Burying the Honeysuckle Girls (21 page)

Vonnie gazed into Dove’s eyes. “I didn’t want no baby.” She flicked a look at Jinn. “But I changed my mind. I don’t think it matters how it got here, do you?”

Jinn shook her head.

“I think it’d be nice to have a little girl.”

“Well, God willing, it’s gonna take, and you’re gonna have yourself one,” Dove said. “I’ll do my best. But I ain’t the one in charge.”

Her hand rested right next to Jinn’s on Vonnie’s stomach, which was trembling slightly and hot as an oven. In fact, there seemed to be waves of heat radiating from where Dove sat on the bed. She began to speak in low tones, words Jinn couldn’t make out, and Jinn felt herself sway as the walls of the cabin fell away and light pierced her skin and bones. She felt herself floating in space, buoyed by the music of Dove’s words and the heat and the light.

Then she felt a rush of heat jolt through her and tingle down her arms and legs. Her scalp prickled and goose bumps raised on her arms. She opened her eyes. Vonnie’s face was relaxed now, and she’d unfurled, stretching into the quilt. The handkerchief lay beside her. Jinn recognized the fine embroidery and the initials stitched with a fine, gold thread.
VA.
Vernon Alford.

She swallowed, then turned away to find Dove. The other woman’s eyes had gone glassy.

“Did it work?” Jinn whispered.

Dove slid off the bed and smoothed her hair. “I’d say yes.”

Jinn scrambled up. “But, what if she—”

“We’ve done our part.” She leaned to Vonnie and whispered into her ear. Then she turned back to Jinn. “Time to scat.”

“What did you say to her?”

“I told her not to say the daddy’s name. Not for nothing.”

For the second time that night, Dove took Jinn’s hand, but this time, Jinn gripped it just as tightly in return. Other than little Collie, no one had held her hand in such a long time, and it just about filled her to overflowing. Made her want to shout out loud.

Mr. Tippett stood when they came out on the porch, but Dove didn’t even say good night. The two of them breezed right past him and tripped, hand in hand, down the front steps and onto the muddy, stump-spotted slope below.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Friday, September 28, 2012

Tuscaloosa, Alabama

The next morning, a giant, mustachioed orderly stuck his head in my room.

“Visitor in the community room,” he said.

I stopped in the doorway when I saw Jay. He was standing with his back to me, wearing khakis and a crisp blue button-down. His hair was wet, his hands in his pockets.

A couple of patients played that infuriating Hungry Hippo game on the other side of the room, banging on the levers like a bunch of toddlers. The sound clacked through the room, giving me a headache. Jay’s attention was fastened on one of the pissers in the corner under the TV, an elderly lady named Melva, who’d done her business, then leaned over the armrest of her wheelchair to observe the yellow lake pooling under her chair.

I stared at the back of his head, mesmerized by the swoops of honey-colored hair, grooved by the teeth of a comb. It was a marvel of sculptural perfection.

Will the baby have his hair?

Will we ever make love again?

Is he still working with Wynn?

“Visiting hours end at eight,” the nurse said behind me, and Jay turned. His eyes lit up—brown, warm—and I resisted the urge to run straight into his arms. Bury my face in his chest, breathe the scent of him in. Confess I loved him and wanted to be with him forever.

“Hey,” I said.

His face was open, his eyes gentle as always. I could see his pulse throbbing in his neck. I wanted to press my lips against the spot. Or punch him, really hard.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

Forget the pleasantries,
I thought.
Just rip off the bandage.

“Your car’s gone,” I said. “They impounded it.”

“What is it with you and my car?” He flashed a smile, but I didn’t return it. “Don’t worry about it. I got my mom’s.”

“Okay. Well, sorry, anyway. Again.”

He ran a nervous hand through his hair.

“I didn’t think you would see me,” he said. “But the woman who called—Beth—she promised me you would.”

“What else did she say?”

“Just that I should come as soon as I could.”

I tried to focus on breathing. Staying upright. I had work to do.

“We should sit,” he said.

“I’ll stand.”

He was looking at the purple-yellow bruise that stretched all the way to my chin.

“What happened?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

He frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Wynn did it.”

His eyes widened.

“What? He didn’t tell you? He doesn’t tell his stooges every move he’s making?”

He reddened. “Just tell me what happened.”

“I was on my way to see Terri and Traci Wooten. Apparently, Rowe was following me and handed me over to Wynn. Who took me to Old Pritchard, up to one of the rooms. He forced me to take a bottle of pills.”

