I sat in the passenger’s seat of the car while Karol drove my Lexus on the darkening road to Cottonwood. She said little while I read and reread every word, every line, and examined every jot and tittle. Every so often I exclaimed my frustration at this new revelation in what seemed to be an overwhelming list of revelations, usually in loud sighs.
“What is it,” Karol finally asked, “that is really bothering you? That your aunt had a child you didn’t know about or that Valentine and Lilly Beth Bach adopted her?”
It was then that the impact of who this child was and is fully hit me. I sat straight and grabbed Karol’s shoulder. “Bettina Bach Godwin.”
“What?”
“Miss Bettina. Bettina Bach Godwin is Aunt Stella’s daughter.”
“Well, of course. I know the birth certificate just says ‘baby girl Nevilles,’ but are you just now getting that?”
I pushed myself back in the seat and stared straight ahead. It seemed to me the dividing line in the center of the highway was coming at us too quickly and the place where the road disappeared was much too far away. It was as if we’d travel on for days or weeks or perhaps even years, and though we’d stay on course, we’d never reach our destination. The foliage on either side of the road sped by in deep shades of green and brown and gray. Trying to keep my eyes on it—trying to focus on just one tree or just one branch or one cluster of leaves—made me dizzy and nauseous.
At least I told myself that was what it was. I closed my eyes against the scene and tried to wrap my mind around what my heart was trying to come to grips with, the knowledge I’d gained in the hours of one day. My great-grandfather, a man I’d never known but had grown to respect by virtue of legend and story, was a murderer. My whole life I’d heard the singing of his praises. Even in the meager population of Cottonwood, he was a man still today revered and respected. How could I possibly expose him for what he really was? Perhaps in the 1930s and 1940s it didn’t matter but . . .
“But even then they wore sheets.”
I wasn’t aware I’d spoken out loud until Karol cut her eyes toward me briefly then looked back at the road. “What?”
I blinked a few times, then said, “I was just thinking that if I expose my great-grandfather for being a murderer rather than this icon I’ve always been told about, I will hurt my family. After all, they wore sheets, didn’t they? Why? So people wouldn’t know who they were.”
“But don’t you think, Jo-Lynn, that most people from around here know that their grandparents or great-grandparents— if they were of a certain skin color—held the same beliefs your great-grandfather did? The photos you have— even those very few—show exposed faces of men, women, and children near the bodies of those murdered. They’re standing there looking like they’ve come to see the opening of Barnum and Bailey, for crying out loud.” She took a much-needed breath. “Look, I’ve been here for a couple of months, and I can tell you the prejudices around here—and they go both ways—are thicker than blood with some of these people.”
“I know, I know.”
“So do you really think you’re going to shock anyone? Sheets or not?”
“I don’t know. I only know that my family has been held in the highest regard in both Cottonwood and Raymore as long as I can remember. I don’t want people to miss the good they’ve done because of the evil they’ve done.”
“Not they, Jo-Lynn. He.
”
I shook my head. “Not just him. My aunt had a child, Karol, out of wedlock, in a place and period when girls of her . . . breeding didn’t do things like . . . that. And more than that, my aunt has lied to me. She’s lied to everyone. She has a child, a daughter, living not five miles from her the child’s whole life and she treats her like any one of Doris’s school chums. Bettina is her daughter, Karol. Her child.” I began to sob, crying so hard I bent over and wrapped my arms around my knees in some awkward form of comforting myself. This was not, I decided, simply a moment of disappointment in the character of my family members; this was lamentation at no longer knowing who I really was.
I sat up and looked at Karol. Brushing the tears from my cheeks and jaw line, I said, “Do you know how long I’ve wanted a child?”
“No.”
“Since the day I married. No, since before that. Since I was a child.”
“So why didn’t you have one?”
“Evan didn’t want children. I would have given anything if I could have convinced him otherwise, but he was set in his ways. Every so often I’d get down about it and I would think surely he would love me enough to relent. To see my pain and think maybe we should . . .”
“But he didn’t.”
“No.” The car began to rock lightly over the broken asphalt in the road, an indication we were nearing Cottonwood.
“And so you made your career your child?”
“I worked mad hours, for sure, but I did love what I did. And I loved—love—Evan. I enjoyed our life together, and other than the childlessness, I had no complaints.”
“And then?”
“And then Evan began to change. He became absorbed by who we were in the community and at the club and—”
“A lot like you.”
“What? What do you mean, ‘like me’?”
“You’ve been absorbed by who you are in the community of Cottonwood and in Raymore. That’s why being here is so important to you. You lost your job in Atlanta—”
“I didn’t lose it.”
“Jo-Lynn, let’s not split hairs here. You know chances are you never had any intention of going back.”
I swallowed hard. She was right. How was it, I wondered, that someone who had only known me a short period of time could read me so well?
“It’s my job,” she said from the other side of the car.
“What?”
“You’re wondering how it is that I know you so well, right?”
I felt my eyes widen. “My gosh! How do you do that?”
