I nod. For once in my life, Mama and I are in full agreement.
A knock on the front door breaks the growing tension. Mama stays in the kitchen, tidying up, and I go to see who it is. When I open the door, Bee is standing on the porch.
“What are you doing here?” I say, surprised to see her.
“I brought banana bread.” She holds up the basket that looks like her mother packed it. Like me, Bee is not much of a cook, but her mother is. “I was worried,” she adds in a whisper.
Bee is dressed in her Sunday best, even though it’s only Saturday. I forgot how concerned she must have been, not hearing from me last night, but I was certain she would already be in bed by the time Lily and I got back to the house. I was also too tired to go back to the mill or to Daniel and Jo’s to use the phone.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” I say to her.
“Are we okay?” Her eyes don’t leave mine.
Mama steps up behind me and Bee beams a smile at her.
“Anybody in the mood for banana bread?” Her eyebrows raise with the question.
Mama invites her inside and tells me to go get dressed. Greeting guests in a housecoat and slippers is never encouraged. Granny leads Bee into the warm kitchen, and I go into the bedroom to change. Lily is sleeping, her head covered to shield her from the morning sun making its way into the room.
I get dressed, run a brush through my hair and pull it back with a rubber band. When I glance into the small round mirror on the wall by the door, I practice a smile, even though I don’t feel like smiling.
When I go back to the kitchen, Mama has put on a fresh pot of coffee and is just unwrapping the basket with the banana bread inside. She makes the noises she only makes for company, telling Bee how sweet she is to bring banana bread by. Mama can be practically friendly sometimes, and not just at church. Perhaps Bee has encouraged her by wearing church clothes to the house.
After filling coffee cups, Mama returns to the table where Bee and I sit. I feel jittery after all the coffee I’ve had, not to mention the secret sitting here in the kitchen between us.
“Banana bread is my favorite,” I say to Bee, as if this is something she doesn’t know.
“I remembered that,” Bee answers.
At that moment, we act like acquaintances instead of what we really are. At least Lily knows now, and is reaching toward acceptance, thanks to Crow. When I try to imagine Mama’s reaction if she knew our secret, all I can see is a shotgun pointing toward Bee. I shut down my imagination before she has time to pull the trigger. Whatever the scenario, I can’t imagine it would be good.
“Did Louisa May tell you about the stranger who came to visit us two days ago?” Mama asks Bee. Whenever Mama calls me by my given name, I wonder if I’m in trouble. When I was younger, I wished sometimes that Jane Eyre had been her favorite book, instead of Little Women, since Charlotte is a much more glamorous name than Louisa May. At least to me.
“Lou—isa did tell me,” Bee says, with an awkward glance in my direction. When we are alone together, Bee calls me Lou, and it isn’t like her to slip and call me that in front of someone.
“That Melody woman stood there in the front yard as brazen as a hussy,” Mama says. Calling someone hussy is as mean as Mama gets in front of company.
“I remember her brother Johnny. I went to school with him,” Bee says. “We were in the same grade.”
I turn to look at her. “I’d forgotten about that,” I say, which is true. Somehow, I always think of Bee teaching school, not being taught.
Mama mumbles something under her breath about Johnny that I decide to let drop.
Bee glances at me periodically to determine if we are okay, and I try to reassure her with a glance that everything is fine. Though I’m convinced nothing will be fine until Melody Monroe leaves Katy’s Ridge for good.
A railroad of secrets chugs along underneath all the polite conversation, while the three of us enjoy the banana bread. We are only one secret away from Mama throwing Bee out of her house, and probably me along with her. If I liked drama, this might be exciting. But as it is, I’m trying not to choke on the banana bread.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Lily
Voices wake me, and I try to decipher who is here. The smell of banana bread propels me to get dressed. When I enter the kitchen, I expect to see Great Aunt Sadie, who often brings over whatever she’s made that day, but instead I find Miss Blackstone sitting at our kitchen table.
