And then she saw it...a tiny piece of blue and gray flannel caught on a hook of the barbed wire, and her heart nearly stopped.
Mama had been wearing a blue and gray flannel shirt!
She looked out across the prairie, and all she saw, as far as the eye could see, was a sea of brown, dead grass.
Without hesitating, she opened the old gate between the pasture and the house, then ran for the house to get her keys. Within moments, she was in her car and flying through the gate, bouncing over dried gopher mounds, sliding across ancient buffalo wallows, trying to imagine where her mother might have gone. When she realized there were tiny snowflakes beginning to stick to the windshield, she groaned. This was not fucking happening.
She started to call 9-1-1 but realized she'd left her phone in the house, so she just kept driving, desperate to find Delia before dark—before the weather got serious with its bad self and turned loose with real snow.
"Please God, please, help me find Mama," Gracie cried. She was caught between weeping in gut-wrenching fear, and angry enough to curse the hard-headed, crazy-ass woman who no longer knew the difference between up and down.
She was so far out into the pasture that she could no longer see the house, but still on their land. She drove in an ever-narrowing circle, praying she'd see her mama somewhere in the grass, when she thought she heard her Daddy's voice telling her to look up. And then it hit her!
This was Texas. If there was a piece of flesh on the ground, there would be buzzards in the air—if they hadn't already migrated south for the winter. When she spotted a pair circling high above in the gray winter sky, she gunned the engine in their direction.
Gracie saw the blue and gray shirt first, and then the woman wearing it, and stomped the brakes so hard she skidded, slammed the car into park, and got out running.
Delia was lying on her side, nestled down in the dead grass and curled up in a ball. Her socks were embedded with stickers and grass seeds, her eyes glazed, her lips as blue as her shirt.
Gracie thought Delia was dead, and then she blinked.
"Mama!" she cried. Gracie dropped to her knees beside her to check her mama's pulse and see if she was bleeding anywhere.
Delia blinked again, and then looked at Gracie.
"Cows got out."
Gracie groaned. "No, Mama. We don't have cows anymore. We sold them years ago."
Delia blinked. "Tired."
"Can you walk?" Gracie asked.
"Tired," Delia said again.
Gracie stood then dragged her mother to her feet. She slung Delia's arm around her shoulder and started moving her to the car, yelling and pulling her along with every step of the way.
"Walk, Mama! I can't carry you. Move your feet!"
"Tired," Delia kept saying.
Gracie screamed. "I'm tired, too, dammit! I'm tired all the way down to my bones. But you're gonna walk now! One foot in front of the other! Just help me get you to the car. We'll drive the rest of the way home!"
So, Delia walked, because Gracie was taking care of business.
* * *
Gracie wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead as the memory faded, then she looked back down at the paper in her hand, tossed it in the suitcase, and threw her sweatshirts in on top of it.
She kept working until all her winter clothes were packed, and then set the suitcases against the wall in her room and went back to the attic to get more.
She was coming down with one in each hand when her cell phone rang. She turned loose of the bags, letting them slide as they fell, and sat down on the stairs to answer.
"Hello, this is Gracie."
"Hello, Gracie. This is Willis Decker. We have your mama ready."
"I'll clean up and be right there," she said, then ran the rest of the way down the stairs, picked up the bags, and carried them into her room.
She stripped out of her old work clothes and washed up, took down her hair and brushed it again, then pulled it up into a ponytail at the nape of her neck before getting out more clean clothes.
As she was dressing, it occurred to her that she didn't have anything to wear for the funeral. She sighed. One more detail she had to address. She was walking past the kitchen when she remembered she still hadn't taken Mama's eulogy to Brother Harp, so she dug it out of the roll-top desk in the living room and left the house.
It seemed weird to have the freedom to do this now—to just get in the car and leave whenever she wanted. It was going to be an adjustment, having only herself to take care of, and a little part of her felt guilty for the brief spurt of relief that came with that knowledge.
She drove with the air conditioner on and thought how good it felt to be cool. She wished she could just keep driving until she came to where she was next meant to be. But there was unfinished business here, and Gracie wasn't a woman who left anything undone.
By the time she got to Decker's Funeral Home, she had herself as collected as she was ever going to be. This was the last thing she had to do for Mama—making sure she didn't look as crazy as she'd become. Still, there was a knot in Gracie’s gut as she got out and went into the funeral home.
The secretary saw her as she entered the office.
"Good morning, Gracie. Just take a seat, and I'll let Mr. Decker know you're here."
"Yes, ma'am," Gracie said, then eased down into the pale, blue wing chair and folded her hands in her lap as the woman picked up the phone.
A couple of minutes later, Willis Decker appeared in the doorway, neatly dressed in a light gray summer suit, with a white shirt and a red and gray striped tie. He looked like a short, en vogue version of Santa Claus, minus the beard.
"Good morning, Gracie. Are you ready?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," she said, and stood.
Willis gently cupped her elbow, guiding her through the lobby then two huge swinging doors into the back, past a display of caskets and all of their accoutrements, past a couple of offices, and then into a room with a single open casket, parked right in the center of the floor.
Willis was talking like a car salesman pitching the latest model as he led her up to the casket.
"The white pearl casket with the pink lining is quite beautiful. The pink carnation casket spray was a good choice, but I have to mention that the dress Delia chose is unusual. I can't say as how I've ever buried someone in a wedding dress before."
Gracie's voice shook. "Mama said she'd only worn that dress once when she married Daddy, and it seemed the sensible thing to do to get one more wear out of it."
Willis chuckled. "That does sound like the Delia I knew. She was one of a kind." He paused and looked Gracie straight in the eyes. "I wish we'd known what a hard time you were having. I wish you would have asked for help. But I commend you for standing by your mama as her health and mind failed her. I cannot imagine all you endured, but you were a good and faithful daughter, Gracie Dunham. All those years certainly put some stars in your crown."
"I didn't do it for stars," Gracie said, and looked down at her mother then, lying there so peacefully, her snow-white hair in the soft waves she'd favored. All the discolorations on her face and hands had been covered with makeup, and the faint brush of pink on her lips made it look like she was smiling. But it was the old white lace dress with the high neck and long sleeves Gracie loved most. She used to dream of getting married in that dress. But then she’d grown tall like her daddy and had given up her dreams to take care of mama. Now, it no longer mattered.