Chapter 9 - The First Frost
By the middle of October, the leaves on the oak trees had turned a brilliant, fiery orange, dropping dry crisp carpets across our lawn every time a northern breeze swept down from the Ozark plateau.
Trisha’s pottery shop was officially gone. The sign bearing The Painted Mug had been unscrewed from the brick facade above Suite 14 on Pleasant Grove Road, leaving clean, dark rectangles where the letters used to be. According to Tamika, who heard it from a neighbor whose cousin worked at the bank, Trisha had moved back into our parents' spare bedroom in their modest subdivision off Highway 12, her unsold inventory stacked in cardboard boxes in their garage.
My parents hadn't paid their club dues. By Tuesday evening, their names had been quietly removed from the active member roster at Sycamore Glen, and their preferred parking privileges by the clubhouse were reassigned to a local real estate developer.
None of it was my business anymore.
On a crisp Friday afternoon, Dwight and I stood on our front porch watching the final phase of our home improvement project. A pair of local roofers we’d hired with our newly reclaimed savings were busy hammering down brand-new architectural shingles over the kitchen leak, the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of their nail guns echoing pleasantly across the neighborhood.
The stain above our stove was gone, covered by fresh drywall compound and a coat of clean white paint I’d rolled on myself while listening to old country records on the kitchen radio.
Cal came running around the side of the house carrying the balsa wood airplane he and Dwight had built, holding it aloft like a fighter jet banking into a cloud.
"Watch this, Mom!" he shouted, launching the plane into the air. It caught a gust of wind, dipped gracefully over the tomato cages, and landed softly in the green grass of the lawn.
Dwight walked up behind me, wrapping his strong, grease-dusted arms around my waist and resting his chin comfortably on my shoulder. He smelled of fresh sawdust and coffee.
"Looks like we're finally getting this place shipshape," Dwight murmured, watching Cal retrieve his plane.
May you like
"It really does," I said, leaning back against his chest.
My phone buzzed in my pocket—a routine notification from our bank about a grocery deposit. I didn't even bother to take it out. I just stood there on the porch of our own house, under our own roof, with the sound of hammers working on a solid, un-leaking ceiling above us, and realized for the first time in my life that we were completely, wonderfully free.
