“Stella?” Abby said.
“I’ll come up in a while, when it’s daylight. Go on home to her, before she gets eaten by your bears.”
He didn’t get the joke.
“Your menagerie of murder,” she added.
He chuckled. “Forgot you called it that. Well, it ain’t as much of a threat as it used to be.”
He lumbered across the yard. He was a thinner man now, but he walked the same heavy-footed walk.
Stella said his name and he looked back. She couldn’t see his eyes, but the moonlight glanced off his bald head. “Sunny. Is she all right?”
All right. ’Round here that could mean a lot of things. Abby considered.
“She’s a little girl,” he said.
* * *
—
the sheriff arrived at daybreak.
Stella heard the engine and went out to the front porch. It was the same radio car Bobby Reed had been driving a few hours ago.
To her right, the sun was edging up over the peak of Thunderhead. Light sliced across the valley, igniting the western hills opposite, the trees burning orange and red under a blue fog. It really did look like smoke, she thought. Autumn in the Smokies made for the world’s prettiest forest fire.
Two men stepped out of the car. Tom Acherson from the passenger side, wearing his official brown park uniform. The right sleeve was pinned up where an elbow would’ve been. The other was Don Whaley, Blount County sheriff. He put a hand on the hood of her Ford, studying it.
“Stella! This is a surprise,” Tom said. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Motty was, well, certainly a part of this place.” His accent was straight out of Movietone News.
“She was that,” Stella said. Whaley was looking into her back seat.
Tom nodded at the sunlit hills. “It’s breathtaking, isn’t it?”
“Practically a crime.”
“We’re getting quite famous for our fall colors.” The park superintendent remained a smiler and a head-bobber, the happiest man she’d ever met. When she was a girl she’d found his relentless enthusiasm charming. “By noon the park will be full of visitors.”
“Gawking at the last of the old-timey pioneers, too. Sheriff, you want to stop petting my car?”
Sheriff Whaley’s hand rested on the trunk. He looked tired, but then he always did. He was one of those men prone to dark circles under his eyes, like he woke up every morning and lightly punched himself in the face. He said, “You mind if I take a peek inside?”
Whaley was the worst kind of cop: a solid churchman who didn’t partake. He’d also grown up with Hendrick, and once they’d been bosom fucking buddies. Maybe still. She wished she’d parked the car in the barn. “You’re a bit out of your jurisdiction,” she said.
Tom seemed dismayed that the conversation had taken this turn. “We came to check on Sunny—and of course, offer help to the family.”
“And check out your new property.”
Tom’s face fell.
“I’m kidding you,” she said. “Come on in.”
Whaley glanced around the living room like he was taking inventory—and maybe he was. Hendrick would’ve wanted Whaley there quick, in case Stella got into the house and tried to abscond with her inheritance. Stella had indeed been searching the house, but for Motty’s will, on the slim odds that the old woman had reversed her lifetime habit and had actually written something down longer than a grocery list. She’d found not a scrap.
Tom said, “I was told Abby found the body?”
Stella passed on what Abby had told her: the yard, the possibility of heart attack.
“It sounds like it was quick,” Tom said. “So that’s a mercy.”
“Where’s the girl?” Whaley asked. “Sunny,” he added, as if to prove he knew the name.
“Sleeping.” Not necessarily a lie.
“I’d like to set eyes on her.”
“You aren’t waking her. The woman who was like a mother to her just died. Leave her be.”
“Every girl needs a mother,” Whaley said.
Tom’s eyes widened. He’d seen something in Stella’s face that alarmed him.
Whaley said, “So you’re staying until Hendrick gets here?” And there it was: confirmation the sheriff had been talking to Uncle Hendrick.
“Don’t you worry,” Stella said. “I ain’t going to run off with the family jewels.”
* * *
—
if motty had died in the old days they would have tolled the church bell for every year she’d lived, and everyone in the cove would’ve sussed out who’d died. These days the cove was empty, the friends and family and former neighbors scattered across three counties, and the bells that summoned them were on telephones. Cars started rolling in soon after Sheriff Whaley and Tom Acherson left, and kept coming like troopships on D-Day, deploying Christian soldiers armed with casseroles and jugs of sweet tea.
Stella was forced to welcome the visitors, listen to condolences, and make table space for the dishes. Many of the first through the door were members of the Primitive Baptist Church, who still drove into the cove on Sundays to meet in the old building, just out of stubbornness. She doubted they’d come today because they loved Motty—there was bad blood there. But the Birches had founded the church, and forms had to be followed.
Baptists of other flavors made an appearance. A passel of Missionary Baptists, still carrying a grudge after splitting with the Primitives in the 1830s, Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, independents. Methodists made an appearance, and even a couple of Maryville Episcopalians. A good portion of these people were cousins. The residents of the cove had intermarried so much that every family tree was as tangled as a blackberry bush; those claiming to not be kin to the Birches probably hadn’t checked the fine print in their family Bibles.
