Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters

by Emily Carpenter

  I stared at the ceiling, waiting for something, I didn’t know what exactly, to overtake me.

  Was it relief? Dismay? A kind of zen understanding that would impart some insight into what was going on? Even with the wine to help, it really was impossible to say. I just felt like I should be able to explain what spending the day in Steadfast Coe’s house had meant to me.

  Combing through the place had been a strange experience, that was for sure. While no divine force had descended like Ember had hoped, no holy pillar of fire directing us to the coin’s location, I’d still felt the place held some kind of special meaning. With every room I entered, every drawer I opened, every loose board I tried to pry up, I’d felt something sharpen inside me. Just a sliver of familiarity. The subtlest knife-edge of a sense that I’d been there before.

  No, not been there.

  Knew the place. Yes, that was it. In an inexplicable way, I was familiar with the patterns of the wallpaper in the upstairs hallway, the weave of the bed hangings and rugs in the upstairs rooms. I expected the musty odor of the basement. The sticky slick of the polished wood banister. The seasick tilt of the oak plank floors under my feet.

  Or maybe it was just my subconscious yearning to understand Dove. To really, finally know the woman who was my grandmother.

  At any rate, one thing I was absolutely sure of was that our motley search party wasn’t going to find the coin. But we’d had to search, that I knew as well. We had to exhaust all of our options.

  Isn’t that the way stories went?

  You exhaust all options and then, in the third act, the miracle.

  I wanted to laugh hysterically. Or cry hysterically. Either would be a relief at the moment, instead of this vague sense of impending doom. But here I lay on Griff’s bed, sipping wine in a not unpleasant haze and watching him futz with the remote control. I was no third-act heroine, figuring out a way to save the day. I was just a person who wanted to protect her family but couldn’t. A failure.

  But God, did it feel nice to be slightly drunk in a hotel room alone with this man. Watching him move, studying the way the muscles in his arms flexed and bunched. The way his hair fell over his eyes. The way his jeans moved with his body as he found a silly movie on cable and then grinned at me.

  I liked pretending that I didn’t have any cares in the world. I liked pretending that my mother wasn’t two thousand miles away, making her way closer and closer to the cliff’s edge in my absence. I liked, I liked, I liked . . .

  He came to the bed in one fluid movement and pushed me down, suspended over me. I reached up to run my fingertips down his cheek and checked the TV.

  “Ah,” I said. “The Fast and the Furious: The Fate of the Furious. The best of the franchise. Directed by the guy who directed Friday and Straight Outta Compton.”

  “Exemplary film knowledge, Eve. I’m impressed.”

  “Pssh. Girls know movies too.” My fingers drifted down one arm. I saw the name Anna again.

  “You know,” he said, “you’ve never asked to listen to those tapes of Dove and Charles, the ones Margaret Luster gave us. If you want, I could cue them up for you.”

  I focused on Griff’s arm. “I’d rather talk about this tattoo. You sure are committed to your ex.”

  “She’s not an ex. She’s family, my great-grandmother. I never knew her, just heard stories from my great-aunts. They said she was a little badass. A survivor.”

  A little lower down, I found another name. I traced the letters. J-O-Y.

  “That’s my Gram. Total sweetheart. Put up with a lot. More than she should have had to. Wound up with kidney cancer for her trouble.”

  “I’m sorry.” I ran my fingers over the next name, Helena. I had a feeling who she was, but I wanted to hear what Griff had to say. This man was more complicated than I’d expected. He paid attention. He saw the people around him and cared deeply about them.

  “My mom,” he said. “She’s smart, tough . . . the worst kind of persistent sometimes. But sweet about it. You never see the storm coming.” He laughed. “Half my life, I wanted to kill her, but ultimately her qualities paid off. She’s the one who convinced me to go to film school.”

  “She sounds great.”

  “Well, she’s a caretaker. All of them were, which is probably why they stuck with their men longer than they should have.”

