“I don’t know why you’re so angry.” His voice sad now. “What happened to the girl who loved the God so much she’d do anything for him?”
“I used to love horses, too. I was a girl.”
He crouched in front of her, and his knees popped. “Come back into the fold. I know you went through some dark times, but don’t blame our God. Help us do the work.”
“You just want to fill out my book.” He’d never shown her what was written in The Book of Stella. “And start Sunny’s.”
“Ah.”
Finally they’d arrived at the heart of the matter.
Hendrick straightened. “It’s true. I did want Sunny to commune with the God. But it looks like that’s not meant to be. The park’s closing before she’s reached the age of accountability, and I won’t go against that tradition.”
“So you don’t need her.”
“Stella! This isn’t about—I meant what I said. I won’t abandon her. Ruth and I will take her in.”
Stella stared up at him. “You will, huh?”
“Hear me out,” he said. “I have a plot of land, five hundred acres, well outside Atlanta. It’s wooded, plenty of privacy. She won’t have to go to school, unless she wants. I’ll pay for tutors, and anything else she needs.”
“You don’t know what she needs.”
“You’re probably right—but I’m willing to find out. I have the resources, the time, and the desire to take care of her.”
“If I wanted custody, you know a judge would give her to me. All I have to do is say a few words.”
“That’s probably true,” he said. “But do you want to be her guardian? I imagine your…business doesn’t allow for raising a child.”
“What the hell do you know about my business?”
“Not a thing. And that’s what I prefer.”
Stella let her head fall back to rest on the top of the pew. Hendrick waited.
“Motty would have a fit,” Stella said.
“My sister and I didn’t agree on much, but she didn’t doubt that I loved Sunny. And I think it’s fair to say the girl has grown fond of me, as well.”
Stella pictured Sunny running across the grass, embracing him.
Hendrick said, “Abby’s already told me that he’s not comfortable with my plan unless you give your blessing.”
“My blessing.”
“Just a few words.”
Stella heaved herself upright. Looked at the cement. “This only works if Sunny never goes in there.”
Hendrick didn’t answer. She turned to face him.
“I’m not fucking around. Sunny goes in there without me to guide her, she’ll be…hurt. Bad hurt.” Tiny sips.
He put up his hands. “I know what Motty’s told me. And I know what happened with your mama.”
“Promise me,” she said.
He looked at her. His eyes were moist. “You’re the eldest now. You have say. Sunny won’t go into that cave unless you take her there.”
Stella thought, Do I tell him? The girl was never going in. Stella had come back to make sure of it.
Hendrick was watching her. “So you’ll allow it? Sunny will come back with me?”
“Let me think it over.”
* * *
—
her body jerked awake as if she’d nodded off behind the wheel at fifty miles per hour. A face hovered outside the dewy glass of the passenger window. An angry face, yelling at her.
Stella scrambled upright. She was in the front seat of the Ford. She’d fallen asleep in her car—not for the first time and surely not the last. Her head felt like a cracked walnut.
The door was yanked open. It was Ruth—her face like ten pounds of bitter in a five-pound bag. How did Hendrick cope with that every morning?
“Where is it?” Ruth demanded. “Where’s the ring?”
“What ring?”
“Don’t play innocent. First the will and now her jewelry? She wore a diamond ring around her neck and you did something with it!”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Motty had never worn a ring around her neck, and Stella would have seen it when she looked over the old woman’s body.
“Don’t lie to me,” Ruth said.
The Ford was still parked in the barn, but the big wooden doors had been opened and light filled the car’s rear window. “Can we do this later?”
“No! The mortuary men are here for the body.”
“What? They’re already taking her?” Stella leaned out the door. Stood up. The planet moved under her like a barge.
Ruth followed her out of the barn, hissing meanness. “This is a ploy of yours, isn’t it? You think because Motty never married that somehow her things are yours?”
There’d been a man in Motty’s past, but no husband. Private Ronald Whitehead, distant kin to Stella’s old grade school teacher, had died in Nicaragua or somewhere during the Banana Wars. Motty never talked about him except to say he’d left behind an unborn child—that would be Lena—and nothing else, not even a picture. Certainly no diamond ring, if that’s what Ruth was going on about.
“Hendrick is her brother, and as the closest male relative—”
“Jesus, Ruth. If there was a ring in the house I’m sure it’ll turn up.”
Last night’s fire circle had burned down to ash. Beer cans littered the yard.
A Pontiac hearse with curtained side windows had been backed up to the porch steps, the rear doors spread open, ready to receive the body. Hendrick was in the living room, arguing with the jowly mortuary man, whose young assistant watched nervously.
Hendrick said, “I don’t see how it can be one person’s decision!”
“I’m so sorry,” the mortuary man said, and meant it. “But we can’t force Elder Rayburn to let her in.”
“What’s the matter?” Ruth said. “What is it now?”
Only one of the Georgians was in the living room—the beefy pale man. His jacket was off, and there was a holster on his hip. He saw Stella looking at it and nodded at her. What the God damn fuck?
“They say they can’t bury her at the church cemetery,” Hendrick said. “John Rayburn won’t allow it.”
