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the car, stretching her arms over her head. “Long trip. How are you doing?”
    Cristy’s stomach was tied in a million knots. She was sorry she had eaten lunch, because even now, hours later, she wasn’t sure the hamburger was going to stay down. After lunch and shopping she had napped most of the way here, but the sleep hadn’t relaxed her.
    She felt Samantha watching and met her eyes.
    “I say we take a walk,” Samantha said. “Just a short one. Once everybody gets here you’ll be bombarded. My mom. Edna. Fresh air might be a good transition.”
    Overhead a bird was chirping in rhythm, as if practicing feathered Morse code, but otherwise the clearing was silent. No noise from the road, no hunting dogs in pursuit of some small, terrified creature. The silence seemed to thrum with foreboding.
    “It seems so...” Words eluded her. “Large,” Cristy finished at last.
    “The house?”
    “The outside. I could walk and walk and nothing would stop me. If I came to a fence, I could just step over it or walk around it....”
    “They call that freedom. It’s going to take a little getting used to.”
    “We were outside a lot in Raleigh. There were places to walk, unless you were in the segregation unit. But it wasn’t like this.”
    “Yeah, we’re short on razor wire at the Goddess House. And we got rid of the guard tower last week. It messed up the view.”
    Samantha was pointing out that she no longer had to worry about prison officials, but Cristy didn’t know how to respond. There was no razor wire or guard tower, but she still felt imprisoned by fear.
    Samantha started along a path leading toward what looked like an old barn in the distance. “Since we had to get it last week, we put your car in the barn. Let’s take a peek, then I’ll show you around a little more.”
    Cristy was afraid to venture off with Samantha and more afraid to go up to the house alone. What she could see of it looked foreboding, too, as if the long front porch sheltered glass-paned eyes that were watching and waiting for her to make a mistake. Reluctantly she fell into step.
    “The house is really off by itself, isn’t it?” Cristy said.
    “If you follow this path a ways you have neighbors. Bill and Zettie Johnston live maybe a quarter of a mile over the crest of the hill. Really nice folks. I’m sure you’ll meet them. By the road you’re not far from the Trust General Store, and there are people all up and down these hills. There’s even a community center down the main road a bit, what used to be the local school before they consolidated, and from what Zettie says, they schedule events there from time to time.”
    Cristy realized she had better sound more confident, or Samantha might be afraid to leave her alone. “I hope that didn’t sound like I was complaining. I like silence. My little house in Berle...” Her voice trailed off.
    “I’ve been there. Your employer’s daughter stored all your things in her attic, but Taylor and I—you’ll meet Taylor and her daughter, Maddie, one day soon—we drove to the flower shop to pick up some florist tools she hadn’t packed. I saw your house behind it and peeked in the windows.”
    Cristy already knew that Samantha and the other woman, Taylor, had driven to Berle to pick up her belongings and car, but now she thanked her again.
    Samantha hesitated. “The house where you lived has been for sale for a few months. No one’s living in it now.”
    “I guess Betsy’s Bouquets will be sold, too.”
    “Betsy’s daughter wants to sell, but it’s not a good time to sell anything. She sent you some things that belonged to Betsy. She said nobody else would appreciate her mother’s tools the way you would.”
    Cristy was so touched that for a moment she couldn’t speak. Betsy had hired her when she dropped out of high school, and when her angry parents told her to pack her bags, Betsy had given her the little house behind the shop to live in. The arrangement had been