Two days later, Betsy stood at the washing machine staring at a pile of small, damp, dirt-streaked clothes. As the wife of a farmer, Betsy had all kinds of stain-removal methods in her arsenal—Tide bleach pen, OxiClean, Fels-Naptha, vinegar and lemon juice, hair spray, salt crystals—but after stomping in puddles and exploring the rain-soaked farm for hours the previous day, the girls’ clothes were covered in mud and Betsy was at a loss. How in the world had Jenna kept their clothes so clean? Betsy made a mental note to ask if there was some miracle stain-stick she’d yet to discover.
Behind her, Addie lay sprawled out on the floor coloring while Walsh explored the dark recesses under the couch. Betsy shut the door of the washing machine and turned it on. One more try wouldn’t hurt, but they needed new clothes.
“Hey, girls,” she called. “How about a trip to Target?”
Addie scrambled off the floor fast as lightning. “Mommy lets us pick something from the dollar bins.”
“Oh yeah?”
Addie nodded. “If our hands don’t get too grabby in the store.”
Betsy smiled. “I think we can make that happen.”
The rain had fizzled, so Betsy rolled down the windows in the car to take in the water-cleansed breeze. Dark clouds zipped across a mottled sky. No sunshine yet, but it would come soon, heating the moisture to a steamy wall of humid heat.
“What are those birds, Aunt Betsy?”
Addie pointed out the window to three spindly legged, long-necked birds soaring over Highway 35.
“Those are blue herons. They fly over water looking for fish to eat.”
“But there’s no water here. It’s just a bunch of grass and cows.”
“Well, we’re not too far from the Gulf. And we have the creek. Remember where you and Uncle Ty threw sticks?”
“Yeah.”
“The creek is full of little minnows and fish, so the herons like to stick around. One time I found a mama heron sitting on a big nest down by the creek.”
“Did she have eggs?”
Betsy nodded. “She did. Pretty ones.”
Betsy had been cutting overgrown brush at the back of their property when she’d spotted a blue heron perched on a pile of sticks and leaves on the other side of the creek. It was nestled in the tree line next to the water, almost camouflaged. The heron’s head was turned to the side, but Betsy knew it was staring at her with that one tiny eye. When she took a careful step backward, away from the creek, she stumbled over her pile of brush. She caught herself before falling but the noise spooked the heron and it flew off, revealing eggs in the nest. Five blue ones about the size of a child’s fist.
Betsy came back every day after, hoping to see the heron on the nest, but the bird never returned. The eggs remained in the nest until one day, the only thing left was a mess of shells and wispy gray feathers stuck to the leaves. She read somewhere that once a heron has been disturbed while sitting on eggs, she will deem the area unsafe and abandon the nest and the eggs. When that happened, predators—dogs, alligators, hawks—would often get the eggs.
Betsy chose to believe the heron came back for her babies and Betsy just missed seeing her. She imagined five little baby herons poking along behind their mother down the creek, miles away from her meddling eyes.
Just before Betsy pulled onto Highway 59, the main thoroughfare through Baldwin County, her phone rang. Thinking Ty might be curious about where they’d gone, she grabbed it out of her purse.
“Betsy? Hi.” Her sister’s voice was quiet, a little cautious. “How are things going?”
“Well . . .” Betsy turned and glanced over her shoulder. Addie was airplaning her hand out the open window and Walsh was playing with Addie’s stuffed elephant. “The girls are fine. I wish you’d talked to me about all this first though. It’s . . . it’s a lot.” She tried to keep her voice low.
“I know. I’m so sorry to have dropped it on you like that. It’s just that I had to give a quick answer or they would have offered the extension to someone else.”
“Would that have been a bad thing? Don’t you need to get back to work?” Or see your kids?
Jenna paused a beat. “Well, technically I’m between jobs right now, so staying here a little longer won’t affect my work.”
“What do you mean, ‘between jobs’?” Betsy’s heart picked up speed in her chest.
“They could only hold my job for the two weeks I told them I’d be gone. I talked to my boss yesterday and he said since I couldn’t give him a firm answer of when I’d be back, he’s going to have to fill the position, which I totally understand.”
“Wait—but you . . .” So many questions bounced around in Betsy’s mind, she struggled to form words to ask any of them. She took a deep breath. “You don’t know when you’re coming back?”
“Not . . . specifically. They’ve left it up to me how long I stay. The whole thing wraps up August 15th, so I guess that’d be the very latest.”
“Jenna, this is . . . You can’t lose that job. You have insurance with it and they’ve been so good about giving you time off when you need to take care of the kids. How are you going to find something like that again? And what will you do for money while you’re looking?” She hated sounding like the mom, but someone had to ask the right questions.
“I have some money saved up, believe it or not. It won’t tide me over for too long, but it’s enough to cover rent and bills while I’m here. We’ll be fine. I’m very good at being frugal. And about the job, I have manager experience, so I should be able to pick up a job at another coffee shop with no problem. Anyway, I’m hoping I don’t have to go back to making coffee. That’s kind of the whole point of being here.”
Betsy recognized the familiar determination in
