I understand now that a woman who spends her life quietly preparing for the worst is not being fearful.

She is being ready.

And my mother was readier than any of us ever guessed.

Chapter 2 — Forty-Eight Hours

Mama passed at seventy-eight.

The day after we buried her, my older brother Lonnie announced he wanted the whole house emptied in forty-eight hours.

That was Lonnie all over.

He’d lived up in Memphis for years and always gave the impression of a man double-parked.