Follow the Stars Home by Luanne Rice Read Free Book Online Page A

boys. Money was tight. Shecharged huge sums for her playhouses, targeting the richest people possible. But production was limited; she lived rent free with her mother and paid nearly everything she made to insurance and deductibles. When the aides were there, she'd take off on breakneck runs along the beach, rows through the marsh in her father's old dinghy. Crying and exercise were free.
    Her studio was now in the small cottage behind her mother's house, where she and Julia had come to live after Tim left. The windows overlooked the estuary, the green reeds golden in this twilight hour. Sawdust was everywhere. Like pollen carried on the spring air, it filmed the cottage floor, workbenches, table saw, miter box, and the inside of the window-panes. Stella, her shy tiger cat, hid in her basket on a high shelf. Julia sat in her chair.
    They listened to music. Dianne loved out-of-date love songs that expressed mad longing and forever love; she sang them to Julia while she worked. “The Look of Love,” “Scarborough Fair,” “Going Out of My Head.”
    Dianne had been without a man for Julia's entire life. Sometimes she saw women with husbands and imagined what it would be like. Did they have all the love they needed, was it worth the fighting and disagreements to be part of a secure family? In the dark, Dianne sometimes felt lonely. She'd hug her pillow and imagine someone whispering to her that everything would be okay. She tried not to picture a face or hear any certain voice, but the night before she had imagined how Alan's back might look under his shirt, how his muscles would strain if he held her really tight.
    Measuring carefully, she used a pencil to mark lightly the places she wanted to cut. The table saw let out a high-pitched whine as she guided the woodthrough. Her father had been a carpenter. He had taught her his craft, and Dianne never cut anything without hearing his gentle voice telling her to mind her priceless hands.
    “Home from the wars,” Lucinda Robbins said, walking in.
    “Hi, Mom,” Dianne said. “Tough day?”
    “No, darling,” said her mother. “It's just that I can
feel
my retirement coming in July, and my body is counting the days.”
    “How many?” Dianne asked, smiling.
    “Eighty-seven,” Lucinda said, going over to kiss Julia. “Hello, sweetheart. Granny's home.”
    Lucinda crouched by Julia's side. Julia's great liquid eyes took everything in, roaming from the raw wood to the finished playhouses to the open window before settling on her grandmother's face.
    Dianne stood back, watching. Lucinda was small and thin, with short gray hair and bright clothes: a sharp blue tunic over brick-red pants. Her long necklace of polished agate came from a street market in Mexico, bought on the only cruise she'd ever taken with Dianne's father, eleven years earlier-the year Julia had been born and he had died.
    “Maaa,” Julia said. “Gaaa.”
    “She's saying our names,” Lucinda said. “Ma and Granny.”
    “She is?” Dianne asked, dumbstruck by her own need to believe.
    “Yes,” Lucinda said soothingly. “Of course she is.”
    Julia had hypersensitive skin, and Dianne smoothed her blond hair as gently as she could. Her hair felt silky and fine. It waved just behind the girl's ears, a white-gold river of softness.
    “At Julia's age, you had the same cornsilk hair,” Lucinda said. “Just as soft and pretty. Now, tell me. What did Alan say?”
    “Oh, Mom.” Dianne swallowed hard.
    Lucinda touched her heart. “Honey?”
    Dianne shook her head. “No, no bad news,” she said. “No news at all, really. Nothing definite one way or the other.”
    “Has she grown?”
    “An eighth of an inch.”
    “Isn't that a lot?” Lucinda asked, frowning. “In so short a time?”
    “No!” Dianne said more sharply than she intended. “It isn't a lot. It's completely normal, Mom.”
    “Good, honey,” Lucinda said, striking what Dianne had come to consider her Buddha pose: straight back,