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house. Using the railing more than she usually had to, she climbed them and let herself in.
    She went through the kitchen into the living room, where she turned on the gas logs she’d had installed in her fireplace. A real fire might be romantic, but at her age she wasn’t about to mess with kindling and ashes. She collapsed gratefully into her old wingback chair. From her bed on the floor her dog, an aged sheepdog and chow mix, got up and moved over to lie down on Maggie’s feet. Laverne’s litter mates, Patty and Maxine, had gone on to the great front lawn in the sky, and for the first time Peggy wasn’t trying to con her into taking in any more strays. She was probably afraid a young dog would outlive Maggie. The good Lord knew Maggie felt old right now, old and aching with tears she didn’t have the energy to cry. But it was all right. Because she’d seen everything through as Lottie would have wanted her to. Over the years she had failed Lottie, because there were things she couldn’t control. But she hadn’t failed tonight. There was comfort in that.
             
    J OSH TURNED THE SUV into Laurel’s drive. They passed under the hanging oak branch and he swerved neatly to avoid the huge hole, while Laurel tried to make her mind a blank. A lost cause; it was now full of the cabin and memories of old Lottie.
             
    I N THE BEGINNING , she had liked Lottie. When her ma was on a bender, lying on her bed too drunk to work, Lottie always seemed to know it. And just about the time that the groceries were running low and Laurel was getting really scared, there would be a knock on the door and Lottie would be standing there with a sack of sweet corn and beans from her garden so there would be something to fix for supper. Sometimes when Sara Jayne took off for a week or two, there would be tomato sandwiches dripping with mayonnaise or biscuits and cornbread wrapped up in a clean napkin.
    “Thought you could use this,” Lottie would say, without smiling, and turn and leave as Laurel called out
thank you
to her back. Many times the woman just left the food on the back stoop, but Laurel always knew who it was from. She would bring the sack into the house and tear into the sandwiches or the cornbread like a starving thing, which by then she usually was. Even more comforting than the food was the idea that someone had thought to feed her.
    Eventually her ma found out about Lottie’s missions of mercy, and she went crazy. She ranted and raved that she didn’t want Laurel taking anything from that nigger, and if Laurel did it again Sara Jayne would take a switch to her. There wasn’t anything unusual about Sara Jayne exploding like that; her mother’s moods were unpredictable at best. But the intensity of her fury was strange. Sara Jayne was usually a tearful, self-pitying drunk, stroking her misfortunes like pets.
    The mystery was cleared up when Laurel was six. By then she was old enough to understand what it meant to be a bastard and why the other kids called her one. So Sara Jayne told her what had happened at the cabin and why Lottie was to be hated.
    The next time an offering appeared on the back stoop, Laurel carried it back across the highway and up the long dirt road to Lottie’s cabin. Lottie came out and stood in front of her. She was a big woman, with long arms and legs and strong hands. Her dark eyes were impassive as Laurel handed her a basket of newly picked peaches and said, “We don’t need food from you. Don’t bring it again,” and fled.
             
    That wasn’t the only time she turned down help. Her ma had told her the three Miss Margarets were the enemy, too. So when Miss Peggy offered Laurel a job at the resort she refused. When Miss Li’l Bit said she could help get her a scholarship for college, she said no, thank you. And when Sara Jayne was racking up astronomical medical bills in the long months it took her to finally die, Laurel never let Dr. Maggie treat