Diamond

Diamond

Book Jacket

S
HARON
S
ALA

Diamond

Prologue

The room smelled mousey.
Like old clothes and unwashed floors and walls. A place where sunshine rarely ventured.

Twelve-year-old Queen Houston stared up at the dusty, narrow window high above the principal’s desk and then back at the woman behind it.

Her younger sister, Diamond, grabbed at her hand and clenched it as the principal shifted in her chair.

Their baby sister, Lucky, was unconcerned with the ominous silence. This was her first year in school, yet already the second school during that year.

Queen and Di were veterans at this process and knew to give nothing away. They volunteered no smiles, no information.

“So,” Mrs. Willis began, “you girls have just moved to Cradle Creek, have you? Let’s see, the first thing we need is an address. Where do you live?”

“403 Front Street,” Queen answered, and watched the principal’s eyebrows arch. She knew what the woman was thinking. She’d seen that look…on other faces…in other places.

“Front Street,” Mrs. Willis repeated, and entered the information on the correct line on the form in front of her.

Jedda Willis tried not to frown. Poverty was a way of life for many in Cradle Creek, Tennessee, but ill repute was not. 403 Front Street was next door to an all-night bar and across the street from the residence of the town’s one and only prostitute.

“Parents’ names?” she asked next.

“Johnny Houston,” Queen answered, and once again Mrs. Willis noticed that only the elder girl spoke. The others seemed frozen in silence.

Mrs. Willis looked up, pen poised above the paper, and waited. But it was in vain. Nothing more was said. She persisted. “Mother’s name?”

Tears welled up in the eyes of the skinny blonde child sitting on the left, but otherwise nothing revealed the depth of the pain the woman’s question had elicited.

“Mine’s dead,” Queen said. She smoothed back a stray lock of her unruly red hair and glared, almost daring the woman to continue. She did.

“What about theirs?” she asked, pointing to the two younger children.

Queen gripped Di’s fingers tighter, then pulled Lucky into her lap. “She ran off. Been gone more than three years. Don’t know where she is and we don’t care…do we, girls?”

Lucky ducked her head, and her straight, dark hair fell across her face and eyes. She barely remembered anyone in her life other than her Queenie…and Di. But it was to be expected. She was only seven.

She slipped her thumb into her mouth, closed her eyes, and began to rock against her sister’s budding bosom.

Jedda Willis had seen a lot of life in her fifty-nine years. But something about their defiance made her sick at heart.

“All right,” she continued, as if their answers were commonplace. “Let’s see…what’s next? Oh yes! Father’s occupation?”

The girls grew still. There was a subtle shift in their posture as they began to press against each other, nearly melding into one entity as Queen answered.

“Johnny gambles.”

It was an unexpected statement. Jedda Willis repeated the word without thinking. “Gambles?”

The oldest girl nodded once, and her mouth thinned perceptibly, giving her an impish quality. But the impression was as far removed from fact as night from day. There was no whimsy in Queen Houston’s life. Nor financial security, social standing, or respect…for themselves or anyone else. They were simply the gambler’s daughters.

Three pairs of wide green eyes stared at Jedda Willis, waiting. She had an instinctive notion to apologize, but for what, she didn’t know. Instead she stood.

“Come along, girls. Let’s get you in class.”

They followed. Quietly. Resigned to their fate.

1

Johnny Houston was a
gambler. He’d always said it would take an act of Congress to make him quit. He’d been wrong. It was an act of God.

An itinerant breeze lifted the heavy blonde hair from Diamond’s neck. She shifted her weight from one hip to the other and squinted against the sun’s glare.

The minister was sweating. Diamond resisted the urge to smile. It wasn’t a time for levity, although Johnny would have been the first to laugh. It had taken death to get Johnny Houston before a preacher.

Tears suddenly rushed to her eyes, blurring her vision. She blinked and looked down at the grass beneath her feet, trying to ignore the deep hole just to her right. It was as close to a pauper’s grave as Cradle Creek could manage and was about to become the final resting place of her father, John Jacob Houston.

Queen’s gaze was fixed. Her chin jutted in stubborn defiance, daring the reluctant minister to say one derogatory word about her father or his life-style. She’d hated it and resented him for it. But if anyone was going to pass judgment on Johnny Houston, it would be her—or God. At twenty-nine, and as the eldest daughter, it would be her right.

She saw Di’s tears. They were as familiar to her as Di’s wide, generous mouth and surprising beauty. No matter how many times in their lives Johnny had gambled away every cent they had, Diamond was the one quickest to forgive. It was Queen’s opinion that Di had too much compassion for her own good.

Lucky stared blindly at the deep, shady hole on the side of the hill and tried to envision her fun-loving father beneath six feet of Tennessee dirt…forever. She shuddered and swallowed a sob. It was unthinkable.

The minister began to repeat the Lord’s Prayer. Lucky’s fingers twitched. And then each of her sisters reached out to her. Their palms touched. Fingers intertwined. But she didn’t look up. She didn’t have to. As always, her sisters were beside her.

They stood, three abreast at the foot of their father’s empty grave, bound by the touch of their hands and the bonds of birth. Marked by a man they’d called father and the life that he’d led.

