Hard Row

were Harris’s yet and I certainly didn’t know till this

morning when your—when Judge Knott told us that

Palmeiro had worked for Harris. That was the first

time I’d heard it.”

“It wasn’t the first time Diaz had heard it, though,”

Dwight said.

Richards let the implications of his words sink in. “Did

he know Palmeiro killed Harris?” she asked hesitantly.

“He says not.”

“Do you believe him?”

Dwight shrugged. “Know is one of those slippery

words. Did Palmeiro confess to him? Did he see the guy

swing the axe? Probably not.”

“But you think he knew,” Richards said.

“Don’t you?”

They rode in silence another mile or two, then

Richards said, “My family. My dad and my brothers and

my sister? They say that they’ll never speak to me again

if I marry him.”

“What about your mother?”

“She’ll go along with them, but she’d probably sneak

and call me once in a while.”

“Family’s important,” he observed as they reached

the Dobbs city limits.

She sighed. “Yes.”

Dwight pulled into the parking lot beside the court-

house and cut the engine. As she reached for the door

handle, he said, “Look, Richards. Your personal life is

297

MARGARET MARON

none of my business as long as you can keep it separate

from the job. But I’m going to say this even though I

probably shouldn’t. If you’re going to break up with

him because you don’t love him, that’s one thing. But

don’t use the job or what he knew or didn’t know as an

excuse if it’s really because of your family. You owe it to

yourself to tell him the truth.”

298

C H A P T E R

35

The retention of the old family homestead and farm by a

long line of ancestry for successive generations is, in many

respects a desideratum, whether we regard it in the prac-

tical light of an investment or of a pardonable pride, as

the basis of the sentiment of family honor and respectability

that is to be associated with the name and the inheritance.

—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

Deborah Knott

Thursday Evening, March 9