Chapter 11
Sixth grade
Ben’s mother, Emily Lawrence, peered across the lawn to the twin house on the other side of the street, where it appeared
a woman with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth was taking a hose to a muddy dog and child.
“That’s your new friend over there?” Ben’s mother asked.
Ben looked down at his feet to keep from grinning. “Yes.”
“The girl or the dog?”
“The girl, Mom. Come on.”
“Interesting” was his mother’s only reply.
If the adjustment to Clay Creek had been hard on Ben, it was equally hard on his mother. She’d grown up in Michigan, in Detroit,
and then spent the majority of her adult life in Chicago. Clay Creek was... not either of those places. It wasn’t really
anywhere as far as Ben could tell.
They’d moved earlier than Emily would have liked, but she couldn’t turn down the offer to teach English at the high school,
not when her position at the elite Chicago private school where she’d taught was eliminated.
She’d asked her father, Ben’s grandfather, more than once how a sophisticated city doctor like Benjamin Sr. could possibly
retire here. Benji had just shrugged and said he loved the quiet, loved the fishing. He loved the part-time clinic he’d opened.
He didn’t even mind being called a Yankee by the locals.
Emily did, though. She chaffed against the relaxed attitudes, the way everyone waved at everyone else, the way people were so... familiar with each other. She’d come home after that first day at school, sat down at the kitchen table, and ranted about how she’d
been expected to give her personal, private phone number to two faculty members just because she knew they’d be offended if
she hadn’t offered it.
“It’s their way,” Benji replied smoothly. “They just want to be able to reach you.”
“I don’t want to be reached,” Emily replied.
“You never have,” Benji joked, patting his daughter’s hand.
Emily stiffened and then turned to Ben and asked about his day. Ben merely shrugged and then said shyly, carefully, that he’d
made friends with the neighbor girl, Mylie.
“What kind of a name is that?” Emily asked.
“She’s Violet Mason’s granddaughter,” Benji replied, as if that explained everything.
And now his new friend was squealing as she ran through a water hose, her ruined clothing utterly soaked, mud sliding down
her tanned legs.
As they stood there, he and his mother, watching the scene unfold, Mylie looked over and grinned at them, at him , Ben realized. She beckoned for him.
“Come on!” she hollered.
“Don’t even think about it,” his mother threatened.
Ben looked to his mother and then at Mylie. Her head was thrown back laughing as she slipped and went down into the soggy
grass, the dog jumping on top of her and licking her face.
“Come on, Ben!” she said again.
Ben didn’t give it a second thought, running toward her, his mother yelling about his nice school clothes as he slid into
the mess, Mylie’s hand outstretched to meet his own.