If you ask me, Sunday afternoons are the most boring time of the week. Granny dozed in the recliner, and Grandpa napped underneath the maple trees. I stretched across my bed and tried reading Heidi Grows Up, but after five pages, the words blurred together.

I threw the book down on the bed and opened my journal. I read through a bedtime story that I had been writing for Robin. I had never finished it, and now it might be too late.

On a blank page, I wrote the words that I was too ashamed to say out loud. Robin’s accident is my fault. I yanked the page out and tore it into a thousand pieces. Better to use pig Latin. Obin’sray accidentway asway ymay aultfay. I wrote it over and over, like the time our teacher made the class write sentences for being too noisy. I didn’t stop until my fingers cramped.

I left a note for Granny on the kitchen table. Gone to Ruby’s house. Be back soon. Love, Sarah.

I climbed on my bike and followed the path deep in the woods until I came to a small white house. Instead of planting grass, Miss Irene had turned her front yard into a flower garden. Ruby was rocking on the front-porch swing.

“You thirsty?” she asked.

I put the kickstand down on my bike. “Yep. It’s hot as blazes.”

We rocked on the porch swing, sipping sweet tea. “Where’s Miss Irene?” I asked.

“Napping,” Ruby answered. “Ain’t that what most grown-ups do on Sunday afternoons? Seems like a waste of a perfectly good day to me.”

“That’s what I think too. Where’s your uncle Clarence?”

“He’s gone fishing.” Ruby grinned. “I wouldn’t wanna be Clarence when he gets back here. He skipped church. You know how Ma Rene feels about that.”

Miss Irene might have kowtowed to white people, but she was the boss in her own family.

“What have you been doing since church?” Ruby asked.

“I tried to read, but I couldn’t make sense of the words.”

Ruby nodded like she got what I was talking about. “I was that way after my daddy was killed in Vietnam. Had to repeat fourth grade because of it.”

“I remember that. It’s why I’m here. I’m afraid Robin will, you know …”

“Die,” said Ruby Lee.

I took a deep breath and let it out. “That’s what I’m most afraid of.”

Ruby chewed on her lip. “If she dies, you’ll be sad for a long time, but then one day you’ll eat some chocolate cake and it’ll taste good again, or you’ll laugh at The Beverly Hillbillies. Somehow you’ll start feeling better, even if you don’t want to.”

“But there’s no way to be as happy as before. Is there?”

Ruby shook her head. “Nope, don’t see how. I still miss my daddy every day. Some stuff can’t be fixed.”

I didn’t feel like going back to the farm. I turned my bike in the direction of Moccasin Gap, pedaling hard up the steep hill. Sweat dripped down my back and under my arms. I rode by a deep gulley that folks had used as a junkyard. It was filled with hubcaps, a wringer washing machine, even an old car. Shady Creek had a perfectly good junkyard. I thought more people should use it. Granny said littering folks hadn’t been raised right.

About a mile from home, a truck pulled up behind me. Its engine breathed down my neck. Gravel crackled. It reminded me of Robin’s accident. I stayed close to the edge of the road and kept pedaling. Then the horn blared.

I looked over my shoulder, and my bike veered off the road. Screaming like a wild animal, I headed down the ravine. The bike picked up speed, and I flew over the handlebars.

“Sarah, Sarah Beth?” Mr. Fletcher yelled. “Child, are you breathing?”

I was too stunned to answer him.

Mr. Fletcher scrambled down the bank. I was ashamed of running off the road and scratching up my bicycle. He knelt down and put his hand on my back. “Sarah, can you hear me?”

I nodded yes.

“That’s good,” Mr. Fletcher said. “What hurts? Can you move your arms and legs?”

I could, but not without wincing. “My elbows hurt.” Then I flexed my knees. “Ohhh, my knees hurt too.”

“Bet so. Your kneecaps are scraped raw.”

Mr. Fletcher took off his cap and twisted it in his hands. “Should I take you to the emergency room?”

“Nooo,” I wailed. “I don’t need an emergency room. I need to go home!”

Granny filled the sink with warm, soapy water. She cleaned my knees with a soft washcloth, then dabbed Merthiolate on them.

“Ah, that burns!” I squirmed on the toilet seat, as the medicine turned my knees an orangey red.

Granny blew cool air on them to stop the burning. While she was applying the bandages, Granny said, “Sarah Beth, what happened? Hiram said he tooted his horn to make sure you didn’t pull out in front of him, and the next thing he knew, you were flying over the handlebars.”

I shuddered. “The horn scared me.” What I didn’t say was that I had been afraid the truck would hit me, the same way the car had hit Robin.

That night I had trouble getting to sleep, and when I finally did, the bad dreams started. The black car sped down the street. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. When I ran toward Robin, the car hit both of us. I was falling, falling, falling, and then the car turned into a casket.

Granny switched on the light and hurried over to my bed. “Wake up, pumpkin. It’s only a bad dream.”

My heart raced. Though I wasn’t sure if God was listening, I bowed my head and asked him to help me. I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

I spent the next morning in front of the television, not really watching the shows, but glad for the noise.

Granny called to me from the kitchen. “Get your recipe box. I’m gonna teach you to make stewed potatoes.”

While I peeled potatoes, Granny fried out fatback meat on the stove. “We have to keep busy,” she said. “That’ll make the waiting easier.”

Keeping busy helped, but nothing could make waiting easy.

Next Granny had me use the cutting board and slice the potatoes into chunks. “Now drop them in the pot and cover them with water,” she said. “Once they cook up nice and soft, we’ll add thickening to them.”

I flexed my sore knees. “What’s thickening?”

“That’s when you mix flour with a little water and form a paste,” Granny said. “Then you add some milk. Thickening makes potatoes and corn creamier.”

I wrote the recipe for the potatoes on a card and put it in my box.

Granny opened a new sack of flour and refilled the bin. “Sarah, go ahead and make some biscuits. They’ll be good with the potatoes.”

In a large bowl, I mixed flour, lard, and buttermilk. I found my rhythm working the dough and started humming one of Ruby’s songs. Just as I was placing the last biscuit into the long, greased pan, the telephone clanged.