Chapter Four

      She woke hungry. Nothing new in that. Eva rolled over, opening her eyes, and everything abruptly changed. The bed beneath her did not squeak and groan or smell of plastic. She was not locked, crammed, into the back of her funky old van. Instead, light and opulence flooded her senses. Memory rushed over her, beginning with the scrumptious doctor who had tended her the day before and ending with the wizened old gardening gnome who had delivered the pajamas that Eva currently wore. She thought of Magnolia pugnaciously standing up to her last night.

       I blame your mother for your brain tumor. I blame her for your terrible taste in men. I could even blame her for your sister’s cancer. It’s often hereditary, after all...You blame God for the failures of His children and the problems of a fallen world...let Himself be crucified to pay the sin debt for the whole of humanity...and give that same humanity the free will to reject His sacrifice. I suspect your definition of cruel is simply not getting what you want when and how you want it.

      Eva had to admit that she had a point. If people possessed free will, it didn’t seem quite fair to blame God for everything they did. And while Eva wasn’t completely sure what the “problems of a fallen world” meant, she’d never before thought of the crucifixion as payment for sin debt. She tried to square that with some of the things she’d heard her aunt say, but her stomach rumbled, so she quickly moved on. Throwing back the covers, she sat up and looked around her.

      The stitches pulled on the back of her head and pain knocked on her skull, but the room didn’t tilt, so she threw her legs over the side of the bed and put her feet on the floor. After quickly dressing, she used a new toothbrush that she found in a drawer in the bathroom, then went out in search of a meal, leaving all but a single shawl behind. She met Magnolia, also dressed much as she had been the night before, on the landing at the head of the stairs.

      “Good morning. Sleep well?”

      “I did,” Eva answered, tying the shawl about her waist. “How about you, Penny Loafers?”

      Magnolia lifted her eyebrows but answered sedately. “Always. Ready for breakfast?”

      “Does a bear, uh, live in the woods?” And the doc said she had no internal monitor.

      Magnolia blinked at her. “I would imagine so, yes.”

      “Well, there you go, then.”

      Blink, blink. “Ah. Hm. Let’s go down, then. I’ll show you the way to the sunroom where we breakfast.”

      As they descended the broad staircase, which turned back on itself halfway down, Eva gazed upward at the ceiling. On second perusal, it did seem too ethereal for comic ducks.

      “Maybe doves,” she murmured.

      “I beg your pardon?”

      “The ceiling.” She pointed upward. “Who painted it?”

      “No one knows,” Magnolia told her. “The records were long since lost. It is a work of art, though. Wouldn’t you agree?”

      “Oh, yeah. It’s something, all right,” Eva muttered.

      Still craning her neck to take it all in, she almost missed the bottom step and nearly pitched onto her face. Only Magnolia’s cry and Eva’s grasp on the curled banister saved her. Stumbling into the bottom post, Eva righted herself in the nick of time.

      “Whoa!” she joked, swiping at her scarf. “Remind me not to go walking around looking up while my stomach’s empty and I have stitches in the back of my head.”

      Magnolia set her pruned mouth and grasped Eva by the wrist, instructing, “This way.”

      The old girl proved surprisingly strong as she towed Eva down one of a pair of hallways flanking the grand staircase to the sunroom at the very end. A colorful combination of rattan furnishings, tropical prints, potted plants, a rock fireplace and glass walls overlooking an enormous patio and a large, covered pool, the long, narrow room managed to feel sunny and warm despite the gray, cold day. Most compelling of all, however, was the table laden with pots of tea and, thankfully, coffee, crisp bacon, scrambled eggs, fresh fruit and steaming oatmeal.

      “I’m going to kiss the cook,” Eva exclaimed, pulling out a chair, “right after I pig out.”

      Magnolia chuckled, seating herself. “What will you have?”

      “Just don’t let any body parts get too close to my plate.”

      Clucking her tongue to hide her smile, Magnolia poured tea for herself while Eva heaped her plate. A large woman with brownish-gray, chin-length hair came out of a side door and carried a basket of ridiculously fragrant muffins to the table.

      “Hilda,” Magnolia said, “this is our guest, Miss Eva Belle Russell. Miss Russell—”

      Shielding her full mouth behind her hand, Eva corrected her. “Eva. Just Eva.”

      “Eva,” Magnolia went on, “this is our cook, Mrs. Hilda Worth. Her husband, Chester—”

      Whatever else she might have said got lost when Eva jumped up and smacked a kiss on Hilda’s cheek.

      Hilda screeched an “Oh!” and started to laugh. “That hungry, are you? I was told to fatten you up. No one said you were starving.”

      “I’ll kiss your feet to keep eating like this,” Eva said, dropping back into her chair and reaching for a muffin. She brought it to her nose and inhaled deeply. Lately she’d found that she couldn’t always smell as well as she should, but the ginger aroma made her head swim. Biting off a huge chunk, she let the flavors infuse her mouth before she chewed, moaning with delight, and swallowed. Hilda waddled back into the kitchen, chuckling and shaking her head.

      “You’ve made a friend there,” Magnolia told her. “Feel free to help yourself to anything in the kitchen that doesn’t need cooking, and if you like reading or want to use the computer, I’ll show you the library.”

      That caused Eva to pause in her feeding. “You have a real library?”

      Magnolia nodded. “And a music room. Just off the ballroom.”

      “You’re pulling my leg.”

      “Hardly.”

      “Huh. Sure beats a roadside park for amenities.”

      Eva went on eating, aware that she was behaving like a perfect glutton but unable to help herself. It had been so long since she had been able to simply eat her fill that she couldn’t stop until she was stuffed. When she finally put down her fork, Magnolia was looking a little worried.

      “Are you going to keep all that down?”

      “I think so, but if you don’t mind, I’m just going to sit here for a minute to let it all settle. I wouldn’t want to upset the Muffin Queen by upchucking her delicious food.”

      Magnolia laughed, waved a knobby hand and picked up her teacup,