Chapter One

1.  La Tornade


A month before we left for France, a truck pulling a steel shipping container pulled into Kensington Farm, our neighborhood, and parked in front of our house. It was moving day and Mother had come down from Raleigh to help me with the children. We pulled lawn chairs into my front yard, along with the kiddie pool and a cooler of juice boxes, and tried to keep the kids out of the way. Sitting there sweating, we watched the movers swarm into our house like termites, dismantling furniture and loading our life into the steel box. It was a little rusty. I hoped it was waterproof.

“It will be an adventure,” Mother said, trying to sound confident as Sam fingered her necklace. I sighed at the bittersweetness and agreed that yes, it would. Then a loud noise came from inside and we jerked around to see a mover slip on the carpet at the top of my stairs, sending towels and boxes flying and ripping the oak banister clean off the wall. I watched it sail like a javelin right out the open door and land in my India hawthorns.

That’s when I began to feel like Dorothy, pulled right out of a scene from The Wizard of Oz, the one where the twister is whirling and I am in the middle, watching everything pop up in front of me, riding the waves of the wind. There were the towels, and then the banister, and the people—Mother, Todd’s boss, Ben’s soccer coach and Sarah’s choir teacher, my sister–in–law, and the man at the bank. They were all waving and talking to me, though I could barely make out what they were saying.

For six months the tornado had been brewing, starting on a December night right after we h