Free The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls Page A

we stopped to get a drink from the faucet above the
watering trough, sticking our heads under the spigot, the water splashing on our faces.
    “Maybe we can do some more scavenging, cuz,” Joe said, wiping his chin.
    “Sure, cuz,” I said, wiping mine.
    He walked down the drive, and I turned to the house. As I reached the front porch, Liz came out of the door.
    “Mom called,” she said. “She’ll be here in a couple of days.”

 
CHAPTER ELEVEN
    That afternoon Liz and I sat out by the koi pond, talking about Mom’s arrival and feasting on blackberries until our fingers
were stained. It was about time Mom called. It had been five weeks and two days since she had the Mark Parker meltdown and took off. As much as I liked Byler and as thrilled as I was to know Uncle
Tinsley and to have met my dad’s family—even that grump Uncle Clarence—I really missed Mom. We were, as she always said, a tribe of three. All we needed was each other. I had tons
of things I wanted to discuss with Mom, mostly about my dad, and Liz and I also wanted to know what the plan was. Would we be going back to Lost Lake? Or somewhere else?
    “Maybe we could stay here for a while,” I told Liz.
    “Maybe,” she said. “It’s sort of Mom’s house, too.”
    Ever since we’d arrived, we’d been straightening up Uncle Tinsley’s stuff, but with a place like Mayfield, there was always more to do. Two days after Mom
called, we were putting away jars and boxes when we heard the sound of the Dart coming up the driveway.
    Liz and I rushed through the door, across the big porch, and down the steps just as Mom got out of the car, which was pulling a little white-and-orange trailer. She had on her red velvet jacket
even though it was summer, and her hair was teased up the way she did it when she was going to an audition. We had a three-way hug in the middle of the driveway, laughing and whooping, with Mom
going on about “my darlings,” “my babies,” and “my precious girls.”
    Uncle Tinsley came out of the house and leaned against one of the porch columns, watching us with his arms crossed. “Nice of you to finally drop in, Char,” he said.
    “Nice to see you, too, Tin,” Mom said.
    Mom and Uncle Tinsley stood there looking at each other, so I started jabbering on about all the fun things we’d been doing, staying in her old rooms in the bird wing, clearing the koi
pond, riding the Farmall, eating peaches, and gathering blackberries.
    Uncle Tinsley cut me off. “Where have you been, Char?” he asked. “How could you go off and leave these kids alone?”
    “Don’t pass judgment on me,” Mom told him.
    “Now, please, no fighting,” Liz said.
    “Yes, let’s be civil,” Mom said.
    We all went into the house, and Mom looked around at the clutter. “Jesus, Tin. What would Mother say?”
    “What would she say about someone abandoning her children? But as you said, let’s be civil.”
    Uncle Tinsley went into the kitchen to make a pot of tea. Mom started walking around the living room, picking up her mother’s crystal vases and porcelain figurines, her father’s old
leather-covered binoculars, the family photographs in their sterling frames. She’d tried so hard to put this place and her past out of her life, she said, and now she was back in the middle
of it again. She laughed and shook her head.
    Uncle Tinsley came in with the tea service on the silver tray.
    “Being back here is all too dark and strange,” Mom said. “I feel the old chill. Mother was always so cold and distant. She never truly loved me. All she cared about were
appearances and being proper. And Father loved me for the wrong reasons. It was all very inappropriate.”
    “Charlotte, that’s nonsense,” Uncle Tinsley said. “This was always a warm house. You were Daddy’s little girl—at least until your divorce—and you loved
it. Nothing inappropriate ever happened under this roof.”
    “That’s what we had to pretend. We had to pretend