a bit much with a long car trip. And please, no matter what, when you meet Edna, don’t tell her what we had for lunch.”
Cristy opened the carton and stared. Her mouth began to water.
Samantha opened a similar one and unveiled what looked like a chicken sandwich. She held it out. “I’ll be happy to trade.”
“You’re so nice, and I don’t know why.”
Samantha didn’t look surprised. “And considering where you’ve been and what you’ve learned these past months, you know better than to take anything at face value. I get that. I’d feel the same way in your shoes. I’ll explain the whole thing someday, in detail, I promise. But for now, here’s the gist. I’m friends with a group of women, and we received a bequest when a mutual friend died. She left us a beautiful old log house right between the townships of Luck and Trust in Madison County, the one I told you about in our phone call. She asked us to use it any way we saw fit.”
“Any way?”
“Any way that matters. Specifically as a way to reach out to other women who can use the help. After we met in class, I asked about you, and I was told you needed a place to go when you were released, someplace close enough to Mars Hill that you could visit your son. I realized the Goddess House—that’s what we call it—would be a good place for you to land for a while.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, essentially, it is.” Samantha began to eat.
“Why Goddess House? What kind of organization is it?”
Samantha chewed a while and sipped some of her drink before she answered. “It’s not. Not an organization, I mean. We’re just a group of friends.”
“But why goddess? It sounds like some kind of cult.”
“No, there’s just a beautiful story about a Buddhist goddess named Kuan Yin, who died, and on her way to heaven—or whatever Buddhists call heaven—she heard the cry of all the suffering people left on earth. So instead of going to heaven she turned and came back to be with them. She said she couldn’t leave until all their suffering had ended. The story says she’s still with those who need her, an anonymous goddess who helps whenever and whomever she can. Without fuss. Just helps. We’re not that good or selfless. We aren’t saints or goddesses, just women like a million others who find ways to stretch out a hand. But there are things we can do and we try to.”
“And I’m going to be your project.”
Samantha didn’t seem put off by her word choice or tone, which even to Cristy’s ears had sounded rude.
“No. I hope you’re going to be our friend.”
“Why did you ask about me? When you were teaching the class?”
“I honestly don’t know. Maybe because you just seemed more alone than the other women.”
The class had been required for pregnant inmates, dealing with prenatal care, changes in their bodies, what to expect during labor and delivery. Cristy knew that Samantha had volunteered to run it on the nights she was in Durham taking classes at the university to keep her nursing certification current. Cristy didn’t know why, though.
She unwrapped her sandwich and took a tentative bite before she spoke. This hamburger didn’t taste like anything she’d eaten in the past months. In fact, she didn’t want to swallow and lose that initial burst of flavor.
She did swallow finally, then reached for a French fry. “Why were you there in the first place? Were you getting credit for teaching our class, too?”
Samantha smiled a little. “No credit, except maybe with myself. I’ll tell you the story if you’re interested.”
Cristy nodded.
“I had a rough adolescence. I went to a fancy private academy in Asheville where my mom was the headmistress—you’ll meet her this evening—and I hated everything about being there. I was one of three minority students, and that was only one of the many ways I felt different. I reacted by rebelling big-time, notably by drinking. My poor mom tried everything to help, but I was beyond intervention and a great liar. One night I sneaked out and went to a party in the country with a guy I’d met on another night when I’d also sneaked out. You see a theme here, right?”
Cristy felt herself relaxing. She nodded again.
“It was some party. I drank. He drank. We both drank some more. On the way home he kept falling asleep at the wheel, so I made him pull over, then I got in the driver’s seat. I guess I was weaving back and forth and driving too fast, because a cop saw us and tried to pull me over. I remember thinking that was hysterical. So I thought it would be even more fun to see if he could catch me. We raced up and down mountain roads for maybe as far as ten miles. Then I ran off the road and into a drainage ditch and nearly killed the guy I was with. They say he had ninety stitches, on top of internal organ damage and three broken bones.”
Cristy didn’t know what to say. Something was required, though, maybe something that sounded as if she understood, which she did. “I hated high school, too. I quit the moment I could.”
“I know you did. It must have been a hard time for you.”
“What happened next?”
“Speeding to elude arrest is a Class H felony. Luckily for me, my passenger eventually recovered, or things would have been different. But the courts can, if they choose, discharge first offenders under the age of eighteen. I was seventeen when this happened, and even with my many problems, I’d never been arrested. So I was given a year’s probation, otherwise known as a wake-up call. I did community service, started going to AA meetings, finished high school somewhere else and kept out of trouble. Eventually all record of my offense was expunged.”
“You got off then. What does that have to do with teaching at the prison?”
“It wasn’t that simple. My mother lost her job over it, something I still can’t forgive myself for. But I got off, Cristy, because I was lucky. Pure and simple. Not because this was a little infraction, or because I’d been a model citizen. I screwed up big-time, and somehow I was given a chance to have a normal life anyway. It’s been a good life, too, but you know what? I still feel like I owe the universe. I figure teaching at the prison is a way to show I’m thankful for not being a resident there. And a way to give back to everybody who wasn’t as lucky as I was.”
“Like me.”
“Like you.”
“I was twenty-two when I was arrested, and I had a prior conviction.” Cristy chewed on a French fry, then another before she added, “I deserved the first one.” She wanted Samantha to know that, to see she was willing to take responsibility when she should.
“Shoplifting?”
“I was still in high school, right before I dropped out. There was a group of girls I liked, girls like me who didn’t really fit in, and they had this unofficial club. They called themselves the Outsiders. To join I had to go into the hardware store down the street from school and shoplift something. Anything, it didn’t matter, except it had to be over a dollar. One of them waited outside to make sure I didn’t go up to the counter and pay first.”
When she didn’t go on, Sam asked, “So you went along with it?”
“I was a preacher’s kid. By then my parents thought I was beyond redemption, but I’d never done anything illegal, not anything like that. So I was scared but determined.”
“And you got caught?”
“I took the cheapest thing I could find on the aisle farthest from the counter. It was a little pocket tape measure. I figured I would go in later when nobody was watching and tell the clerk I’d walked out by mistake without paying for it, and give him the money. I thought that would make it okay. I stood there for ten minutes trying to make myself slip it in my pocket, and finally I did.”
Samantha