“But why?”
Stella knew why. He was still wounded, and lashing out. His only son was dead, and he wanted payback.
“I’m sure you can work something out,” the mortuary man said. “There are other churches—”
“No,” Hendrick said. “There are no other churches. Our family founded the Primitive Baptist Church. I was a deacon before I left. It’s our right—her right—to be buried with her ancestors.”
“You have to talk to him,” Ruth said.
“God damn it,” Stella said quietly. Her hangover was chiseling at the inside of her head.
Hendrick and Ruth looked at her. The mortuary man glanced away.
“I’ll go,” she said.
Hendrick was surprised. “You will?”
She recoiled at the idea of facing John Rayburn. She’d avoided him for ten years. But she’d be damned if she’d let him have the last word on where they put Motty. And Stella was the only one who could fix this. “Motty’s owed her spot—next to my mother. With all the Birches.”
Hendrick nodded enthusiastically. “We’ll both talk to him. He has to know he’s facing the entire family.” He was swole up with capital-H Honor.
Last night, Stella hadn’t given Hendrick an answer on his plan to raise Sunny in Georgia—at least she didn’t remember giving one. She’d walked back to the fire and sat up for a few more hours, passing moonshine. But Hendrick was acting, well, avuncular, which worried her.
The pale man pulled on his jacket. “I’ll ride with you.”
Hell no, Stella thought. Then said, “Give me a sec,” and walke
d out of the room.
“What about the ring?” Ruth screeched.
Stella went into Motty’s bedroom, Ruth right on her ass. The air was heavy with perfume—Hendrick and Ruth overcompensating. The body couldn’t smell that bad yet, could it? A blue dress Stella didn’t recognize lay across the foot of the bed, the price tag still on the collar. Stella could feel Ruth behind her, bristling, almost eager for her to object.
Stella gazed at Motty, waiting for sadness or regret or something to poke its way up through the fog of the hangover. Anger would at least be familiar. It was the emotion they’d most often brought out in each other. It would be nice to argue one last time—say, about this diamond ring that Motty had evidently been hiding from her all her life. Or about the benefits of cremation. Or how Hendrick, despite being an asshole, was Sunny’s best chance for a good life.
“What do you say, Motty?”
Motty didn’t answer. Her face seemed more caved in than yesterday, her skin grayer, but otherwise the same as when Stella first saw the body. Death took some time to assert itself. Maybe grief did, too.
Stella leaned close. “Speak now,” she whispered. “Or forever hold your peace.”
* * *
—
john rayburn had taken the government’s money and moved into a humble frame house on the edge of Townsend. Stella pulled into the driveway happy that she’d never been there. No memories to get in the way of the job.
Uncle Hendrick and the bleached Georgian were waiting in Hendrick’s car. Her uncle had been hurt that Stella had wanted to drive separate. Weren’t they family? But even though she was cooperating with him on Sunny, the thought of getting trapped in his car with a pistol-packing deacon made her feel itchy. Ruth was staying back at the house to “receive visitors” and take care of Veronica, who was probably still sleeping off her sins in what used to be Stella’s bedroom. The rest of the Georgia boys were staying somewhere in town.
“I thought we should go in together,” Hendrick said. “Present a unified front.”
“Uh-huh.” He was afraid of Rayburn, always had been.
“Just…try to be respectful. You get more flies with honey.”
“What about him?” Nodded to the man in the car.
Hendrick said, “Brother Paul will wait for us out here.”
“Suits me.”
Mary Lynn, Elder Rayburn’s daughter, met them at the door. “Stella? Oh my goodness.” She was surprised, but there was a warmth in her voice Stella hadn’t expected. They’d hardly seen each other since Lincoln died. Mary Lynn had moved to Maryville, working at the diner a couple of doors from the police station, and Stella made it a point to avoid both places. Mary Lynn was a few years younger than her brother, a grade below Stella, in fact, and had never looked or acted much like him. Lunk had been solid and forthright, but she was soft and watchful as a mouse.
“Hey, Mary Lynn.”
Hendrick said, “It’s good to see you, Mary. Is your father in?”
Mary Lynn winced. Looked back into the dark of the house. A voice said, “I thought you were going to sit out there all day, Hendrick.”
Hendrick forced a laugh. Mary opened the door.
Elder Rayburn was a silhouette in an armchair set up by the front window. Sentry duty. The only place for Stella and Hendrick to sit was side by side on the pebbly couch.
Mary asked them if they wanted coffee and Stella said, “Lord yes.”
Hendrick shot her a glance. What, was “Lord” too close to taking His name in vain? Her hangover didn’t leave room for worrying about blasphemy.
Hendrick and Rayburn talked about the weather in the cove, and Georgia weather, and the new road going in. This was a southern home, and even blood enemies wouldn’t draw swords before coffee and corn bread. It may have been a new house, but everything in it was old—the armchair, the elaborately scrolled wooden clock, the rugs, even the drapes—no doubt hauled from the Rayburn farmhouse in the cove, jammed together in this unfamiliar place like refugees.
