“I should be going,” she said, covering an involuntary shiver as she slid out of the booth.

Kelly Grace followed, but when Charly glanced over at her, she saw that her friend had her hand clamped over her mouth and that above the hand her eyes were way too bright Somehow Charly knew that the brightness wasn’t laughter.

A new thought and a terrible fear clutched at her heart. She halted, touched Kelly Grace’s arm and said airlessly, “He’s okay, isn’t he? I mean, he didn’t…die or anything?” And tried to laugh, as if it were of no consequence to her one way or the other.

Kelly Grace blinked, then gave a sharp bark of laughter. “The judge? God, no. I guess there was some talk he was goin’ to retire a year or so ago, and I b’lieve he has cut back some. But…no, the judge is still-” she shrugged “-the judge.”

“And Aunt Dobie, is she…?”

“Aunt…you mean miz-” Once again she stopped herself. She swallowed, nodded, and her eyes slid away. “Oh, yeah, she’s still goin’ strong.”

“The Stewarts?” The word caught, and emerged in a croak.

Kelly Grace’s lips twisted in a little half smile of sympathy. “No, hon, they’re gone. Mr. Stewart, he passed on a few years back, and Miz Stewart, she sold the old place and moved down to Mobile to be closer to her grandkids. Becky and Royal-the girls, remember them?-they’re both married and livin’ down there somewheres.”

They were at the door. Charly paused, looked over at the woman, now inexplicably middle-aged, who at the age of sixteen had been her best friend in all the world. Save one. She searched for something to say. But so many emotions were backed up inside her that she couldn’t say anything at all. Kelly Grace seemed to be having the same problem. She wiped away a tear, and they both laughed.

“It was so great seein’ you again.”

“Yeah, you too.”

Sniffling, Kelly Grace said, “Charlene, you come on back here later on, now, y‘hear? After you’ve been to see him. We have catchin’ up to do. You just have to meet my kids… come up and see Mama…”

Charly tried clearing her throat, but the ache there obviously meant to stay awhile. “Oh, Kelly, I wish I could, but I can’t. I have to get back to Atlanta. I just came to…” She made the mistake of looking at Kelly Grace’s face again. She turned away, saying tightly, “You know people in this town aren’t going to be exactly thrilled to see me back. I doubt that’s changed, even after all this time.”

“My Lord, it’s been twenty years!”

Charly drew a breath and let it out in a snort of ironic laughter. “Kelly Grace, fifty years wouldn’t be enough. You haven’t forgotten anything that happened, have you? Don’t kid yourself-neither has anybody else.”

It had been a good many years since Charly Phelps had made a fool of herself in a public place, and here she was, not thirty minutes back in Mourning Spring and trembling on the brink of doing just that. I’ve got to get out of this town, she thought. Do it, get it over with and get out of here. God, I hate this place.

“I’ll stop and see you before I go,” she finally promised, desperate to escape. She gave Kelly Grace a quick hug and pushed her way through the door.

Looking neither right nor left, she hurried across the street. She unlocked the Taurus, got in, started it up, backed out of the parking space and drove off, all without allowing herself to think even once about what she was about to do. She’d conquered skydiving pretty much the same way, come to think of it. And if I did that, she told herself, teeth clenched with determination, I can do anything. I can do this. I can.

Her courage thus bolstered, her resolve fortified, she turned off the courthouse square and onto Hill Street, so named for the residential neighborhood in which it dead-ended. The Hill wasn’t much of a hill, as hills go, but it did lend a kind of exclusivity to the cluster of mansions dating back at least to Reconstruction. A few were even said to have actually survived the Yankee invasion. All the homes on the Hill had the same quiet, if rather stuffy elegance, surrounded by brick and wrought iron and shaded by oaks so huge and old they arched over the street and met in the middle, turning it into a sun-dappled tunnel.

Her destination was the second house from the end, a redbrick Victorian monster with a white-columned portico and black shutters. She turned into the semicircular driveway, shut off the engine and sat for a moment, watching dust motes dance in the afternoon’s last sunlight where it slanted through the trees. The ache in her throat felt like a betrayal.

Oh, God, I hate this place.

She opened the car door and stepped out, then closed it carefully behind her. Had she ever done anything more difficult?

Oh, yes, once. Twenty years ago.

But this was only one step…still so many more to go.

