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Chapter 1
Who is going to recognize me? It’s been sixteen years, people change, neighbors move. Paige scanned both sides of the rural road before stopping the car in front of an overgrown cornfield. The only house in sight was tucked behind a large maple tree and rangy forsythia bushes.
She jumped from the car, unlocked the trunk and flipped an old rag over the edge so that it partially covered the license plate, then quickly shut it and returned to the car. Just in case, she thought. Coming here might be the second most stupid thing I’ve ever done.
Cautiously she continued down the road; fast enough not to draw attention from passersby or neighbors, slow enough not to stir up a cloud of dust. Suddenly, movement to her left sent a shock of adrenaline through her body. Her foot jerked up from the accelerator, her head snapped to the left. The whole field was in motion. Paige let out a sudden gasp as a herd of deer, startled by the car, bolted into action.
“Ho!” she exclaimed in a loud exhale. “Don’t do that to me.”
Only seconds later the last of the herd fled the field, crossed the road behind the car and disappeared into the neglected cornfield. With adrenaline still pumping through her body, Paige drew a deep breath and composed herself enough to continue down the road.
Her legs still quivered as she neared her mother’s house. “Damn deer,” she said, rubbing her right thigh.
The curve was just as she remembered it, the remnants of an old wire fence still lining the top edge of a drainage ditch that was overgrown with weeds and tall grass. Just past the curve was the boulder, smaller, though, than she remembered, marking the corner of the driveway. A large rusty mailbox, atop a wooden post, marked the other side.
Paige slowed the car to a crawl as she looked across a yard of dying grass and flourishing weeds. There were no flowers, only a neglected juniper on either side of the front step to accent the little one-story house. The cardboard was gone from the front bedroom window and someone had replaced the broken glass. No one needs to break in for clothes anymore…or out for safety.
Then, something caught her eye. The tires crunched to a stop in the gravel just beyond the driveway. There, beneath the shade of a maple, sat a rusty once-blue bouncy chair. Her next attempt at a deep breath was unsuccessful. Acid churned in her stomach and threatened to rise.
She could see him there, as clearly as sixteen years ago, in his faded jeans and his favorite NBPD T-shirt. He was leaning forward, his forearms resting o his knees, as he so often did, a cigarette held loosely between yellowed fingers. His thoughts were his own; the process that formed them a mystery. All Paige knew was that the number of beer cans sitting on the metal TV tray next to the chair determined when those thoughts would become action – when her being gone was essential.
The air coming in the open car window carried a sudden whiff of familiarity. The smell of cigarette smoke mixed with perspiration and two-day-old deodorant started the churning in her stomach once again. She hit the button and rolled up the window. Not possible, she reminded herself, just my mind playing nasty tricks. He’s gone – forever. The reminder did little to settle her stomach. The discomfort continued while her mind leapt to a disturbing conclusion. She still lives here.
Paige looked more closely at the front of the house and the driveway, searching for another sign that would confirm it. Why wouldn’t she still be here? She backed the car enough to pull into the drive. Geri Panning, nerve endings dulled by alcohol, had walked across the coals of hell unscathed. It would be just like her to stay right here.
There was no other car in the driveway. Paige left the old Mazda idling and walked tentatively past the side of the house. She stopped briefly to look through the window of the side door. Not much to see there, a hooded sweatshirt and a flannel jacket that could belong to anyone. She stopped longer at the kitchen window. Her heart felt as though it rolled over in her chest, then resumed its rapid pace. She stared at the center of the small kitchen. They were still there – the brown Formica table with the edge missing on one end, and the mismatched chairs. The same damn table and chairs.
Paige turned from the window quickly before the vision could form fully in her mind. It would always be the last vision she had of him, and just because it was the last made it no better than the rest. She cursed silently as she rounded the back corner of the house. Like so many things from her childhood, the perspective had changed. It was smaller and closer to the house than she remembered, but the barn was still there. Her refuge, her hiding place. She’d dreaded ever seeing it again, but surprisingly the sight of it didn’t repulse her.
