When she was eight, Ruby used to hide in the trees by the abandoned supermarket parking lot. She would wait there until it got dark and quietly sneak back into the house when she knew no one was awake. This became her routine for the years that Bill lived with Momma—the two of them never seemed to mind that she wasn’t around. She started to treat the giant statue like a
friend of hers, always there waiting for her, always listening to her stories and her singing without a word against her. Eventually Bill left Momma just the way that the others had before him and Ruby stopped hiding in the trees. And when they tore down the statue to make room for a used car lot, she didn’t know what to think.