  I turned my head and studied the nondescript beige polyester curtains.

  “I got the tattoos because I wanted to honor them. And to remember that, for me and whoever I end up with, we’ll be on equal footing. I don’t want one person propping up the other. It’s not healthy. Not what I call love.”

  I gnawed at the inside of my cheek, discomfited. He was pretty much describing my relationship with my mother, stem to stern—and in almost the exact terms Althea had used just moments ago. And they weren’t that far off. I’d spent the last half-dozen-plus years keeping secrets that I was scared might upset my mom. I’d gone to work for a company I didn’t believe in for her. I put my desires and plans on hold so that I could keep tabs on her.

  I’d lost myself.

  “Which reminds me,” he continued, “I have some bad news.”

  I frowned. “Oh, no.”

  “I made the mistake of letting it slip to my parents that I was up here, and they rented a house on the river . . . so they could maybe meet us for dinner or something.”

  Relief washed over me. And then a different kind of feeling. One that felt suspiciously like happiness. Did he consider us together now? We hadn’t had time to talk, and things had moved so quickly.

  “Don’t worry,” Griff said. “I told them it was impossible. That we were too busy with the documentary.”

  I grinned in spite of myself, relief turning into a different feeling altogether. Sure, disaster loomed just around the corner, but Griff wanting me to meet his parents was . . . an interesting twist. Maybe it was the booze, but I felt buoyed by the thought. Which was a welcome change from the constant gut-churning dread I had been experiencing.

  “I’d love to meet them,” I said. “We should go.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “You would? We should?”

  “Why not? Otherwise, I’m just going to be sitting around here, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the end of the world. I might as well keep myself busy.” I tried to wriggle my way up, but he gently pressed against my chest, pushing me back to the bed. But he was smiling.

  “No, Eve. Just rest. You’ll need every ounce of strength for the interrogation. Remember when I interviewed, I told you they followed Dove and Charles’s ministry for years? They’re fans.”

  I laughed. “You told me all this. Your dad was calling you for updates?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Oh, come on, Griff, it’s no big deal. Really. I’m used to it. Why are you so bugged?”

  He sighed. “My dad ran up some debts in my mom’s name. Substantial debts. Anyway, he says it’s all paid off, and Mom says they’re trying to work it out. Which is good, I guess. But part of getting my mom back means he’s got to make nice with me. So, dinner.”

  I patted his arm. “Think of it this way. If we find the coin, we won’t be able to go anyway.”

  “Good point,” he said, looking glum. “Now we’ve really gotta find that coin.”

  I laughed. “But I’d really like to meet your family as well. I would. What are Mr. and Mrs. Murray like? Kind and beautiful and talented, like their son?”

  He smiled. “I’m Murray, remember? They’re Singley. That’s my father’s name. Bobby Singley.”

  The way he said it, he almost seemed ashamed. But I didn’t want that, not at all. I wanted him to know I didn’t judge him by what his father was like. I wanted him—I realized with a jolt—to love me.

  My fingers found his chest and then his stomach. I hooked them in the waistband of his jeans. He got very still. I smiled up at him, suddenly nervous. “It’s good you can choose the name you want. You can be whoever you want, Griff
Murray.”

  He kissed me, lips soft. “Right now? I just want to be the guy who makes love to you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Florence, Alabama

  1934

  When the truck carrying Steadfast’s most valuable possessions rumbled off, Ruth locked every door and window. She double-checked that Steadfast’s pistol was still safely stowed in the ice cave where she’d hidden it the night after Arthur had left, then sat on the edge of her bed.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about poor dead Steadfast, his body wedged into the crevice of the cave. What did he look like now? Had the cold air in the cave slowed the process of decay? Had the skin stayed firm? The organs turned to jelly yet? Maybe he’d never rot, but be preserved forever, his milky eyes always open and staring. The mottled skin of his face forever frozen in a death mask, the last expression on his face when he saw his murderer.