When she was very young it had frightened her – the spiders and the mice and the cold of winter. But eventually her fears had turned to anger – at him, at her mother, at the unfairness. Other children didn’t have the same fears, they didn’t have to hide; she knew that, he had been to their homes. It wasn’t fair. But she did what she had to do, fair or not. She became better at managing her life, and with that came self-reliance and a strange kind of confidence that replaced some of the anger. She learned to appreciate her hiding place, hold it in her mind as a kind of trophy, a personal triumph he had been unable to deny her. She felt it even now as she continued around to the back of the barn.
A subdivision of houses now occupied old man Bennett’s horse pasture; her secret path to and from her hide-out was gone. Gone, too, was her first entrance into the barn. The woodchuck hole that led under the side boards and into an old tool box, that she had widened until she could squeeze through it, was now filled with rocks and concrete. When she glanced up, another stab of adrenaline took her back to her early teens and the climb up the corner of the barn to the loft window. She looked at the open pane with its still missing glass and marveled. How the hell did I ever do that? Amazing what desperation can do. Bruises and splinters were of little consequence then. They healed and were forgotten in a manner of days. It was avoiding the other pain that mattered most. Up there she couldn’t hear the cursing and the yelling; she could never be trapped in the bedroom for a beating, or worse. And, being gone, she finally realized, gave him one less reason to hit her mother. Yes, up there, it was much better.
Her ears, fine tuned to his comings and goings over the years, picked up the sound of a vehicle nearing the curve. At the sound, Paige bolted into a full sprint down the drive. She scrambled into the car and pulled out into the road before the approaching vehicle cleared the curve. With her heart still sprinting, she hit the accelerator and left a cloud of dust rising behind her.
The instinct to flee held strong through the first turn onto
There was no one in sight for miles; the closest buildings looked toy-like in the distance. Still, Paige hurried from the car to open the trunk. She pushed the rag partially covering the license plate back into the trunk and felt immediate relief. Forgetting it would have given some cop reason enough to pull her over, and the last thing she wanted to do was give them a cause that she could have controlled.
What control she still had in her life she was determined to hang on to, whatever it cost. Paige lifted the quilted blanket that covered everything she owned, neatly arranged in the trunk of her car, and pulled open her toiletries bag. The cost today would be about a half a bottle of Maalox.
Chapter 1
Renee sat quietly with her brothers and sisters around the table in the prison visiting room, waiting for the inevitable. It began the moment Sylvia Parker entered the room.
Tears, predictable and disheartening, welled in Sylvia’s eyes as she rushed to hug each of her children. Always Rory first. For three of his four years, twice a month was all she had had to get to know her youngest.
“My precious boy,” she said, kissing the top of his head. “Have you been good for Renee?” He nodded his head vigorously, then planted an obligatory kiss on his mother’s cheek. “That’s my good boy.” Sylvia looked up at Renee. “Two seizures this week?”
A full year after the diagnosis of Epilepsy and eight seizure-free months had eased the concern considerably, but this week he had Renee worried. “I’ll make sure he gets more rest next week. I think maybe he over-did it.”
Six-year-old Rachael jumped from her chair and wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders. “And my sweet Rachael,” Sylvia said, adding a smile. “I miss you all so much.”
“Rory wasn’t good all the time,” information from Jenny that garnered a ‘that’s enough’ look from Renee. Eight-year-old reasoning, however, doesn’t always see the need for compliance. “He broke my butterfly lamp.”
This time Renee said it aloud. “That’s enough, Jenny.”
“He didn’t mean to,” Rachael said, standing defiantly next to her little brother.
“But he lied about it,” Jenny defended, bringing Rory to tears. “And now he thinks they’re going to lock him up, too.”
Renee rose and shot a look of anger-tinged disapproval at Jenny. “I wonder why he thinks that.” She said, continuing around the table.
