Double Wedding Ring Read Free

return to her, didn’t stick even when Malorie explained them to her.
    The place called Sweetbranch didn’t look much like the place called Atlanta, where the hospital lived. Huge ribbons of concrete didn’t twist and wind through Sweetbranch, providing parking places for thousands of cars and trucks and vans. The big trucks made Susan nervous.
    Tall trees the colors of fire spread every which way in Sweetbranch. The houses sat far apart, separated by green carpet that was nothing like the sickly hospital green.
    â€œI might take a liking to green, after all,” she said, forgetting that it was easier all the way round when she didn’t speak.
    â€œWhat, Mother? Are you all right?”
    Susan heard the alarm in the young woman’s voice and sighed. “Green. It’s pretty.”
    â€œOh. Yes.”
    But Susan heard the uncertainty in Malorie’s voice and wondered if she had made herself understood. Would she ever be able to speak clearly again?
    â€œThere’s where you went to church when you were a girl, Mother.”
    Eagerly, Susan followed the direction of Malorie’s gesture. The brick building with the center spire seemed vaguely familiar. “Reckon I should’ve gone more often?”
    Again, that funny look from Malorie. Her therapist had liked it when Susan made little jokes. Malorie took it all way too seriously.
    â€œAnd there’s the high school. You were on the debating team, if you can believe that.”
    Susan looked again, this time at a two-story brick building. Home of the Bobcats, read a brick-framed sign between the street and the gravel drive. The squat, square building stirred more vague feelings in her, feelings of anticipation, feelings that something good was about to happen. She smiled.
    Malorie must have seen the smile. “Do you remember Sweetbranch High, Mother?”
    â€œMaybe.” Susan could tell, although Malorie went to great pains to hide it, that every missing memory, every forgotten skill, was like a personal loss to her daughter.
    â€œThat’s good. Dr. Kerr said being back on familiar territory like this could be very good for your memory retrieval.”
    Susan remembered that, and took it as a good sign. “Yeah. Maybe someday I’ll be normal again.” She laughed, despite the frown her daughter shot in her direction. “Shoot, maybe someday I’ll even know what normal means.”
    â€œMo-ther!”
    Susan smiled at the admonition. She didn’t know if she’d always been the type to try to do things against the grain, but she was discovering she liked it now.
    â€œThis is Main Street coming up,” Malorie said.
    Having heard the expectation in Malorie’s voice, Susan sat forward in her seat. She didn’t want to miss Main Street, and the chance for more memory retrieval.
    The two lanes of traffic along Main Street crept between rows of adjoining brick buildings. Susan’s heart leaped at the familiar sights, until she remembered that they had passed by similar Main Streets in other small towns all along the way from Atlanta. As in those other small towns, the brick buildings housed a dress shop and a bookstore and a drugstore and a post office and various other offices. Signs read The Picture Perfect and Holy Spirits Tavern and Sweetbranch Weekly Gazetteer. People here didn’t bustle around the way they did in Atlanta. These folks seemed to have more time as they made their way along the sidewalks, stopping to talk, laughing over something in the bins at the hardware store, calling out to people passing slowly in their pickup trucks.
    Susan didn’t recognize any of them. She didn’t recognize anything.
    Except for Hutchins’ Lawn & Garden.
    The sign made her heart skip again, and when it resumed its regular beat, it had sped up.
    Hutchins’ Lawn & Garden was on the northeast end of Main Street. The wooden sign had been hand-painted years ago and needed