Somewhere Between Luck and Trust (11 page)

Zettie wore a patterned housedress paired with a light sweater. She came right up to the porch and joined Cristy on the glider after reaching out to shake her hand.

“Pretty country up here, isn’t it?” she asked.

Cristy had only murmured a polite welcome. Now she cleared her throat. “Very. Have you lived here long?”

Zettie chuckled. “All my life. Bill, too. We knew Lottie Lou from the time she was a baby. Sure is a shame we lost her last year. There been some mighty fine gardens on this land, too,” she went on. “Lottie Lou’s grandmother raised near to fifty tomato plants every single year and every one must’ve borne fifty to a hundred tomatoes. And she found ways to use them. Ketchup, sauce, canned them whole, canned them chopped. Made spaghetti sauce and canned it. The list goes on and on.”

“Lottie Lou?”

“You probably heard these women here talk about Charlotte. That’s what she went by later, but her real name was Lottie Lou Hale.”

“Oh.” Now Cristy understood why Harmony called her baby daughter Lottie. “Isn’t that a lot of tomatoes?”

“’Tis, for sure, but the soil here’s about perfect for them. Not so much over at our place, but then our apple trees thrive like nothing you ever seen.”

“I would like to fix up the garden. Is there still time to plant whatever people up here plant in the spring?”

“You’d be better off getting the soil ready for a summer garden. Needs to be tilled first, that’s for sure. Then the dead weeds need raking out, and the new ones that will come up on account of the seeds being disturbed and buried will need to be pulled. It’s going to be a big job.”

Cristy felt a surge of interest. “Could I do it? I mean one person alone?”

“I do the vegetable garden at our place all on my own, but I’ve been taking care of it for years and years, so it knows what I expect and gives it to me. You’d have to wrestle with the garden here.”

Cristy liked the way Zettie said “wrestle.”
Wrassle.
The way people in Berle would have said it. None of the goddesses had what she thought of as a mountain accent. Zettie reminded her a little of Betsy, who had been country through and through, but as smart as anyone Cristy had ever met. And kinder.

“I could do that,” Cristy said. “I could wrestle. Although I’m not sure where to start.”

“We’d come till for you, ’cept our tiller’s busted, and my soil’s as soft as butter anyway, so I doubt we’ll fix it. You have some time, though. I’d start by clearing anything that doesn’t belong there. You can pull, you can hoe, you can rake. You have tools?”

There was a wall of tools just inside the barn. Cristy nodded with more enthusiasm than she’d felt about anything that week. “How do I know what doesn’t belong there?”

“Let’s go see. It’s on my way home, anyway.”

“Would you like some lemonade and cookies first?”

“No, honey, I got to get back in a bit, but I’m never too busy to help a neighbor. You remember, that, too, you hear? Because you need us, we’re right along that path. I’ll show you when we get up to the garden how you find our house. That reverend lady told me you’re here all alone and asked me to keep an ear out for you. You’d better believe we’ll be happy to.”

Cristy was sorry she hadn’t been more welcoming to Analiese, who had obviously stopped by the Johnston house before or after her appearance here. She wondered what else the minister had told them about her.

“I’m hoping to find a job,” she said, as she walked down the steps after Zettie. “So don’t worry, I won’t be here all alone every day. I hope I’ll be working.”

“You started looking yet?”

“I thought I’d check over at the general store this afternoon.”

“They don’t need nobody. I’d know if they did. But I do know somebody looking for help. Not a fancy job. You okay with that?”

“I’ll clean out their henhouse if that’s what they need.”

Zettie laughed. “Nothing quite that stinkafied, but close enough. We got a little bed-and-breakfast not too far away, and the girl who cleaned for the owner just up and left last weekend. It’s not full-time work, but it’s something.”

“I can clean anything that needs cleaning.”

“Then I think you ought to get over there this afternoon and find out if she still needs somebody, don’t you? And if that don’t work out? Then we’ll stick our heads together and see if we can figure out something that does.”

Cristy swallowed an unexpected lump in her throat. “I can’t thank you enough.”

If Zettie heard the emotion in her voice, she didn’t comment. “You don’t have to thank me, honey. Don’t you know? That’s just what neighbors do.”

