She hadn't been inside that house in twenty years. Didn't want to go there now. She could smell the hypocrisy from here, like it had soaked through the walls and wafted downwind like skunk spray.
She rolled and lit a cigarette, just to calm her nerves and give her hands something to do. And the house already reeked of smoke as well as intolerance — both of them smoked, or had the last time she'd seen them, maybe six months ago, in a chance sighting down in the village collecting their mail. They hadn't even shown up for Lew's funeral. Didn't want to recognize their tie with the town drunk.
Everything self-centered and neat and white and smug on its hill above the road. Even Mom's white Chevy sat neatly square and centered in the white gravel driveway. Kate did not want to go in there. But she had to. She needed answers, and the most likely source sat squarely in that house.
Three times now, you've come by and nobody home. God or the Devil offering a subtle hint?
Yeah, she'd think about God and the Devil, looking at that house. She took a deep breath and climbed down from her truck cab. God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. Even the Devil can quote scripture for his own purposes. The mills of the Lord grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine. She felt the pious mouthings beat against her ears, from clear across the road.
She was dithering, avoiding the house. And more to the point, the people who lived there. At least his truck was gone. She'd only have to face one of them, not both at once. And Frank wouldn't know the things she needed to know.
She stepped in through the side door and into the mudroom, the damned door left unlocked even with fear walking the streets of Stonefort — no reason to fear when you're armored with the Power of the Lord. Kate knocked at the kitchen door and then opened it.
"Hello?" The room looked exactly the same as the day she left — same stove and fridge, same canisters and cookbooks and spices and toaster on the counter, same kitchen table with what looked damn-all like the same plastic placemats in the same places.
She heard footsteps from the back bedroom, the sewing room it had been when she lived here, footsteps down the stairs, and her mother came around the corner into the kitchen, stopped with one foot in the air, and frowned.
"Katherine?" She finished her next step, eyes narrowed and suspicious. "What do you want?"
Ah yes, welcome the Prodigal Daughter. Kill the fatted calf and all that. Kate felt the anger growing inside her again, and cut to the heart.
"Tell me about my grandmother."
Mom stood up straight and squared her shoulders, big and blonde just like her daughter and granddaughter but with silver taking over her hair and the weight migrating from shoulders to butt. She looked for all the world like she faced a firing squad. "Your grandmother was a good Christian wife and mother. It's a shame you never spent much time with her."
Kate cut her mother off with a sharp wave of her hand. "Grandmother Rowley."
Her mother jerked and sagged, the bullets from that firing squad hitting home.
"Grandmother Rowley was not a Christian woman. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but you don't want to know more than that about her."
Remember why you left home. "Grannie Rowley took us in when Dad was killed in Vietnam. I don't recall your mother making the same offer. 'Didn't have room,' I think you said. In a five-bedroom house."
"My mother never approved of Barry. Said he was a charmer but not a good man. Said I was well rid of him, and I can't say she was wrong. After all, when Barry died, God brought Frank into my life. She said you'd never amount to much, bad seed grows bad fruit, and I can't say she was wrong there, either."
Remember why you left home. At least Frank isn't here, so I won't have to bruise my knuckles on the way out the door. "Grannie Rowley went to Mass damn near every Sunday. Priest gave her Communion, just the same as any other woman. You saying Catholics aren't Christians?"
Kate's mother looked like she might make just that claim. Some hard-assed Protestants did. All those idols in the sanctuary . . .
"She worshipped those stones."
So Mom knew. "Worshipped? Or maybe just used?"
"'Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.'"
That forced a laugh out of Kate, and she shook her head. "Ain't a single one of those stones 'graven' in any way, shape, or form. They're just the way God made 'em, straight from the glacier and not a tool-mark anywhere to be seen. Unless you call the last ice age 'God's tool.' Same with the hilltop and its power. Only thing those old folks did, was drag the stones into a circle so's they could measure the seasons. If God made a thing, why can't we use it? 'Use,' not 'worship?'"
"God made the Tree and told Adam and Eve they couldn't eat the fruit. Those stones are forbidden fruit."
"Sounds like quite a jump to me. But if we're quoting commandments, how about 'Thou shalt not steal.' That one's in there, ain't it? What happened to the papers the lawyers sent me?"
Her mother froze and then melted into a chair at the kitchen table. "We tried to raise you as a Christian girl."
Kate sat down across the table, stared quietly at her mother for a minute, shook her head, and then pulled a quotation out of her memories of Sunday school. "'For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me
