The next morning, Sawyer was up and at 'em at six forty-five and I rolled out of bed feeling like someone had drained me of blood overnight. When Sawyer turned on every light in the house before I had even put on my slippers, I was able to see, once I pried my eyes open against the bright light, that no vampires were present after all. The French press did have an allure similar to that of the fabled bloodsuckers, so I headed that way.
I put on the kettle and dropped four slices of bacon into the frying pan as Sawyer began one of the few periods of individual play he would undertake for the day. Soon, I’d be wrist-deep in kinetic sand and baby doll hugs, but for now, it was just me, my grogginess, and a gratefulness that my toddler liked bacon as much as I did. Most mornings, it was all he would eat besides chocolate milk and the one blueberry he deemed worthy.
As the goodness fried away in the pan, I thought about our day. Play time and the war of wisdom and wills to get dressed were in order first thing. Then, we’d head over to Dad and Lucille’s, where they had a veritable playground of delight in the backyard. In the past six months, they’d bought a swing set, a trampoline, and a kiddie pool that could serve as a hot tub for six on a warm night. Plus, my dad had built Sawyer this amazing contraption for him to climb and swing on, all from reclaimed materials. We had a great yard at the farmhouse, but the fun stuff was at Baba and Boppy’s, at least until my budget allowed me to buy a giant swing set.
I was just getting to the part of my thought process where I was planning my order of research at the historical society when a tiny blonde head rammed full force into my rear-end, sending me careening toward the bubbling kettle of hot water.
Fortunately, two and a half years of parenting practice had tightened my reflexes, and I caught myself before we had to call the ambulance. When I turned back to my laughing toddler, my shock must have shown on my face because his round cheeks fell into a frown, and he said, “Sorry, Mama.” Then he patted my leg and said, “You okay?”
There was never a calm moment unless this child was sleeping, but those little expressions of kindness were all I needed to do the sometimes-impossible thing of being his mama. He was getting sweeter every day as he came to understand that other people had needs and feelings, and when I didn’t want to throttle him, I just wanted to squeeze him.
“I’m okay, buddy. Thanks for saying you’re sorry.” I reached down and scooped him up.
“What that?” he said as he pointed a still barely chubby finger at the frying pan.
“Ooh, that’s bacon.” I slid him down to the floor.
“I do like bacon,” he shouted as he headed toward the couch where Beauregard was snoozing. Fortunately, the cat was wise to his ways and slipped into my room and under the bed before he was snuggled to death.
That morning Saw was amenable to pants, so we got to his grandparents without a major meltdown for either of us. Dad was building small birdhouses for a local public garden where he volunteered, so it only took handing Sawyer a drill for him to be so engrossed that he could only manage to say a half-hearted “Bye, Mama” over his shoulder as I left.
The historical society was in the heart of the biggest town in the county, and so I had a bit of a drive ahead of me. I turned on my latest podcast obsession, Nice White Parents, and listened to the way people like me, i.e., white parents, often felt they had the right to “save” people of color while also taking over every school their children attended. I was so fascinated by the stories on my newest episode that I barely registered that I’d entered town until I was parking. I’d been here often enough that I was pretty much on autopilot. Still, it was a little disconcerting to realize I had driven all the way there but couldn’t remember any of the drive. Another reason to love country living – you can space out on the road without too much risk to yourself or others.
The county historical society was located in an old house that sat next to the early nineteenth-century stone jail. The woman who had owned the house was named Phyllis, and she cooked all the meals for the prisoners and guards alike. Rumor had it that she would torture the prisoners by leaving her cooling pies on the windowsill right beneath their cells and then not bring them pie with dinner. I’d asked the historical society director once if the rumor was true, and she’d assured me that Phyllis was a kind-hearted woman and that pie was served with every evening meal. I decided I liked Phyllis and did my best to unsully her reputation with the locals.
On this Tuesday morning, Phyllis’s House, as it was called, was empty save for the lone volunteer, Xzanthia Nicholas, the retired librarian who had guided me toward some of my still-favorite books back when I was in elementary school. Ms. Nicholas was one of those people who respected anyone who respected her, and since my parents had always taught me to respect my elders, she’d been my guide and my champion for almost four decades now.