  Maybe this was how a ghost was made. Murder, the body secretly stashed away in a cave. A con to make money for the one who did the deed. Maybe this was what troubled a soul so deeply it could not leave this earth, but stayed, hovering and swirling, infecting the minds of the guilty. He would come back, Ruth thought, to his home, where he’d last been alive. He would find her here and haunt her. And she would go mad, locked up in this house alone. Just her, this black pistol, and a coin hidden inside a door.

  She was woken sometime in the middle of the night by the sound of tapping. She struggled up, bleary and confused. But then she saw Dell’s face appear in the window and he motioned for her to let him in.

  She unlocked the window, and he climbed through, sweating from exertion and the warm spring night. She didn’t wait for an explanation as to where he’d been or why the job in Texas had taken so long. She just pulled him onto the bed and kissed his face all over.

  He kissed her back, his lips and tongue ardent, but he did not touch her like last time. He was being a gentleman this go ’round, trying to do the honorable thing. The strange thing was, she wished he wouldn’t. The one thing she longed for, the very thing she needed tonight, was to lose herself in him.

  He pulled loose from her arms. “I heard your old man went off. That’s bad luck.”

  Her eyes dropped to study his lovely mouth. She didn’t dare tell him what she suspected Arthur of doing and what he planned for Ruth to do at the fair. She had no doubt Dell would find the boy and beat the stuffing right out of him, then and there. And word would get out, putting Ruth herself under suspicion.

  “Yes,” she finally said. “They haven’t found him. They think he might’ve died.”

  “That’s bad news.” He took her hands. “Ruth, I got some bad news of my own. Texas was a bust. The job went sour and two of the boys got caught. They’re on their way to the penitentiary.”

  She went cold. “You got away?”

  He nodded. “But they saw me. One of the cops, I’m pretty sure.”

  She opened her mouth.

  “And a clerk. And maybe a girl on the street outside the bank.”

  “Dell!”

  “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have even come back here—there’s plenty of folks around here who’d be tickled pink to see me locked up—but I couldn’t leave you in the lurch. I had to tell you what happened.” He hesitated. “I ain’t got no money, Ruth.”

  She touched his face, then held it between her hands, drinking in the sight of his beautiful angled cheek, the ruddy skin and golden fuzz that covered it. “I got money,” she said. “Lots of it. As a matter of fact, I’ve got more money in this here room than was in that whole bank in Texas.”

  He bolted upright. She couldn’t help but delight in the sight of him—the way his collar gapped, showing the hollow in his neck and then the rise of his hard chest. The curve of his stomach, his strong legs and what rose between them. What she liked most was the way he looked at her. It was everything wonderful and warm, that mixture of boyish admiration and manly lust.

  “Stop joking,” he said.

  “I’m not joking.” She scrambled out of the bed and over to the door, where she seductively turned the knob and swung open the door. She struck a pose against it, vamping.

  “What? How?”

  “You ever hear of the Hawthorn Sisters?”

  “Sure. I worked a meeting they were at. So many folks they couldn’t fit ’em in the tent, so they stood outside. While they sang “Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus,” I lightened a few folks’ burdens myself—”

  “Dell.” Ruth gave him a wry look. A look she knew he’d understand.

  “Hold up. That was you in that tent singing?” he said.

  She pursed her lips and lifted an eyebrow. He blinked and shook his head like an overgrown puppy, then smiled with delight.

  “I got more than just the money from the Hawthorn Sisters,” Ruth said. “I got something big. Something Mr. Coe gave me. A coin, and it’s worth a whole year’s wages or more.”

  His eyes drifted back up to her face. “Good goddamn gravy.”

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded.

  He hesitated. “It’s just that I heard something about that coin. Some fellas talking in town.”

  She paled. “What? What did they say?”

  “That the coin went missing with old Mr. Coe. That . . . somebody most likely stole it.”

  She frowned. “Who?”

