t get it then.
To chase away those thoughts, she stood and used her staff to rake away dead leaves from around the poplar. She quickly spied the coned shape of a morel growing in the rich soil and stooped over and twisted it off. Fifteen minutes later she had over a dozen of the prized mushrooms that brought over twenty dollars a pound in town. Not that these were going anywhere—she had plans to batter and fry these if Danielle agreed to join her for dinner tomorrow.
Her cell phone rang once, startling her, and she fished it out of her pocket. Her heart skipped when she saw Mark’s name. But the call had failed. It was a wonder it rang at all. Maybe he’d heard from Dani Collins.
There were more mushrooms, but they would wait for another day. Going down the hillside was harder on her knees than climbing up, and that headache was back. When the house came in sight, she stopped to check her phone. Yes! Mark had left a message. She punched the play button.
“Where are you, Mae? Call me as soon as you get this.”
She tried to decipher his tone . . . He didn’t sound excited. More like worried. Mae winced. She’d forgotten to text him that she was going up on the ridge. He’d probably called to check on her and got worried when she didn’t answer. Mae hated getting old and having to let people know where she was and what she was doing. Oh, she knew it was because Mark cared, but still . . .
Mae approached the steps to her back porch and froze. The door was a quarter of the way open. She hadn’t left it that way.
She jumped when something crashed to the floor. Someone was in her house. Mae backed away from the steps. Call 911.
The floor creaked inside the house. She knew every sound in her house, and that creak came from the hallway to her office. Another creak indicated the person was walking to the front of her house. Anyone bold enough to break into her house in the middle of the day would have no problem taking care of her.
She needed to hide, but where? The thicket she’d seen earlier. It was only a short walk up the hill. Mae dialed 911, but when the operator answered, she hesitated. If she said anything, the person in her house would hear her. Instead, she turned and used her staff to hurry along, veering off the path when she came to the thicket. Maybe she could make the call once she was hidden.
What if there were varmints in the brush? They wouldn’t be as dangerous as the varmint in her house. With her head pounding like someone had taken a hammer to it, Mae pushed away thoughts of what might be in the maze of weeds and bushes, got down on all fours, and crawled inside. Why did her head feel like the top was going to blow off? Maybe if she rested.