* * *

Two hours later Cristy parked her car about twenty yards from the gate to the bed-and-breakfast Zettie had told her about. Zettie had offered to call and tell them Cristy would be stopping by about three-thirty. Afraid she might have trouble finding the place despite Zettie’s directions, Cristy had left too early, and now it was only three-fifteen. She wasn’t sure being early was as bad as being late, but she didn’t want to take a chance.

She had brought clippers and a bucket for any promising plant material she saw along the way, plus one of the vases she had already filled. She hoped having the partially finished arrangement with her would be inspiration to find just the right items to complete it. She wanted to make an arrangement for the Goddess House living room and another for the kitchen, to welcome the women who were coming next weekend.

She wandered along the roadside and clipped some of this and that. There wasn’t a lot to work with. Winter rain and snow had stripped branches, and wind had carried away dried blossoms and seed heads. She was dependent on Mother Nature’s largesse and couldn’t practice any of the tricks of her trade. She concentrated on finding twigs with sweeping curves and discovered a spray that still had tiny pinecones.

After a while she tried the other side of the road, walking back toward the bed-and-breakfast clipping a few things she liked the looks of. She spied cattails on the other side of a ditch down a shallow embankment, but she didn’t want to chance getting muddy, nor did she want to remove something the owner might enjoy looking at in the wild.

Someone honked, and she jumped back from the road. She’d been concentrating so hard on her search that she hadn’t heard the car approach. The old SUV that had
Mountain Mist B and B
stenciled on the driver’s door came to a halt, and a woman jumped down.

“You Cristy?”

Cristy wiped her hand on her jeans—and held it out. “Yes, ma’am. You must be Lorna?”

Lorna Dobbins looked to be in her late forties, trim but plain, with dark eyes that took in everything as she shook Cristy’s hand.

“I’m glad you waited for me,” Lorna said.

“No, I got here early, so I haven’t been up to the house yet. I didn’t even know you weren’t home.”

“I had to run into Marshall to buy a few groceries. Course, that’s a forty-five minute trip each way, so
run
’s the right word. What do you have there?”

Cristy hoped the woman wouldn’t mind. “I used to work for a florist. I’m making some arrangements to put in the house I’m living in. There’s not a lot available right now, but I’m always on the lookout. I was just killing time.”

“What kind of arrangements?”

Cristy figured it would be better just to show her, so Lorna wouldn’t think she had taken anything valuable.

“Whatever I can find.” She started back toward her car, and Lorna followed. Cristy opened the door, hoping a good look would convince Lorna nothing was amiss.

Lorna looked at the bucket, then at the nearly finished arrangement. “You did that? With whatever you could find out here this time of year?”

“There’s not a lot, but you can see I’m just using whatever’s left after winter. Once I get settled in, I’ll dry some things that are starting to come up, but meantime, this is all I have to work with.”

“That’s really pretty, just the way it is.”

Cristy squinted at the arrangement. “What it needs are some feathers. I’ve been keeping my eye out, but I haven’t seen anything I could use. Nothing dyed or fancy. Where’s a wild ostrich when you need one?”

Lorna’s smiling face was no longer plain. “Believe it or not, we have ostriches. And peacocks, too. The peacocks wander the grounds. Will that bother you?”

“Not a bit. I’ll just pray they drop a feather or two.”

“I like what I do. I like my house, and I like cooking and baking and talking to guests, but I don’t like arranging flowers. Never have, never will. And I can’t afford to pay for professional arrangements that wilt and die in less than a week. The house needs flowers in season and something like what you’re doing there to fill in the gap before the flowers start coming up.”

“I could do them for you.” Cristy meant as part of her job cleaning, but Lorna didn’t understand.

“How much would you charge me?”

“Oh, I—”

Lorna waved away her answer. “You haven’t even seen the house yet. We’ll do a tour and figure out how many arrangements you think we’d need. Then we can decide prices and amounts. I can’t pay too much, and I’d want things that lasted awhile.”

“If I’m cleaning for you, I’ll be right there to spruce up whatever I create until it’s time for something brand-new.”

“You ever cleaned for anybody before?”

“My mother,” Cristy said truthfully. “And nobody likes a clean house better than she does.”