“They wouldn’t lock up a sweet little boy,” Sylvia said, kneeling to again hold Rory. “Especially one this sweet.” She wiped his tears and kissed his cheek.
“I’ve got him, Mom. Go sit and visit. He’ll be all right. I’m sure Jenny can find happier things to tell you about.”
Sylvia rose and feigned a smile at the others. She pulled a chair around to sit between Jenny and J.J. “Jenny, I would much rather hear about what you’re doing in school. And Jaylin, I want to hear all about baseball.”
“My name’s J.J.,” he said as he pushed his chair back noisily and left the table.
“He hates to be called Jaylin,” Jenny explained.
Sylvia started to get up, but Renee interceded. “I’ll take care of it. You stay here and visit. She approached J.J. on the other side of the room. “Come on, J.J., be nice while you’re here. You and I’ll talk about it when we get home. Okay?”
“I hate coming here!” he said, contorting his normally genteel features. Then loud enough for the whole room to hear, he added, “And I hate her!”
“Enough,” she said firmly. Renee stepped in front of him to look him directly in the eyes. “I thought we had a deal. You promised me you wouldn’t do this.”
He had no chance to respond before Sylvia appeared at his side. “Honey, I’m sorry. I promise I’ll remember to call you J.J. Come on and talk with me, please, honey.” She reached out to take his hand, but he jerked it away. Hugs had been routinely denied to her, but today even a touch wouldn’t be allowed.
“Leave me alone,” he shouted. “I hate you.”
Renee stepped between them. “Stop it, J.J.! You don’t hate anyone. Now go sit over there by the door.” She turned to her mother to see the watery blue eyes now spilling their contents down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Mom. Maybe I should have let him stay home like he wanted; it would have made it easier on all of us.”
“He’s only nine.”
“He would have stayed at a friend’s house, Mom. I wouldn’t have left him alone.”
“I know, Renee. I meant he’s too young for all that anger.” Her hand shook as she tried to wipe her cheeks dry. “What have I done to him? What have I done to you?”
“Don’t, Mom. It won’t do any good. It never does any good…It won’t change things.”
“I would, Renee. You know I would change it if I could. I’m working real hard in here, so maybe they’ll let me out early. You know that,” Sylvia touched a still shaky hand to Renee’s cheek, “don’t you, baby?”
“I know, Mom; you don’t have to tell me. But there’s nothing you can do about it now. You just have to trust me to take care of things.” For five more years, or seven, for as long as it takes.
“So much responsibility,” Sylvia replied, concern clearly pressed into the lines of her face. “You were too young to have to shoulder keeping a family together. And you’ve done such a good job. I’m so proud of you – so proud that I tell everyone who will listen. I talk about it like I’m any normal mother bragging on her children’s accomplishments.” She turned her gaze to the younger children entertaining themselves at the table with paper and crayons. “Then I lie awake in my cell at night, and all I feel is shame.” She folded her arms across her chest and dropped her gaze. “I have no right to be proud of anything – even you. All I can do in good conscience is worry.”
Renee was shaking her head before her mother finished. “No. I don’t want you to worry. It does no good. Study the books I bring you; concentrate on helping some of the women. Help where you can; don’t worry about where you can’t.”
“I am, honey, I am. It does help me to be useful, and I am making a difference. Did I tell you how good Danny’s doing? She read the comic from the newspaper today. I couldn’t believe that someone my age couldn’t read at all. You know who I mean, don’t you? The one whose girlfriend works in the laundry?”
Renee looked away to scan the room. “Yeah, Mom, I remember.”
After a few seconds of awkward silence, Sylvia asked, “You’re not bringing girls to the apartment, are you? If social services found out—“
“No, Mom. I don’t even have time for friends.”
“Honey, maybe you should try, you know, to find a nice boy.” She took Renee’s hands and tried to make eye contact. “It would make things so much easier, and you wouldn’t have to worry—“
“No, you wouldn’t have to worry.” She reluctantly met her mother’s eyes. “Look, it wouldn’t matter; I don’t have time for that either.”
