“I said I’m a changed man. I spent every day since getting your letter thinking on who I want to be . . . on what I want. I want to be with you . . . and I want to be with my child. And I am willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.”
He saw it in her eyes, how badly she wanted to believe him.
“I’ve got two thousand dollars cash left over from the car. That’s a good start, Trish. We can head to the coast. You’ve always said you wanted to see the ocean. Right? I’ll get a job, a real job. I promise you that. I hear there’s work to be had out on the trawlers, plenty of it. We can stay with my grandmother until we get on our feet.”
Her eyes were distant now, as though in a dream. Her lips tightened and he saw she was trying not to cry.
“I’m not saying things are going to be perfect, but it’s gotta be better than you staying here with your daddy. Y’know better than anyone that if you don’t get away from that man, he’ll be telling you what to do your whole life. He’ll suffocate you. Trish—”
“He’s making me put our baby up for adoption,” she said, unable to meet his eyes.
“What?”
“Mama, she’s going along with it. They even got Pastor Thomas in on it. They’ve already made arrangements. Some nice couple down in Tuscaloosa.”
“Adoption?” Chet couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Is . . . is that what you want?”
Her eyes flared, then appeared hurt. “No it is not.” She shook her head. “That’s not what I want at all.” She cradled her belly. “It’s my baby.” She wiped at her eyes. “My . . . child.”
Chet pried the screen out, setting it aside, reached through the window, and squeezed Trish’s shoulder. She grabbed his hand, clutching it with surprising force, and stared intensely into his eyes. “Chet. Chet, you look at me.”
He did.
“Swear to me. Swear to me and Jesus Christ, that if I take that ring . . . if I agree to run off with you . . . that from this day on, you’re going to fly right. You’re going be a man, a father. That you’re going to act like one.”
He held her eyes and stated solemnly, “Trish, I love you and I swear I’ll do everything I can, never to let you down again.”
“If you fuck this up . . .” Her grip tightened. “I swear to God you won’t have to worry about my daddy shooting you . . . because I’ll do it.”
He grinned so hard tears welled up in his eyes. “I won’t fuck this up, baby-doll.”
She stared at him another long minute before releasing his hand. “Be right back.” She slid off the bed, crept to the closet, quietly dug out a bag, and began shoveling in clothes and underwear. She stepped into a gypsy skirt, pulled it up under her long T-shirt, plucked up some sandals, and headed for the window. She handed him her bag and he helped her climb down.
“We need to hurry,” Trish, said. “Daddy’s going fishing this morning.”
“Wait,” Chet said, and dropped to one knee, holding his hand out to her. “Need to do this proper.” She bit her lip and placed her hand in his.
He held up the ring and she beamed at him.
“Trish, will you marry me?”
She nodded and he slid the ring on her finger, then stood up and kissed her. She hugged him, hugged him so tight he feared they might hurt the baby. Then she let go, stepped back, and looked at him. “Just remember what I said about shooting you.” But she was smiling, the sweetest smile he’d ever seen.
Something pushed between them. Rufus stood, looking up, tail wagging. Chet gave the dog a pat and picked up Trish’s bag. They started around the porch when a light came on inside the house. They ducked down as a big man walked through the living room in a bathrobe. It was the Judge. He disappeared into the kitchen. Chet let out a breath and they snuck around to the gate.
Trish gave Rufus a pat. “You be a good boy.”
Rufus wagged his tail and gave her a look that said, “I’m always a good boy.”
They closed the gate and hurried down the drive toward the car, Chet watching her the whole way, charmed by the way she held her belly.
“What?” she asked.
He grinned. “You’re beautiful.”
She put a hand up in front of her face. “Stop looking at me. Christ, I’m as big as a blimp and don’t have on a lick of makeup.”
“You’re a beautiful blimp.”
She laughed out loud, clamped a hand over her mouth, then grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He squeezed back.
“And you gotta nice waddle,” he added.