This morning, her hair was done in two wide braids that met in a beautiful spiral of gray at the nape of her neck. Long, peacock-feather earrings hung against her brown skin, and she was wearing a draping, aqua dress that reminded me of the ocean on a gray December day. “You look wonderful, Ms. Nicholas,” I said as I bent to kiss her cheek. “I love those earrings.”
“Thank you, Paisley. My granddaughter makes them for her online store and gives part of her proceeds to a different charity each month. This month, she’s saving ferrets, I believe.”
I laughed. “I wasn’t aware that ferrets needed saving, but I’ll be getting a pair of the earrings to help . . . and because they are gorgeous. The feathers came from your birds?”
“You know it. Got to be good for something,” she joked. Ms. Nicholas was forever pretending like she didn’t love those giant birds like they were her babies. She gave them fresh meal worms twice a day. No one touched those disgusting insects for animals they despised. “What brings you in today?”
“Actually, I was hoping you’d be here because I think you may actually be able to tell me more than the archives, if you have time.” I raised my eyebrows with hope.
Ms. Nicholas stood, looked around the tiny house as if bewildered by the throngs of people on hand, and said with a laugh, “I think I can spare a minute. What are we talking about?”
I told her about my desire to write about the Scruggs store in my next newsletter and asked about Alice Scruggs. “I thought people might want to know more about it and about her, you know?”
“You mean you thought the busybodies of Octonia would go hunting for anything related to the recent murder of that poor woman?” Her face was stern, but I could see a smile at one corner of her mouth. “Why would you ever think that?”
“Lucky guess,” I said with a smirk. “Did I ever tell you about the time my dad knew that Tommy McKay was going to ask me on a date before I did?”
She winked. “I do want to hear that story someday. But believe me, I know. Good news, no scratch that, any news travels fast around here.” She led me up a tiny flight of stairs to the archives room. “Let’s start here. I know some things, but it may jar my memory to see what’s actually written down.”
Back in the day, someone – maybe Ms. Nicholas herself – had begun a system of writing down every key place or name on an index card and then alphabetizing that card in amongst its kindred in an old-fashioned card catalog. It was a painstaking process to add each mention that was discovered in any new materials that were catalogued into the society’s collection, but it made finding information so easy. Every time I used the system, I wanted to kiss whoever invented it. On the offchance it had been Ms. Nicholas, I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek when we found a full three inches of index cards on the Scruggs family.
“There’s a lot here, Paisley. Where do you want to start?”
“Are these in order by date?”
The harumph from my former librarian told me I had asked a ridiculous question. Of course they were in chronological order. “Let’s start with the oldest then.”
“Sounds like a plan.” She placed two hot pink index cards at either end of the Scruggs cards to mark the place where they’d been removed and then carried the stack to the worktable in the center of the room.
I took out my notebook, and Ms. Nicholas pulled over a second chair. Then, not for the first time, we dug in.
Two hours later, we had a clear timeline of the Scruggs family, thanks to the cards, the documents we’d pulled from the collection, and a little help from an online genealogy site. I knew that the store had first opened, as I expected, in the early twentieth century and that it had been a huge deal because it was the only black-owned store in the county. The local paper had done a big story on the grand opening, and that article was full of excitement and enthusiasm. But in that same edition of the paper, the editorials had been full of racist diatribes about people knowing their place and the way the food would be “tainted” there.
That ugliness made me sick to my stomach, and when she saw I was more than a little angry, Ms. Nicholas brought me a bottle of water and said, “Baby, please, those people don’t deserve the time it takes you to vomit out their names. Leave them to their ugliness. We’ve got a story to tell.”
I took a swig of the water, carefully put the half-empty bottle on the floor where it couldn’t hurt the documents and kept going.
I learned that Alice had run the store herself after her parents died. She had never married, but she’d been in that store at six a.m. every morning except Sunday, when she opened only from three to five for folks in need of something crucial, and had worked that counter until nine p.m. every night.