“Then how do you know that it wouldn’t be the right thing for you – someday?” She pulled her daughter’s hands up to hold them tightly against the front of her uniform. “All I’m saying is that one experience doesn’t make you…” Her eyes remained fixed. “You’re too young to say that you never want to be with a man. You don’t have to decide things like that now.”
“It’s not a decision at all,” she said, slipping her hands from her mother’s grasp. Despite her better intention, the tone of her voice dipped into cynicism. “Just like the rest of my life, it’s not a decision at all.” As quickly as she said the words, she regretted them. She needed to have better control, she usually did. There’s no excuse, not frustration or exhaustion or even anger, for hurting her mother further. Incarceration is enough hurt, painfully obvious in her mother’s eyes – always so close to tears. And now, words spoken without restraint have brought the tears spilling down her mother’s cheeks again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wrapping her arms around her mother’s shoulders. “I don’t mean to hurt you. Sometimes I’m not as grown-up as I think I am. I love you, and so does J.J. What he hates is that you’re not home. He just can’t sort out the difference right now.”
Sylvia eased from their embrace and wiped her tears with the sleeve of her uniform. “You’re more grown-up than you think you are. I only hope that someday you’ll be able to forgive me for making such a mess of things.”
“The little ones don’t know there’s anything to forgive. You’ll just have to be patient with J.J.”
“And you?”
She looked away from her mother’s eyes and lied, “Already forgiven.”
Chapter 1
Patience, calling upon patience. Dhari shifted her weight from her right foot to her left and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. In Michigan I would have had my change, along with probably three other people, gone to the bathroom and checked my oil by this time. But this certainly isn’t Michigan and the woman behind the counter is no doubt a nice woman with no clue of how my being plopped in the middle of this mess is disrupting my life. It’s different here. Take a deep breath. It’s only a few days. It can’t be any more frustrating than dealing with Mom.
The woman smiled, a cordial softer-church smile, and fumbled with opening the end of a roll of quarters.
Just crack it open. Dhari shifted her weight again and tried not to look annoyed. “Smaller change is fine,” she suggested.
“We always seem to run out of quarters first,” the woman said. “I’ll have them in just a second…see now that’s what I get for bitin’ my nails…there.” She emptied the roll much too slowly into the drawer and counted out Dhari’s change.
If change took this long, she hated to ask directions. But what choice did she have? Get back in the car, try another place, and get the same slow response? No, she’d take her chances here. Dhari sighed and pulled a piece of paper from her pocket. “Can you give me directions to this place? Do I turn east or west from here?”
The blank look she received was one Dhari was quickly learning to interpret. She’s not sure, but it’s going to take her ten minutes to say so. “That’s okay,” Dhari offered, “Ill take my chances on east and see what happens.”
“Springhill?” the woman asked. “The old Grayson place.”
“Yes,” Dhari replied gratefully.
“Lordy, it must be on past ten years since anyone’s asked about gettin’ out there. Miz Anna Grayson, she was some firecracker; Buddy, that’s my daddy, ‘member him telling me a story about her goin’ after a rattlesnake with a shotgun. Like Buddy said, that snake didn’t stand a Custer’s chance at Bull Run with that woman. So sad about her passin’ away, but Lord she did live a life. Y’all related? I am sorry for your loss. I sure am. Oh, and that house, it sure was somethin’. I remember goin’ out there when I was a kid for some big Fourth of July shindig. Boy I never seen such fireworks. She hired the entire Tolliver family, the men do the butcherin’ and bar-b-quin’, and you know how it is, the women do everything else. My Lord that was fun. Why that’s when I first heard the story about Sherman burnin’ a path right to the door of that house. Don’t seem to be a natural reason it was spared. Not that I believe all those stories, mind you. You say you’re relation?”
