The Secret Hum of a Daisy Read Free

and came up with a Safeway plastic grocery bag. She nodded toward my pockets and set the bag on the seat between us.
    â€œFor the dirt,” she said.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    Mama died six days ago, and Grandma had tried to pick me up twice before, but I’d hidden from her. The threat of missing Mama’s funeral was what finally made me get into her truck. At least twenty times per day, I’d begged Mrs. Greene to let me stay. But Mrs. Greene had said the same thing each time. “She’s your grandma, Grace. You have to give it time. Everyone deserves a bit of time.”
    â€œWhat about what I deserve?”
    â€œYou deserve to be loved. But sometimes, you can’t see what that looks like for yourself. You’ve got too much mad mixed up in there. Too much sorrow. After a few months, things will be different.” Mrs. Greene had put her hand on my leg and squeezed, holding tight longer than was necessary.
    Mama and I had lived with Mrs. Greene and Lacey for nine months, the longest we’d lived anywhere, and by the time we got there, I was tired. Tired of this adventure Mama said we were on, trying to find the perfect place to call home. For Mama, there was always a better job or a better place to live, better schools or less crime. A place with trees or, when she was sick of trees, a place with open fields or water or whatever it was that Mama needed to keep her spirits up. Mama told me that when we finally found home, it would hum. Like the daisies.
    I thought we’d finally found that place when we found Mrs. Greene. The wide and slow movement of the Sacramento River was a quick walk from Mrs. Greene’s back steps. The mountains were an hour’s drive, and the beach was just a little farther in the other direction. Mrs. Greene had taken us under her wing, both me and Mama, into a safe place that felt like home. But things always seemed to happen at some point or another to make Mama want to leave, and Mrs. Greene’s ended up being no different.
    Grandma drove down Main Street, past the small church we’d just left and the public school next to it. As we drove past the snow-globe storefronts, I saw a giant spoon hanging from a pole in front of a restaurant called the Spoons Souperie. I spun around in my seat and watched the spoon swing in the wind.
    â€œWhat is it?” Grandma said.
    â€œNothing.”
    Mama had used spoons in all of her birds, claiming that a spoon was the utensil of comfort. She said it brought you soup on a cold day and stirred honey in your tea. Without spoons we couldn’t eat pudding or ice cream, and you could never hang a fork from your nose or ears.
    It confused me to think she might have been using them because they reminded her of home. Home being a place she never talked about.
    Thinking that was a question I couldn’t answer, I let it go as we came to a four-way stop where the land opened to rolling fields and cedars. There was a sign welcoming us to Gold Country, California. One of the only other pieces of information Grandma had shared with me was that Auburn Valley was on the National Register of Historic Places because of how much gold had been discovered here. She explained it was an even smaller town now than it was then because of some fires that had burned the place down a long time ago.
    After a short distance, she made a left on Ridge Road. She drove so slow, I almost could have walked faster.
    Try as I might to picture the house where Mama had lived, the only picture I came up with was the witch’s cottage from “Hansel and Gretel.” As much as I’d like to see Grandma as the witch in that cottage, she was actually pretty ordinary looking. No tinge of green or warts. Instead, she had silver hair with streaks the same blond as Mama’s pulled back into a loose knot, and she wore long gray skirts and tall black boots with flat heels, which didn’t do anything to hide the length of her legs. She