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SOURDOUGH

1

Grace knew she was about to get trouble. It seemed like she was always just about to get in trouble. This time though, she would like to think it was for a good cause.

As Grace watched her mother chase the last rug-rat inside the school, she glanced around. The cold weather and blowing wind made it really hard to stay outside for long.

That was exactly why she was about to get in trouble.

Glancing around carefully she slipped along the side of the building, carefully crunching through the crust of snow. She had to be careful because Mrs. Crabby’s room faced the street, and she didn’t want to be seen. Pulling her black knit cap over her bright red hair and tucking it under, she started jogging down the street, her backpack thumping against her shoulders. Within two blocks, she realized she should have grabbed some of the Sheriff’s toe warmers from the box beside the door to put against her skin, but she hadn’t been thinking ahead. It was too late now.

She rounded the corner to Main Street and glanced up and down, being sure to stay a little hidden. Being a part of the Lowell family was a blessing and a curse, she’d realized long ago. It seemed like they had family everywhere, or ranch hands. Way too many people who could, and would, rat you out. And now that her mama was about to marry the sheriff, she had to watch out for the deputies, too. It was ridiculous how hard it was to have fun anymore.

Would her name have to change to Lane when they got married? Grace Lane. Hm. It would take some getting used to.

Grace jogged down the sidewalk, ducking under some of the bigger storefront windows where she thought people would be, until she came to the corner. She looked around, searching for the figure, but she didn’t see him. Where the heck was he? This was where he hung out.

Snowflakes began to fall, and she took a minute to zip up her jacket. She tried not to because mama told her to all the time, and she generally tried to do the opposite of what Mama told her, but Mama wasn’t here right now, and she was dang cold. She also dug out her fur-lined mittens and tugged them on.

Glancing around she headed down the cross street. Maybe he was in the alley.

There was no stooped figure in the alley, either, and she was put out for a moment. After all the planning and getting herself psyched up to do this, she couldn’t find the man. She looked through alleys and behind big metal trash dumpsters, behind the bigger snow piles, but she didn’t find him. The Main Street area wasn’t very big so she didn’t know how she could miss him.

Then she spotted him, shuffling down the street toward her, long black coat open to the wind and his bald head bare. At least he was wearing a coat today. A few times she’d spotted him in shirtsleeves and pants, even when it was cold enough to fog the air with your breath. She shifted the bag on her shoulders, feeling the extra weight. He liked to hang out in the park, and he was kind of heading in that direction. If she could get the stuff to the park bench where he liked to stay, she would leave it there. And he was probably the only one that would take it. Honeywell, Texas only had one homeless man.

He never looked up as he drew closer, so she ducked back behind the corner of the building and just watched him. Mama said that Old Man Rochester had been around since she’d been a little girl, and no one really remembered why he was the way he was. Grace had asked her grandparents and they said that they remembered when he owned the bakery down the block, but that had been years ago.

“He used to bake the best sourdough bread,” PawPaw Lowell mused, looking out the window, remembering.

“Oh, I remember that,” Gramma Lowell had said, a faraway look in her eyes. Then she looked back at Grace. “He was a good man, but a terrible tragedy happened, and he was never the same after.”

“What happened?” she’d asked, intrigued.

The two of them had shared a look. “Well,” Gramma said. “There were a couple of variations of the story running around, but we know that his granddaughter died. We think.” She frowned then, looking at PawPaw. “Isn’t that right Garrett? I can’t remember for sure anymore.”

PawPaw shook his head, frowning. “I don’t rightly recall either, to tell the truth. It’s been many years ago.”

She was frustrated by her grandparents’ obvious sub… subterfuge. She grinned at the use of the word she’d learned in vocabulary the other day. Sometimes her grandparents didn’t tell her things because they thought they were protecting her, but Grace had figured out how to work around them. Logging into the computer at school, she’d typed in the homeless man’s name. It took some digging, and some more details she kind of guessed at, but she’d figured it out. His granddaughter had been lost in a snowstorm, just a few miles outside of town, they thought. Her body was never found.

That made her sad. There was no picture, but the article she found said that Hannah Wilson had been ten at the time, just a year younger than Grace was now. It didn’t say anything about her parents, just that she was staying with her grandparents at the time. The article was dated from the nineties, which was more than thirty years ago.

That was a super-long time to be sad.

Creeping forward, Grace circled a tree and jogged down the sidewalk, slipping a little on the ice. She caught her footing and glanced back, afraid that he’d seen her, but the old man had disappeared again. Huffing, she circled down the expanse of the sidewalk. Palmer Park wasn’t very big, but it was nestled down into a broad depression, and circled with gently sloping banks. The pond in the bottom had frozen over on the far end, but the fountain on this end kept it open for the fat white ducks to survive the winter. The park department had brought out their Christmas-y winter house, where the ducks would stay. People came every day to feed them, and the parks people tried to keep the sidewalks skirting the edge clear.

At the far end was the bench where Old Man Rochester liked to sit. She jogged to it and swung her backpack off. When she’d been making her sandwich today, she’d made a couple of extras. Carolyn and Savannah weren’t in the elementary school anymore, so they got to buy their lunches, and there was nobody in the kitchen to see what she’d done. She packed them away in one of the brown paper sacks Mama kept under the sink and added a couple of Little Debbies and a bag of chips. Then she packed her own lunch box.

Her backpack had been extra heavy this morning, because of the extra stuff. She’d also packed him a Ziplock bag with a pair of lightly used socks she’d snitched from Pawpaw, some matches in case he needed to light a fire, and a couple of the sheriff’s instant heat packs. She also smashed in one of those soft blankets they always had for sale at Wally world. The old man disappeared at night, so she wasn’t sure where he stayed, but maybe he could be a little warmer for a few nights. Next week was Christmas break, and she wanted to get it to him before they all left school.

She set the items on the old bench and draped the blanket over the back. Then something caught her eye. Grace leaned forward. There were words scratched into the back of the bench. “For My Hannah”.

Tears started in her eyes, and she knew who had put the words there. Old Man Rochester. It was why he sat here all the time. Turning, Grace sat on the bench and looked out over the mostly-frozen pond, trying to put herself in Hannah’s shoes. In the summertime, there were even more ducks here. And geese. Maybe she and her pawpaw sat here and fed them together. If he used to make bread, Grace bet he always had something to feed them. She snorted, envisioning fat ducks rolling through the water and trying to stay upright.

Then her laughter faded. She didn’t know what had happened to Mrs. Rochester, and she’d never heard if he had any other family around. The thought of the old man just sitting here alone, without anyone, in the cold over Christmas made her heart hurt. Maybe if she talked to Mama…

“Hannah!”

Grace’s head jerked up, and she wondered if she’d actually heard someone say the name or she’d just imagined it. She glanced around.