Dhari stopped jingling the keys impatiently in the pocket of her leather jacket. The woman was actually waiting for her response. “Yes, distant relation. A niece. I never knew her.” Never heard her name mentioned once.
“Didn’t think she had much family. Too bad you couldn’t have come to visit before she passed on. I heard ole’ Mrs. Tinker found her sittin’ in her chair by the window. Fell asleep and never woke up. Guess that’s the way I’d want to –“
“Yes, I suppose so.” Dhari broke eye contact and motioned out the large glass window. “Did you say that was east or west that I should turn?”
“Oh, now listen to me ramblin’ on. I nearly forgot to get you on your way.” The woman stretched to the full extent of her short frame to see up over the display in the window and pointed to the exit drive of the gas station. “You might-oughta take that drive right there and turn right, then turn right again on that road there, right there where that old sign stands. This here used to be Jimmy Holger’s station; he and his brothers owned it for forty-some years. See the ‘J’ still hangin’ up there on the sign? Oughta stay right on that drive. You’ll be goin’ west.”
“Thank you,” Dhari replied quickly, before the woman could take a breath. Finally. “Thank you very much.”
Out there. The words were beginning to take on a whole new meaning. Once she had passed the sprawl of new housing communities on the northern outskirts of Atlanta, it was impossible not to appreciate the beauty of the Georgian countryside. Hillsides, sugarcoated with a light dusting of snow, glistened like a crystal forest in the first light of day. But the sun had since melted the beauty into miles of drab brown, leafless trees. The pavement turned to red clay and gravel, and houses with styles representing the decades, dotted the landscape.
Dhari reached blindly into her backpack and found the cell phone. She quickly dialed Jamie’s number and waited through six rings. “Did I wake you?” The question was a formality. It was nine o’clock on a Saturday morning, of course she woke her.
“Sorry. I wanted to let you know that I got in okay…Yeah, it’s not the RAV but it’ll do for a couple of days…I don’t, I haven’t seen it yet. I’m on my way out there now, but nobody warned me that I should’ve packed water and an extra day’s rations. I’ll call you later and let you know what I find…Why tomorrow…Do you have to go to the bar tonight?” Another question she already knew the answer to. Why do I ask? To see if I could be wrong just once? “Would you wait until next weekend? I’ll get this thing wrapped up in a couple of days and I’ll be back by then…I know they want to get together…Yeah, okay, ask.”
Believing that Jamie’s friends would wait for her though was like believing in UFO’s. Right out there on the edge of sanity. It wasn’t going to happen and she knew it. They were Jamie’s friends. In the three years that she had known them they had never gone out of their way to accommodate her; that’s just the way things were.
It was no one’s problem but her own, whether she trusted Jamie or not. Trusting her meant that her own angst was about being left out, about being of lesser importance, admittedly selfish. Not trusting was where things got tricky. It wasn’t supposed to matter whether Jamie was a flirt, or merely an extraverted personality. Old friends and old lovers shouldn’t be suspect. There had been no promises, no commitments. Exactly as Dhari wanted it. Paranoia wasn’t supposed to happen. She crammed the phone back into the leather bag and pressed the accelerator harder.
“Where the hell is this place?”
Then she saw it, sitting far off the road on a graceful but neglected knoll. There, washed brilliant by the morning sunlight, stood the pride of Georgian architecture. Immediately, thoughts of a potentially high selling price and investments and a retirement fund raced through her mind.
She admired the sight all the way up the curving drive until the angle of the sun shifted and left the house in shadow. What had looked white in the sunlight was actually weathered clapboard and peeling paint. Apparent now from close range was a century of accumulated scars.
Old wooden shutters, some clinging stubbornly from one rusted hinge, offered a smile flawed by missing teeth. Once grand steps now sagged with age and neglected porch columns showed evidence of infestation.
With her hopes fading by the second, Dhari emerged from the car with a groan. Who in their right mind is going to want this? She started cautiously toward the side of the house following the remnants of an old plotted flower garden. Left now to compete against the weeds on their own, the dead remains of liriope and rudbeckia share the once trimmed plots with thistle and chickweed.
