“I thought you didn’t like me,” I said. “I overheard you tell Scarlett not to get too close to me because I wouldn’t stay around any longer than it took for me to sell the café.”
“I meant for you to hear that so you would begin to think about what you have here, as opposed to what you had before you landed here broke and without so much as a dollar bill in your pocket.”
I cut my eyes around at her and frowned. “You’d only just met me.”
“I have no idea what kind of poker player you are, girl, but I saw fear in your eyes that morning.”
“I was treading water in new territory, and itwasscary,” I admitted.
I didn’t tell her that the only other time I’d been that terrified was the day I came inside from playing in the backyard and the house was filled with smoke and the smell of something burning. Mama was lyingon the kitchen floor, and I couldn’t wake her. I called 911. The lady on the phone told me to turn off the oven but not to open the door. Then I heard sirens. The policemen opened windows and the oven door to let the smoke out of the house. They told me to go sit on the porch, and I did. Then the ambulance came, and two men pushed a gurney across the yard and inside. To me, it was hours before Frank got home, but he was really there before they brought my mother’s body out of the house. He tried to hold me back, but I got away from him and jumped up on the gurney with Mama.
“She can’t breathe,” I’d sobbed as I unzipped the black bag.
Ada Lou reached across the console and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” I took a couple of deep breaths and wished again that I’d never gone to Tucson. All these people around me seemed to be smothering me with painful memories.
We whizzed by a green sign that saidDell City, Population: 413.
“You looked like you were about to cry,” Ada Lou said. “Was it the sign reminding you how small this place is?”
“It’s not about the sign or how desolate this area is. I didn’t want her to smother,” I said around the lump in my throat, then told her about the memory of watching them take my mother away.
She patted my shoulder. “Bless your heart. No wonder you are a nomad. You’re afraid to get close to someone for fear you’ll lose them. But I’m not going anywhere, and neither are Rosie and Scarlett.”
“Thank you.”
She pointed to a water tower and then put her hand on the steering wheel again. “The internet lists several towns or communities in this county, but most of them are like salt flats—just a place where a town used to be. Fort Hancock can boast the biggest population with a little over a thousand folks living there. Dell City and Sierra Blanca are behind that, with four to five hundred. Over there is a great Mexican restaurant. I eat there at least once a week,” she said and gestured as she drove. “And there’s where the folks here can buy fuel and auto parts.And there’s the church where Scarlett goes, and the school. And on down here is the San Isidore Catholic Church.”
Rosalie’s truck was the only vehicle parked outside the building with crosses on the doors and a bell at the top of the false front. The wooden sign out front looked like it had been stenciled by an amateur.
“What kind of name is that?”
“Saint Isidore is the patron saint of farmers,” Ada Lou answered.
“Why would they give a church that name out here in the middle of nothing but weeds and yucca plants? They should have named it after the patron saint of yucca plants.”
She shrugged and chuckled. “I agree with you, but I doubt that yucca plants have a patron saint. That is the whole of Dell City. If you don’t blink, you’ll see it again as we drive through town on our way back to the trailer park.”
“Why would anyone want to live here?” I asked, and then wished I could hit a button and take the words back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you or any of the folks who make their home here.”
“Home can be anywhere from this place to New York City, or Los Angeles, or the Sahara Desert. The size of the place or the land where it’s located has no bearing on where your family lives,” she answered.
“Why—”
As if she knew what I was about to say, she cut me off with a flick of her wrist. “I can read your mind—at one time, I had the same question. Why does your family have to be in a place like this? Truth is that I have no idea, but I listen to my heart, Carla. When I don’t, I have regrets.”
Amen to that,I thought when I remembered Lady Luck telling me not to go to that poker game in Tucson.
“Have you always paid attention to your heart?”
“I don’t like the feeling I get when I am stubborn and insist on doing something different. My heart told me that you need an honest friend. So here I am.” Her tone seemed to scold me.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“We’re going back to my place to watchSweet Home Alabamaand eat popcorn.”
“Why—”
