Hanson didn’t want to go home. It was Katie, her ten-
year-old daughter, who wanted to visit Dreyerville, the
small Michigan town where Marilys had been raised. Katie
had begged for months to finally meet the grandmother she
had never known. Marilys had finally agreed.
She pressed the brake pedal, slowing the car to make the
turn onto Main Street. Unable to resist a look at the town
she had left twelve years ago, she drove along the sycamore-
lined streets, passing the old domed courthouse and the
ornate clock tower in the middle of the square.
She remembered Tremont’s Antiques in the block to her
right, and next to it, Brenner’s Bakery. She and her mom
had made it a tradition to go there on Saturday mornings.
Marilys could almost smell the fresh-baked cinnamon rolls,
see Mrs. Culver in her pink and white uniform, her gray
hair tucked neatly beneath the matching cap, standing
behind the counter, smiling and welcoming them inside.
Of course, that was all before.
Braking again, she turned onto Fir Street, drove a
couple of blocks, and pulled up to the curb in front of a
gray-and-white, wood-frame house with fading paint. Katie
slept in the passenger seat, her head against the window.
Marilys turned off the engine and for long moments just
sat there, staring at the house that had once been her
home. The house she had fled that awful night.
After so many years, just being there again made her
stomach churn. Where she gripped the steering wheel, her
palms were sweating. Years of emotional turmoil threatened
to surface, but she firmly tamped them down.
She hadn’t seen her mother since the night she had left,
the night she had run off with Burly Hanson, one of the
town bad boys. Even when they were dating, Burly drank too
much and flirted with other woman, but he would never hurt
her, and Marilys was desperate to get away. When Burly
offered to marry her and take her away from Dreyerville,
she had jumped at the chance.
She had sworn that night she would never return, but she
had a daughter to think of now, a child who had just
survived a series of brutal radiation and chemotherapy
treatments for brain cancer. Against the window, Katie’s
bald head gleamed in the sunlight slanting down through the
early spring clouds. Marilys had considered shaving off her
own shoulder-length blond hair the way people did when a
loved one was fighting the disease, but Katie had begged
her not to.
"I don’t want to see you, Mom, and be reminded how awful
I look."
And so Marilys had tamed the soft curls that were her
secret vanity into a modest French braid and silently
thanked her brave little girl.
She glanced over at the child sleeping peacefully in the
seat. The prognosis was good, the doctors said. With luck
and time, Katie should recover. Marilys clung to those
words, but it was too early to know for sure if the
treatments had succeeded.
Which was the reason she was back in Dreyerville.
After what Katie had suffered, the child deserved her
most fervent wish: to meet her grandmother, Winifred
Maddox, Marilys’ mother, one of the few relatives Katie had.
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