Carolina Moon

travel kit she’d brought in with her.
    The dark was soothing now, and the candy bar and soft drink she’d bought from the rumbling vending machine outside her room kept her system wired. She turned on the radio to distract her mind. She wanted to think of nothing but the road.
    When she hit the heart of the state the sun was up, and the traffic thick. She stopped to refuel the gas-guzzling station wagon before heading east. When she passed the exit that led to where her parents had once again relocated, her stomach clenched and stayed tight for another thirty miles.
    She thought of her grandmother, of the stock loaded in the back of the car or being shipped to Progress. She thought of her budget for the next six months and the work involved in having her store up and running by Memorial Day.
    She thought of anything but the real reason driving her back to Progress.
    Just outside of Florence she stopped again and used the rest room of a Shell station to brush her hair, apply some makeup. The artifice wouldn’t fool her grandmother, but at least she’d have made an effort.
    She stopped again, on impulse, at a florist. Her grandmother’s gardens were always a showplace, but the dozen pink tulips were another kind of effort. She lived—had lived, Tory reminded herself—just under two hours from her grandmother and hadn’t made the trip, the effort of it, since Christmas.
    When she turned down the pretty street with its blooming dogwoods and redbuds she wondered why. It was a good place, the kind of neighborhood where children played in the yards and dogs napped in the shade. A gossip-over-the-backyard-fence kind of place where people noticed strange cars and kept their eye on their neighbor’s house as much out of consideration as curiosity.
    Iris Mooney’s house sat in the middle of the block, bandbox neat with old and enormous azaleas guarding the foundation. The blooms were past their peak, but the faded pinks and purples added a delicate color to the strong blue paint her grandmother had chosen. As expected, her front garden was lush and lovely, the gentle slope of the yard well trimmed and the stoop scrubbed and swept.
    A pickup truck with the sign ANYTIME PLUMBING was parked in the drive behind her grandmother’s aging compact. Tory pulled to the curb. The tension she’d ignored along the drive began to ease as she walked toward the house.
    She didn’t knock. She’d never had to knock on this door, and had always known it would open in welcome to her. There had been times when that alone had kept her from crumbling.
    It surprised her to find the house quiet. It was nearly ten, she noted, as she stepped inside. She’d expected to find her grandmother in her garden, or fussing around inside the house.
    The living room was cluttered, as always, with furniture, knickknacks, books. And, Tory noted, a vase holding a dozen red roses that made her tulips look like poor relations. She set aside her suitcase, her purse, then turning toward the hallway called out.
    “Gran? Are you home?” Carrying the flowers, she started back toward the bedrooms, then lifted her eyebrows when she heard the movement behind her grandmother’s closed door.
    “Tory? Honey-pot, I’ll be right out. Go on back and … get yourself some iced tea.”
    With a shrug, Tory kept walking toward the kitchen, glancing back once when she heard what sounded like a muffled giggle.
    She laid the flowers on the counter, then opened the refrigerator. The pitcher of tea was waiting, made as she enjoyed it most, with slices of lemon and sprigs of mint. Gran never forgot anything, Tory thought, and felt tears of sentiment and fatigue sting her eyes.
    She blinked them back when she heard Gran’s quick steps. “Goodness, you’re early! I didn’t expect you until after noon, if that.” Small, slim and agile, Iris Mooney swept into the room and caught Tory in a hard hug.
    “I got an early start, and just kept going. Did I wake you? Aren’t you feeling well?”
    “What?”
    “You’re still in your robe.”
    “Oh. Ha.” After one last squeeze, Iris drew back. “I’m just as fine as rain. Let me look at you. Aw, honey, you’re wore out.”
    “Just a little tired. But you. You look wonderful.”
    It was inevitably true. Sixty-seven years of living had lined her face, but it hadn’t dulled the magnolia skin or dimmed the deep gray of her eyes. Her hair had been red in her youth, and she saw that it remained that way. If God had meant a