“I’m tired just reading about what she did,” I said as I closed the 1948 yearbook from the black high school in the county. Ms. Scruggs's niece had been the yearbook editor and had dedicated the book to her aunt, “who serves her community faithfully.”
“Me, too, but you know, we women have always done what we needed to do.” She patted my hand as she stood up. “I’ll leave you to look through these last two boxes. Looks like it’s photos and clippings. Show me anything interesting that you find?”
“You sure you don’t want to go through them with me?” I asked as I stretched and glanced at my phone. Sawyer would just be going down for his nap, so I had a couple more hours.
“Nope. I’ve got newsletters to address. Just don’t hold out on me, okay?” She winked as she walked back to the front parlor.
I lifted the lid off the first archival box and began studying each picture within. All of them were taken by a local black photographer, and most of them were dated from the 1920s to 1950s. Everyone in the images was dressed to the nines with hats and gloves for the ladies, ties and jackets for the men. The photos were mostly posed, families gathered with the wife and mother seated proudly in the center of her clan, two men – clearly brothers – standing with hands on hips as they survey something apparently astounding in the middle distance, a little girl with a parasol standing beside her infant brother.
Most of the images did not have names recorded on them, and so while they were beautiful, they weren’t particularly helpful for my research. Still, the catalog had said there was a mention of Alice Scruggs in here, so I kept looking. . . and there, near the bottom of the stack of images, was one of a woman in a casual dress, hair pulled back into two twists at the side of her head, leaning against a post on what was definitely the Scruggs Store front porch.
I smiled as I studied her and then turned the photo over. “Alice Scruggs, Proprietress,” someone had written in cursive on the back. I flipped the image back over and studied Alice’s face. She was lovely with big eyes and a narrow jaw that was set as steel. A quick glance gave the impression that she was firm, maybe even mean, but when I studied her eyes, I saw a twinkle there, a bit of mischief that made me really wish I had known her.
I snapped a quick photo of the picture with my phone and made a note to ask Ms. Nicholas about obtaining permission to use the photo in my article. As I was enlarging the image on my phone to be sure it was clear enough for me to study as I wrote – I always found that images really helped me solidify what I wanted to say – I noticed something just by Alice’s feet. I zoomed in further and then back out, trying to be sure I was seeing what I was seeing.
When I was sure, I set the photo down and sat back in my chair to think. Alice Scruggs wasn’t married, at least not under that name. Ms. Nicholas and I had confirmed that. Yet there was clearly a toddler sitting at her feet in that photo. It could easily have been a niece or nephew, of course, maybe a neighbor’s child that she kept as a way of making a little extra cash, or even a customer’s baby sitting outside while the parent shopped. But something about the way that child was holding onto her legs made me think this was her baby. And a baby born out of wedlock – goodness I hated that phrase – in those days was cause for scandal.
I wasn’t interesting in stirring up a scandal, for sure, and I really, really didn’t want to cast aspersions at another single mother. I had lived with enough judgment from other people in my own life. But there was a story here, and I wanted to follow that trail. The question was how to do that without belittling the strong, confident woman I saw in this photo.
The answer to that question would come in the writing, I expected, and besides, I had come here to see if I could find out more about the first murder in the store, the one that had caused it to shut down. The boxes I’d gone through were all too early, but this last one was labeled: “Murder, May 1999.” I took a deep breath and lifted the lid.
Inside, I found newspaper article after newspaper article describing the murder of a man named Luther Angelis. He had been strangled to death behind the counter of the store in broad daylight, and no one had ever been caught. The story made headlines all the way from Roanoke to Richmond, which seemed odd to me especially given the murder rate in Richmond City at the time. But people just don’t get murdered by strangers in rural places, I knew this. Our crimes were ones of passion – jilted lovers, angry and drunk friends – but rarely random acts of violence.
Article after article detailed the facts of the day. Angelis had been working at the store as he had for the past five years. He covered the day shifts, running the register, stocking shelves, helping elderly customers by pumping gas. All the people interviewed said he was a nice, quiet guy. Never seemed to give anybody any trouble.
