“No, you go up and knock.” Bitty and I had been having this back-and-forth since we’d pulled up in front of Sherman Sanders’ house. The single wood door was still open and the other one closed. The screen door banged softly against the frame when the wind blew just right, which meant it wasn’t locked from the inside. There was no sign of Sanders, his hound, or the mule. There was, however, a rather skinny chicken pecking desultorily in the gravel around the side of the house. The sunshine of the day before had been swallowed by rolling gray clouds that promised rain, but the temperature was still warm. I shivered anyway. Then I took a deep breath. “We’ll go up together.” “We probably look like we’re in a three-legged sack race,” Bitty said with a giggle when we clumsily climbed up the second step to the porch. That was because I clung to her arm as tightly as a baby possum to its mother’s tail. I untangled my arm from hers and checked to see if I was still wearing my own shoes.