Seeing her reminds me of the kiss and a grumpiness descends like the fog that is just now rising along the river valley. Talking to Crow last night helped with the situation, but I didn’t anticipate how I would feel seeing the two of them together again.
I greet Miss Blackstone, sounding less than thrilled, and Granny sends me a look that reminds me to respect my elders. I offer a ‘sorry’ as I sit at the table. This is more than I wanted to face this morning, especially after so little sleep.
While I take a piece of banana bread, I push away the scene that replays of Mama and Miss Blackstone in the mill office. I wonder if a person can wash out their eyes with soap to clean away something they’ve seen. Mama looks like she’s seeing inside my thoughts and isn’t pleased. I try to remember how happy she looked when she and Miss Blackstone were together, but this does little to soften my mood.
Mama and Miss Blackstone exchange cautious looks, like they’re afraid I’ll tell Granny their secret. But I have no desire to see World War III erupt right in the middle of the kitchen.
The conversation steers toward safe things. Mama and Miss Blackstone glance at me like they’ve known me my whole life, but I’ve all of a sudden become a stranger. While I’ve seen them together hundreds of times, I’ve never given it a thought. But now I’m remembering everything. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons they’d read together in the living room. Other times they’d go into Rocky Bluff together on a Saturday to see a movie or to run errands. Mama would often be invited over to Miss Blackstone’s house for supper, and she wouldn’t get home until after I’d fallen asleep. Later she’d say they’d played a long game of Scrabble that Mama won. She’d even throw in the words she won with like zenith or cosmos. Maybe if I’d had Mama’s secret sense, I would have known about them a long time ago.
After finishing her coffee, Miss Blackstone announces that she’d best be getting home. Mama stands, almost too eager to walk her to the door.
I need to talk to Pearl and wish for the thousandth time we had a telephone. I want to tell her I know about Mama and Miss Blackstone and ask her how she managed to keep it a secret.
After they leave, Granny wipes her hands on a dishtowel and then stands staring at me, her hands on her hips. She’s caught me lingering again, and I wonder if it’s too late to make a quick exit.
“You’ve been different since that Melody woman showed up,” she says.
“Have I?” I say, surprised she noticed.
“You’d best stay away from her, Lily. That whole family is bad news. The Lord would be smart to smite the whole bunch of them.”
“But I’ve already talked to her,” I say.
“You what?” Granny’s voice gets as big as her eyes. “Why in God’s name did you do that?”
“Because I wanted answers,” I say.
“Damn it, Lily McAllister, why do you and your mama always go looking for trouble?”
Until this moment, I had never heard my grandmother say a cuss word. Not once. And for some reason it gives me permission to say what I really want to say.
“Is it true?” I ask. “Is Johnny Monroe my father?” My question surprises even me. It’s the one I’d intended to ask Mama yesterday, before I saw what I wasn’t supposed to see.
Granny’s lips form a thin line in the sand, daring me to cross.
“Is it true?” I ask again, knowing I’m crossing the line.
She takes a wooden spoon from beside the stove and uses it to point at me. I get a sense of what it must have been like f
or Melody to stare down Granny’s shotgun. Then Granny’s eyes get watery like she might cry and the answer suddenly scares me even though I haven’t heard it yet.
“He hurt your mama,” she begins. I expect her loud voice, but the words come out soft. Somehow this feels even more dangerous. “Johnny Monroe doesn’t deserve to be your daddy.”
I swallow hard. When I look up, Mama is standing in the kitchen doorway.
“What’s going on in here?” she asks.
“Lily and I were just talking,” Granny says.
Mama looks at me like she’s wondering if I told Granny about Miss Blackstone.
I shake my head, no.
Granny puts her wooden spoon back on the stove and then goes over and starts to scrub the sink like she’s trying to scrub her memories clean.
Granny’s words soak into me: He didn’t deserve to be my daddy. He hurt Mama. More clues to the mystery of who my father was. The blank chalkboard of my past is filling up with words. Words I never expected to see written there: Mean as a snake. Dropped out of school. Hurt Mama bad.
