that would lose all her good customers and she had already lost some of them because of what people thought Daddy had done. Grandma was up every morning at three; the smell of baking always woke Sammie. A lady came in to help her, and once the cakes and pies and bread were out and cooling they would stop long enough to make breakfast, but Sammie could never eat very much. Later when the cakes were iced and everything was boxed and ready, Sammie would ride with Grandma in the van to deliver them to the local restaurants. And every night, during the trial, Misto was with her.
Now, after saying good-bye to Daddy they came in the house, through the closed-in porch, and straight into Grandma Carolineâs arms. They stood in the middle of the living room clinging together hugging each other, needing each other, hurting and lost.
The whole house smelled of sausage biscuits. In the kitchen, Grandma had already poured a cup of hot tea for Mama and milk for Sammie. Grandma always wore jeans, and this morning a faded plaid shirt covered by a brightapron of patchwork, one of the aprons she liked to sew late at night when she couldnât sleep. She must be awake a lot because she sure had a lot of aprons, all as bright as picture books.
C AROLINE T ANNER WORE no makeup, her high coloring and short, dark hair needing no enhancement. She set a tray of sausage biscuits on the table beside a strawberry shortcake. Comfort food, Becky thought, watching her mother, never ceasing to wonder at her calm strength. Becky had been seven when her father was killed in a tractor accident. Two weeks after the funeral Caroline began baking and selling her goods. She was a Rome girl, and the town had given her its support. They had lived on what she made, Becky and her two brothers helping all they could.
Becky was ten, her brother Ron twelve and James fifteen when Caroline got a loan from the bank and extended the kitchen of their little house into a bigger and more efficient bakery and storeroom. Becky and her brothers had helped the carpenter after school and on weekends, as he built and dried in the new walls, then tore out the original walls. The children had learned how to paint properly, how to clean their tools, and her brothers had learned how to plaster. After the stainless steel counters were installed, and the two big commercial refrigerators and two sinks, they had taken the bakery van into Atlanta and brought home the new ovens, the big stovetop, and the smaller commercial appliances. The big window over the sink looked out on the side yard beneath a pair of live oak trees.
Before the remodel, Caroline had done all her baking in their small, inadequate kitchen, her equipment and trays of baked goods spilling over into the dining room, where cookies and breads and cakes cooled on racks, along with those already boxed and ready for delivery. The two iceboxes neverhad enough space for the salads and casseroles for the parties that Caroline catered. Their own simple meals had been eaten in the living room, worked around the urgent business of making a living. When the new bakery was finished, theyâd had a little party, just the four of them, to celebrate the new and more accommodating kitchen, to reclaim their own house.
Within three years Caroline had paid off the van and equipment and could hire more help for the catered weddings and parties, though still, the whole family pitched in for those. All the years Becky was growing up, her mother would be out of bed and dressed by three in the morning, rolling out pie crusts, baking cakes. Beckyâs brothers made breakfast until Becky was old enough to cook. Her brothers, as soon as they could drive legally, had done the bakery deliveries before school.
Becky missed her brothers. Even after Ron was killed in the Pacific, she still felt often that he was near her. And though their older brother, James, was still in Japan he was close to them, he liked to write home of that very