CHAPTER 2

Five hundred miles north of Unionville, Larkin and Velma Reeves were worried. Larkin, a thin man with slicked-back hair and a pencil moustache, pushed the afternoon newspaper aside, set a serving tray on the patio table, and handed glasses of iced lemonade to Velma and their daughter Becky. They sat on cedar chairs he had built, along with the table, in the basement of their suburban Kirkwood, Missouri, home. July had brought sweltering heat and the women were wearing sundresses and sandals. Larkin had on Bermuda shorts. They had been arguing off and on since last evening. Becky had an offer to teach seventh grade in Unionville, Arkansas, and Larkin, a high school principal for twenty-six years, did not want his only child taking a job in a school she had never seen in some small town in the middle of nowhere. More than that, even though she was thirty-five, he hated the thought of her moving so far away.

“You’d be better off laying out a year and waiting for something to open up around here,” he said, nodding toward the St. Louis skyline.

“Dad, I love you,” Becky said, flashing a dimpled smile and flipping strands of auburn hair away from sparkling brown eyes, “but you and Mom are overreacting and you know it.” Gestures like these had melted her father’s resolve before but not this time. He and Velma, who taught third grade, were proud that Becky had followed in their footsteps, but the Unionville position seemed risky.

It had come open when the woman holding it quit unexpectedly and, according to Becky’s understanding, took a similar position elsewhere. With the start of school only weeks away, Unionville officials scoured Arkansas and every neighboring state in search of a replacement, posting as many ads as they could afford and conducting interviews by telephone. They learned little about Becky except that she had a teaching certificate and experience, was not married, and could relocate on short notice. She learned even less about them.

“You haven’t met anyone down there,” Larkin said, frowning. “You don’t even know what kind of facilities they have or what textbooks they’re using.”

“Come on! They said I’d be teaching in a practically new building. And you know I’ve never been tied to textbooks. You and Mom taught me better than that.”

“Honey,” Becky’s mother asked, trying a different approach, “are you sure you can drive that far?” A trim woman admired for her Latin good looks and sunny humor, Velma normally did not worry out loud like this. When Becky had come down with polio during her teens, Velma helped her work through months of hospitalization and painful therapy and later encouraged her to chase her dreams. Now, however, Velma seemed willing to do anything to keep her daughter from going south, even reminding her how hard she found long drives because the polio had left one leg shorter than the other.

“I have to do it, Mom,” Becky said, putting her hand on Velma’s arm. “I want to work and I still like being in a classroom.” She had been seeking an assistant principal’s job or similar position but had exhausted all possibilities for the coming school year. Since finishing her master’s at the University of Missouri in the spring, she had gone on nine interviews and received zero offers. More than one recruiter, after seeing her limp, suggested that helping to manage an entire school would be too much for her.

Velma took a deep breath and let it out slowly, searching for the right words. “I understand how you feel,” she said, “but this just seems too rushed.”

Becky sighed and sat back. For a long time, all three sipped their lemonade in silence. A light breeze stirred the warm air and raised the scent of potted petunias.

“Look, Mom, Dad,” Becky said finally, as she leaned forward and set her glass on the table, “I’ve handled a lot of different situations and I can handle this one. It’ll be fine until I can get something else, so I’m taking it.”

They had to admit she had always been resourceful. After beating polio, she had worked during most of World War II as a clerk in an aircraft factory then earned a degree from nearby Fontbonne University and taught at a private academy in Illinois before going to graduate school.

“Becky,” Velma said, coming to what concerned her most, “there are a lot of mean-spirited people down South. The farther you go, the worse it gets. I looked up Unionville on the map. It’s not far from that place in Mississippi where someone killed that poor Emmett Till boy just because he said,‘Bye, baby,’ to a white girl. And you know what it was like for your Great-grandmother Charlene and your Grandmother Abigail living in New Orleans.”

“But Mom, that was a long time ago. And they were madams for gosh sakes.”

“Yes, they were, but they didn’t have much choice about it. That’s why Momma sent me up here to live with Cousin Lottie—to get me away from all that. Now I wish they’d given me Lottie’s last name too.”

“What difference does that make?”

“None probably,” Velma said, “but Clémence isn’t exactly common, and Momma and Grandma both owned a lot of property. What do you think will happen if somebody down there starts nosing around?”

“Oh, Mom,” Becky said, getting up to clear the table,“no one up here has ever bothered about you, and no one down there is going to bother about me.”