About eleven a.m., a woman came in to pay for her gas and found his body slumped against the cigarette racks behind the counter. The police investigated, but they had no leads. There were no security cameras on site, and the woman didn’t see anyone else at the store.
For the next several weeks, the police repeatedly asked the public for information that might lead to an arrest. Eventually, they even offered a reward for that information, but according to a follow-up article published a year after the murder, no arrest had ever been made.
That was all there was to find in the articles, and so I closed up the box and reviewed my notes. The papers made it sound like Angelis, the victim, was just a worker at the store, but everything I’d read about the store had made me think it was still in the family. I opened the genealogy site again and did a search for marriage records for Luther Angelis. Sure enough, there was Luther Angelis, married to a woman named Mary Johnson. On his certificate he listed his mother as Sheila Scruggs.
Another quick search brought up Sheila Scruggs and her marriage certificate to a man named Robert Angelis. The certificate listed her mother as Alice Scruggs and her father as “Unknown.” I would have to confirm at the clerk’s office, but it seemed likely that Sheila had left the store to her two children Luther and Berlinda.
I stared at the scribbles on paper before me. All the public records indicated that Alice Scruggs had no children, but here she was with a daughter and two grandchildren. She had a long legacy, and I was so excited to write about it.
But first, I had to figure out how to tastefully address Angelis’s murder. I didn’t want to hurt Berlinda Jefferson, not after she and her husband had been so kind to me. No wonder the store hadn’t reopened after the murder. I couldn’t imagine working in a place where my brother was brutally murdered.
The question I pondered next was whether or not there was a connection between Bailey Thomas’s murder and Luther Angelis’s death. It was possible that it was coincidence that two people were killed in broad daylight in the same rural building, but that would be some coincidence.
And I didn’t really believe in coincidences. But I did believe in research, and I clearly had a lot more to do, beginning with a visit to Berlinda Jefferson. I hoped Sawyer was up for a road trip.
After telling Ms. Nicholas about the photo of Alice and asking her to think about what she remembered about Angelis’s murder, a request she frowned at but didn’t refuse, I walked out into the cool air of the early afternoon. Lucille had texted to say that Sawyer had napped beautifully and was enjoying the trampoline. “Take another hour,” she said. “We’ll nap later.”
I smiled. Being an older mom meant that Sawyer had older grandparents, too, and some days, the physicality of a two-year-old was wearing on all of us, but especially my dad. Still, they never balked at watching him, and for that, I was grateful. Today, I was especially grateful for the hour to walk and think and maybe grab a vanilla steamer.
I popped into the coffee shop at the end of Main Street, got my warm milk, and strolled up the sidewalk. The autumn window displays were charming, all pumpkins and scarecrows, and I was tempted to browse for Christmas presents for Mika, Dad, and Lucille. But cash was tight, especially with my latest salvage finds held for evidence, so I just kept walking and let my mind work in the background.
Soon, I found myself at a tiny park just behind the bank in town. A fountain splashed water against bricks, and I planted myself on a bench under a sprawling sycamore to sip and think. I tried to convince myself I was just thinking about my article, about how to feature Alice Scruggs's story in a way that did her justice, highlighted the history of the store, and desensationalized the murders of Angelis and Thomas, but I couldn’t get my mind to think logically about those things.
I just kept seeing that child’s face leaning against her mother’s leg and wondering if she knew what was coming down the train of history for her family.
I heard Sawyer’s riotous laugh as I parked in front of my dad and stepmom's house, and when I came into the backyard, his Boppy was letting himself get sprayed, head to toe, with the water hose. Saw was cackling with delight at his game, and my dad looked just about as pleased.
When he saw me, my son let the hose go and ran toward me with a shout of “Hi Mama. I got Boppy all wet.”
“I see that, Buddy. Is Boppy happy to be all wet?” I asked as I pulled a mostly dry towel off their clothesline and handed it to my dad.