“Is there anything else I should know about you before I give you a try? Have you ever left any jobs because you don’t like to work hard? Been in trouble with the law?”

Cristy looked her in the eye. “I was convicted of shoplifting. I served my time, and it’s behind me. I won’t ask you to believe me, but I wasn’t guilty. Either way, I’m ready to make a new start. And you won’t be a bit sorry if you hire me. I work hard. I always have.”

“Zettie told me she thought maybe you’d been in trouble, but she liked you on sight anyway. Zettie’s pretty much always right about people. Hereabouts we trust her judgment.”

“I’m glad she’s my neighbor,” Cristy said.

“We’ll look around, then we’ll talk.”

Cristy couldn’t believe Lorna hadn’t told her to turn her car around and head back home. “Thanks for considering me.”

“I’m desperate, and it sounds like you might be, too. Maybe we’ll suit each other. But don’t think I’m a pushover. I’ll have my eye on you, same as I’d have my eye on any new employee.”

“I would be surprised if you didn’t.”

Cristy watched as Lorna headed back to her SUV. And she wondered how any day that had started with so little to look forward to could change so quickly.

Chapter Twelve

CRISTY WASN’T HOME
when Georgia arrived at the Goddess House. Georgia hoped that was a good sign, that the young woman was off doing something to improve her situation, but the trip up the narrow, winding road was grueling enough that she decided to wait a little rather than return another day.

Even though she had a key, she took a seat on the porch. The afternoon was pleasantly warm, and since it wasn’t necessary, she didn’t want to invade Cristy’s privacy. Samantha had sent slices of last night’s birthday cake, a container of the seafood mac-and-cheese she’d made for dinner and a loaf of her favorite bakery bread. If Cristy didn’t come back soon, Georgia would let herself in and store the food in the fridge. But if she left a note explaining what was there and why, would Cristy be able to read it? How poor were her reading skills? If she agreed to let Georgia tutor her, how long would it take to bring her up to a level where she could do and read everything she needed to be a success?

Whatever the specifics, Georgia was almost certain Cristy was functionally illiterate, which meant she couldn’t read above a third-grade level. She was all too familiar with the statistics. Almost half the people who fit that definition lived below the poverty level, and they earned about a third of what workers with more advanced skills did. Not being able to read was a life sentence.

If Cristy actually had a driver’s license, she had been tested verbally, a humiliating admission that some people simply skipped, instead driving with no license at all. Moms who were illiterate were more likely to have illiterate children, to need welfare assistance, to work fewer hours than their more educated contemporaries. Prison inmates were four times more likely to be dyslexic than the general population. It was no wonder Cristy hadn’t gotten the help she needed there.

Georgia wondered why more hadn’t been done for the young woman when she was in school. Since Cristy was clearly bright, with adequate social skills, Georgia was fairly certain she had a reading disability, most likely dyslexia, which was a much broader category than parents or some teachers realized. The story was familiar. Only one in ten students with dyslexia actually qualified for special help. The testing was often too broad, and the results were too narrow. School psychologists too often decided that if the student just had a little help with this or that, he or she was guaranteed to blossom.

Bright students who learned to get by using listening skills instead of reading skills were often the hardest to classify, and their parents were the most likely to refuse help. Cristy had a good vocabulary, careful grammar, the ability to make quick, effortless leaps in logic. Georgia guessed she had been one of those latter, with parents who believed she was just lazy. Or maybe they’d made excuses. Cristy would grow out of this. Cristy was bored and would learn when she was ready. Cristy was creative, not academic.

So many students had been doomed to failure by inadequate testing and curriculum that didn’t teach in a way that helped them learn. “One size fits all” was rarely a good idea. Not in clothing and not in education.

Luckily Georgia had spent countless hours tutoring children, and while she hadn’t worked extensively with adults, she knew the reading system she liked best succeeded with adults, too. Plus she had access to all the materials through BCAS, and the school was finding that reading scores were quickly improving for students that other schools had branded as hopeless.

Now she just had to figure out how to broach the subject with Cristy.

She was just about to unlock the door to put the food away when a pale blue sedan pulled in and parked beside hers. She recognized the car as the one Sam and Taylor had brought from Berle.