She shook her head. “Why, you’re just on a roll, ain’t you, honey?”
He laughed.
She spotted the car and stopped. “You really did sell the Mustang.”
“Yeah,” he said, dismally. “I really did.”
“Well, I’m glad you did. But damn, Chet. You think you could have found an uglier car?”
He frowned and she laughed and it was music to his ears.
They got to the car and he opened her door.
She clasped his hand and pressed it to her belly. “Feel that?”
He didn’t feel anything, then there, a bump, then another. “Oh, my gosh,” he gasped.
She beamed at him. “Someone’s glad their daddy’s here.”
A vehicle slowed on the road. Chet turned in time to see a truck pull into the Judge’s drive, trapping them in its headlights.
“Shit,” Chet said.
The truck stopped quick, sending a handful of fishing rods rattling about in the bed. Chet made out two men: Larry Wagner, his former high school PE coach, and Tom Wilson, the Judge’s brother. Both men were staring at them.
Tom cut the engine and hopped out, bumping the cap off his bald head in the process. He was a big man like the Judge, thick through the gut, wearing a flannel jacket. “Trish?”
“We need to go,” Trish said to Chet.
“Is that Chet?” Tom called. “Fuck, it is. Boy, you were told to stay away from her.”
Coach got out, reached into the bed, and returned with a tire jack. He cocked back his head and smirked, like he was already reading his name in the paper—all about how he’d saved the Judge’s daughter from being kidnapped by a deranged ex-con. “Go on, have yourself a seat, son. Cause you ain’t going nowhere but back to jail.” There was no mistaking the glee in the man’s voice and Chet understood this wasn’t just about the Judge’s daughter, but about some unfinished business between them. Back in high school, Coach had caught Chet sharing a joint with three other boys in the bathroom. He’d lined them up, giving them each four licks with his notorious two-handed paddle—the one he’d named Biter—and hit them hard enough to lift their feet off the ground. When it came Chet’s turn, Chet, who was all of fifteen at the time, told him to just go ahead and suspend him, because he wasn’t going to take a lick from a man and not give one back. When Coach tried to hit him anyway, Chet slugged him, breaking the man’s nose. Chet ran off from school that day and never came back.
Chet heard the garage door opening back at the house.
“What’s going on?” someone called. It was the Judge.
Trish slid in the car. “Com’on, Chet. Let’s go!” Chet hopped in and Tom started toward them at a run. Trish locked the door just as he grabbed hold of the handle. Chet jammed the key into the ignition and started the engine.
“Trish!” Tom yelled, yanking on the handle. “Come out of there!”
Chet hit the gas and the little car leapt forward with Tom chasing after them, shouting.
Tall pine trees lined the narrow drive and Chet wasn’t sure if he could get past the truck without hitting one or not, but he was going to try. Coach, seeing this, stepped over, blocking their way, clutching the tire iron like he meant business.
Chet didn’t slow down, part of him actually hoping to hit the man, wanting nothing more at that moment than to knock that smirk off that man’s face for good.
“Watch out!” Trish cried.
There came a crack as the tire iron h
it the windshield, then a thud.
Trish screamed, but Chet didn’t slow, slicing past the truck, knocking off his side mirror.
Chet glanced in his rearview, saw no sign of Coach. “Fuck! Did I hit him?”
Trish was looking back. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Chet pulled out onto the highway, tires screeching, floored it, and the little Pinto shot down the road.
CHAPTER 2
MORAN ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA
A sandy one-lane road led them to a wooden, weather-beaten bridge. Chet stopped the station wagon, amazed the clunker had made it. Shortly after leaving Jasper they’d ditched the Pinto, swapping it out for an old station wagon he’d spotted behind a church. Chet had jammed a screwdriver into the ignition to get it started, and a minute later they were on their way, driving almost nonstop across Georgia and South Carolina, all the way to the coast. He’d thought for sure the Judge would’ve had the whole state out looking for them, but they’d stuck to the back roads and the few cops they’d passed must not have been on the lookout for an old wagon. Finally, after several wrong turns and dead ends, they found themselves staring at this bridge.