“Ah, it’s just water. I’m not made of sugar, you know.” He headed inside, presumably for dry clothes, and I helped Sawyer into the trampoline so he could show me his tummy bounce. Then, we went inside, said our goodbyes, and headed back to the farmhouse.
As soon as I unbuckled him from his car seat, Sawyer was off and toward the chicken coop. It was his chore to feed the chickens, but since he was two, that usually involved the work of flinging some ground corn while I slipped behind him and actually put the feed in their feeders. He was an expert at gathering eggs though, if not completely adept at carrying them into the house unbroken.
While the hens pecked around their boy's feet, I cleaned up their “poop boards,” ingenious devices that sat under their roosts and were covered in linoleum that made it much easier to keep their coop clean, and pondered what I’d learned about the Scruggs family. I related to Alice Scruggs in so many ways – a working, single mom – but I was a white woman living in the twenty-first century, not a black woman living in the early twentieth century. Those two things alone made a world of difference.
But I had to wonder a little about her life. Maybe she was married. Or maybe the child wasn’t hers and I’d read the postures in the photo wrong. Maybe she was a widow. My instincts coupled with the cursory genealogical search I’d done before made me think I was reading that image right, but I always tried to leave room for me to be wrong. At least most of the time.
Eventually, Sawyer tired of picking up tiny shards of corn and letting the hens take them from his fingers, and we headed inside. He found the toy stroller someone had left at the Share Shed at our local dump and proceeded to walk his baby doll around the room while talking to her about how she didn’t need to be scared of the Big Bad Wolf.
While the water boiled for spaghetti, I pulled out my “Work Bible,” the notebook I used to keep track of everything necessary for my work life, and flipped to Berlinda Jefferson’s cell number. It was just before five, so I hoped I was calling early enough to avoid interrupting dinner. She picked up on the second ring.
“Hello, Mrs. Jefferson, Paisley Sutton. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”
“Not at all,” she said. “I was actually going to call you. Are you okay?”
I took a moment to appreciate that this woman who had just had someone murdered in her store was asking about me. “I am. I’m fine, but thank you for asking. It was a hard day yesterday.” A long deep breath steadied the shudder that went through me as I thought of that poor woman’s body. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you myself. I figured you probably had enough to worry about.”
“Well, we were worried about you most of all, but it was a busy day. I simply can’t believe this happened. George was terrified that you had been hurt yourself or had suffered some sort of trauma when you found that poor woman’s body.” Her voice was strong but shrill, like worry was tightening her vocal cords.
Berlinda’s musings made me wonder something, and I jotted a note in my Work Bible. “I drive by there every day, Berlinda, and I never had any idea that someone was living there. No idea at all.”
“It’s amazing what we don’t see when we don’t know to look for it,” she said with distance in her voice. Then, her tone got clearer, and she said, “But what can I do for you, Paisley, now that I know you’re okay?”
“Actually, I was wondering if Sawyer and I could come visit you this week. I found something when I was doing some research, and I’d like to share it with you. I think you’d be interested to see it.” I knew I was being obtuse, but I really wanted to surprise her with the photo in person.
“And you’re not going to tell me what it is before you come, are you?” I could hear the smile in her voice even through the phone.
“No, ma’am. I hope that’s okay. I just really want to see your face when I show it to you.”
“I do love a surprise, and if you bring that boy of yours, I’ll get a double treat that day. Does Thursday suit? I have a hair appointment tomorrow, and you know us old ladies and our hair.” She laughed quietly.
“Thursday is perfect. Wouldn’t want to get in the way of you and your stylist. Plus, that’ll give me a chance to do a little more research before we come. Does ten work? We’ll bring donuts.”
“Anytime works if donuts are involved, and ten is great. I’ll let George know. I expect he and Sawyer might just be able to get into a little good trouble in his workshop while we talk.”
I smiled. “I’ll tell Sawyer to pack his hammer.”
We said our goodbyes, and I wrote the date in my calendar. It was then that I realized Saw had gone very quiet. Anyone who has spent time with young children knows that quiet is never a good sign.
“Look, Mama, I made you a picture,” he said when I found him in the bathroom.
