Good Hope Road by Lisa Wingate Read Free Book Online Page A

to me and the kids.
    I sat up in the bed, trying to remember what was real. It was all such a blur. . . .
    Those thoughts went through me in less than a minute, and then the clock struck nearby, and I realized it shouldn’t be there so close to my bed, and I realized I wasn’t in my bed. I was on a sleeper sofa, and the room around me was Weldon’s living room, and Olney had been dead for fifteen years. The thumping of the train against the track was only my heart pounding and the howl of its passing just a memory. Only the breath was real.
    I took in another long, slow draft of air and smelled the oil lamp burning atop the woodstove nearby . Eudora, you’re seventy-eight years old, and trains don’t run through Poetry anymore, and a tornado come yesterday and blew your house away, and Ivy’s been gone for sixty years.
    It was a lot to understand in the depth of night, just waking from a dream.
    Beside me, Lacy stirred and made a soft little cough.
    “Ssshhhhh,” I whispered. “It’s all right, sweet one.” I knew the sound each one of the grandchildren made when they coughed, and when they sighed in their dreams, and when they laughed. I worried about them, even when they didn’t need it. But lately, Lacy needed it.
    I rested my cheek atop her head and whispered to her, even though I knew she was sleeping. “All the babies are all right. Toby, Cheyenne, Christi, and Anna are asleep in their beds down the hall, and their older sisters are far away at college. Your auntie Elaine’s in Michigan with her two girls, and you’re right here with me.” I didn’t mention Lacy’s father, my son Cass, and his wife. I wasn’t sure what to say. They were living somewhere near Tulsa, last I knew.
    When I had counted them all and I knew where they were sleeping, I let out a long, slow breath. “That’s what really matters—that all of our babies made it through the storm. Compared to that, an old house don’t mean much.” I whispered the words like a prayer, then sent them to God on the oil-scented smoke from the lamp. I watched it float around the ceiling for a moment, then disappear.
    I tried to close my eyes and sink again into the quiet darkness of sleep, but instead I lay thinking of my house. Something my papa used to say come into my mind: When your heart wants to grow heavy, it is always best to remind yourself of other folks who have got it worse.
    “I wish I had my notebook to write that down,” I whispered close to Lacy’s ear. I often wrote them old memories in my notebooks, because sometime after my seventy-eighth birthday, I begun to notice I was getting forgetful, like my mama did when she got old. I didn’t tell any of the kids about it, but the notebooks helped me keep my mind straight. Now even they got snatched up by the wind.
    Somewhere there’s a grandmother whose arms are empty tonight , I reminded myself, and she’s wishing all she lost was her house and some dime-store notebooks. Somewhere there’s an old lady who’s lost everything, and maybe her memory ain’t just a little gone, but gone so completely she can’t even remember what she’s lost. . . .
    My eyes drifted closed, and sleep must of come on me. It come in quiet, peaceful, like the moment I looked into the face of Ivy’s angel and saw the door to heaven. The moment before Jenilee Lane come into the cellar, called my name, touched my hand, and pulled my soul back into my body . . .
    A noise startled me awake, and I saw someone moving in the shadows of the lamplight. My mind fluttered around like a bird trapped in the barn loft, not quite sure how to find a way out, or whether it wanted one. “Weldon?” I whispered. “Is that you? Is everything all right in town? You been gone for hours.”
    “Things are bad, Mama.” He sighed wearily. His shoulders sagged as he opened the old chest by the fireplace and started pulling out blankets. “I just came to get what blankets and medical supplies we’ve got here. We’re