  Dell put his hands in his pockets. “Maybe a vagrant. Maybe the maid.”

  “I didn’t steal it,” she protested hotly. “He gave it to me.”

  “I know. I believe you. But listen. Forget that old coin. I can do another job, better than that one in Texas. I’ll get us situated and we’ll be all set. Besides, the husband is supposed to provide for his wife.”

  She smacked her forehead. “What does it matter who does it? It’s done! He gave me the coin and now we got money and plenty of it.”

  “If we try to sell it, they’ll come after you for stealing, I guarantee it.”

  “We’ll go to Tennessee to sell it. To New York!” She moved back to him and tucked his straw-gold hair behind his ear. “I’ll tell you where I hid it.”

  He put a finger to her lips. “No. Tell me later, after I’ve got us situated. Okay?”

  “Oh, Dell.” She huffed and turned her back to him. He was going to hang on to that silly notion of providing for her all by himself, no matter what she said. Stubborn son of a gun.

  “After I get us set up,” Dell said, “we’ll take your coin and sell it. Put the money away for later. For when we got kids or decide to take off to parts unknown.” He plucked at her nightgown, pulled until she relented and let him take her face in his hands. He kissed her tenderly and looked deeply into her eyes. “I want to take you to parts unknown, Ruthie. I want to see the world with you.”

  She traced a finger along his cheek. “Well, the Hawthorn Sisters got a big show in July. At the fair.”

  He kissed her again. “How’m I gonna wait till July, huh, Ruthie?”

  “I’ll tell you how. Lay low and stay out of trouble. Then come back the last night of the fair. We’ll leave then.”

  The way he stared at her, like she was the cleverest, prettiest girl he’d ever laid eyes on, made her believe it. She was clever and she was pretty, and when she and Dell were together, why, they could handle just about anything this nasty old world threw at them.

  She had another thought too—that there was no reason in the world for Dell to act like a gentleman when they were alone in her tiny room, not if she didn’t want him to. After their first night together, she knew what she wanted. And that was to touch Dell’s skin, to feel his mouth, his hands, and more on her. So why on God’s green earth should she pretend otherwise? As a matter of fact, what reason was there to wait on Dell to get things rolling? She had two hands of her own, didn’t she?

  She gathered up her nightgown, pulled it over her head, and tossed it aside, enjoying the look that came over Dell’s face.

  “Let’s do what we did the other night,” she said
. “But this time, let’s take our time.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Florence, Alabama

  Present

  The next morning, I woke with knots in my stomach. For good reason. It was Monday. Day three. The day the asshole was due to call in his chips.

  If I hadn’t found the coin in roughly—I glanced at the clock radio beside Griff’s bed—twelve hours, the foundation was toast. Mom was in danger of another breakdown and my future was . . . well, it was going to look identical to what I’d been doing for the past eight years.

  At some point today, I was going to have to call Danny. Tell him everything and get him to sign off on the official statement for the foundation for Pam and Martin in the communications department. And then we’d have to call Mom.

  I slipped out between the covers, and felt a hand grab my arm.

  “Come back.”

  His grip was light but insistent. I wanted to. Wanted more than anything to crawl back into bed with Griff and repeat the night over and over again. But I couldn’t. I had work to do.

  “I’ll see you tonight.” I kissed him and tried not to melt into his arms as they circled around me. “Dinner with your parents at six-thirty. Asshole calls around seven-thirty or eight. From there, I guess we just figure it out.”

  “You’re going to survive this. I know it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Griff reluctantly let me go, and I showered, then headed on foot to the library. I spent a couple of hours in the reference room looking for something—anything—regarding Steadfast Coe’s personal coin collection. There wasn’t a single article. I did stumble across the same advertisement Margaret had shown us, the one touting the Hawthorn Sisters’ three-night appearance at the North Alabama State Fair. Once again, I stared at the grainy black-and-white photo of Dove and Bruna holding hands onstage, unable to tear my eyes from the pair.