“No, but the last I heared, he’s sober now. Seen a lot of April and the girls, though,” he added dryly. “They and Maidie’s got enough to feed the five thousand. Eating table’s full of cakes and pies.”
The old rosebushes that grew around the graves of both his wives were already starting to drop their leaves, and that reminded me. I looked at Daddy, stricken. “I forgot to order flowers!”
“Don’t you worry, shug,” he said, patting my hand. “You know April won’t gonna forget something like that. And I told Duck to make sure Tallahassee has what she wants for the coffin. They’s gonna be plenty of flowers.”
The grave had been dug next to the little stone carved in the shape of a kneeling lamb that marked the grave of Daddy and Annie Ruth’s first baby boy, a stillbirth. It was as if the gods had required a sacrifice for all the strong, healthy boys to come.
And now another boy was joining him that none of us had ever met, either.
With my arm still linked in Daddy’s, we walked over to Mother’s grave and I put my hand on her stone: SUSAN STEPHENSON KNOTT. It’s not that I think dead spirits inhabit the graves of their bodies, but this was as close as I could physically get to both my parents.
I took a deep breath. “Dwight’s asked me to marry him,” I said, speaking as much to my mother as to my father.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, I found myself too choked up to continue.
At last, Daddy asked quietly, “How did you answer him, Daughter?”
“I told him yes.”
He pulled his arm free of mine, stepped back, and tilted my chin up till the moonlight fell full on my face. His own face was stern and, in this light, looked as if it, too, were carved from marble.
“Except for when you decided to run for judge, I ain’t never said a word to you about the way you lived your life, the things you done, the men you been with. Have I?”
“No, sir.”
“I figured you won’t hurting nobody but yourself and what you done was your own business. But if you marry Dwight and mess up—well, now, that’s gonna hurt a lot of people.”
“Daddy—”
He held up his hand. “Hear me out, Deb’rah. I’m right partial to Dwight. He’s a good man and he deserves a good wife. You gonna forsake all others and cleave only to him so long as you both shall live?”
“Yes, sir.” Tears streamed down my face and my hand still lay on Mother’s stone as if it were on a Bible.
“All right, then.” He opened his arms to me and held me against his chest till I quit crying.
CHAPTER 17
TUESDAY MORNING
Tuesday continued fair and sunny, but weather forecasters were predicting a change by the weekend. Normally, I like autumn rains that help the trees unleaf and let winter wheat sprout so that newly disked fields turned bright green. Now I was hoping they’d hold off till after the harvest festival ended Saturday night so that Tally and Arnold wouldn’t have a financial loss to pull them down further after the loss of their son.
I’d forgotten to set the alarm and didn’t wake up till nearly eight. That was so surprising, I reached over and picked up the telephone just to reassure myself I still had a dial tone. I had half expected a call from April or Andrew or Minnie or Dwight. Instead, the phone stayed silent while I showered and then struggled with panty hose. I always forget to check for runs and the first two pairs I tried had them. In the second leg, of course.
The dress I put on was a sleeveless navy with a matching long-sleeved jacket that was cropped at the waist. Instead of my usual pumps, I found a pair of Cuban-heeled navy shoes more suitable for walking around a sandy-soil graveyard. For sentiment, I wore my silver charm bracelet again.
Lipstick, a dash of mascara, a touch of blusher, and I was ready to roll by eight forty-five.
Still no phone calls. I wondered if Dwight had chickened out of telling Miss Emily.
I’d left my car parked by the back door, and when I slid in behind the steering wheel and started to fasten my seat belt, I saw an unfamiliar manila envelope that had slipped down between the two seats. Puzzled, I opened it and found a thick stack of color photographs. They all seemed to be of the same woman in different clinging outfits. When I looked closer, they appeared to be nightgowns in colors that ranged from sexy black satin that shimmered in the camera’s flash to demure white lace and pink ribbons, with all the rainbow in between. But they were such crazy poses that it took me a minute to realize she must have taken the pictures herself, holding the camera out at arm’s length. Nothing could be seen of her face, though, except a chin line here, a brow there, or, in overhead shots, her dark curly hair and dangling earrings above more lace and silk.
I recognized that these must have come from the self-storage locker of negligees that Braz had bought, but how—?
Then I remembered Dwight struggling with my seat belt. The envelope must have slipped out of his jacket pocket. With a mental note to hand it back to him at the funeral, I stuck it up between the sun visor and the roof.
When I got over to the homeplace, most of my sisters-in-law were already there, aprons tied over their Sunday dresses, working as a team as they directed the kids to set up lawn chairs out under the shade trees and on the porch that wrapped around three sides of the house. It was a school day, yet all the children seemed to be here. A long table had been set up on the porch nearest the kitchen door and I found Minnie and Jessica covering it with several snowy white bedsheets that were kept for just that purpose.
Jessie immediately voiced the curiosity the others must be feeling. “Deborah! You’ve met her. What’s she