“I’ll kill him,” he said between clenched teeth. “I’ll kill both of them.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but they wouldn’t have found me if it hadn’t been for you. So, you know, fuck you.”

He was staring at me with that guilty-as-hell look on his face. A duplicate of the one I’d seen as I’d driven away from him and Wynn and the restaurant.

“I didn’t tell them where you were,” he said. “Not Wynn. And not Rowe, I swear. I didn’t even know where you were.”

“Not even with the car’s remote access thing?”

“No.”

“But you set me up at the restaurant in Birmingham.”

“Yes . . .”

“You told Wynn I was going to be there.”

“Wynn said he wanted to help you, and I believed him. I was an idiot. I didn’t know what he was planning, and I knew I’d made a mistake the minute I saw your face. So I left it alone. I left you alone. Wynn and Rowe tracked you on their own.”

I felt words, sentences, and paragraphs multiplying so fast I thought they might geyser up my throat and out of my mouth before I could stop them. But I couldn’t let that happen; I had to be careful. Smart.

“Tell me something,” I said.

“Anything.”

I cleared my throat. “Why did you come find me that night in the clearing . . . at my father’s party?”

He flushed again, and I felt a stab of fear in my chest.

“He said you could use a friend.”

“Who said?”

“Wynn.” His face had gone from pink to deep red. “He asked me to hang out with you. Keep your mind off your dad’s health . . . and all the other stuff you’d been through in the past year.”

“In exchange for what?”

He was quiet.

“What, Jay?”

“A job. Later, after he got elected.”

“Fuck you.”

“I told him no, Althea.” He looked down at his clasped hands. “I told him I didn’t need anything to spend time with you. I wanted to do it.”

I barely suppressed an eye roll.

His flush had faded, and he was looking at me with an intensity that unsettled me. “You have to believe me, Althea. It was good, being with you, really good. It made me happy. Made me want to sort out my shit. But it was selfish, in a way. I see that now, and I’m sorry.”

“You knew what he was planning. You knew he wanted to lock me up when you got him to meet you at the restaurant.”

“I know, I know. But he kept calling me, Althea, the whole time we were together, swearing he wanted to help you. He said he wanted to look after you. I didn’t buy it, not completely, but I thought I could get him to back off. I was going to make him a deal at the restaurant. Offer him a campaign contribution and maybe convince him to let me take you away somewhere. I didn’t know who I was dealing with. I didn’t see the truth—that he wanted to hurt you, really hurt you. That you were the sane one, and he was the crazy one.”

“And you couldn’t share this plan with me?”

“If I had told you what I was going to do, that Wynn had asked me to hang out with you and that I was going to bargain with him, you’d have been gone in a shot.”

“Maybe not.”

Jay gave me a look that said he knew I was lying.

“Why couldn’t you have just told me the truth?” I said.

He swallowed. “At the party he told me I was the only person who could get through to you. That I was somebody from your past who had never hurt you. I didn’t want to mess that up. I was worried about you. He said you were sick.”

“I
am
sick. The drugs, the drinking, what happened to my mother . . . Everything made me crazy. I’ve been seeing things for years, did you know that? Gold on my hands. Red birds . . .” My voice trailed off.

His brow furrowed.

“It’s this thing . . . ,” I said. “This thing I can’t quite shake. I wanted to believe it was the drugs, but it still happens sometimes. I see crazy shit.”

“Stress can do weird things.”

“Make you see the exact same crazy shit, over and over again, for twenty-five years?”

He was quiet for a really long time.

“I’m pregnant,” I finally said into the silence. His mouth dropped open. I spoke again, in a louder voice. “I’m going to have a baby.”

It was the first time I had said it out loud.

I was going to be a mother. The mother of his child.

I waited, steeling myself for the disappointment, the moment when he backed away. I kept my face neutral. It wouldn’t surprise me if, overwhelmed with the bomb I’d just dropped, Jay got up and walked right out of the building.

“I’m sorry, I’m . . .” He passed his hand over his mouth. “You’re . . .”

“What?” I rested both hands on my stomach, as if I could shield the baby from what Jay was going to say.

“It’s a surprise,” he said. “That’s all. I guess . . . I guess, congratulations to you.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said slowly. “Congratulations to you too.”

His eyes widened, then he thumbed at his nose a few times, sniffed, and looked up at the ceiling.

“Jay?”

He didn’t answer me.

“Jay, say something.”

His eyes dropped down and locked on mine. He looked scared, entirely freaked out, in fact, and my heart quickened.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

I nodded. “Absolutely. Without a doubt. The baby is yours.”