Everybody was curious about Sunny—Stella could see it in the way they scanned the tiny house—and several got around to asking about her. They called her “that poor girl” or “that poor little thing.” Only a few knew her name, and no one seemed to have met her. Motty, evidently, had kept her out of school and, even worse, out of church. The whiff of disapproval hung over every covered dish.
Stella told them all the same thing: “She’s staying with family.”
Upon receiving her third green bean casserole—“Just heat it up in the stove, honey”—Stella walked out of the kitchen, slipped into her old bedroom, and put her back to the door.
She fished out her pack of Luckies. Lit one with her Zippo. Smoking in her bedroom was something she used to dream about. She wondered how long she could hide. Folks would assume she was grieving, wouldn’t they?
The room was very different in daylight.
When she’d searched the house in the predawn hours she’d spent only a few minutes here, because she couldn’t imagine Motty hiding anything of worth where Sunny (or Stella, in her day) could get at it easily. In the half dark the bedroom seemed pretty close to the way Stella had left it.
Now, though, it was clear that Sunny had made the room her own. Starting with the books—the shelf had been decimated. Her biology journals were gone, the remaining novels were all jumbled—the Nancy Drews stacked helter-skelter!—and worse, The Book of Clara and The Book of Esther were nowhere to be seen.
Surely Sunny hadn’t thrown those out. Had Hendrick repossessed them?
Stella started pulling the mysteries off the stack to place them spine out, but stopped when she found a small cardboard box tucked behind them.
She didn’t recognize the box, so it had to belong to Sunny. The shelf was a good hiding place because Motty didn’t have much interest in books. When Stella lived here she hated how the old woman would go through any of her things, no privacy at all. Stella thought, I really ought to put this back.
She lifted off the lid.
&nbs
p; Her chest cinched tight. Inside lay a square of lace, a handkerchief, folded to show Stella’s initials, “SW.” Lunk had given this to her for her fourteenth birthday.
And Motty, God damn her, had given it to Sunny.
Someone knocked on the door. “Stella?” A voice she didn’t recognize.
“Just a second.”
“Your uncle Hendrick’s asking for you.”
Hendrick? Fuck.
She closed the box and returned it to the shelf. Pushed a palm across her eyes. Dried her hand on her pants. She was not about to meet that man with tears in her eyes.
* * *
—
uncle hendrick stood in the front room, talking with an old man who used to live in the cove. Behind Hendrick stood three men in almost identical blue suits, their hair slicked back, awkwardly holding their hats and hanging on to Hendrick’s every word. The biggest one was pale as an uncooked biscuit: white hair, white eyebrows, pink lips. Most definitely not from around here.
Hendrick had never looked like he was from the cove. Her great-uncle looked so fucking dapper, his suit somehow appearing neatly pressed despite the drive from Atlanta, smug as King Richard back from the Crusades.
She wasn’t ready for this. Not after Motty’s sneak attack from beyond the grave. She didn’t know whether she was about to run from the house or drive the bastard out of it.
Before she could decide, the men in blue parted and Aunt Ruth and Veronica stepped to Hendrick, Ruth already mad about something, Veronica looking sleepy. Then Veronica spotted Stella and her eyes lit up. She strode over on high heels, arms open. Stella accepted her hug.
“Oh law, I’ve missed you,” Veronica said. She smelled of hairspray and Shalimar.
“It’s good to see you, Vee.” They’d been girls when they last saw each other, Veronica not even a teenager, but they’d exchanged letters over the years. She was the only family member Stella had cared to stay in touch with.
“Are you okay?” Veronica asked. “You look all broke up. I’m so sorry it had to be like this. Poor Motty.”
“You’re upset too, huh?”
“Of course I am.” Veronica looked to the side to see if anyone was listening to them. “You remember that navy veteran I wrote you about?” She held up her hand to show an engagement ring. “Look!”
“When did this happen?”
“Last May. We’re going to get married next June.”
“I’m surprised you’d go that long with a ring on your finger. That’s like leaving your turn signal on for a year.”
“Stop it! We’re taking our time.”
Stella had been watching Uncle Hendrick; he’d finally seen her. Stella kept nodding as Veronica chattered on about wedding plans.
Hendrick glided up. “Stella,” he said in that warm fog of a voice. His hair had picked up a dusting of silver, but he was as handsome as ever. Maybe more so.
He moved in for a hug and Stella shook his hand instead. “How was the drive?”
“We made good time,” he said. “Though not as good as yours.”
Veronica said, “Daddy wanted to hop in the car by himself as soon as the call came in, but Mommy wouldn’t have it. She had to pack the car like we were crossing the prairie—half a dozen egg salad sandwiches and a case of Coca-Cola. We checked into a new hotel in Gatlinburg an hour ago and freshened up.”
The men in the blue suits watched all this conversation. Stella nodded at them. “You pack those boys, too?”
Hendrick glanced behind him. “Oh! These are members of the church. They kindly came with me.” He introduced them and Stella promptly forgot their names. She was thinking, What church?
