Martin braked in the driveway of the Reynolds Farm and wished she could turn the car around and take Maddie home, where her daughter could pout and complain out of earshot. She was fairly certain that not having an audience wouldn’t actually stop Maddie—there was always a girlfriend at the end of the phone line to sympathize—but better a prepubescent peer than Taylor herself.
Instead, because Harmony was waiting for them, she came to a stop and waited for the girl to fall silent. She reminded herself that for most of Maddie’s existence, Taylor had only hoped for a normal life for her child, a life in which every move, every decision, wasn’t factored through the reality of epileptic seizures.
Now, following surgery that had transformed Maddie’s future, she had her wish. These days every move, every decision was instead factored through the normal reality of approaching adolescence. And at eleven, this was just the beginning.
“Are we finished?” she asked when the only remaining sound was the twilight serenade of crickets in the woods nearby and, from closer to the house, the grouchy bleating of a goat.
“We weren’t talking. I was talking, and you weren’t listening.”
“You’re wrong. I heard every word you said. I am not going to leave you at home alone in the evenings when your grandfather can’t stay with you. You are only eleven, and now that we’ve moved, we don’t know our neighbors well enough to ask them to intervene in an emergency. For now, you’re going to have to buck up and go to meetings and classes with me.”
“You don’t trust me.”
Taylor turned to face her daughter’s profile. “Are you going to spoil our fun tonight? Harmony doesn’t get many chances to get away without Lottie. I think she’s looking forward to having dinner together and watching a movie. I hope she won’t regret going with us.”
Maddie said something that wasn’t audible, which was probably a good thing. Then she muttered louder, “Can I have a hamburger? I eat them in Tennessee.”
Taylor tried not to smile. She had raised her daughter to be a vegetarian. Harmony was a vegetarian. Of course eating meat in front of them would be Maddie’s revenge.
“You can have anything you want. You know that. As long as you have vegetables with it.”
“French fries are a vegetable.”
“Healthy vegetables,” Taylor amended. “I know you eat meat when you’re at your father’s house, but he tells me he’s also big on salads and cooked veggies, and he limits fried foods to special treats.”
“I liked it better when the two of you weren’t speaking.”
Actually Maddie hadn’t liked that at all, since the discord between Jeremy Larsen and Taylor had been tough on everybody. But now that her parents were on better terms, it was easier for them to present a united front, along with Jeremy’s wife, Willow, who was an excellent stepmother and followed their lead.
“You could probably stay here and help Rilla with Lottie and the boys,” Taylor said. “I could pick you up again when I drop off Harmony tonight.”
“It’s kind of weird that you two are friends now.”
“Why? We’re both goddesses. We see each other a lot.”
Taylor and Harmony were both trustees of a house in the mountains near Asheville that had been left to a small group of women by Charlotte Hale, Taylor’s mother. Because Charlotte had particularly loved the story of Kuan Yin, a Buddhist goddess who had remained on earth anonymously after death to continue helping those who suffered, they had taken the name Goddesses Anonymous for their little group. Together they tried in whatever ways they could to follow the example of Kuan Yin and help other women who might need them.
Not that any of them really thought they lived up to Kuan Yin’s standard.
“Well, I think it’s weird because Harmony was friends with Grandma when you weren’t even speaking to her. You’re like...rivals.”
Taylor wondered why this had never come up before. She wondered if Maddie and her close friend Edna, daughter of Samantha, another of the goddesses, had been discussing it.
“Life is complicated,” Taylor said, and without looking she could imagine Maddie’s eyes rolling. “Here’s what you need to learn from everything that happened with Mom and me. We loved each other, but we let our differences get in the way. I held a grudge for years, almost to the end of her life, and I was wrong to do that. Very wrong. Your grandmother wanted badly for us to be close again, and when she couldn’t make that happen she kind of adopted Harmony, who needed her.”
“And you don’t feel jealous?”
Taylor did look at Maddie now and saw that she was actually engaged in the conversation, interested. Her brown hair fell around her earnest little face. “I don’t. I feel humbled.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I wish I could do something for Harmony to pay her back for what she did for Mom, Maddie. Because she really helped your grandmother feel like she had a reason to live and a place in the world, something I didn’t do until it was almost too late.”
“But she died, anyway.”
“Yeah, she did. But she died knowing she’d made a difference. And thanks to Harmony, who helped me see what a mistake I was making, your grandmother died knowing how much I loved her, despite everything. And she got to spend time with you, which meant everything to her.”
“That is complicated.”
“Tell me about it.” Taylor started the car again and shifted into drive. “So no, I’m not jealous. Harmony was like a bridge where your grandmother and I could meet after too many years apart. She probably doesn’t realize how much she did for us both.”
“Why did Harmony need Grandma? Doesn’t she have family?”
Taylor knew that was Harmony’s story to tell and not hers. “She couldn’t be with them. I think there are problems there.”
“The kind you had with Grandma?”
“I don’t know the whole story.”
“And now that Grandma’s gone, Harmony’s all alone?” Maddie paused and thought that through. “No, I guess she has lots of people. All the goddesses, for sure.”
“So let’s go feed her and take her to a movie. What do you say?”
“That’s pretty lame after all she did for us.” Now Maddie sounded bored.
Taylor knew their moment of communication had ended. These days her daughter was as difficult to predict as the autumn weather, and often as stormy.
“It’s a start,” she said as she drove toward the house.
Taylor had expected to meet Harmony at the Reynoldses’ house, since that was where Lottie was supposed to spend the evening, but when they pulled into the farmyard she saw that all the lights were on in the garage apartment where Harmony lived.
“I guess she’s at her own place,” she
