Free Coming Home to You by Fay Robinson

his pain. She had six brothers and thought them all perfect. To catch one using drugs would shatter her. To discover a brother on drugs and then to lose him in the tragic way Bret Hayes had lost his…that, was inconceivable.
    “You don’t have to tell me the rest of it,” she said.
    “I want to tell you, but I need time to ease into it. Do you mind walking for a while?”
    “No, not at all.”
    He called to Tom, telling him they’d be back in a little while and to watch the children. Tom waved that he understood.
    “I still own the land adjacent to the ranch,” he said. “Through these woods is a place that’s very special to me. I’d like to share it with you if you’re interested.”
    The offer touched her. “I’d like that very much.”
    T HE OLD HOMESTEAD was beyond a locked gate and cleverly hidden on all sides by thickly planted pines. A crumbling rock chimney stood in a sea of yellow field grass and wildflowers of every conceivable hue. The house once attached to the chimney had long ago given in to the assault of time; it rested among the flowers, now just bits of decaying wood and tin rusted to a color an artist would have difficulty re-creating.
    Kate marveled at the contrast, the weathered gray of the wood, the tan of the rocks among the red, yellow and green of the vegetation.
    “This is lovely.”
    “I think so.” Hayes stood on a low rock wall that ran for thirty feet along one side of the ruins. He offered her a hand and pulled her up beside him. “Originally there was a two-room log house chinked with grass and mud, but over time, as the family grew, they replaced it with a larger house that had a tin roof and clapboard sides. Come on and I’ll introduce you to them.”
    Kate followed him into the tall grass. The air held a pungent but pleasant odor. “That’s rosemary I smell. Where’s it coming from?”
    “All over. The lady who lived here believed some superstition about growing it near the house.”
    “The woman rules where rosemary flourishes.”
    “That’s it. She made her husband plant tons of the stuff.”
    “Hedging her bets,” Kate said. “I like this woman.”
    The graves were beyond the field in the quiet cool of the trees. Joshua and Elizabeth Satterfield rested under a common headstone dark with age and covered with lichen. Kate knelt and brushed away the dirt that partly obscured the inscription. Using her fingers to feel the words, she was able to read it.
    Death is only a shadow across the path to heaven .
    “How beautiful.”
    “Joshua died during the Civil War,” Bret said. He gestured to the graves on the left. “These three children were stillborn and never named. The two over here were boys—five and seven. They died when the barn caught fire and they were trapped inside.”
    “And this one?” she asked, pointing to the graveof the couple’s infant daughter, Nancy Mary. The crude gravestone said she’d been born in January 1861 and had died in April that same year. “She was only three months old.”
    “She died of pneumonia.”
    “So many children lost.” She stood and wiped the dirt off her hand onto the seat of her shorts. “How do you know about the family?”
    “Elizabeth’s granddaughter told me. When she was a child, she and the other grandchildren would sit on the front porch at Elizabeth’s feet, listening to her talk about how the family had lived through the war.”
    “Is this granddaughter still living?”
    “No, she died several years ago.” He smiled with remembrance. “She was really something special. Feisty. Funny. You never knew what she was going to say next, and you didn’t dare argue with her because she always won.”
    “You sound as if you cared about her.”
    “Yes, very much. She was an important part of my life. Her name was Margaret, but everybody, even her children, called her—”
    “Granny Mag,” Kate finished for him, suddenly realizing the significance of his story and this place. “Margaret Taylor