Her heart pounded and her breath came in soft, quick snatches as she mounted the steps between two concrete urns filled with bright red impatiens and yellow day lilies. She crossed the wood plank porch where white wicker armchairs and rockers sat empty, reminiscent of long, hot summer evenings, tall glasses of cold, sweet tea, and lightnin’ bugs blinking on and off in the twilight.

On the doormat she paused, looked down, and from a habit she’d thought long forgotten, carefully wiped her feet. She wiped her hands on the sides of her expensive gray gabardine slacks, wrinkled and creased now from the flight and the long drive from Atlanta. Then she took a deep breath, held it and firmly pressed the doorbell. She could hear the old-fashioned chimes go echoing through the great, high-ceilinged rooms. She bowed her head and waited, counting her own heartbeats.

The door opened without warning, thrown wide to frame the figure of the woman who stood there. She was as straight and regal as in Charly’s memory, though she seemed perhaps a little smaller. Her close-cropped hair, once pepper black with only the lightest sprinkle of salt, was snowy white now, but her mahogany skin was still without a wrinkle, stretched taut over the bones of a face that might have graced the walls of an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb.

Her deep-set eyes seemed equally ancient in that eternally young face, missing nothing. They skewered Charly where she stood, narrowed, then went wide with shock. She lifted her hands, sucked in air and whispered, “Oh, my sweet Jesus…”

It was in no way a blasphemy, but a heartfelt prayer.

Chapter 2

June 10, 1977


Dear Diary,


This is just so unfair! The judge found out about my platform shoes, and did he throw a fit! He says no daughter of his is going to show her face in something so trashy, and besides, I’d probably fall off of them and break an ankle, which is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. They’re not trashy. Everybody’s wearing them but me. Colin even says they’re bitchin’, and he’s got the best taste of anybody I know. The judge says they’re just a fad, and a waste of money, but I bought them with my birthday money, so I don’t see how it’s any of his business!


Thought for the Day: It’s the absolute pits, having a judge for a father.

Charly lifted her hands, tried a smile that didn’t work and finally just said, “Hi.”

“Sweet Jesus…sweet Jesus…” Tears had begun to trickle down the woman’s cheeks.

In about another second they were going to be flooding down Charly’s, too. Desperate not to let that happen, she laughed instead, and said in a shaking voice, “Yes, it’s me, Aunt Dobie. It’s me, Charlene. How are you?”

One hand rose slowly to touch Charly’s cheek. “Charlene Elizabeth… is that you?”

Then the same hand hauled off and smacked her hard on the arm. “That is you! Wicked, wicked girl! Never called, nor wrote…I thought you was dead.”

Trembly with relief, Charly rubbed her arm and said, “Ow!”

Aunt Dobie whacked her again for good measure. “I thought you was dead, and here you stand. Come here and let me look at you. Oh, praise the Lord, praise Jesus. My baby’s come home. My baby’s come home.”

And with that, Charly found herself enveloped in loving arms, familiar arms, and in old, familiar scents-Ivory soap and starched cotton clothes, oil of wintergreen and strong coffee laced with a splash, just a splash, of bourbon whiskey-and in the time and place those scents evoked. Just like that, she was a child again, seeking solace and protection in those same strong arms, while inside, her heart quaked with dread.

Because, of course, she wasn’t a child, and had not been in more than twenty years. And not even Dobrina Ralston, the only mother Charly had ever known, was going to make what she’d come to do easier.

“Aunt Dobie,” she began, “is he…is my…?” But her voice was betraying her. She drew herself up straight and tall to give it support, and with a good strong breath behind it, tried again. “Is he here?”

“He is. Yes, he is,” Dobrina crooned, wiping her face with the big wraparound apron she’d worn for all the years Charly could remember. “You just come in here, child. Come in.”

Dobrina backed up into the house, keeping a good firm grip on the arm she was holding as if she thought Charly might be about to bolt and disappear on her for another twenty years. Once she had the door shut solid behind them, she plunged her hand into an apron pocket and pulled out a tissue. She swiped it hastily across her cheeks and nose and then waved it at Charly.

“Stay here, child, you hear me? Stay right here. Don’t you move a muscle, now. I’ll go fetch the judge.” And off she went toward the back of the house, her flat summer shoes slap-slapping down the long hallway. From far away Charly could still hear her muttering “Praise the Lord!” and “Thank you, Jesus!”