24
BECKY WOKE TO rain pounding at the windows, and to a residue of fear. In the night she had experienced again Falon’s car careening at hers, had fought the wheel again to avoid going off the bridge. Now, waking fully, she lay listening to the comforting clatter from the kitchen, smelling the aromas of baking bread and pies and, this morning, the scent of bacon as Caroline made their breakfast. Rising, she showered and dressed quickly, then woke Sammie, watched as Sammie sleepily pulled her on clothes and ran a brush through her hair.
In the big kitchen Caroline and her assistant, redheaded Nettie Parks, were lifting pecan pies and fresh bread from the two big ovens. Nettie was a neighbor, a widow whose five children had left the nest. She liked getting up early, she liked the extra money, and most of all, she and Caroline enjoyed working together. Nettie was among the few who had stood by them during the trial. Nettie set their breakfast on a corner of the long, crowded table and hugged Becky. “I hope Brad Falon burns in hell.”
That made Becky smile. Sitting down, she cupped her hands around the warm coffee cup while listening to the rain, watched her mother turn out muffins from their tins and ease them into the familiar bakery boxes stamped CAROLINE’S. They ate quickly this morning and didn’t linger; it would take a while at the police station to file the complaints and go over the details of Falon’s attacks. Their overnight stay with Caroline was too short, but they’d had a cozy visit after Sergeant Trevis left.
She had called Quaker Lowe last night, too, on the after-hours number he’d given her. He said, “I tried to call you, at your aunt’s, Becky. Good news! There’s a warrant out for Falon, he’s wanted in California.”
She laughed. “I know. I’m in Rome, Sergeant Trevis told me.” She told Lowe about Falon’s attack on the bridge, and that she was on her way to the station.
“But you’re both all right?”
“We’re fine. Sammie’s a soldier.”
“I’m glad you changed your mind about naming Falon, glad the police have a record of his attacks. This will be a big help if . . . if there are complaints on file against Falon,” Lowe said quietly. His unspoken words If we lose the appeal resonated in silence between them. If we lose the appeal and have to start over . . .
Now, rising from the table, promising Caroline she’d call when they were safely home, she hugged her mother, hugged Nettie, and went to get her car from the garage—leaving Caroline to deal with her own poor, damaged vehicle.
Getting Sammie settled in the front seat with her books, they headed along the rain-sloughed streets for the station. Becky missed Caroline already. Sometimes she felt as needful of mothering as was Sammie. That amused and annoyed her.
At the station she filed a complaint for each offense: the highway assault, the break-in at Anne’s, Falon’s attack on her behind the drugstore, and the break-in at her house in Rome when Sergeant Leonard had refused to make a written report.
Detective Palmer, a thin, dark-haired officer of Cherokee background, asked that Caroline bring in her car. “Will you call her? I want to take paint samples. With luck, I can lift chips from it, left by Falon’s car. And if we pick up his car, we should find scrapes there from Caroline’s vehicle. One more piece of evidence,” Palmer said. “Every small thing counts.”
He stood looking down at her. “The FBI will want to talk with you, as part of the federal investigation on Falon’s land scam. The Atlanta bureau will call you at your aunt’s if you’ll give me the number.”
Becky wrote down both numbers, Anne’s and her private one. She saw no animosity in Palmer, she didn’t think he’d been among the many officers who’d turned against Morgan. She found it comforting that the FBI wanted to question her about Falon; that made her feel more in control. As she and Sammie headed for Atlanta she drove the narrow, rainy highway filled only with positive thoughts, with new hope. She wasn’t in the habit of saying prayers to ask for special favors; such begging was, in her mind, self-serving. Her prayers were more often of thanks, for the many blessings they did have. But last night and now, this morning, she prayed hard that Falon would be found and sent to L.A., that a California judge or jury would convict him for the land scam, that he would be locked up for the maximum time. And that maybe, in prison, someone would kill him. If her prayers were a sin, so be it, that was what he deserved.
It rained all the way to Atlanta, harsh rain slanting across the road in gusts so sharp they rocked the car. They were home at Anne’s just before noon. Mariol had made hot vegetable soup and a plate of cornbread.
“I’m just going to grab a bite,” Becky said, “and go on to work, it’s payroll time.”
Mariol nodded. “Go in the dining room first, take a look at what was in the attic.”
Becky found Anne at the dining table leafing carefully through the pages of a black leather album, a thin folder so ancient and ragged that the disintegrating covers had shed bits of rotting leather onto the white runner.
“Mariol found it,” Anne said. “I’d forgotten about those few boxes we’d stored away. We cleaned out most of the relics a couple of years ago, left a few family papers, this album, and a small trunk of antique clothes. I forgot, but Mariol remembered.”
The faded pictures were all in sepia tones, some of men in coveralls standing by their teams of horses, or women in long dresses over laced-up boots, women with serious, unsmiling faces beneath hand-tucked sunbonnets. Becky touched the old pictures gently, thinking how it would be to live in that time when life was so hard. Raising and canning or curing all your food or going without, doing the laundry over a corrugated washboard, traveling on foot or in a horse-dawn wagon or by horseback, maybe sometimes by train. No telephone to call for the sheriff, if there even was one, only your own firearms and your courage to protect your children.
When Sammie came to stand beside them, Anne said, “This is our family, your family.”
Sammie stood looking as Anne turned the pages, then excitedly she pointed. “Wait. That’s the cowboy. That’s Lee.”
The boy was maybe fourteen. He did look like Lee, the same long bony face, same challenging look in his eyes, even at that young age. Sammie looked up at Becky, her dark eyes deep with pleasure. “I dream of him, Mama, we’re family. Lee’s part of our family.”
Gently Becky touched the picture. All along, was this what Sammie’s dreams had been about?
“Here’s another of the boy,” Anne said, turning the page. “And that’s your great-aunt Mae.”
The woman in the picture was maybe thirty, but Becky could see the resemblance to Sammie. “Mae . . . Mae was Lee’s sister,” she said.
Anne turned back several pages. “Here . . . here’s Mae as a child.” She looked from the picture to Sammie, looked at Becky, but said nothing more. The child was about ten. Becky studied her for a long while, as did Sammie. They were looking at Sammie’s twin, except for Mae’s long, old-fashioned skirt and laced boots. Sammie reached out a hesitant hand, gently touching the faded likeness just as Becky had touched the picture of Lee. Mae’s mirror image of Sammie made Becky shiver. How could any child be so like her own little girl?
She left Anne and Sammie at last, numb with putting the pieces together, with accepting the reality of a family she had never known. Sammie was doing a better job of it, seemed to have accepted it alclass="underline" her great-uncle Lee, stepping out of a formless past; her great-aunt Mae, who had dreamed just as Sammie dreamed.