Chapter 16
Mama's Tears
Mama Annie walks to the grocery store and passes the notice board. She stops as if struck. Her son’s drawing of the town is pinned there, lines sure and full of love. She stares at it, and tears slip down her cheeks. Billy, coming up behind her with a loaf of bread, freezes. He has never seen her cry before, not like this—not with joy. She turns and gathers him into her arms, her voice cracking as she says, 'I always knew, Billy. I always knew.' He buries his face in her shoulder, feeling her tears wet his hair. He promises silently: he will always try to be this for her. This moment is a new beginning.
The day had a clean feel to it, the kind that comes after hard rain. Rodney was putting itself back together, board by board. The flood had left its mark, but the town was healing. Mama Annie walked the two blocks to Carter's General Store with her basket over her arm, her feet knowing every crack in the sidewalk. She was tired—she was always tired—but it was a good tired. The kind that comes from working beside your neighbors, from handing sandbags down a line, from wading through water to save what could be saved. She'd done all of that and more, and now the sun was out, and the river was low, and her boy was safe.
She passed the notice board. It was a plain slab of wood on two posts, older than most of the town, and it held every scrap of news that mattered. A sign for the church supper. A hand-lettered thank-you from the Hendersons for the sandbag line. A photograph of a lost calico cat. And there, in the middle, pinned with a single nail, was a drawing.
Mama Annie stopped.
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