Updrift Read Free

inland from Griffins Bay. Both she and Kate would have to commute to work and school but the house was worth it—small and picturesque, butter yellow with black shutters, dormers over the upper windows, and a spacious yard with a garden outside the back door. Someone, a long time ago, had put a tire swing on what was now an immense hickory tree in the front. To Cara, the place was a storybook idyll.
    The burden of grief she had carried the previous two years continued to lighten as the days passed. Dana helped her scrub every surface in the house and paint the walls with warm, vibrant colors. She found discounted vegetable plants at the local nursery, which she promised Kate she would coax into a bounty harvest in the garden area out back. She indulged her daughter in a garishly bright yellow and pink color scheme for her bedroom, adding cheerful pillows and fabric accents of every pattern imaginable. The result was an exquisitely pretty, charmingly jumbled little girl’s room. Cara knew what she was doing and was proud of herself. Kate, too, was impressed.
    *
    And Kate was impressed with their new home, her new room, and all her mother’s fresh demonstrations of competence since leaving Kansas. She felt as if her mother had freed her from something awful, like she’d been bound in baling wire from her grandfather’s old shed, and Cara had snipped her out of it using bolt cutters. Her mother was finally someone she remembered, someone she’d badly missed. She drank in their contentment until she was full from it, and then reached for another glass.
    Their final, and to her mind, most profound transformation occurred in the kitchen. In her depression which comprised the whole of Kate’s conscious memory, Cara had relied on a small cadre of prepackaged dinner options to sustain them. She had no appetite and no will to cook during the time following her father’s death, so she didn’t. Kate became an unenthusiastic eater when presented with the mushy, overly salted or tasteless options she was consistently served, so both of them came to regard mealtime as an unpleasant chore. Following a few days of scrubbing out cupboards and organizing pans and utensils, however, her mother made a dinner that changed Kate’s outlook on mealtime forever.
    It was roast chicken. Kate came downstairs, drowsy from an afternoon nap, to investigate the irresistible smells coming from the kitchen. Cara seemed again like she had not been crying, which was becoming the new norm since they’d come to Childress. The bread maker was out on the counter, perfuming the air with its toasty aroma. The sharper smells of onion, garlic and lemon provided their own compelling undertone, and the whole package of scents put Kate in a happy trance.
    “Hi, honey,” her mom said. “Wanna help me make supper?”
    “Sure!” She slid a chair over to the sink.
    Kate watched dubiously while her mom put a chicken in a roaster, seasoned it, and added lemon and onion to the cavity. She held out a sprig of something green for Kate to sniff.
    She wrinkled her nose. “It smells like a Christmas tree.”
    “It’s rosemary,” Cara laughed placing the sprig inside the bird.
    While the chicken roasted she helped her mother set the table, something they never did. Cara put on some music, and they played cards, her mom smiling diabolically when she told her, “Go fish,” before laying down her hand. Kate had never seen her mother so lighthearted.
    The chicken, which made such a dubious impression raw, eventually smelled too good to be true. After filling their plates they ate silently, savoring every bite, contentment settling over them like one of her grandfather’s evening prayers. Cara had glazed the carrots with brown sugar, and Kate demanded seconds. She used the buttermilk bread from the bread machine to sop up every last morsel and finally, after she could eat no more, rested against the back of her chair and sighed. She couldn’t remember a better dinner