Free The Long Road Home by Mary Alice Monroe Page A

established early in childhood and nurtured over fifty years of devotion. May interpreted his pain, his worry, and his hesitancy to discuss the subject.
    Seth knew she understood. May was a good listener and an even better observer.
    “She’s up there now,” Seth finally muttered. “I guess she’s all right.”
    “Don’t be so sure, Seth. Esther’s all bark and no bite. She may have a hard time seeing Nora MacKenzie move in next door. She’ll have to work with her every day, too.”
    “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Seth’s mouth was set in a hard line.
    “That’ll be the day I listen to a heathen preach the Bible at me!”
    “Who you callin’ a heathen, heathen?”
    May cackled loud and hearty. Neither one of them went to church, but they each considered the other the most honest, loving Christian they’d ever known.
    “Well then,” May said, pushing back her chair and hoisting her largesse out of it. She, too, panted with the effort and her legs started to throb from sitting still too long. “Ain’t nothing left to do but go up and see the missus for myself. Check on her ailment. Sweet little thing, up in that big house by herself. Just hope she don’t plant no more blueberries. Don’t know I can stand the smell!”
     
    May rolled up the mountain in her burgundy Buick. When May turned fifty, she treated herself to her first luxury, an “almost new” new car. It was plush: wide bodied, a cushy interior, air conditioning—the works. She even got one ofthose vanity mirrors, though she never used it. Today, eight years later, her beloved auto had spots of rust and a crumpled left fender from when she slid on the ice and bumped a tree. These she considered her car’s mere ailments. Like her, the burgundy Buick ran rough but reliable and only clocked in at 49,241 miles.
    She spotted Esther barreling toward her down the back road with dust flying at the wheels. May lay on a honk that brought Esther to a crawl at the fork. She eased to a stop beside the Buick. May made a show of blowing the dust out of her face and offered a cough for emphasis.
    “We don’t need no more accidents,” May warned.
    “Yes’m,” Esther replied, knowing better than to risk a fiery scolding from her aunt. Nothing Aunt May hated more than back-road speeders.
    “You just leaving the MacKenzie place?”
    Esther’s face clouded. “Not soon enough.”
    May scrutinized Esther’s face. She was right, she decided. This move of Mrs. MacKenzie’s back to the farm was coming hard for Esther. Esther would never let on to anyone how deeply she’d been hurt by Michael MacKenzie; she was too proud, or too ornery, to show it. They all counted on Esther to be the strong one, and she never let them down. In the process, however, she never let her hurt out. May saw it, however. Saw the hurt in the spurts of anger at all the wrong places, in the many lone ventures up to the mountains with her easel. Mostly, she heard it in the way Esther pined to leave the farm but never did.
    “Your pa, he wants us to be fair with her. Don’t be casting blame where it don’t belong.”
    “I don’t know what you mean.” Esther looked ahead out the windshield.
    May knew that tight-lipped, squinty-eyed stare. Esther was simmering and ready to blow.
    “I’ve got something I want to take care of,” said Esther, abruptly shifting into drive. “You be careful going up that road, hear? It’s full of rough spots. See you.”
    Esther’s Impala sailed away on a cloud of dust. May clucked and wagged her head. The devil had that girl’s tail, she thought, and if she wasn’t careful, she’d have the devil to pay. Esther sure had a tongue. May remembered Nora as the kind of girl who kept her thoughts to herself.
    “Poor little thing,” she murmured, thinking of what might have transpired between the two young women. That’d be like pitting a cock with a razor against a hen.
    She rambled to the MacKenzie road, and remembering it, she took it in first