Chet allowed himself a moment to just sit and feel the late afternoon sun pour through the windshield, warming his face. He let the smell of the pluff mud take him back to his childhood as he watched the Spanish moss and marsh grass swaying in the breeze.
“We’re here?” Trish asked.
Chet couldn’t see the house, not through all the trees, but he knew it was the right place. His grandmother’s voice called to him like a beacon, almost a song, growing steadily stronger as the distance narrowed. He nodded. “Yeah, Moran Island.” He hadn’t remembered it being so far from the highway, so far from everything, really. The last houses they’d passed were a few tin-roofed shanties a couple of miles back.
“I think you’re right,” Trish said.
“How’s that?”
“No one’s gonna find us way out here.”
“They shouldn’t. No one knows about this place, not back in Alabama, not anymore.”
Trish pointed to three small scarecrows tied to the bridge post. “You wanna tell me what those are?” They were made of sticks, bones, and Spanish moss, with chicken claws tied to them with wire. A small skull sat atop one, possibly that of a possum or cat. A reddish oily substance stained the dirt and wood across both ends of the bridge.
“Like I said, she’s a witch.”
“You mean she’s really a witch?”
Chet shrugged. “According to my aunt Abigail. That’s why she never let me come out here. Of course she never let me play Zeppelin or the Stones either. Wouldn’t put up with that devil music, not in her house.” Chet smirked. “Crazy seems to run on all sides of my family.”
“When was the last time you saw her then?”
“My grandma?”
“Yeah.”
“We buried my mother here when she died, I think I was seven. That was the only time I got to meet my grandma. But I’ll say this, she made a heck of an impression. So did this place. Just got into my bones, y’know. Always wanted to come back . . . wanted to stay with her. But my great-aunt, my grandfather’s sister, she got custody.” Chet shook his head. “I actually ran away once . . . trying to get back here.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I was only eight or nine. It was before we moved to Jasper, but even back then I wanted to get away from all my aunt’s Jesus preaching.” Chet let out a small laugh. “Made it twenty miles on my little Schwinn before a trooper brought me back.”
“So you haven’t seen her since you were seven?”
“No.”
“Well when was the last time you talked to her?”
Chet shrugged.
“Chet, she does know we’re coming?”
She knows, he thought. I can feel it. But he didn’t say that, because there wasn’t any way to explain that even though he’d not received a single letter or phone call from his grandmother, he still felt like she’d been with him for all these years. “I think so.”
“You think so?”
“It’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
She looked at the twisted totems again. “Ah, Chet . . . I don’t know.”
He smiled and pulled slowly onto the narrow bridge. A wide, lazy creek flowed a good twenty feet below. Trish tightened her seat belt and winced, cupping her hand. She’d cut her palm climbing over some old barbed wire when they were stealing the wagon, leaving a nasty gash.
“We need to get that cleaned up as soon as we can,” Chet said. “You’ll get tetanus or something.”
“Just get me across this bridge alive, then we can worry about it.”
He continued forward and the whole structure creaked and shuttered, the boards popping as they crossed. They made it over and continued through the woods along the winding two-rut sandy road, passed the old rice fields and up a gentle sloping hill. Chet slowed down when they came into a clearing. Up ahead, at the top of the hill, a two-story antebellum sat among a grove of giant oaks. The house needed paint, but other than that it appeared exactly how he’d remembered it, the way it looked when his dreams took him here.
“Hey,” Trish said, pointing across the field. “Is that where your mother’s buried?”
Chet spotted several neglected gravestones sticking up from of the tall grass. “Yeah, that’s it. I believe all my family’s buried there. All the way back to when they first settled here. Late seventeen hundreds sometime.” Movement caught his eye—flittering shadows within the dark woods behind the cemetery. “Chet.” A whisper on the wind. A sense of vertigo hit him, then dread, like a lead weight in his stomach. Chet stopped the car.