Brother Joseph Chatham breathed a quiet sigh of relief as his sermon came to an end. From the moment he’d stepped onto the hillside until now, he’d felt the fire from three pairs of sharp green eyes. He knew that Cradle Creek had not been kind to Johnny Houston’s girls. But fate had. In all his years of ministering he’d never seen three more striking women. He flushed with guilt as he realized that he’d been thinking covetous thoughts about a family in mourning.

At the minister’s nod, the gravediggers began to slowly lower the plain pine casket into the ground.

Queen gritted her teeth and stared, refusing to show weakness or emotion. Lucky closed her eyes as a single tear finally slid down her face. But it was Diamond who broke the silence of the moment. She stepped forward, lifted her face to the sun, took along deep breath, and began to sing.

It had been good to go home, even if only for overnight, and regardless of the fact that Tommy Thomas, his manager, had thrown a fit the size of Dallas Stadium when Jesse had announced his intentions. The familiarity of family and high school football, not to mention hunting and fishing, had slowly taken a backseat in his life. It was something he missed and had decided last week to reclaim. When his dream of success had become reality,
ordinary
had disappeared from his vocabulary.

Jesse Eagle of Rocky Flat, Kentucky, was one of the hottest, if not
the
hottest, country singers in the nation. His career had been five years in the making, but the fast track he was on showed no signs of slowing down.

He geared down as a sharp curve on the narrow mountain road appeared, and grimaced as his tired muscles pulled across his shoulders. It was an unwelcome reminder of how long he’d been driving. He tried to stretch his long legs beneath the dash of the sports car, but his knee hit the steering column.

The car was a culmination of several childhood fantasies, but Jesse’s tall, lanky build would have been better suited to an eighteen-wheeler than the interior of a Maserati.

A warning light came on, reminding him that fuel was running low. He looked up in time to read the small green sign at the side of the road. He was less than three miles from someplace called Cradle Creek, Tennessee.

“If I’m lucky,” he muttered, “they’ll have a gas station. If I’m real lucky, they’ll even have a cafe.”

He looked in the rearview mirror and then laughed at himself. It was the first time in almost three years that he’d had a chance to be alone, and here he was talking to his reflection.

Cradle Creek was larger than he’d expected. Signs of a worked-out mine at the edge of town and another farther off the road suggested coal, as did the telltale smoke columns rising into the atmosphere. Obviously when the first had played out, they’d simply moved the mining farther up the mountain.

Sunshine glared across the hood of his car and into his eyes as he entered the outskirts of town. He slowed to accommodate a gaggle of half-dressed, half-grown boys carrying fishing poles. As one of the braver ones flipped him off and then laughed, Jesse honked playfully in return. In his youth, he would have done the same. This low-slung car said money, and in this town, it would be like waving a red flag in front of an angry bull.

Tin-roofed, unpainted houses occupied every nook and cranny of the hills surrounding the single, two-lane road that ran through Cradle Creek. Some boasted porches that barely hung onto the residences on which they belonged. Others were bare-faced and open-doored, allowing freedom to any dog, chicken, or child who happened to be coming through.

A sign to the left caught his eye.
GAS
. Short and to the point. Jesse grinned. He smiled a lot these days. It was to be expected. Jesse Eagle had plenty to smile about.

He pulled up and parked between two outdated gas pumps at the front of the store. One wore an enormous cardboard box over its top that informed whoever cared to know that it was “BROKE.” The last person to use the other had neglected to replace the hose back in the cradle. Jesse stepped over it before dragging it out of the dirt. He frowned at the grit and grime clinging to the nozzle and looked toward the station’s open doorway. He had no intention of sticking it into his fuel tank until it had been cleaned.

He blinked and pulled his black Stetson lower across his forehead as the fierce glare of the sun glanced across his vision. The smoky tinted windows on his car had protected him from this intense blast of July heat. He was eager to crawl back inside his car and head toward Nashville and the ranch on the outskirts that he called home.

And then he heard her singing.

“Fill ’er up?” a man asked as he sauntered from the station.

Jesse didn’t answer. He was dumbstruck by the clear, almost crystal quality of her voice. Hair stood on the back of his neck as the pain in her voice pulled at his heart. It was the first time he’d ever contemplated the true meaning of “Amazing Grace.” For just a moment, following the pitch of her voice, he felt as if he’d just received grace…straight from God himself.

“…
that saved a wretch like me
…”

“Who’s that?” Jesse asked, turning slowly around in place, trying to locate the owner of that voice.

The man hitched at his pants and spit. “Just one of them Houston girls,” he drawled. “You want I should fill ’er up?” he asked again.

Jesse nodded as he continued to search for the voice’s owner. “But clean the damned nozzle before you put it in my car,” he remembered to add.

The man hastily did as he was ordered. It wasn’t every day he got a chance to fill anything up. Usually all he sold was a few dollars’ worth at a time.

“Where is she?” Jesse asked. Something vast was expanding inside his chest. An understanding…a need to find this woman and see what kind of a person had been blessed with such a voice.

The man spit again, aiming for the same spot as before, superstitiously telling himself that if it landed close, what he revealed wouldn’t matter.

“Up yonder,” he answered, pointing with his chin toward a sloping hill beyond the station. “At the cemetery.”

Jesse stared. Cemetery? The man answered his unspoken question.