Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

“Basils and sages and stuff, plants to look pretty and to eat too. Raspberry Delight and Blue Steel Russian and Pineapple and Scarlet and Grape. Grape sage gets big, so it has to go in the garden.”

“We can try to overwinter them on the front porch, but they may not survive.” I placed the bags in the kitchen sink near the herbs and veggies I had brought in earlier, and opened the paper. The rich scent of sage leaves spilled out and filled the room. The spicy scent of Thai and lemon basils added to the mélange of fragrances. I separated the plants and lifted down narrow-necked vases and cups with broken handles and other good rooting dishes. I hadn’t cleaned my own veggies beyond hosing them off outside, or dealt with the cuttings I had brought in, so I piled everything together, turned on the water, and went to work.

“We could cover ’em with plastic on cold days and nights,” Mud said, “or …” She stopped. Her color went high, her face bright red, and not with sunburn.

My hands stilled all by themselves and my body hung loose as if I was about to face a fight. “Or what?”

“Or we could build a greenhouse,” she whispered. It was the tone of a faithful supplicant in a cathedral, one full of reverence, hope, and not a little awe.

I went back to separating the plants and snipping off the bases of the stems, removing leaves to create a good spot for roots to start, and putting all the leftover green matter in the compost bucket. Carefully, to keep from getting Mud’s hopes up, I said, “I’ve considered a greenhouse. But this is a hard time to build one for lots of reasons. You’re starting school, we have a court date to be set, we have to consider child care, I have cases at work, we’re learning how to live together. A proper greenhouse is expensive.”

“Them’s all problems we can deal with,” she said earnestly. “If we had a greenhouse, I could practice my growing skills and we could have plants ready for the ground in spring. We could have fresh lettuces all winter. And tomatoes starting early. Please, please, please!” Hope and groveling laced all through her words and tone.

I never wanted my sister to grovel or beg me for anything. Women were used to begging in the church. Asking was okay. Begging was for victims. “I’m thinking about it. But it’s costly, Mud.”

“Not if Sam and Daddy build it.”

We both went still and silent. When I could move again, I put three basils into vases. Fivesages, then three more basils. I separated my mints and put them into a separate shallow bowl. Softly, I said, “Daddy and Sam still want us in the church.”

“Nope. You grow leaves,” Mud said with satisfaction, “and I might.”

I studied my sister as my fingers continued to separate plants, working by muscle memory. Mud was dirty and tired and full of both angst and animation, what churchwomen might refer to as “being fraught.”

“You think they want to help us but not bring us back into the church because I grow leaves.”

“I think they want to keep an eye on us because they have future generations to look at and their young’uns might grow leaves too. I’m thinking they want to have a safe place for their plant-people to live if necessary. I’m thinking we’uns—sorry—we need to make hay while the sun shines. I’m thinking we need to get a greenhouse outta their worry.”

“That’s very Machiavellian of you, sister mine.”

“That sounds like a dirty word, but if’n I get a greenhouse outta that, then I’m okay with it.”

I chuckled and placed the last cutting into a canning jar. I washed my veggies and set them aside. Washed my hands. I looked at the water pouring from the sink and sighed. If we got a greenhouse, I would need a separate cistern since my well was wind powered and a slow draw. A separate system was costly. I shut off the water. “I’m okay with family—but only family—providing labor for a greenhouse. But I have to be able to pay for the supplies, materials, equipment, and any nonfamily labor.”

“Deal,” Mud said instantly, digging in a dirty pocket. “Sam came up with a … not a bid, but a materials and cost list.” A grin that might have riven the Red Sea split her face.

I took the folded piece of paper. There were three columns listing prices and materials, based on the size and type of greenhouse. The totals made my heart pound. “I’ll think about it,” I managed. What I was thinking? Even the smallest greenhouse was sooo much money!

