Page 27

I remember that morning. Charlotte at the stove in her robe with the percolator going, telling us Mama had been in an accident. Her eyes were red. I thought she'd been crying all night.

"You watched."

"Somebody has to witness. Somebody who loves the girl stands in that room and swears it was done proper, so it's a sacrament and not a sin." Her fingers find the cross at her throat. "I held her hand at the end. She'd have wanted me to. And I raised her girls. Don't you ever tell me I didn't do right by her girls."

The glass is slick in my grip. I lower it to the coaster with great care.

"And Dee."

"Dee started digging into her mama. Courthouse records. Calls to some newspaper in Lafayette. I warned her twice." Charlotte exhales through her nose. "I marked her in April. I meant to wait for the gathering and do it right, candles and singing, the way it's meant to be. She wouldn't quit, and Judah said it couldn't keep. So it was done early." Her lips pinch. "Badly. Malcolm didn't know what he was about. It dragged on and it was ugly, and I told Judah so. Your sister deserved better."

"She deserved better,” I repeat carefully.

"She did." Charlotte nods as though we agree. "The Arceneaux girl last year was mine. The Guidry girl before her. Near about all of them these thirty years. Men look straight at a girl gone wrong and never see it. I can spot it from the back pew."

"Spot what?"

"A girl who won't leave a thing alone." Her mouth curves. "You were seven years old at your mama's graveside, and you tugged the preacher's sleeve and asked him why they'd shut the casket if she only drowned. You asked me the same thing every night for a month. That's when I knew which way you'd go."

Nothing comes to me to say. I let the silence sit.

"When I came down those basement stairs and found the youth pastor on the floor with his skull caved in, do you know what went through me?" She leans forward, eager. "Not my poor baby. I thought, there she is. A girl who'll lift iron and bring it down with nobody telling her to. Do you know how rare that is in a woman? The old man had Silas. I wanted one of my own."

"So you cleaned it up."

"I cleaned it up and put you on a bus and let you run. I figured you'd come home when you were grown, and I'd bring you in, and you'd stand in that room beside me and take the picking after I'm gone." Her face darkens. "Except you didn't come home for me. You came home for Dee, and you took up with the family's dog, and you've spent a week cutting good men down all over this parish." She settles back. "So you'll go down to the water instead, right behind Nellie Roach. Same hymn. 302. I penciled your pew myself."

"I know."

Her smile slips.

I stand.

She sees it all at once: my clear eyes, my steady hands, the tea she believed I'd drained, the pothos dripping onto the end table. She lunges for the telephone beside her recliner, but I reach it first, tear the cord from the wall, and hurl the handset across the room. It crashes into the curio cabinet, and glass and porcelain shepherds rain across the carpet.

"Sit back in that chair."

She doesn't. She's up quicker than any woman her age should be, heading for the kitchen and the knife block. I catch a fistful of cranberry wool before she's more than two feet from the recliner. She weighs nothing, gristle and spite, and her nails go for my face. I pin both wrists and fold her back into the chair.

Killing her would cost me nothing. The .38 rides at the small of my back, and my hands have already learned the work.

I hold off. It's Tuesday. Four days to the gathering. If Charlotte Price turns up dead in her living room this afternoon, the family will know by supper that I've been here, and Judah will move the girls, move the date, and dig in somewhere Silas can't reach. Breathing and silent, she's worth more to me than a corpse on her rug.

I pick up my tea. Half remains.

"Drink."

Her lips seal. I pinch her nostrils shut and wait. She lasts longer than I expect. The instant she gasps, I pour, and she chokes and sputters and swallows because there's nowhere else for it to go. She fights every mouthful and gets most of it down regardless.

"Whatever you stirred in there was meant for me," I tell her. "Now it's yours. You'll sleep through the day, and when you wake you'll have no telephone and no car and no notion where I've gone."

Her eyes are already glazing at the rims. Her curls sit crooked, and her chin glistens.

"You'll never reach Judah." The words smear together. "You'll walk right into it like your mama did."

"We'll see."

I hook a finger under the chain at her throat. It's thin and old, and one tug snaps it. The cross drops into my palm.