The Probable Future

The back door opened and Stella peeked inside. “Is that your great-gran out front?” she asked Cynthia. When Cynthia nodded, Stella said, “I thought we should probably avoid her. I’ve heard she cooks up babies for lunch.”

“Only on Tuesdays.” Cynthia grinned. “The rest of the time she eats lemon chess pie.”

“Ooh,” Stella said. “Pie.” She grabbed a slice for herself. “Is that who Jimmy takes after? Your great-gran?”

“She refuses to sit down at the table with him. Even at Thanksgiving. She calls him ‘the delinquent,’ right to his face.”

Although Cynthia was two grades ahead, she’d taken Stella under her wing at the high school; the two often had lunch together. Cynthia’s brother had tried to join them on several occasions but Jimmy had been told, in no uncertain terms, that his presence was not appreciated. For this Stella was eternally grateful, for something strange happened to her when he was around, and she hated herself for whatever wicked thing she felt. It was during these lunches with Cynthia, with Jimmy glowering at them from across the room, that Stella had heard all about Sissy Elliot, who was known to keep a pile of rocks by her front door, ready to throw if anyone was foolish enough to walk across her lawn.

“Where’s your partner in crime?” Cynthia joked. “I thought you and Hap were always together.”

Stella opened the door wider and there was Hap Stewart waiting for her on the back porch. Hap leaned his head through the door and asked for a piece of pie-to-go, if that wouldn’t be a bother. He was ill at ease in Jenny’s presence, but he had that grin you couldn’t help but respond to, a sort of goodness that shone through.

Stella came to stand next to her mother as Jenny wrapped up some pie for them. “So you made it through your first day.”

“Barely,” Jenny admitted. “I never worked so hard in my life.”

Stella had a heavy backpack over her shoulder, always favoring that side that had been broken at birth. She wore jeans and boots and an old rain slicker that Jenny thought she recognized as her own from years ago. Stella’s hair streamed down her back, rain-soaked and pale. All the same, she looked more solid since she’d moved to Unity.

“But you made it through.” Lest she sound too complimentary, Stella added, “Now I can say my mother’s a professional pie-server. I’ll be home late. We’re still working on our science project. Can I have another piece of pie in case I run into my uncle?”

“Your uncle?” Jenny had a light-headed feeling, surely brought on by standing on her feet all day.

“He’s cutting down that big old tree on the corner of Lockhart. I met him there one day. He’s great. But it’s so weird—he’s nothing like Dad.”

“No,” Jenny said. “He wouldn’t be.”

“Call me later,” Cynthia reminded her new friend as Stella and Hap left through the back door. Cynthia and Jenny finished cleaning up the kitchen, allowing the more compassionate Liza to collect the bill from the grans. Let her be hit by the sparks of old Sissy’s comments. Let her put out the fire.

“I think I will spit in your great-gran’s tea next time she comes in,” Jenny confided to Cynthia. She wished she could feel as at ease with Stella as she did with this child with the scarlet hair.

Cynthia laughed. “I wish my mother was more like you.” Annette Elliot was a lawyer like her husband, Henry, and Cynthia hadn’t spoken to her in a month. “Nothing I do is right.”

“Maybe everyone wishes her mother was like someone else.”

“Especially my grandmother, I’ll bet,” Cynthia said.

Jenny had thought, Especially me, but in light of Sissy Elliot’s dreadful behavior, she didn’t feel she especially deserved anyone’s sympathy. She was now completely exhausted; all the same, she decided the walk home would do her good, the fresh air might revitalize her. The rain had eased off and was little more than a sprinkle, so she turned down Liza’s offer of a ride home.

“Get a bike, like me,” Cynthia called as she zoomed past the porch of the tea house, spraying Jenny with water from the damp road. “It will take you where you want to go.”

But where was that exactly? Jenny was far too old to be taken in by the green light of spring or by the way she felt when she breathed in the humid air. She was certain Liza Hull was mistaken. She and Matt weren’t even the same people anymore. She would assuredly never have recognized him if Liza hadn’t informed her of who he was. He was just a good-looking man hired to take down the oldest tree in town, waving good-naturedly, someone she used to know, nothing more.