"Tell me this belt doesn't look good," Kid said with a grin.

Ruth just shook her head. The scaly imprint was still there on the brown belt, and as Christophe had promised, it was now as soft and supple as you could imagine. She reached out and touched it, still disbelieving. "I reckon it don't look as bad as I thought it would."

"I'm looking forward to showing this fine piece of craftsmanship off. Looks good against the black, don't it?"

"Nobody cares what's holding up your britches."

"I should've had a reticule made for you. We could've been a matched set."

"I wouldn't have carried the thing. If you're through fooling around, we got a busy day ahead." Though she was fussing, she was smiling.

Grace and Cecile waited at the foot of the stairs with armloads of baskets at their feet. There was more meat on the alligator than Ruth or Kid knew what to do with, so they were taking most of it to some of the impoverished in the city.

Given that it was for charity, Grace's mother had actually let her help the cook make the bread to go along with it. Grace had learned how to crack eggs and mix the ingredients. It delighted her to know bodies were going to be nourished through her efforts and hopefully they'd enjoy the taste of it too.

"Can I help give it out too?" Grace asked, trying her luck.

"May I and you may not," her mother answered. "Your dance tutor is coming over this afternoon and you have to practice your steps."

"I'm going to be 12 on my birthday," Grace pointed out. "Ain't it time I was able to make some choices for myself?"

"That's right you are. It won't be long before you come out into society. We have to prepare. When you are mistress of your own house, that's when you can make your own decisions."

"Fine, but I won't enjoy it." Though she was angry, the disappointment was also evident.

Cecile relented. "I suppose you can go this once, but you're going to dance when you get back double the usual time. I pay good money for that tutor."

Though Grace wasn't altogether thrilled with that bargain, it was better than not getting to go. "Thanks, Mother," she said as she picked up her share of the baskets.

"We'll take good care of her," Ruth promised. "It won't take long either."

Cecile nodded gratefully as Grace went ahead of Ruth and Kid.

Though they had 20 baskets all toll, it didn't take them long to give them away. One mother with a baby on her hip and a couple of shy toddlers peeping out at them from behind their mother's worn skirts cried tears of gratefulness. From the sounds in the room behind, the brood was even larger than the three visible children. Not everyone was as grateful though, Grace found. Some seemed embarrassed, but if they had hungry kids, they generally took it.

"You help people a lot, don't you?" Grace commented when all the baskets were gone.

"I reckon. The good feeling it gives you alone makes it worthwhile, but it also serves to point people's eyes on Jesus if we're doing it right, if we're loving folks right."

Grace understood about the good feeling, having felt it herself. "I don't want to be some white man's lady. I want to be independent and a true wife if I'm a wife at all. I can't heal like you, but I like cooking. I could get me a job doing it even, use it to help people. I know it's only cooking—"

"Only cooking? Folks got to eat, don't they?" Ruth said. "Don't undervalue the gifts the Lord gave you. The Bible says 'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.' You feed the hungry and you're feeding Jesus. The size or the number of the gifts that he gives you don't matter as long as you're using it for Him."

"Mother doesn't understand that cooking is my gift. She already has my life all planned out for me," Grace confided.

"Only cause she loves you. She worries about your future; all mothers do. You got your own ideas about it and she's got hers. You're also at that age where mothers and daughters fight, but it gets better, I promise."

"You speaking from experience?"

"I am. My mother and I didn't always see eye-to-eye where my future was concerned, but she's accepted that it's where the Lord wants me to be and we loved each other through it all."

Grace could definitely relate. She hoped her mother someday accepted her as she was too.

The cook was waiting for them in the foyer when they got back to the house. The woman never went beyond the kitchen and dining room, which was the first clue that something was terribly wrong. The other was the sad expression etched in the creases of her face. "Your mother's gone, child."

"Gone?" Grace vehemently shook her head. She refused to believe it. "Mother, mother!" she called, running up the stairs to find her. It was a game to get back at her for the argument they had this morning, not a funny one she admitted. It had to be the answer because how could a woman without a single gray hair be whole and hale one moment and gone the next. It just didn't make sense.

Cecile's room was empty though; the cloying scent of her honeysuckle perfume still hung heavy in the air, but she wasn't there.

They'd all followed her upstairs.

"The neighbors are preparing her for burial," the cook explained. "I'm sorry, Miss Grace. Your mother was a good woman, best employer I ever had."

When she turned, there was Sister Ruth behind her, the gray spots on her lilac dress blurring before her eyes. Grace threw her arms around her and sobbed.

The only thing Grace could think of was that her mother was gone and she'd never had the chance to tell her how much she meant to her and her last conversation with her had been an argument.