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was coming, Grandma started stockpiling memories the way people collect canned goods and batteries when a bad storm is coming. She and I went through all her pictures, got them in books. She said memories were so precious, she wasn’t going to let some infernal disorder take them from her. I opened the scrapbook to a photo of me at ten in the rainbow skirt, twirling in the park, the skirt flowing out, catching the wind.
    I pointed to the photo. “That’s the one, Grandma. You used your sewing kit to make it. It was the best skirt in the world. All my friends were jealous.”
    She studied the picture and held her sewing kit tight.
    I walked to her memory board and put up a picture of myself with a sign I made that read, “Jenna’s gone to Texas. She’ll see you when she gets back.”
    “When I come back we’re going to have that picnic,” I promised. I put the daisies in water and kept one out. I put it in her hand. “I remember how we used to pick daisies, Grandma, at your house, and Faith tried to eat them once when she was small. I loved going to your house.”
    She squeezed the daisy tight like it held all her memories.

    “Okay, Faith, you’re sure you know how to take the bus up to see Grandma?”
    Faith was sitting on the one corner of my bed that didn’t have luggage on it. We’d been through the directions three times. She nodded. I handed her a supply of bus tokens.
    “You’ve got to see her every week and go through her scrapbooks with her and put things up on her memory board and tell her about the times you remember.” I handed her a container of thumbtacks. Faith took them, unsure.
    “I just feel so weird in that nursing home, Jenna. I never know what to say and I can’t wait till I leave.”
    “I know. I’ll tell you my secret. I remember that Grandma can’t help it. I remember how she never left us. And I tell myself that for one hour a week, I can be strong for her.”
    “I’ll try.”
    “I know you will.” I didn’t say
you’d better,
even though I was thinking it. “And if Dad comes around, what do you do?”
    Faith gulped hard. “If I think he’s drunk, I tell him I can’t see him now.”
    “And?”
    She bit her lip. “I tell myself he’s got a disease and it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
    I handed her a pamphlet:
Is someone you love an alcoholic?
    Faith took it and curled up in the patchwork quilt Grandma made me. I folded my yellow bathrobe carefully. Too much was swirling in my mind.
    How would Faith and Mom manage without me?
    Would Dad come around drunk?
    Would Grandma be all right?
    And what about Mrs. Gladstone and me in that car for six whole weeks?
    I wondered if I was about to make the biggest mistake of my promising young life.

CHAPTER 7
    “Well,” Mom said, trying to be tough. We were standing at Mrs. Gladstone’s front door, having been through the goodbyes already. Mom cried a little at the house. Faith got hostile because I didn’t have time to do the dishes. She got over it, though. We gave each other a suffocating, rib-busting Boller good-bye hug. Opal called and said I could phone her anytime day or night and she promised not to say I told you so. I rammed the lion door knocker as thunder sounded in the distance—a warning sign from God.
    Maria opened the door, grinning. She was going to have the house to herself for six weeks. Mrs. Gladstone stood in the hall, wearing a trench coat and a hat with a feather; she was leaning on a cane. I’d never seen her with a cane before. It was probably to whack me on the head if I did something wrong. She walked slower than usual to Mom and handed her an itinerary of our trip with phone numbers and addresses.
    I put my suitcases in the hall and told Mom she shouldprobably go. “I’m not going to camp,” I whispered. “I’m being paid. It’s a grown-up thing.”
    Mom nodded and left, her shoulders shaking. Thunder clapped as we walked to the garage.
    Mrs. Gladstone stood regally by the car door