Meanwhile, in fourteen years of life, I’ve never felt so lost. I cross my arms in front of my chest and think about how Mama is all of a sudden a stranger to me. Is anybody as they seem? Maybe everybody in Katy’s Ridge is just walking around pretending they are somebody they’re not. All these years I’ve imagined my father was a good man. But it seems I was wrong. Dead wrong.
Another knock on the door causes everyone to jump.
“This place is becoming busy as a beehive,” Granny announces, not hiding her irritation. “Lily, see who that is,” she says. “Maybe somebody’s brought sausages to go with the banana bread.” She looks toward the ceiling as though God is getting special pleasure in irritating her, and then she starts to make more coffee. I go to the front door and open it.
At first I think it’s a stranger, but then realize it is Crow wearing his uniform. It’s the first time in my life I feel like swooning from the beauty of someone. But then I remember he has no ambition other than to live in Katy’s Ridge after he does his time in the military.
“What are you doing here?” I say.
“I wanted to make sure you got home all right,” Crow says.
Crow isn’t like his nickname, except for the blackness of his hair. Real crows are mischief makers and hang out in groups. Their squawks and calls get the attention of anybody around. Crow, however, is soft-spoken, and the tone of his voice is low, like Johnny Cash, who debuted on the Grand Ole Opry last summer right around my birthday. Granny and I listened to him on the radio.
“I made it home just fine,” I say, not mentioning how hell broke loose when I did.
“I’m glad,” he says, with a smile that adds to the potential swooning. “I just passed Bee on the road,” he adds.
“She brought banana bread,” I say. “Would you like a slice?”
He says he would and then follows me inside.
As we walk together, I catch a whiff of Old Spice aftershave. I know the smell because Pearl bought a bottle at the drugstore in Rocky Bluff for her dad at Christmas with the money she’d saved from babysitting. That same trip she bought herself a lipstick called Cherries in the Snow, even though her mother doesn’t let her wear lipstick, and it stays hidden in the bottom of her dresser drawer.
In the kitchen, Mama and Granny greet Crow, and Granny goes on and on about how handsome he looks in his uniform. She pours him a cup of coffee and then gets him a plate to put his banana bread on. When he joins us at the table, Mama asks him questions about the Army.
Every now and again, Crow glances at me like he’s remembering us sitting alone in the dark next to the mountain stream just a few hours before. At the same time, I pretend I’m not disappointed that he’ll never leave Katy’s Ridge. Maybe Granny is right about Melody Monroe being bad news. Trouble started as soon as she came back to Katy’s Ridge. I remember her staggering off into the darkness last night, and hope she made it home all right, too.
While Crow eats his second piece of banana bread, Granny excuses herself and goes into the living room. She brings back a gold picture frame Aunt Meg gave Granny from Woolworths, with a photograph inside of my Uncle Nathan holding me while wearing his Army uniform.
“Our Nathan didn’t come back,” Granny says, her voice shaking a little. “But I want you to promise me that you will.”
Crow promises, and looks over at me like I’m one of the reasons he might make such a promise. A lump of new emotion catches in my throat. He glances at his watch and apologizes that he has to leave. He thanks Granny for the banana bread and coffee, and I walk him to the door just like Mama did Miss Blackstone.
“I enjoyed spending time with you last night,” he says on the front porch, looking about as sleepy as I feel.
“I enjoyed it, too,” I say.
“Is it okay if I write to you?” he asks. “I mean if you don’t want me to, that’s fine, too.” He looks at his shoes, something he seems to do when at a loss.
“I’d like that,” I say, and wonder if I might be persuaded to stay in Katy’s Ridge after all.
He hesitates again.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks.
“That would be nice,” I say, feeling about as awkward as a mule on roller skates.
When Crow leans in, I have to resist backing up. But then I follow his lead. He closes his eyes, and I do, too. His lips feel soft and warm at the same time. A tingle shoots through my body like a small electrical charge that’s looking for a place to ground itself.
