The house smelled so strongly of wild animals and urine that Patricia’s eyes began to water. Even though she’d left the mushroom lamp on the hall table turned on, it was dark. She flipped the light switch and saw the mushroom lamp lying in pieces across the floor.

The smell got stronger in the den, the floor dotted with brown pellets and puddles of urine. The sofa was shredded, the curtains hung in tatters. Her first thought was that vandals had broken in. She and Carter walked fast for the garage room and stopped short in the doorway.

A giant had picked up the room and shaken it hard: chairs turned over, tables on their sides, medicine bottles scattered among dead rats, their corpses dotting the carpet. And in the middle of all this wreckage, Mrs. Greene knelt over Miss Mary, caked in blood, clothes torn to rags. She raised her head from the old woman’s lips and pressed down hard on her chest, performing perfect CPR compressions, and then she saw them and cried out in a cracked and terrible voice, “The ambulance is on its way.”

CHAPTER 13

Three of Miss Mary’s fingers had been stripped to the bone. She would need reconstructive surgery to rebuild her lips. They weren’t sure about her nose. They thought they could save her left eye.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” Carter said, nodding rapidly. “But Mom’ll be okay?”

“After we stabilize her she’ll need several surgeries,” the doctor said. “But at her age you may want to consider whether that’s even wise. After that, with extensive rehab and physical therapy she should be able to return to her normal life, in a limited fashion.”

“Good, good,” Carter said, still nodding. “Good.”

The doctor left and Patricia tried to take Carter’s hand and reconnect him to reality.

“Carter,” she said. “Do you want to sit down?”

“I’m good,” he said, pulling his hand away and running it over his face. “You should go get some rest. It’s been a long night.”

“Carter,” she said.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I think I’ll actually go by my office and catch up on some work. I’ll see Mom when they bring her out of surgery.”

Patricia gave up and drove home a couple of hours before dawn. When she pulled into the driveway her headlights swept across the yard and the shadows seethed and scattered, fading back into the dark bushes: hundreds and hundreds of rats. Patricia sat in her car for a minute, lights on bright, then got out and ran for the front door.

* * *

—

Dead rats littered the den. There were even more in the garage room. She didn’t know what to do. Bury them? Put them in the trash? Call Animal Control? She knew what to do if too many people showed up for supper, or if someone arrived early for a party, but what did you do when rats attacked your mother-in-law? Who told you how to cope with that?

She decided to start with the garage room. Her heart contracted painfully when she saw Ragtag’s limp corpse stretched in the middle of the carpet. Poor dog, she thought as she bent over to pick him up.

He opened one eye and his tail thumped feebly against the carpet.

Patricia wrapped him in an old beach towel and drove to the vet’s office at twenty-six miles per hour. She was waiting when he showed up to unlock his office door.

“He’ll live,” Dr. Grouse said. “But it won’t be inexpensive.”

“Whatever it takes,” Patricia told him. “He’s a good dog. You’re a good dog, Ragtag.”

She couldn’t find an unlacerated part of him to pet, so she settled on thinking good thoughts about him as hard as she could all the way back home. When she got out of the car she heard the phone ringing inside the house. She took it in the kitchen.

“Mom died,” Carter said, biting down hard on each word.

“Carter, I am so sorry. What can I do?”

“I don’t know, Patty,” he said. “What do people do? I was ten when Daddy died.”

“I’ll call Stuhr’s,” she said. “How’s Mrs. Greene?”

“Who?” he asked.

“Mrs. Greene,” she repeated, not sure how to better describe the woman who’d tried to save his mother’s life.

“Oh,” he said. “They put in some stitches and she’ll have to get a rabies series, but she went home.”

“Carter,” she repeated. “I’m so sorry.”

“Okay,” he said, dazed. “You too.”

He hung up. Patricia stood in the kitchen, not knowing what happened next. Who did she call? Where did she begin? Overwhelmed, she dialed Grace.

“How unusual,” Grace said, after Patricia explained what had happened. “At the risk of sounding insensitive, we should get started.”