Nell said, “I gotta shower. Then I gotta tell you’un about the vampire tree. It’s been retreating for months and last night it let the bulldozer go. And it ain’t ate—hasn’t eaten?—an animal in weeks!”

? ? ?

Mud was determined to get a greenhouse. Family discussions were hard, despite the fact that there were only two of us. Mud had the ability of most churchwomen to finagle, manipulate, and guilt me into too much. I’d been raised the same way myself, but years living with John and Leah, my husband’s senior wife, and years more on my own, had dulled my abilities to wheedle to get my way. It wasn’t an ability that I particularly wanted to encourage in either of us. It was a cult woman’s way—a victim’s way—of negotiating in a household where multiple wives had no control over the purse strings.

I’d been working to get Mud to understand the difference between negotiation and wheedling and was making progress. For that reason—or that’s what I told myself—I let Mud talk to me about the possibility of a greenhouse. “Not one a them little ones neither, but a proper greenhouse,” she insisted, tapping the kitchen table with her fingertip on each of the last four syllables.

“Oh?” I asked, knowing exactly what she meant. Mud wanted a church-style greenhouse—a twenty-by-forty-foot structure, dug down into the soil, with French drains, cement-block foundation, galvanized steel supports, raised beds, a working water supply, a planting station, shades to block extreme heat and sun, easy-to-open vents, and eight-millimeter twin-wall polycarbonate cover material. A proper greenhouse had been my dream for years, and so I let her talk, showing me illustrations on her new computer tablet, having fun with a device that had scared her silly the first time she held it, only a week or so past.

“There’s lots of reasons to build a proper one. Logical reasons,” she concluded.

“I’m listening.”

“We can save money by growing our own food.” Finger tapping with each point, she continued. “We can trade veggies for half a pig in the fall like Mama does.” Tap. “We can sell veggies at Old Lady Stevens’ and Sister Erasmus’ market”—tap—“and at the town farmers’ market on Wednesdays.” Tap. “And we can show the lawyer and the judge how we can eat cheap and fresh. That’ll make ’em feel good about you getting custody of me.”

“Now you’re pulling out the big guns,” I said, secretly amused, and pleased that there had been no whining. Yet. “We’d have to go into debt,” I said.

That shut Mud up. Debt was against everything the church taught.

“I’d have to get a loan,” I said, “and the supplies you’re suggesting would run me a good ten thousand dollars, Mud. For ten thousand, we can buy from the church and still eat organic, still put up veggies and fruit. Ten thousand is a lot of money, and we’d still need to buy seeds and plants and roots. And we still need to address upgrades for the house like air-conditioning and a real hot water heater and a redesigned bathroom and laundry room and maybe even central heat. And add to that the cost of child care until you reach the age of sixteen.”

“I don’t need no child care.”

“You can’t be here alone at night if I’m out at work. It’s expensive. We need all that to make this place a proper home for you, according to what the court is likely to require. That’s a much bigger part of the custody problem than not having a greenhouse.”

“I reckon that’s a lot.”

“It is. And it’s what it’ll take to bring us into the twenty-first century.” I studied my sister and said, “I have the list of upgrades to the house suggested by the lawyer. Brother Thad will have me an estimate soon.”

Mud took a breath as if diving into deep water. “You make more’n fifty thousand dollars a year,” she said, looking at her hands tightening into fists on the kitchen table. “And your living costs last year were around fifteen thousand. You being a tree for six months meant your income was less—due to you bein’ on disability and everything. But your cost of living while you were a tree was negalable so you came out ahead.”

Oho. “Negligible,” I corrected, wondering how Mud had figured out all this. JoJo had hacked into my accounts and paid my few bills while I was out on “disability,” but Jo would never give out my private information. My family thought I had been undercover, not on disability. The story had been a total fabrication to appease the Nicholsons until a solution could be found for calling me back from being a tree. Only Mud had known, and she must have gone through my bills, my bank statements, my mail, all my financial papers. “Somebody’s been sneaking around, searching through my financial records.”