The pale one said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Pastor Hendrick’s told us a lot about you.”
Pastor Fucking What?
Aunt Ruth squeezed around her husband and looked at Stella with an anxious, searching expression. “Someone just asked if—what are you wearing?”
“How you doing, Aunt Ruth?” Stella said pointedly.
“You couldn’t put on a dress?”
“I don’t think Motty’s going to mind.”
“Someone just asked when the service will be. You haven’t called a funeral home yet, have you?”
“I haven’t decided anything. No arrangements.”
Her aunt’s relief lasted only a second. “Hendrick, we have to call Smith’s in Maryville.”
“Whatever you think, dear,” he said distractedly. To Stella he said, “Is Sunny in her room?”
“She’s up at Abby’s.”
A flash of annoyance crossed his face, and then he covered it. “This house is probably too crowded for her. She’s a sensitive soul. We’ll get some of this food to her.”
Stella wasn’t sure what irked her more, Hendrick’s familiarity or the fact that he’d thought of the obvious kindness. Stella should have run food up there already.
“Hendrick, the funeral home!” Ruth said.
“Darn it, Ruth, let me see my sister first.”
* * *
—
stella had kept Motty’s door closed all this morning. She opened it for Hendrick and then kept it open behind her.
He stood over Motty’s body, and he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He kept passing his hat from one to the other. He didn’t look closely at her body. She was relieved by that.
Without turning he said, “Had she been sick?”
Stella almost said, Your god murdered her, you idiot. Motty’s health don’t enter into it. But there were too many people in the house to say it aloud—and she wanted to be sure before she put that idea in his head. Instead she said, “Don’t ask me.”
“You never came to see her?” Putting on a hurt tone.
“When I left I said I was never coming back. I never came back.”
He turned. “You came running over here pretty quick this morning.” Oh, yes. He was mad she’d beaten him here.
“I didn’t want Sunny to be up here alone.”
“That’s so kind of you. To take an interest.”
He’d kept his voice low. The small house was growing more crowded, and Ruth was hovering six feet away—giving them their privacy without quite respecting it.
Stella said, “You want to explain what’s going on with those boys in the suits, Pastor Hendrick?”
He shook his head, pretending not to understand.
“What kind of church we talking about?” she asked.
“The same one you grew up in.”
He couldn’t be serious. “That—that stays in the family. That’s what you always said.”
“It was time to bring in others. The mission of the church continues.”
“How does that work? We’re in the middle of a national park—one that’s about to seize all the land.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
We. Meaning, not her. “You and your followers can’t stay,” she said. “John Toliver already sued the government, and he lost. You sued and lost. The park gets this farm, and they’ll tear it all down. The house, the barn, the chapel.”
“We should talk about this later,” he said.
“Just answer one thing,” Stella said. “Has she gone in?”
He flinched. She’d put him on edge by saying as much as she had within earshot of so many nonbelievers. She stepped closer. “Has she?”
Stella was taller than him, she realized, and not because Hendrick had shrunk in the ten years since she’d seen him. Stella had gotten all her height by the time she was fourteen, so even then she would have been taller than her great-uncle—but it hadn’t felt that way. In her memory he was always the adult and she was the little girl.
Hendrick looked away. “No. She wasn’t of age yet.”
“Hendrick.”
&nbs
p; “And Motty wouldn’t allow it.”
Stella took a breath, stepped back. That rang true. Motty had always had final say on who went into the chapel. Even now she was calling the shots. That concrete over the cave entrance was a Fuck You from beyond the grave.
“What is it?” Hendrick asked.
He’d seen the smile on her lips. She considered telling him about what Motty had done, then decided it’d be more fun for him to find out.
“I want what’s best for Sunny,” he said. And then added, smooth as a knife sliding into the belly of a fish, “I will not abandon her.”
* * *
—
stella stalked out of the house, feeling stunned and ashamed. I will not abandon her. Went to the barn where she’d moved her car, thinking: Fuck them. Let the God take them all. I’ve got work to do.
Veronica came up behind her. “Are you all right? What did Daddy say?”
“Nothing I didn’t have coming.”
“Well all right, then.” Vee looped an arm through Stella’s. “You know where a girl can get a drink around here?”
“It’s ten in the morning.”
“And I’ve been up all night. You too, from the looks of it.”
“So you’re saying this is a nightcap.”
“Exactly!”
Stella stepped to the Ford and Veronica said, “Oh heavens, have you been transporting demon liquor?”
“Sheriff Whaley nearly opened my trunk this morning.”
“Oh no!”
“Not to worry—the trunk’s empty. However…” She opened the driver’s side door, flipped the hidden latch, and lifted the back seat. Inside were twenty jars of moonshine, packed in straw to keep them from clinking against each other.
Veronica was delighted. “You’ve always been my favorite outlaw.”
Stella opened a jar and raised it. “Here’s to your impending nuptials.”
“And I’m not even pregnant! That must be a first in our family.” She took a sip. “Law!”
“This batch came out pretty well, I have to say.”
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