Relief flooded Patricia as Grace took over. She called Maryellen, who arranged for Stuhr’s to pick up Miss Mary’s body from the hospital, and then she told Patricia what to do with the children.

“Korey will have to start soccer camp a few days late,” Grace said. “I’ll call Delta and change her ticket. As for Blue, he’ll need to stay with friends. You don’t want him seeing the house like this.”

Grace and Maryellen searched for someone to clean the house, which was now crawling with fleas and reeking of rats, but they couldn’t find anyone to take the job.

“So much for the professionals,” Grace said. “I called Kitty and Slick and we’re coming tomorrow. It’ll take us a few days but we’ll make sure it’s done right.”

“That’s too much,” Patricia said.

“Nonsense,” Grace said. “The most important thing right now is to clean that house until it’s safe. I’ll make a list of furniture and drapes and carpets and all the things you’ll need to replace. And of course you’ll stay at the beach house with Carter and the children until we’re finished.”

On the other end of things, Maryellen organized the visitation, helped with Miss Mary’s burial insurance, and got Miss Mary’s obituary written and placed in the Charleston paper and in the Kershaw News-Era. The only thing she couldn’t do was promise an open casket.

“I’m so sorry,” she told Patricia, sitting in Johnny Stuhr’s office. “Kenny does our makeup and he doesn’t think there’s enough left to work with.”

Miss Mary’s service followed upstate rules: no jokes, no laughter, and all the scripture from the King James Bible. Her coffin sat at the front of the church with no flowers on it, lid screwed down tight. They had to go back three hymnals to find the hymn Carter said was Miss Mary’s favorite, “Come Thou Disconsolate.”

Packed into the hard pews of Mt. Pleasant Presbyterian, Carter sat next to Patricia, hunched and miserable. She took his hand and squeezed, and he gave a limp squeeze back. For years, his mother had told him he was the smartest and most special boy in the world and he’d believed her. Having her die like this, in his house, in a way he couldn’t even really explain to people, was a kind of failure he’d never experienced before.

Korey took things harder than Patricia expected, and tears ran down her cheeks throughout the service. Blue kept standing up to see the coffin, but at least he’d brought A Bridge Too Far to read and not a book with a swastika on the cover.

After the graveside service, Grace opened her home and took all the quiches, and ham biscuits, and Kitty’s casseroles, and Slick’s ambrosia, and all the cold-cut platters people had brought by and laid them out on her dining room table. There was no bar because that wasn’t what you did for a funeral, and they made the children go down to Alhambra to play because having them horsing around in the front yard didn’t look right.

As one old face from Carter’s past after another brought him over to their children, told stories about him, made him smile, Patricia saw him coming back to life, assuming his natural place as the center of attention. After all, he was the small-town boy who’d worked hard and become a famous doctor in Charleston—that was his real identity, not the little boy whose mother died in his garage room in a way that made people do double takes when they were told.

Monday morning, Patricia drove Korey to the airport and was touched at how hard she clung to her for a moment before dashing out of the car, her huge red, white, and blue duffel bag knocking against her legs. Then she drove to the beach house, packed their bags, and moved them back into Pierates Cruze. The house smelled of bleach, and the downstairs looked empty and sounded hard. Anything with upholstery had been thrown out and would have to be replaced. But they were home. And the air conditioning finally worked.

Now Patricia had to do what she’d been dreading: she needed to check in on Mrs. Greene. She’d been hurt badly and hadn’t attended the funeral, and Patricia felt guilty she hadn’t gone to see her earlier.

The problem was getting someone to go with her.

“I couldn’t possibly,” Grace said. “I have to clean from the funeral party, and Ben needs me to drive up to Columbia with him for a meeting. I’m overwhelmed.”

Next she tried Slick.

“We all love Mrs. Greene,” Slick said. “She’s such a wonderful cook, and she’s strong in her faith, but Patricia, you would not believe how frantic we are with this new deal of Leland’s. Did I tell you about it? Gracious Cay? He’s been talking to investors and all those money people and things are just wild. Did I tell you…”

Finally, she tried Kitty.

“I’m just so busy…,” Kitty began.