Chapter 16: The Roof

It took three hours to reach Millbrook, and July spent two of them reading the pie labels aloud.

"Apple. Peach. Apple with the crumble. And a pecan, in case she's a pecan woman."

"Mom, she's a farmer. She's a pie woman."

"Everybody is a pecan woman in the right light."

William drove.

He had insisted on driving himself, in the plain gray sedan, with no driver and no second car.

Ken sat in the back beside Jude, with his hands on his knees and his eyes on the road.

He had not said ten words since the highway.

The last mile was gravel.

Then the trees opened, and there was a long green field, and a gray farmhouse with a tin roof that flashed in the sun.

Cows stood in the near pasture.

A woman in a faded blue apron stood on the porch with her arms folded.

She was small and straight, and her white hair was braided down her back.

Jude had seen the house in a photograph on a forum, posted by a stranger who wanted to be cruel.

The photograph had not shown the sunflowers along the fence, or the swing on the porch, or the pot of something steaming on the rail.

"That's the roof," Ken said quietly. "She paid for it herself."

"It's beautiful."

"It leaks in the kitchen."

The car had barely stopped when Grandma Bronze came down the steps.

She looked at William, and at July holding four pies, and at Ken, and last at Jude.

She looked at Jude for a long time.

"You're bigger than the picture," she said.

Jude's stomach dropped.

"Good," she went on. "There's more to feed."

She pulled him down by both shoulders and hugged him hard, smelling of woodsmoke and bread.

Jude hugged her back, and found, somewhat to his surprise, that his eyes were stinging.

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