Twenty-one 
FOR the first time all summer, I contemplated voluntarily giving up my riding lesson. Jamey Louise was cleaning my last stall, so I told her I didn’t feel well and I was going home.
“You look like dog poo that someone set on fire and stomped,” she said, leaning on her manure rake. Her head was tied in a bandanna, and there wasn’t a scrap of makeup on her face. During the summer she’d lost the little bit of baby fat she’d started with, and her body was lean and better-looking than it had ever been. Maybe that was why Jamey Louise worked more willingly than she ever had before. She also said that her cup size had increased from a B to a C. And she’d turned thirteen.
Nadine had disappeared into her house and didn’t come back out. I gave Jamey the breakfast Mama Betts had packed, and she settled down in the shade of the barn to eat the bacon biscuits with homemade scuppernong jelly. Even Jamey was smart enough to realize Mama Betts made the best biscuits in the world.
I went to the back door and knocked real hard, but there wasn’t a sound inside. Nadine’s dogs never barked. I couldn’t imagine how she kept them so quiet. Picket would have torn the screen down trying to get at someone at our back door.
I knocked again and stepped back away from the house. It stank. Mama Betts was right that Nadine didn’t keep a clean house. The trash piles had grown and grown over the summer. Kali Oka Road didn’t have garbage pickup like Jexville had, but Nadine owned a truck and she could have taken her garbage to the dump. But she didn’t.
It smelled like something had died in the kitchen, and I backed up a few more steps. I sure hoped she didn’t ask me and Jamey to clean up the garbage mess. Shoveling horse manure wasn’t bad. The smell coming from Nadine’s house was enough to gag a maggot, as Arly was always saying.
On the third try, when Nadine never came to the door, I gave up and started walking home. It seemed like it took forever to make the short walk, especially when I got close to the Welford place.
Mrs. Emily Welford was the last person I wanted to see, so I just kept walking toward the house until I passed under the grancy gray-beard tree and slipped into the old swing The Judge had made for me in one of the oak trees. Arly and I hadn’t played parachuter a single time this summer. It was a game where we’d swing as high as we could and then jump out when the swing was at its highest point. We’d mark where we landed. The farthest parachuter won the game.
I smelled the delicious lemony scent of Mama Betts before I heard her.
“Bekkah, are you sick?”
“Maybe a little.” I was. My head ached and my stomach jumped and twisted. “Maybe I’m just tired.”
“Where were you last night?”
“Alice and I went down to Cry Baby Creek.” The urge to confess was almost more than I could bear, but I couldn’t. “We were looking for the baby.”
“Come in the house and I’ll make you some soup. You look positively gray, child. You don’t have a bit of color.”
I followed Mama Betts like a puppy. “Where’s Effie?”
“Your father’s coming home. She went to the airport to get him.”
“Daddy’s coming home? For good?” It was too much to hope for. But even The Judge couldn’t fix what Nadine and I had discovered.
“For the weekend.” Mama Betts gave me a look that took in a lot of territory.
“And Arly? Where’s he?”
“He’s working over at Arnett’s Nursery this afternoon.”
No one would be home but me and Mama Betts. “Can I have my soup on the sofa and watch The Edge of Night with you?”
She stopped walking and turned around to look at me. “Of course. You must be feeling mighty bad.”
I nodded. “I am.”
“Are you sick or guilty?” she asked, her blue eyes watching.
“Both.”
“Then you have some soup and a nap first, and then we’ll talk.”
At last the tears came. They filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks, but I never made a sound.
“Whatever you’ve done, Bekkah, it couldn’t be that bad.”
No matter what I’d done, Mama Betts would never think the worst of me. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I whispered.
“Sick in body or sick in spirit?”
“I can’t tell.” I got a grip on my tears and fought them back. What would I tell my grandmother, if I could? That I’d been digging in graves in a church cemetery? That I’d broken into a church and torn up a preacher’s bedroom with Nadine? That I thought maybe the Redeemers were selling babies because Nadine said so? And I wasn’t even sure of that because she’d told me not to tell anyone or we could go to prison. Surely Nadine would have to call the police if it were true. Mama Betts’ hand on my forehead brushed back my hot hair. She lifted my chin and stared down at me through her thick glasses.
“No matter what it is, I’ll still love you, and Effie and Walt, too. Now stop crying in this heat or you’ll make yourself throw up.”
I wiped the tears off my face with the back of my hand. I felt her arm around me, pulling me up against her stomach and bosom. The lemony smell was stronger than usual.
“I made your daddy a lemon pie,” she said. “Just the way he likes them with meringue four inches high. That’ll put him in a good mood.” She hugged me to her side as we walked across the lawn. “I think Effie and Walt have been neglecting you lately. You’ve been so busy at that barn we haven’t gone swimming or made ice cream. Maybe we should do that.”
I was afraid if I tried to talk I’d start crying again, so I nodded.
“Let’s do that tomorrow. We’ll all go to the Escatawpa River, where it’s really deep enough to swim. We’ll take a picnic and that old hand-crank ice cream machine, and we’ll have us a time. Does that sound good?”
In the back of my mind I remembered Nadine’s promise to take Cammie for a ride down the road. It didn’t matter. I wanted to be with Mama Betts and Effie. I wanted The Judge to show me how to do the different strokes in the medley races. I even wanted to see Arly.
“That sounds great.” My voice was shaky, but it held.
“Yes.”
“Then it’s settled. I’m declaring tomorrow a holiday. Nobody works, not even you or Arly. It’s going to be a family day like we haven’t had in too long. Maybe after The Edge of Night you can help me peel some potatoes for a salad. And I’ll fry up some chicken. I’ll even make another batch of biscuits and some baked beans.”
“Can Alice come?”
“The child’s practically family. Of course she can.”