“I’ll take it,” Momma said, and Winnie handed her the refreshed cup of ice water.
Instead of following her down the hall, Winnie moved to the French doors and stepped outside, taking a deep breath as she hugged her arms around herself.
Her parents had a half-acre property here in Redwood. Nowhere near what Ty was going to buy for his horses and the small farm animals he’d count as pets, but she found their faithful border collie, Lucky, near the back fence. Winnie walked across the deck and down the steps to greet him. He was thirteen now and clearly excited to see her. She smiled, opened his run, and crouched to scrub his neck and face.
“How you doing, Lucky?” Lucky whined and licked her, turned in a circle, his rump wagging in joy to see her.
“Winnie,” her momma called.
Winnie rose and faced the house again, the motion light blazing as she made the trek back, Lucky bounding ahead of her.
“Oh, don’t let him in,” Momma said. “He’s a pain.”
“Momma, how long’s he been in the run?” Winnie asked.
“Um, Taylor put him outside…when your Daddy fell.” Momma glared at the dog as he dodged past her into the house. He went straight to the water bowl in the corner and started lapping vigorously.
More alarms rang through Winnie, far louder now than the fact that her aging mother needed to write down her father’s medication schedule. “Momma, when’s the last time you fed him?”
“Taylor takes care of him,” Momma said.
Watching Lucky sniff his empty bowl and then turn to look at her, Winnie very seriously doubted that. “Momma, I don’t think he’s been fed today.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Momma said.
“Have you met Taylor?” The words slipped out before Winnie could stop them. She shook her head. “Never mind.”
She walked to the pantry and opened the doors, expecting to see Momma’s neat rows of baking supplies, canned goods in holders, bags of flour and sugar and rice, and the bucket of oatmeal on the floor. Instead, pure chaos stared back.
More packaged food than Winnie had ever seen in her parents’ home stared back at her. Mac and cheese, bagged noodles, rice dishes, lentil cups, the list went on and on.
“Where’s Lucky’s food?”
“We had to move it into the garage,” Momma said.
Winnie turned a long look on her mother. When Momma didn’t meet her eyes, Winnie’s heart started to pound an irregular rhythm.
“Come on, Lucks,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Let’s go get your food.” She scooped up his bowl, opened the door by the dining table, and stepped down the three steps into the garage, flipping on the light as she went.
She’d parked on the street, because her parents’ minivan was in the driveway, and she’d wanted to leave room for Taylor’s SUV. She hadn’t realized the minivan was there, because they couldn’t pull it into the garage.
She blinked at the disarray and magnitude of items swallowing the two-car garage. Momma had always kept a standing fridge and freezer beside the door, as well as a chest freezer. Daddy had huntedin Winnie’s childhood and filled the freezer with venison every year. For a few years, they’d invested in a cow co-op and gotten half a beef with a neighbor down the street, and Momma was a good cook, especially with soups and stews.
Now, moving boxes and a couch and loveseat set filled the second parking spot in the garage, and a queen mattress and box springs leaned against the wall covering Daddy’s tools. Trash bag upon trash bag, most of them clearly tossed from the entrance and left where they landed, littered the other half of the garage. One had liquid oozing onto the concrete.
With the sight of all that garbage, the smell hit Winnie, along with the realization that things here in Redwood were far worse than she’d known.
Lucky whined and circled her legs, and Winnie jolted back to the task at hand. She’d never been to the landfill, but she could figure it out. She cringed inwardly at loading up her parents’ and Taylor’s trash and driving it somewhere, but she would do whatever she had to do to be able to drive away in good conscience on Monday night.
After all, she had a job, a little house by the river, two cats, and Ty waiting in Three Rivers. She couldn’t stay here, even if Taylor forgot to feed Lucky and everyone in this house had forgotten how to walk the trash an extra twenty feet to the big black barrel outside.
She looked to the shelves above the chest freezer and found a bag of Lucky’s food there. “Thank you, Lord,” she whispered, because she did not want to get back in her car and drive to the grocery store. She would have, though, because Lucky needed—deserved—to be taken care of.
She filled his bowl and set it on the floor right there in the garage, needing another moment before she went inside and confronted her mother about what had really been going on.
Unfortunately, Momma opened the door a few seconds later. “Oh, you found it.”
“Momma,” Winnie said, sweeping an arm across the garage. “What is all this?” She turned to watch her mother’s reaction. Anxiety,and then resignation, filled Momma’s gaze. “Why didn’t you tell me things had gotten this bad?”