He nodded. Sniffed some more. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

“So,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

I heaved a sigh. Closed my eyes.

“How are you feeling . . . about all of it?” he said.

“I don’t know what I am, exactly. Wynn gave me pills,” I said. “A lot of them.”

“Don’t think about that right now,” he said. “It’s going to be fine.”

I thought suddenly what a good father he’d be. Steady. Reassuring. If I let him back into my life. Forgave him for working with Wynn.

I had two days until my birthday. Two days. Was I willing to face my thirtieth birthday alone? Without Jay? I thought of waking up, smothered in a cloud of schizophrenia. Out of my mind, maybe even to the point of being suicidal. Or being tracked down by the honeysuckle girl, right here at Pritchard, confronted with some horrific reality or evil mountain spell or whatever she had that pushed Trix and Collie over the edge.

I had no idea what to expect, not even this late in the game. And now there was a baby in the mix. I didn’t want to go into this alone, but I didn’t know if Jay could be trusted. I was clear on one thing, though.

“If something happens to me,” I said, “you have to take care of her. Promise me that, okay?”

“Her?”

“Promise me. You’ll take care of her, no matter what.”

“I promise, Althea,” he said. “Nothing will happen to her. Or you. I’m going to look after you too. If you’ll let me.”

I sighed. “I don’t know, Jay. I just don’t know.”

“Okay. Fair enough.”

He picked up my hand and put it over his. Then flipped his up to grasp mine. I felt the warmth of his skin, the pressure of his fingers, and something else: a folded piece of paper pressed between our palms.

“You don’t have to believe me,” he said. “Or even love me.”

I curled my fingers around the paper.

He leaned forward. Whispered in my ear. “You can just use me for my day pass.”

Forty-five minutes later, we were at the Wootens’ house, but, just as I feared, the BMW was gone. And probably the gun as well. We went on to the hotel, where I spoke with the woman at the front desk. Luckily for me, they’d boxed my things and stored them in the back room.

“Some guy came in here. Tried to get us to give him your stuff,” she said, after she’d retrieved the items. “Didn’t like the look of him. I said you had to give the okay.”

I thanked her and took the box to the car. Pulled out the cigar box and opened the lid. Everything was still there. I ran my finger over the barrette. The ivory bird stretched out in flight.

A bird.

Rowe had said the woman my mom met with had the name of a bird.

We made a quick supply run—clean clothes and new phone to replace the one Wynn had taken—and then I found Sybil Valley on the map, and we set off. We drove north to the first in a chain of mountains, the foothills of the Appalachians in Alabama. Brood Mountain was a lush dome, covered in green and, even in the summer, a good ten degrees cooler than the rest of the state. It was close to noon by the time we arrived at a rambling, shingled bed-and-breakfast perched on the edge of the mountain, and after Jay checked us in, I fell instantly asleep on top of the covers of a huge quilt-covered bed. When I awoke, I was alone. In the fireplace, a plucky little fire crackled between fake logs.

I spent the next half hour throwing up in the bathroom. When I finally emerged, showered, teeth brushed, Jay put down the magazine he’d been thumbing through.

“Feel better?” I nodded and sank back onto the bed. He pointed at the bedside table. “I brought you some tea. Peppermint. The lady who owns this place said it was good for morning sickness.”

I sipped the tea, then opened the cigar box and pulled out the wine label. I smoothed it on the bed in front of me. “‘Tom Stocker, Old Cemetery Road,’” I read. “No idea who he is. Or was.”

“Not the honeysuckle girl, obviously,” Jay said. “But maybe he knew who she was.”

“He’s probably long gone by now. If Jinn wrote that, it would’ve been all the way back in the 1930s.”

“The woman who owns this place, she told me the valley’s full of Stockers.”

I sat up. “She did?”

“Maybe we can find someone up here who knew him. A family member?”

I was quiet.

“Are you up for this?” he asked.

“I only have two more days. I have to be.”

He sighed. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Althea.”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t so sure.

“If you’re worried about Wynn, we can still go away. Anywhere, as far away as you want. But there’s no bad magic coming, I swear.”

I put down the mug. “I appreciate everything you’re saying. I do. But I can’t give up now. I have to know what this thing is. If I’m mentally unstable, if I’m going to have some kind of psychotic break on my birthday, I’ll need you here to help me. To keep the baby safe. If it’s something else—something really bad about my family, and Wynn tries to keep me from . . . from publicizing it . . .”

He stared at me, unblinking.