Stella downed a cup and asked for a refill. Mary Lynn poured it silently, then hovered at the doorway between the kitchen and the front room. Where was Mrs. Rayburn? It was odd for Mary Lynn to play hostess.
“How’s your mother?” Stella asked Mary Lynn.
“She’s…” She gestured toward the back of the house.
“Resting,” Elder Rayburn said. Gazing into his coffee cup. He’d yet to look at Stella or address her.
Hendrick said, “Well, please give Elsa our regards. You know, I always loved to hear her sing.”
A silence descended. Hendrick gazed at the clock. Rayburn noticed something out the window.
Stella sighed, set down her coffee cup. “We’re here about Motty.”
Hendrick shifted uncomfortably. Rayburn looked at him, not her.
“There seems to be some confusion,” Hendrick said. “The boys from Smith Mortuary…”
Rayburn pursed his lips.
“The boys were under the impression that they weren’t allowed to bury Mathilda at the church.”
“You can see how that wouldn’t be proper,” Rayburn said.
“Proper?” Hendrick said.
“The cemetery is for church members in good standing.”
Hendrick glanced to the side, performing his confusion. “Motty was a member of the church, John. We both grew up in the church, both baptized there. I may have transferred my membership to Georgia, but Motty—”
“I said, in good standing.”
“What does that mean?” Stella asked.
Rayburn finally looked at her. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.”
“I’m not pretending. All the Birches are buried there. My mother’s buried there.”
“In hindsight, that may have been a mistake.”
“What?”
“Lena barely attended. And Mathilda outright rejected the church.”
“Oh come now,” Hendrick said. “Motty never rejected the church. She just stopped going. She got old.”
“She followed other ways.”
Mary Lynn inhaled sharply. Her father was practically calling Motty a pagan. Or worse, a Catholic.
“That’s—” Hendrick bit off what he was going to say next. Took a breath. “I know my sister. I know she was rough around the edges—”
“She was a mite more than rough.”
“She was still a Christian! One of the Elect. I don’t see how gossip and made-up stories…” Hendrick was flustered. He couldn’t say what the stories were without lending them credence. But everybody in the cove had theories about the Birches. You couldn’t stop them from talking.
Stella was about to come off the couch, but she kept her voice steady. “You still believe in eternal security, don’t you, Elder Rayburn? Once saved, always saved?”
“Even the devil can quote scripture,” Rayburn said evenly. “You always had a talent for it.”
“There’s one I remember about God granting eternal life,” Stella said. “And no man shall pluck them out of My hand.”
“Only God knows if she was in His hand to begin with.”
“You’re making my point.”
“And my point,” Hendrick said, “is that we’ve always been a congregation-led church. Perhaps the other elders—”
“We?” Rayburn said. “You left for Georgia, to sell chairs.”
“I went where there was work.” He forced a smile. “The world needs a place to sit.”
“What we’re wondering,” Stella said, “is if the other elders would be more impartial.”
That got to Rayburn. But he wouldn’t respond to Stella. He turned to Hendrick and said, icily, “Impartiality has nothing to do with it. This is about the Lord’s plan, not mine.”
“The Lord’s plan,” Hendrick said. His voi
ce dropped and slowed. “The Lord’s plan.”
“That’s what I said.”
“I sure wish we knew what it was. I think about what happened to Lincoln…it doesn’t seem fair. That was a tragedy.”
“Don’t you talk about my son.”
There was a time people couldn’t stop talking about it. Everyone in the cove knew the story of the preacher’s son, good and true, who drove his daddy’s new car to see the wicked Stella Wallace. That girl made him dance in the moonlight and drink whiskey straight from Abby Whitt’s still and sent him on his way with her lipstick on his cheek. The next morning they found that new car wheels-up in the icy-cold Little River.
Hillbillies did love a good murder ballad.
“He made a mistake a hundred boys made before him,” Hendrick continued. “They all lived to tell the tale. Some of ’em might even brag about it—though Lincoln was not that kind of boy. We all know that.”
“He was tempted,” Rayburn said. Hendrick put up his hands, allowing the point.
Stella thought, I’m sitting right here, you bastards.
“Now, I’m a father myself,” Hendrick said. “But even I can’t imagine the pain of losing your son. No one would be surprised if you let your personal feelings about my niece…let them cloud your heart.”
“Your niece,” Rayburn said. He was so angry, barely holding on to himself. “I don’t care a whit about your niece. My feelings, my concern, is for my progeny. Given your family history—”
Mary Lynn suddenly swept in. “Can I get anything for anybody? More coffee?”
No one responded to her. “The whole cove knows about the Birch women,” Rayburn said. “The string of children born out of wedlock.”
Hendrick said, “John, I don’t think—”
Stella held up a hand. “You said progeny.”
Rayburn’s eyes didn’t leave hers. “You ran away,” he said. “Days after Lincoln’s funeral, you ran away. Now my wife, she has a kind heart. Even after what you did to her boy, she was ready to forgive you. But then, you vanished. You hid.” Stella realized she’d gotten to her feet. He said, “And then that girl appeared in Mathilda’s arms.”
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