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The farm the pastor mentioned is impossible to miss. As soon as I turn onto Baxter Loop, I see the signs leading the way.
Safe Anchorage Goat Farm. 2 miles.
Raw goat milk, cheeses, and soaps. 1.3 miles.
Please drive slowly. Goats ahead.
I think this last sign’s a joke until I literally have to brake for three goats stripping bark from a tree on the side of the road. I follow about half a dozen colorfully-painted arrows up a winding driveway until I stop in front of a bright red farmhouse. I feel like I’ve jumped back in time at least sixty or seventy years.
A middle-aged woman in one of those old-fashioned aprons — I think you call that pattern calico even though I’ve never been a hundred percent sure what calico actually means — stands on the porch and waves at me.
“Welcome to Safe Anchorage!” she calls out as soon as I step out of the Pontiac. “Are you here for milk, cheese, or to meet the animals?”
It’s been a couple months since I’ve talked to two strangers in a single day. I glance around, half expecting Grandma Lucy to appear like a phantom at my elbow. “I’m here looking for someone.” At least now my voice is competent. I don’t even want to know what that LA Lakers fan boy pastor thinks about me after that show I gave him. “Is this where Lucy lives?”
The woman’s smile broadens, a feat I wouldn’t have imagined possible.
“Of course. Come right in. Grandma Lucy will be delighted you stopped by.”
I know for sure this woman’s too old to be anyone’s granddaughter but for lack of better alternatives, I follow Calico Lady through the swinging double doors of the farmhouse entrance. Some bells tied to the knob chatter merrily as we enter.
“Who’ve you got there?” An old man with a potbelly and Santa Claus beard glances up from his recliner by the fireside. I’m half afraid that if I get close enough to glance at the newspaper he’s reading, I’ll find that I’ve somehow stepped back into the 1950s.
“Friend of Grandma Lucy’s,” the woman replies. “Grandma!” she hollers up a flight of stairs, and I try to guess her age.
I feel like a kid being sent to the principal’s office for truancy when Grandma Lucy appears at the top of the stairs, her spectacles falling halfway down her nose. Her shock-white hair reminds me of the icing on the gingerbread houses Sandy and I used to make with some of her younger foster kids.
“Hello, dear,” Grandma Lucy says. Like we’ve been neighbors for decades and I’ve stopped by for our regular afternoon chat.
“I’ll heat up some tea,” chatters Calico Lady, and I’m left alone at the bottom of the stairs watching Grandma Lucy descend.
Before I know it, my hand is clasped warmly in hers and she’s smiling into my eyes, saying, “Now remind me, my dear, where it is that we had the privilege to meet.”
I bite my lower lip. I can stand my ground in a room full of medical specialists whose total net worth must be in the tens of millions or more, but I feel uneasy in front of an eighty-year-old granny.
“I was at church on Sunday. I was there when you ...”
Grandma Lucy nods sagely and sucks in her breath. “Rachel.” She says the name with absolute certainty.
I hate to correct her. “No, I’m Tiff.”
Grandma Lucy’s led me into a little greenhouse room with a view of the backyard. She still hasn’t let go of my hand. “No, my dear. Rachel, the mother weeping for her children.”
It’s been a few years since I’ve been a heavy partier. I’m not used to this feeling, this racing in my chest. “I guess that’s me,” is all I can say.
Grandma Lucy sits me down in a gaudy upholstered loveseat with giant rose patterns splattered all over in dizzying masses. She pulls up a rocking chair and sits across from me so close our knees touch.
“Now, tell me about your baby. I want to hear everything.”