“Do you know how to get there?”

He doesn’t spare me a glance, so I assume he does and settle in for the winding trip up the mountain. Eastern Kentucky isn’t at its best in February. The trees are bare, the snow is melting, and the sky’s full of clouds. Granny calls this mud season, and that’s mostly what I see in the bare fields we pass. Red mud, little white farmhouses puffing out wood smoke, and the curving gray sky holding it all down.

I feel the shift in the engine as the road tilts upward. We pass the ancient billboard proclaiming, Coal Keeps the Lights On. Then trees close in on either side, disappearing only when walls of craggy rock take their place. I’m not one of those people who wax all poetic about nature, but I like the way this place makes me feel. Like my bones are made of the same rocky stuff. I’ve missed it.

It takes about fifteen minutes to get to Granny’s. Her driveway’s long and really muddy and the taxi guy refuses to go up it. He’s worried he’ll get stuck. I pay him seven dollars, call him chickenshit under my breath, and haul my backpack and suitcases a quarter mile up the hill.

There are so many things I’d forgotten about: the haunted birdhouses we made one Halloween; the split-rail fence my granddad built; two little terriers nipping at my ankles; and Goldie, the old retriever, licking my face and covering my coat with muddy paw prints. I push them away, and they race back to the old brick ranch at the end of the drive, barking nonstop. It’s nice to know things haven’t changed that much in five years. I’m picking my way across the drier parts of the dirt yard when the front door flies open.

“Liberty, s’at you? God almighty, yer all growed up.”

The woman on the porch is a far cry from the wiry, spitfire of a redhead I remember. She’s tiny. Thin and stooped. Her cotton-candy hair is a shade I’d call Strawberry Jolly Rancher. If I hadn’t just heard my granny’s voice come out of that body, I’d swear I’d never seen the woman. Is this really what sixty-one years does to a person?

“It’s me.” I climb the steps and drop my suitcases. She hugs me and I try to find something to put my arms around. It’s like hugging a bird skeleton. “Granny, you’re so…” Skinny. Feeble. Old.

She launches into a cough that makes my throat burn. Before it’s done, she’s bent over, hanging on to the porch rail.

I put a hand on her bony back. “Let’s go inside, and I’ll get you some water,” I say.

I sit her on the same ugly plaid couch we used to play Clue on and head to the kitchen. Everything looks exactly the same—green-striped wallpaper, bright yellow curtains, coffee pot on the stove, glasses in the cabinet. I’m reaching for the faucet when Granny calls out.

“Don’t use the faucet, Libby. There’s bottle water in the fridge.”

I grab a bottle and take it in to Granny, watching as she downs half of it.

“Thanks, sugar pie.” She rubs her chest.

I sit down next to her and put my arm behind her. “You sound terrible. What’s wrong?”

“Just a cold, but the cough’s sticking with me.” She smiles, a picket-fence grin with missing slats. “Now, tell me what all you been up to at that fancy school o’ yours.”

I tell her about my best friend, Iris, about drama club, volleyball, and newspaper staff. About Georgetown, my dream college. I’m hoping to get early action this year. I have a good chance. But there’s this complicated equation of Mother + Prison = Legal Bills = I can’t freaking believe she spent my college fund! = Must earn scholarship.

Luckily, Plurd County High School should be a cakewalk compared to Westfield. Straight As…here I come.

Granny mashes her lips together and shakes her head, which I recognize as her “you’re full of shit but I ain’t gonna say nothin’” face. She squeezes my hand. “Well, I’m’a let you get settled in. If you need anythin’, I’ll be righ’chere.”