The kiss ends, and I thank him like he’s just given me a gift. He thanks me back, and then we laugh. It seems I’m not the only one wearing roller skates. Then the events from the day before push their way into my thoughts and I almost scream my frustration at remembering Mama and Miss Blackstone’s kiss, too.
“I guess I’d better go,” he says. “My dad is waiting at the bottom of the hill to take me to the bus station.”
We look at each other, and I feel like I’m in one of Aunt Meg’s romance novels, where the two main characters are trying to memorize each other’s faces before they part.
“Stay safe,” I say, not wanting him to go.
He smiles again and gives me a little salute before taking off down the hill. After I lose sight of him, I touch my lips, remembering our kiss. But before I have time to go back into the house, a third visitor walks up the path.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Wildflower
Lily calls me from the front door, her voice sounding desperate. I rush to the porch to see Melody Monroe weaving in the yard, sipping a familiar clear liquid from a ball jar. The past flares my nostrils as I remember the smell of corn liquor, and Melody’s brother, Johnny, drinking from a similar jar.
After the morning I’ve had, I’m not sure I can take much more drama. It doesn’t help that I’ve barely slept and have drunk enough coffee to keep a coal miner awake.
“She’s drunk,” Lily whispers, as if I haven’t noticed.
Melody nods her head in an exaggerated way to confirm the situation. She can barely stand.
“I thought you were going to come visit me today,” Melody says to Lily, her speech slurring.
I step to the front edge of the porch to discourage Melody from coming any closer.
“Were you supposed to visit her?” I ask Lily.
“I don’t think so,” Lily says.
Melody’s shoes and clothes are still muddy, and I wonder if she has soap up at that old cabin.
“Why are you lying like that, girl?” Melody yells to Lily. “Of course you said you’d visit. You said it last night when we heard the whispers.”
“Last night?” I say, looking at Lily.
“She was standing by the road,” Lily says to me. “At the start of the path that goes to the cemetery. I didn’t say anything about visiting her today.”
“Chip off the old block,” Melody says to Lily. “Your daddy was quite the liar, too.”
M
y hackles raise. “I have a mind to slap you from here to Sunday,” I call out to Melody.
She laughs as though that’s been tried before. Yesterday, she was friendly. I don’t understand why she’s being so different now, except that the liquor has changed her.
Melody’s hair hasn’t been combed today, and even from twenty paces I can smell the alcohol. She is wearing a different dress, her arms and legs exposed on this late October day. Her thinness reminds me of the photographs in the newspapers when the Americans liberated the concentration camps in the last war. It is easy to imagine the skeleton underneath. The mother in me wonders if she’s had anything to eat today. Should I offer her some of Bee’s banana bread?
The screen door slams behind me, and Mama joins us with Daddy’s shotgun again.
“What’s with you people and shotguns?” Melody asks, attempting to focus on the current danger.
“You best be getting home,” I say to Melody.
“You best be watching yourself,” Melody says.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“I came to help you,” she says. “The rumor mill has started up and the story isn’t good.” Melody’s words slip and slide like a car on icy mountain roads.
“I’m not worried about rumor mills,” I say.
“Well, you should be,” she says, with a drunken wink.
Mama and her gun take a step closer. “What’s she saying, Louisa May? I can’t hear.”
“It’s nothing, Mama,” I call to her.
“That’s probably smart,” Melody says, keeping her voice low. “You wouldn’t want your mama to hear about this. It would probably break her heart.”
I narrow my eyes at her, wondering what she thinks she’s protecting me from. “I’m not interested in the gossip on the party lines, Melody.”
“Oh, you’ll be interested in this,” she says with a grin. “It’s about your fondness for a certain teacher who lives here in Katy’s Ridge.”
I take a step back and glance at Mama on the porch, who asks again what’s being said.
“You want me to speak up, Mrs. McAllister?” Melody raises her voice. “I was just telling your daughter here about—”
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