She rounded the corner of the house where the sight of a tree, larger than any she had ever seen, stopped her in her tracks. What had seemed from the road to be a clump of tall trees was in fact one monumental tree. The width and breadth of it was nearly incomprehensible. Dhari looked above her as she walked beneath the canopy of its branches. City trees, planted in tiny plots of dirt between sidewalk and street, were merely trigs in comparison. Even without its leaves the tree created a showed world beneath it where only a few spears of sunlight reached the ground. Dhari shivered in the coolness. Only the giant sequoias, known to her only in pictures, Dhari imagined could best the magnificence of this tree.
She had nearly forgotten about the house. Maybe there was some hope. She continued to the edge of the shadows. Maybe I can sell it for the land, she thought. Her gaze wandered pat an old trellis, covered with thorny vines, to what she could see of the property beyond the house. “The acreage alone has to be worth something,” she muttered. I wonder how many acres…
“Been waitin’ for ya.”
Startled, Dhari whirled around to find an old woman sitting on a bench in the shadow of the huge tree. She caught her breath as the woman moved.
“You scared me,” Dhari managed. “I didn’t see you sitting there.”
Although the old woman was standing now, she wasn’t noticeably taller than when she was seated. “You believe in ghosts?” She asked moving forward and stopping short of the edge of the shadow.
Dhari recoiled a step. “No,” she replied quickly. What the hell kind of question is that? Only a crazy woman would ask such a thing.
“Mm, no matter,” she said as she closed the distance between them.
Dhari watched the tiny woman emerge into the sunlight. Black pearls looked with intensity from the raisin-like face. Just a harmless old woman, that’s all. Dhari took a more normal breath. “Do you live nearby?”
“Raised up right here on dis lan. Never saw no need to go nowhere else.”
Right here? She hadn’t quite decided whether to question further when the old woman obliged her.
“My family’s been here long as yorn, workin’ da lan before we was free, workin’ it after. Nessie Tinker, dat’s me.”
“You’re the one who found my aunt.” The old woman made no acknowledgement. “After she died.”
“Miz Anna jus lef dem ol’ tired bones. She don’t ache no more.”
Dhari nodded. The uneasiness she felt under the old woman’s stare was still there. What is her concern with me, especially now? What does she want?
“I think I’ll take a look inside.”
“All ready for ya. Fresh fixins in da kitchen. Clean bed sheets.”
“Oh…well, thank you. That was very nice of you, but I hadn’t planned on staying. I’ll only be here for a few days. I got a otel room near the highway.” Dhari looked back at the house and noted a back door. “Where is it you said you lived>”
Nessie motioned toward a well-traveled path leading through the tall grass at the rear of the house. “Jus over dere.”
The roof of a small one-story building was visible over the crest of a sloping hill. More than a healthy walk for such an old woman, Dhari thought, before movement at the start of the path caught her attention. Nessie, with remarkable swiftness was on her way home.
“Nessie,” Dhari called, “thank you for preparing things for me.”
Nessie nodded and held up the back of her hand and disappeared around a turn of tall grass.
I wonder how many trips it takes to keep a path so worn. What kind of person was Anna Grayson to keep a woman that old working for wage? Selfishness? Loyalty? And how will she survive now? Maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to know Anna Grayson at all.
She watched for a moment without seeing even so much as the top of Nessie’s head moving along the path, then continued into the house. The inside was as she had expected, full of old furniture, creaky floors covered by worn rugs, and looking as it had, probably, for most of her aunt’s life. It was, however, cleaner and neater than she had imagined. Actually, immaculate would be a fairer description, a pleasant contrast to the exterior. At least the furnishings, in their pristine condition, would bring a fair price from antique dealers and collectors. She made a mental note to ask for a reputable name from the realtor. Now to find a realtor that I can trust to handle everything by phone.