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mildew.”
    “Yes.”
    “Possible nitrogen deficiency.”
    “Yes!” He slapped the table. “Yes!” he shouted, then shot out of his chair, tumbling it backward and skidding it across the floor. “The words!”
    “Well, I know what’s wrong with it . . .”
    “You’ve found the words!”
    “. . . but I don’t know if it’s gonna make it.”
    He shook his head, then leaned across the table to Novalee, his Where the Heart Is
    voice dipping to a whisper. “The tree has no leaves and may never have them again. We must wait till some months hence in the spring to know. But if it is destined never again to grow, it can blame this limitless trait in the heart of men. ”
    Novalee watched his lips shape the words . . . the sounds, like whispered secrets, hanging in the air.

Chapter Six
    NOVALEE HOPED he wasn’t watching her through the library window when she lifted the buckeye from behind some evergreens, but she felt sure he was. She carried the tree to the end of the block, then stopped to dig the city map out of her beach bag. She was going to the last house on Evergreen Street, the house where Sister Husband lived.
    As she walked the first few blocks, her mind was on the strange man she had met in the library. She kept going over what he had said, trying to make sense of it, but she wasn’t even sure she knew what he was talking about. She hoped the book in her bag, the one he had checked out for her, would help her understand.
    The trip to Sister Husband’s took her to a part of the town she hadn’t seen before. Usually, when she left the Wal-Mart, she stayed fairly close or walked to the north side where wide streets were lined Where the Heart Is
    with elms and sycamores and deep lawns were edged with geraniums, snapdragons, and moss roses. She had rested in pretty parks where children waded in blue pools while their mothers waited in the shade of broad, flowering mimosas.
    But this part of town, Sister Husband’s part of town, looked like the places where Novalee had lived in Tellico Plains, neighborhoods the color of cold gravy. The streets were lined by shallow ditches filled with brackish water, and the parks, where swings dangled from broken chains and merry-go-rounds leaned drunkenly on their sides, were empty except for skinny dogs and old men.
    The houses, their roofs patched like scrap quilts, sat crookedly in yards littered with rusted cars on concrete blocks. And at the end of them all, at the end of the street, was Sister Husband’s home: a house trailer on wheels.
    A porch of raw lumber leaned against the front of the trailer and coffee cans of flowering kale and cockscomb lined the steps. The grass, recently mowed, had been trimmed around a granite birdbath and two tires that protected small bushes of hollyhock. A pecan tree bonneted by bagworms provided shade for a bald spot in the yard that served as driveway for the Toyota Welcome Wagon.
    Novalee carried the buckeye to the door with her, but then changed her mind and left it at the edge of the steps. She brushed her hair back from her face and mentally rehearsed her lines, then she knocked, louder than she had intended.
    From inside, she heard bare feet slapping the floor, doors slamming, water running. After a few minutes, she began to feel uncomfortable.
    She didn’t know whether she should knock again or just leave, but before she could decide, the door suddenly opened.
    Sister Husband, her hair a soft shade of blue, smiled at Novalee through the screen.
    “Sister Husband, I don’t know if you remember me. Well, you probably don’t, but we met one day at Wal-Mart and you gave me a Welcome Wagon basket and I took your picture which I’ve got right here in this bag and you called me Ruth Ann, but I’m not. My name is Novalee Nation and I—”
    “Why, how awful of me to make such a mistake. Of course, now that I see you in a different light there is not the slightest similarity between you and Ruth Ann. Well, it’s just wonderful