Sure enough, my toddler had painted a lovely blue-green abstract piece on the bathroom mirror . . . in toothpaste. I was just in time to keep him from “cleaning it up” with his tongue.
“Sawyer, dinner’s almost ready. You can help me break up the spaghetti.” Oh, the things that thrill a toddler.
Two hours later, he was sound asleep under his rocket ship sheets, and I picked up the carousel stitching again. My mom had gotten me started on Wentzler’s patterns when I was in elementary school. For months, I stitched and stitched on a single carousel horse that had gold highlights on the saddle and headdress. The idea was that it would match my new room, which had lots of gold in it – my favorite color.
It took me more than a year, but I finished the horse. And when I did, my mom took me to a frame shop next to the studio where I had survived one year of ballet to have it framed. The woman at the counter lectured me a bit because I had left the cloth in my sewing hoop for a some weeks, and it was hard for her to press out the creases. But when she handed me my carousel horse in a wooden frame with tiny hearts carved in the corners, I was beaming with pride, especially when my mom paid forty dollars, an astronomical sum for our family in the 1980s. Still, just thinking about that gift made me cry. It was a precious affirmation from my mother, and I looked up at the framed golden beauty above my sewing nest. It was still priceless to me.
As I stitched, I thought about Alice and her daughter, Sheila. I wondered what kind of moments they had shared: Hobbies Alice passed down. Lessons she taught. I selfishly hoped that our time with Berlinda would give me some personal insights, not just facts for my article.
The next morning, after feeding Sawyer his morning’s quota of two slices of bacon, I put on his favorite movie, Sharkboy and Lavagirl and sat down beside him with my laptop. I really tried not to work when Saw and I were hanging out, but sometimes it couldn’t be avoided . . . and sometimes we needed to be together but not dependent. This morning’s meltdown over the fact that I went to the bathroom without him told me that maybe we needed a little space from each other, even if my sweet boy didn’t want me to be out of eyesight.
Fortunately, I’d seen SharkBoy and Lavagirl do their thing at least nine times already, so I was able to provide the requisite responses about the appearance of the spaceship and why Mr. Electric has those “dog things” without breaking my concentration.
I was trying to put together as comprehensive a family tree as I could online so that I could give it to Berlinda tomorrow. I spent the ninety minutes of the movie pulling records and double-checking them against other records and what I knew of the Scruggs family timeline. And by the time Max’s parents were happy-go-lucky again, I had managed to flesh the tree out into about sixty people who went back seven generations.
The oldest generation I had included Alice’s grandparents, people who were almost certainly born into slavery. I wasn’t completely certain the two names I had were correct, and I’d tell Berlinda that. But if my educated guesses were right, I might have been recovering a bit of family history that had been lost to that horrible institution.
As the credits ran and Saw began to stir, I closed my laptop and said, “Let’s go to a playground.” Playgrounds were Sawyer’s happy spaces, especially if other children were there and would play with him. I really enjoyed them, too, because they gave my busy guy a place to burn some of his energy while I got to enjoy nature without having to punish my body by being the actual jungle gym.
Plus, Beauregard was always a hit on his leash. That novelty alone drew attention, but mostly, he received a lot of awe because of his size. Children loved his girth and parents liked to try to make witty remarks about how they had toddlers smaller than that cat or how they’d seen a nature show about his kind stalking zebra in Kenya. I tolerated the corny jokes because I needed the interaction with other adults. Single parenting is, I imagine, a lonely endeavor at any age, but in the preschool years, it’s downright solitary. I craved conversation, even mundane conversation about shoe sizes and toilet training. If Beau was how I got to talk to adults, so be it.
Still, after chatting with the dad of a four-year-old who had started preschool that fall and was loving it and a conversation with a mom and her nanny about why she only buys organic fruit snacks, I was grateful for a phone call. I stepped to a quiet spot where I could see Sawyer hogging the top of the twisty slide and answered.
It was Sheriff Shifflett. “I hope I’m not bothering you,” he said.
“Not at all, but be forewarned. I’m at the playground and may need to drop the phone in the event of an imminent head trauma.”
