“I wouldn’t be surprised if I did,” Lynn said. “I doubt anybody came through here and took the shampoo but left the corn.”
There was shampoo, and soap, and even washcloths so soft when Lucy pressed them to her cheek, a memory from childhood flashed so brightly she had to sit down to shake it off. She saw Neva, her long-dead mother, smiling and plastering a wet washcloth to Lucy’s pudgy toddler belly, tickling her through the softness. Lucy gasped for breath, still clutching the washcloth to her face and waiting for more.
But none came.
That night they were clean and full of a hot meal for the first time in a long while, and Lucy felt a happiness that even the rising mountains in the west couldn’t overshadow. Lynn sat with her on the porch and they watched the stars come out, like pinpricks in the black fabric of the sky. The horses grazed in the yard, their calm mutterings carried to the women on the breeze.
“How far back do your memories go?” Lucy asked suddenly.
“What’s that?” Lynn lifted her head from against the post she’d been resting against.
“What’s the earliest memories you have, from when you were a kid?”
“I’d have to think about it. It’s hard to know sometimes what’s real and what’s my mind filling in blanks with stories I’ve been told.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Lynn said slowly, “Mother was the only person I knew for a good long while. We had to work hard to get things done, and what little time there was together she was pushing me for something else. Like during the winters we’d be in the basement for hours, her teaching me to read when I was little, then memorizing poetry as I got older. Stebbs told me a few stories from before the Shortage, about how Mother looked or acted that is a nicer version of her, with less worries. Some of those memories I can’t help but wonder if my mind is changing things so I remember good things that didn’t actually happen.”
“So how do you know what’s real and what’s something you made up?”
Lynn shrugged. “I guess you don’t. In the end I know Mother did what she thought was best when it came to raising me. If what I remember fits into that idea of Mother, it’s probably true. Why you asking me this?”
“No reason,” Lucy said, picking up a stone and flinging it into the night.
“Liar,” Lynn said. “Out with it now.”
“I don’t want you to think . . .”
“If it’s something you remembered about your mom, you go ahead and say. It won’t hurt my feelings. I’m good at pretending I don’t have those, anyway.”
“Okay,” Lucy took a deep breath. “Certain things will cause a memory to come rushing at me, and I don’t know if it’s because I need to know she loved me and I’m making it up, or if it really happened.”
“I can’t tell you whether your memories are true or not, but your mother loved you, very much.”
“But she left me,” Lucy said, her voice catching in her throat and barely clearing her teeth. “She knew she wouldn’t ever see me again when she shot herself.”
Lynn was quiet for a long time, long enough for more stars to blaze up and make themselves known. “That was a dark day.”
“I know it,” Lucy said, trying to ignore the tears creeping down her face. “Grandma told me about how I was sick, and the men from the south traded her for my mom, and my mom went with them because she thought I would die without Grandma to doctor me.”
“And you would have, little one. There was nothing I knew to do for you, and your uncle and Stebbs were lost thinking you would be taken from them. Vera saved you, like none of us could have.”
“But she didn’t have to kill herself!” Lucy cried out, giving vent for the first time to the anger she hadn’t known was inside her. “You could have gotten her back from those men.”
“Maybe,” Lynn admitted. “But maybe by the time I did, the things that had been visited upon her would’ve changed her for good and forever, and she’d have been no kind of mother to you.”
“She could’ve tried harder,” Lucy said. “Held on a little longer.”
“Sure. And if Stebbs had shot a little sooner at the man holding a gun on your uncle, I’d have my own babies. But that’s life, little one—lots of little maybes and what ifs all lined up in a row. And if you put your mind to following some of them that never came about, you’ll get lost and not find your way back to the way it really is.”
“The way it really is sucks.”
“It can, from time to time,” Lynn agreed. “But there’s good things too. Your mom dying means I got to have you, and your uncle dying means you’ve got me all to yourself.”
Lucy scooted across the porch to lean against Lynn, resting her head on the older woman’s shoulder and smelling the clean smell of her hair. “And me losing everybody makes me scared of losing you.”
Lynn slipped an arm around her, the strength of it buoying Lucy’s spirits. “That goes for both of us, little one.”
Seventeen