Cristy got out and waved, then she came up the path with a metal bucket tucked under one arm and a vase under the other. Both were filled with dried foliage and branches.

“Out gathering?” Georgia asked.

“Among other things. I think I might have a job.”

“Congratulations.” Georgia was genuinely pleased.

Cristy came up to the porch and told her about her interview and the Mountain Mist Bed-and-Breakfast.

“It’s a rambling place, with five suites, and when it’s busy I’ll be plenty busy, too. I’ll be paid by the hour if I work hard, or by the job if I don’t. Lorna says I’ll make more the first way.”

“Sounds like a good system.”

“I’ll dust and vacuum, clean bathrooms and the kitchen after breakfast. Change sheets, do laundry. Whatever needs to be done. But best of all?”

Georgia listened while Cristy told her about doing flower arrangements for the living areas and the individual rooms.

“Nothing fancy there,” she finished. “Just something simple, but each room’s furnished differently, so I’ll find things that work with each one. I’ll have a budget for flowers, but I think it would be more fun to grow my own and use those. Of course that will take some time.”

Georgia thought her excitement and enthusiasm was a good sign. She had networked to find the job, proving she could operate independently, and she wasn’t afraid of hard work. All that would serve her well learning to read.

Her gaze settled on the arrangement in an old ceramic vase, and she realized she wasn’t just looking at dried weeds Cristy had stuck there for lack of a better place to put them. The arrangement was quite lovely. There was form and symmetry, despite Cristy having little to work with at this time of year. Georgia was honestly impressed. She couldn’t even put three carnations in a vase successfully, and a dozen roses was a hopeless task. Samuel, Samantha’s father, had given up on bouquets and given her arrangements instead, which had always looked as if they belonged at a dinner party. But his alternative had been kinder to her ego.

“You know I’m the principal of a school in Asheville, don’t you?” Georgia asked.

Cristy reined in her enthusiasm and gave a quick nod.

“We have a flourishing art program. I’d love to have you come down and illustrate some of the principles of floral design. Would you be interested? I know the students would love it.”

Cristy looked stricken. “At your
school?
I don’t think so. I’m going to be awfully busy up here for a while. Work—if I get the job. Refurbishing the garden.”

Georgia realized the word “school”
had immediately doomed her idea. She guessed Cristy’s association with classrooms and teachers was a dismal one. How many times had the girl been told she wasn’t trying? Or worse, how many times had she been given busywork because her teachers had given up on her?

“I brought some food for you,” Georgia said. “Samantha cooked for me last night.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I should have wished you a happy birthday. Analiese Wagner was here, and she told me about the party. I’m sorry I missed it.”

Georgia turned on her warmest smile. She was about to need it. “Why don’t you unlock, and I’ll store it in the refrigerator. There’s cake, too. You know, it’s something of a miracle Samantha can follow a recipe. You’ll appreciate the food even more when I tell you the story.”

Cristy looked interested. She unlocked and they went into the kitchen. Georgia noted how clean everything was inside. Nothing out of place. No clothes draped over chairs. Not a speck of dust. The kitchen looked as if it hadn’t been touched since she’d been here the previous weekend.

“Cristy, are you eating? It doesn’t look like you’ve walked through this door.”

“I eat. I just clean up the minute I’m done. I even stopped on the way back and bought more bread and milk. It’s still in the car.”

“Why don’t you walk down with me to get it? I have to go.”

“You’re sure?” Cristy sounded as if she was just being polite. Urging guests to stay was part of Southern culture, but not always entirely honest.

“You know how it is,” Georgia said. “When you work during the week, you just have the weekend to shop and do laundry. And I need to do both.”

She explained what everything in the plastic containers was, then the two women went outside and started toward the car.

“You were going to tell me a story about Samantha,” Cristy said.

“I bet you have things to do, so I’ll make it quick. Samantha was very bright. She was speaking in complete sentences by the time she was eighteen months old. She could repeat stories I told her, word for word. Then she went to school, and suddenly it was all downhill.”

Cristy was silent. Georgia suspected this sounded familiar.