“So noted,” he said warmly. “I wanted to let you know, just so you could feel a little more at ease, that Bailey Thomas’s cause of death was not a threat to you or your son.”
I sucked in my breath. “Well, I should hope not. I mean, I realize that the idea that we might have seen the killer put us in danger, but I didn’t know you thought we might have been at risk because of how she died.” I tried not to think about guns and knives and things.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” the sheriff’s voice was strained. “I’m not so good with words sometimes. What I meant is that you were not in any immediate danger that morning. Thomas died from a heroin overdose.”
“Oh man, that’s sad. Bad drugs or too much?” I had no idea what I was saying. All I knew about drug use I’d learned on television.
“Neither.” The sheriff said. “Well, technically too much, but not because she used too much. She wasn’t a regular user. Someone injected her to kill her.”
I gasped again, both because the idea of killing someone with a drug overdose just felt cruel but also because Sawyer had almost bit it as he made his way down a rope ladder. “That’s awful,” I whispered once I’d recovered my breath. “But I see what you mean about how we weren’t in danger that morning. I wouldn’t think a murderer would just have extra heroin to inject random people who saw them there.” I tried to laugh, but the idea that someone had been not just committing but following through on the plan for a murder at a place where my son and I were had me a little wobbly.
“Right. Exactly. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t addled by the fact that you were there when they committed the crime. So we’re going to keep the protective watch on for the foreseeable future, okay?”
I nodded and then realized he couldn’t see me. “Yes, Okay. Thank you.” My heart thumped hard against my chest as I looked around the park to see if anyone was watching me. I wondered if those two parents I’d chatted with earlier were just trying to figure out a way to get rid of someone who was a witness. I tried to peer into car windshields to see if someone was watching us with binoculars. I kept turning and twisting to see around the edges of the playground and into the woods that lined the park around us.
Sawyer was still blissfully playing a game of tag with two new friends he’d met today, but I couldn’t get myself to calm down. I was so worked up that the sheriff was practically shouting when he finally got my attention again. “Paisley!” he said. “Listen to me. Do you see the blue Honda at the end of the front row of cars, three cars down from yours?”
I gave my head a little shake and then replayed what he’d just said. “Yes, I see that car.”
“Good. Keep watching.”
As I stared at the car, Sheriff Shifflett stepped out of the driver’s side and gave me a small but very clear nod. “I’ve got you,” he said into the phone.
I smiled and felt a knot rise in my throat. “Thank you,” I said. It had been a long time since someone had anticipated my needs, and while I wished my son and I didn’t need a police tail, I was touched by his care and confidence. “I hate to tell you this, but the next part of my day is even less exciting.” I explained what was up with our plans for the afternoon, and the sheriff assured me that he would be fine with just quietly staying close as we went about our day. I hoped he meant it because in addition to being a bit lonely, exceedingly hard, and beautifully rewarding, parenting a small child was also profoundly boring.
We picnicked at the park, a guaranteed way to get a full meal in my toddler’s belly. I nibbled at my sandwich and fed the rest to Beau. I had wanted to offer Sheriff Shifflett some of the sandwiches I’d packed for us, but I figured if he felt it necessary to stay in his car, he probably didn’t want me walking over with my zipper bag of ham and cheese. After Saw finished a half-sandwich, a handful of grapes, and a juice box, I loaded him and our gear into the car and pointed toward home. But as was often the case, we didn’t make it there before Sawyer was sound asleep in the back with his neck at an angle that would leave me debilitated for a week. I did my usual route out to Barboursville and then up through Somerset and back West into the Blue Ridge. Every time we took this route, I hoped my son would wake up as we passed the new gas station out by Bacon Hollow because I’d heard their kitchen was phenomenal, but again today, Saw snoozed right on as I drove by, and I had to content myself with the stale pretzels in his snack cup.
The sheriff’s blue car putted along at a leisurely distance behind mine. I drove slowly so I could enjoy the mountains and because it was easier to poke along on these winding roads. Plus, today, it seemed wise to stay under the speed limit. I didn’t think the sheriff would give a ticket to a person he had under protective custody, but I couldn’t be sure.