She laughed, the tiniest bell of a giggle, and then said, “I keep telling you my job is to know everything.”
“Maybe that’s why I was so quick to forgive Evan and allow him back . . .”
“Into your bed?”
I didn’t answer. My gosh, but she was good. Finally, in an effort to get the subject away from me, I said, “I just don’t see how Aunt Stella could have possibly given away her child and then stood by and watched another woman raise her.”
Karol was silent. I felt the car slowing and instinctively looked to my right. We were approaching the big house, now no more than 150 yards away. Dusk’s shadows had settled around it, and I could see that Valentine’s crew was gone. Sitting in front of Mae-Jo and Bob’s store was a county squad car, empty of its driver. No doubt he was inside getting a cup of coffee to keep him warm.
Karol pulled into the driveway, turned the car off, and then turned to me. “Isn’t it funny? You’ve been agonizing about the fact that your aunt had a child she didn’t keep while I have completely different questions.”
I turned to her. “You do?”
“Jo-Lynn, are you so wrapped up in this that it hasn’t dawned on you that I am only—what?—five years younger than you and that I’ve neither been married nor do I have any children?”
I opened my mouth to comment, then closed it. I rubbed my fingertips hard against the pounding flesh of my forehead then looked at her. “No, I guess I thought . . . well, I don’t know what I thought.”
She laid her head back against the headrest as she barked, “Ha!” Cutting her eyes at me she said, “Listen, my new fledgling friend . . .”
Her choice of words brought an unexpected giggle to my throat.
“Listen. I work in what is predominantly a man’s world. I travel all over the globe—mostly in the U.S., but I travel constantly and meet people of all ethnic, religious, and financial backgrounds—and I’ve never once met a man who so knocked me off my feet I’d be willing to give up anything, much less my job, for him. I can sit here and tell you I’ve honestly never been in love, Jo-Lynn, though God knows I’ve wanted to be.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“Not even in high school?” I thought of Royce Coniff and the “love” we’d once had.
“Well . . . who can count that? I mean, what do we really know about love at sixteen and seventeen?”
I picked up the bent papers—the telltale birth certificate and adoption records of Baby Girl Nevilles—and said, “Or eighteen?”
“I think life was different then. A girl of seventeen or eighteen in the 1930s was far and away from girls of the same age in our day or today.”
I thought of the photo of Aunt Stella, the one I supposed taken by Henry Hawkins Jr. I thought of the maturity in her eyes and yet the hope in the unexpected joys of what tomorrow might bring. Then I thought of myself in high school and—once again—of Royce Coniff and of those fleeting emotions we’d called “love.” I thought of Arizona and Annaleise. Arizona fancied herself to be in love with a boy she hardly knew. Annaleise seemed put off by the prospect of love for her sister.
Karol was right. There was a vast difference in then and now.
“So,” Karol said, breaking my reverie. “You’re wondering how she could give up a child, and I’m wondering who she’d had a child with. Where is that love story? Because surely there is one.”
I thought on this for a moment. “Oh my gosh.”
“What?”
“Valentine Bach told me he and my aunt were in love seventy years ago.”
Karol shifted in her seat. “So you think . . .”
I shook my head. “No, I . . . no. He said they broke up because he got married.” I waved a hand in the air. “I’ll explain that later.”
“I’ll wait.”
“So then . . .” I took my time, trying to imagine the scenario. “Maybe because she’d loved him at one time and she knew he loved Lilly Beth enough to break off their relationship . . . maybe Aunt Stella thought then they’d be likely candidates. Lilly Beth never gave birth, I don’t think, so . . . maybe . . . maybe because she didn’t, she couldn’t and . . .” I sighed. “I need Sherlock Holmes for this one.”
“But you don’t think your aunt gave birth to Valentine’s child?”
I remained quiet for a moment, then said, “What kind of woman would raise the child of her husband and his old girlfriend?”
Karol laughed. “A pretty good one.”
I rubbed my hands together in the cold of the car. “If I’m going to find out who Bettina’s father is I’m going to have to take drastic measures.”
“Go right to the source.”
I looked at her then and nodded as I gave a wistful smile. “I’m sorry you’ve never been in love.”
She reached across the seat and took my hand in hers. “And I’m sorry you never had a child.”
I breathed in deep through my nose and sighed it out. I squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. My new best friend, I thought, and I smiled.
But Karol didn’t return the smile. Instead she said, “Just see to it you don’t throw your love away. My gut tells me Evan and you haven’t begun to work through anything really. Allow me to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong and say, ‘Work it out, Jo-Lynn.’ Whatever you need to do, do it. Talk it out, scream it out, hug it out. Whatever it takes. Just don’t throw anything of value away.”
“I won’t,” I said, a mere whisper in the night.
Then she smiled. “Now, let’s walk over to see Mae-Jo and tell her I’m spending the night tonight.”
I blinked. “What?”
She spread her arms, bent at the elbows, and waved her hands around the driver’s side of the seat. “In case you haven’t noticed, sister, I’m without a car.”