“It was very hard for her to sit still and work for any length of time. She might start out with the other children in her reading group, but after a few minutes, she couldn’t go on. Her teachers decided she had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and needed to go on medication. They told me that then she would sit still and concentrate, like she was supposed to.”

“Did it help?”

“No, because we didn’t try it. I was with her so much, and I was in school, training to recognize those kinds of problems, among others. It just didn’t fit with what I saw. So I made a guess. She had fallen so far behind in reading that her teachers were afraid they might have to keep her back in school. I thought it might be her vision, but she’d performed perfectly on the school eye exam, so no one believed me.”

“Nobody listened to you?”

“Right, but luckily I didn’t take no for an answer. I packed her in my car and took her to Atlanta, to a developmental optometrist I’d heard about. As it turns out, our eyes have to work as a team, and if they don’t, and one gets off track a little and drifts, the letters blur. A child may even see double. I had seen Samantha covering one eye with her hand, which is a red flag, and I just had a hunch that might be the problem.”

“Was it?”

“It was. She began a series of eye exercises. After about three months, her eyes were working normally together. After about six, she’d almost caught up with her class. By the next year, she was way ahead of them.”

“She was sure lucky to have you.”

Georgia thought Cristy’s wistful tone spoke volumes.

“It turned out well,” Georgia said. “Happy endings are great, but there are all kinds of reading disorders, and those stories don’t always end well, unless somebody steps in.” They were at her car now, and Cristy was staring into space.

“You have problems reading, don’t you?” Georgia asked.

“You could say that.”

“I’ve taught a lot of children and teenagers to read, Cristy. That was a big part of my last position. I have all the right tools, all the right training, and I like you. I think we would be a good fit.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. I don’t see double. I don’t get tired. I just can’t make sense out of words.”

“Were you ever diagnosed with dyslexia?”

Cristy barked out a laugh. “I was diagnosed with stupidity.”

Georgia felt a surge of anger at a school system and a family who could have allowed this girl to feel that way. “You’re
not
stupid. Not even a little bit. Your brain processes written material differently, that’s all. But in the same way we taught Samantha’s eyes to work together, we can teach your brain to process what it sees in a way that’s more helpful. I’m sure if you work hard at this with the right materials, your reading will improve to the point where no one will ever suspect you were a late bloomer.”

“I’m too old.”

“You’ll be even older next year. Why not start now?”

“It’s not for me.” Cristy nodded, as if to say goodbye, and started toward her car to get the groceries.

“I hope you’ll think it over.”

The young woman turned. “Can you promise I won’t fail again?”

“I can promise it’s unlikely.”

Cristy turned away and shrugged, as if to say,
See, what did I tell you?

“If you don’t try, you
will
fail,” Georgia said. “That’s how it works.”

“You have a safe drive back down the mountain.”

Georgia realized that was all she was going to get for now. As she started her car she just hoped she had planted the seed.

A few minutes later her cell phone rang, right before she began her torturous descent into Asheville, and she was surprised to find that for seconds, at least, she actually had coverage. For a moment she hoped this was Cristy calling to say she wanted to try tutoring, but she realized the young woman hadn’t had time to reconsider. She pulled over and answered.

“Georgia? Lucas.”

She had the silliest desire to make sure her hair was combed. “Hi, how are you?”

“I just got back from most of a week in Atlanta with my crazy family, or I would have called you sooner. I saw Dawson this afternoon, and he mentioned the literary magazine.”

She processed that. Lucas had been out of town, not ignoring her. And he sounded pleased that Dawson had been recruited for the new project.

“You like the idea?” she asked.

“I wonder if you’d like to talk about it over dinner tonight.”

“I’m up for pizza again. This time my treat.”

“No, I want to cook for you, one of the recipes I’m trying for my book.” When she didn’t respond immediately, he added, “I really need test subjects, Georgia. I’d be grateful.”

“At your place?”

“It’s just a mountain getaway, but it does have a great little kitchen.”

She considered, but not for long. Yes, she had laundry and groceries to get ready for the next week, but she also had tomorrow. Tonight she was allowed to enjoy herself. “What can I bring?”

“Yourself.” They settled on seven, and he gave her directions to his house before she hung up.

When she pulled back on the road she was smiling.