Four days out of five, I ended up on the road with a sleeping toddler, and while it was exhausting sometimes, I found it was also a great time to think or listen to a book. Today, I had a lot to ponder, so I kept the book off and thought about the events of the last few days.
One thing had become clear from the sheriff’s presence at the park today: he and his deputies had not just been sitting outside our house at night. No, we were under constant protection, and while that was comforting on one level, it was also disconcerting that our tiny police force felt it necessary to expend this many resources to protect a mom and her kid. Either they had little else to do – which was a distinct possibility if the crime report in our tiny local paper was accurate – or Sheriff Shifflett was really worried.
Still, there was nothing I could do about what had happened in the past, and dwelling on the hard things of life hadn’t ever gotten me anywhere. I pushed my mind to think about something I might be able to figure out, like why someone would have wanted Bailey Thomas killed. I mean, she wasn’t a particularly pleasant person. I’d seen that firsthand, and while I tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and allow them to behave poorly on a bad day, it seemed that Thomas had nothing but bad days. And she had keyed Berlinda and George’s car.
But still, the woman didn’t deserve to be murdered. No one did. Yet, she’d obviously done something to someone that made them think killing her was the best option. I could not even imagine being at that point, not even with the people who had caused me a great deal of pain in my life.
One of the things that had served me well as a historian and a salvager was a strong belief that everyone’s story was worth telling. To believe that all the time, I had to really work my empathy muscles and do my best to try to understand the whys behind the whats of people’s actions. In Thomas’s case, I didn’t know the specific why of her life, but I knew behind that huffy attitude and mean streak, there was pain. I recognized it in others because I saw it in myself. Pain could make me want to do some awful things, and most of the time, I knew it was but for the grace of God, as the saying goes, that I didn’t.
But murder, I just couldn’t find my way to understand murder. Maybe I’d learn the why of this one, but I didn’t think I wanted to get to a place where I empathized with someone who would do something so awful. Still, I was curious about what Bailey Thomas had done to warrant this end to her life.
As I turned right and entered the crossroads that was Nortonsville, I saw the sheriff’s car turn behind me and realized that maybe it wasn’t so much what Thomas had done as what she had seen or heard. Maybe she, like me, had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe she was killed because she was a witness.
A chill went down my spine, and I breathed long and slow as I drove along the Lynch River and made the turn toward my favorite valley, Blackwell’s Hollow. All around me the mountains rose up in undulating curves, and the farms of generations spread to their feet. The Episcopal Church stood on a rise with mountains behind it, and I contemplated pulling in to rest my accelerator foot and let the peace of the mountains soothe me a little. But I knew that the minute the car stopped, Sawyer would wake up, and he was on track for a two-hour nap early enough in the day that he’d still be plenty tired come bedtime. I wasn’t going to squander that miracle because of an aching ankle.
Plus, out here, someone would notice if two cars pulled into the same parking lot, and there wasn’t anywhere else for the sheriff to stop. I drove on down into the hollow and admired the new house going up on the west side of the road. They had done it right – chosen a style of architecture and a location that fit the landscape. The house had a central structure with two wings and mirrored the plantation houses nearby, and it sat on a small hill right in the middle of the valley. The residents would have vistas of the Blue Ridge on every side, and yet, they’d also get the clear sight lines of pasture up close. Pretty perfect.
Another mile down the road, I grinned as I put on my signal and turned onto Shifflett’s Mill Road. The sheriff’s ancestors had been some of the first settlers here, and their descendants had scattered all around Virginia taking their name and its various spellings with them. I wondered if the sheriff knew which of his distant cousins had built the mill that once operated along this stream.
The drive back north and over the hills to the farmhouse was quiet, and Sawyer only awoke as I crossed the train tracks near our house. He woke up, caught me looking at him in the rearview mirror, grinned and said, “I done sleeping now.”
I laughed and picked up the pace toward home. It was a gorgeous afternoon, and that boy had trees to climb.