CHAPTER ONE

The earth spins at a thousand miles an hour. Sometimes when I remember this, it’s all I can do to stay upright – the urge to flatten myself to the ground and clutch hold is that strong. Because, gravity? Oh, gravity is no match for a force that equals ten simultaneous hurricanes. No, if we aren’t all flung off the earth like so many water droplets off a cartoon dog’s back, it must be because people are connected somehow. I like to imagine the ties between us as strands of spider silk: practically invisible, maybe, but strong as steel. I figure the trick is to spin out enough of them to weave ourselves into a net.

By ties, I’m not talking about showing up at a birthday party with the same gift or the same card. Those are coincidences, and coincidences aren’t any more of a match for the force of ten simultaneous hurricanes than gravity is. I’m talking about real bonds. Like two people loving the smell of gasoline because it’s about going some place new. Or knowing that broken things tell stories.

Discovering one of these ties feels so good – as if I’m sinking safer into the earth, as if my bones are made of iron and my blood is melted lead. Because I never know when I’m going to find one, I’m always on the look-out. The whole time I lived with Louise, I was watching.

Finally, on the last day of her life – in the last hour before she died, most likely – I found one. Actually, Louise found it. She threw it out like a lifeline. I grabbed.

“Help me unload the car, Stella. I went down to the Agway yesterday, got some fertilizer and mulch for my blueberries.”

“I love blueberries,” I said. “So does my mom.” I pulled a box of waffles out of the freezer and braced for the sarcastic remark about my mother I figured was coming.

Louise grabbed the box and clattered the last two waffles onto a plate. “Puh,” she muttered. Puh, I’d noticed, was the start of a lot of her conversations. As though she’d taken in a mouthful of road dust and had to spit it out before she could form any words.

“Puh,” she started again. “You’re telling me. That girl was crazy for blueberries.” She winced when she realized what she’d said, and frowned over at me to see if she had to apologize. But of course I didn’t react. Be the iceberg. Besides, my mother wasn’t crazy. That wasn’t it.

“What I mean is, she was always hounding me to buy ‘em. ‘Course, they cost an arm and a leg out of season; I didn’t have enough money to go buying ‘em whenever she got a whim.” She shoved the plate into the microwave and stabbed the START button extra hard, to show me how she felt about things. Then she stopped. She pushed aside the curtains over the sink to gaze out the window, and when she turned back her face had softened to almost pretty. For the first time, I could see how she and my grandmother could have been sisters.

“Out there,” she said. “Past the garden. You see those bushes?”

I stepped beside her and nodded. I saw bushes. They didn’t impress me much, I have to say.

“Your mother helped me plant ‘em. Because she loved ‘em so much. Couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, but she worked like a little trouper. Never quit. Three different high-bush varieties. I got Pipkins for muffins…”

I stopped listening for a minute as it hit me again: my mother had lived here. Right. Exactly. Here.