“What’s wrong?” Trish touched his arm, when she did, the dread faded. “Baby, you okay?”
“Yeah . . . I’m fine. Thought I saw a ghost. That’s all.”
“You look like you saw a ghost.” She grinned, then frowned. “You are kidding, right?”
Chet shrugged. “Maybe. From what I hear, there’s supposed to be plenty of spooks haunting this old place.”
She scanned the cemetery. “Well, wouldn’t that be something? Y’know, to see a real-life ghost.”
“That would be something.” Chet let off the brake and headed toward the big house.
They parked in the circular drive, got out. The grounds were overgrown, but the path to the big porch had recently been trimmed back. They were about to head up the steps when Trish halted. “Look, what’s that all about?” She pointed to several strings of colorful tattered yarn twisting together, weaving through the porch posts and across the steps. Tiny silver bells dangled here and there along the string. The yarn disappeared around each side of the house. “That’s kinda odd.”
Chet shrugged. “You’re gonna find plenty of odd around here.”
They stepped over the string and started up the steps. The door opened. Chet made out a thin figure behind the screen door.
“Hello, Chet,” came a soft familiar voice.
“Grandma?”
She pushed the screen open and stepped out onto the porch. She looked just as he’d remembered her: an elegant woman with flowing snow-white hair cascading down her shoulders and back. She clutched a simple black cane and wore a plain white cotton dress, no jewelry or makeup, her skin, lips, and eyes all of the same paleness. A dime-size circular scar stood out prominently on her right temple. Chet remembered staring at it as a child. She’d told him then that it was a bullet hole, sounding quite proud of it. She set her silvery eyes on him, kindly eyes with a hint of sadness. Chet felt all of six years old again, wanting nothing more than to be smothered in her arms. And as though reading him, she opened her arms. “Chet, welcome home.”
He embraced her and a wave of warmth coursed through him. Never had he felt so light, not even as a child. Why, he wondered, why did I wait so long?
She released him, looked past him to Trish.
“Grandma, this is Trish.”
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Trish stepped forward, extended her hand. “Hi, Mrs. Moran. It’s good to meet you.”
“Please, child, call me Lamia.” Her voice still held a slight accent. Chet recalled she was originally from somewhere in Eastern Europe—Romania or Hungary maybe. Lamia’s eyes fell to Trish’s pregnant belly; her face lit up. “So, it seems I’ll live to be a great-grandmother after all. Come here, child,” she said, taking Trish’s hand, pulling her forward and embracing her.
Lamia released Trish, stepped back, looking them both over. “It does my old heart such good to have you two here. Please, come inside.”
She led them in and down the long central hallway, her cane thumping along with each swing of her lame leg. Despite the limp, she still held herself tall and straight, as though in defiance of her impairment. Chet glanced in each room as they passed, the rooms were mostly barren, only the occasional chair or end table, the old wall paper peeling in places, some of the plaster crumbling, laying in heaps on the floor.
They came to a bathroom and Trish stopped.
“Mrs. Moran . . .”
“Please, girl, it’s Lamia.”
“Lamia,” Trish said, urgently. “May I?”
“Ah, of course.”
Trish ducked inside.
Lamia and Chet strolled a little farther down the hall. Chet felt her eyes on him, studying him. He had so many questions, things he’d wanted to ask her for years, but here, in her presence, he found himself all but unable to speak.
“Go on,” she said. “Ask.”
“Huh?”
“I know you have questions.”
Yeah, he thought, plenty, about his mother, his father, but what he most wanted to know about was the voice, her voice, the one he’d heard, or felt, over all these years. Had that been real? He just didn’t know how to ask such a thing.
“You’re wondering how I spoke to you.” It wasn’t a question.
He met her eyes. “It was real then . . . is real? You reaching out to me. Not just something in my head?”
“Part of me has always been with you, Chet. In your heart . . . in your blood.”
“But it was more than that.”