CHAPTER 29

“Mason, what brings you way out here?” Adeline pushed back her bonnet and shaded her eyes against the sun. “Come in. I’m done here.” She picked up the empty laundry basket, adjusted a clothespin or two on the line, and brushed her hand down a wet sheet that had folded back on itself in the breeze.

“Just scouring the country round about. Keeping my eye out for skulkers. Of several varieties.”

“And do you find them?” He caught the edge in her voice.

“No, but I find a lot of rumors about them. Folks that are scared will believe any old tale, even if they made it up themselves.”

Adeline smiled, a rarity in her life these days. She opened the door and motioned the sheriff in.

“Mainly I thought I’d put your mind at ease that I delivered your ultimatum to Lucian. Where’s Thomas?” he said.

Adeline hesitated, looking Mason in the face.

“I expect he’s propped against a tree somewhere out back with his bottle, Sheriff,” she said. “Do you need him?”

“No, ma’am. But I imagine you do.”

Adeline slid the basket onto the table, holding hard to its sides, her shoulders rising as she took in a deep breath.

“I’m sorry, Adeline. I don’t know what took hold of me to say that. I stepped clean over the line on that one and I’m begging pardon. I reckon I better keep scouting.”

“No, no pardon to be given, Mason. You just stepped on the truth, not the line. Have a seat. I was about to have my tea anyway. Or what passes for tea these days. You might as well join me.”

He touched her elbow. “Adeline, there’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time now.”

Adeline hesitated before looking up. “Perhaps there is something I should tell you first, Sheriff.” She stood very still. “Belinda is getting married again. To George Gattaway.” She studied his face for reaction. “Yes, I see you know him. She wants me at the church tomorrow morning. I am loath to be there, Sheriff. The man is a snake. Ill-treats his slaves.”

“May ill-treat her, Adeline.”

“She chooses for herself, Sheriff. I have no sway with her at all since—” Adeline grasped at the edge of the door. “I am searching for the words here. There is something that she doesn’t say and I cannot be around her now.”

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“How different,” she said. “How very different from Will.”

“Will was a man of integrity.”

“Yes,” she said. “His death so—” She paused, seemed to have difficulty speaking. Then, “So here is this man who bought his way out of service. Paid for young Graham to take his place. Now, that boy is dead.”

“So is Will,” Mason said.

“Yes, Will is dead. So are they all. All dead, Mason. And what have you done about it?”

“I can’t go to the front and bring Jeremiah back, Adeline, hard as I want to. I can only pray the war will do my job instead.”

A long silence ensued before Mason positioned his hat on his head and stepped from the porch.

“Mason.”

He stopped.

“What was it you wanted to tell me?”

“Nothing that won’t wait. Maybe another time.” He looked back once to see Adeline standing in the sun, her bonnet hanging down her back, her hand shading her eyes.

* * *

A slow drizzle commenced after dawn the next day and continued through the morning, with brief glimpses of sky that assured better, then broke their promise. Another disastrous spring seemed on its way, the weather as erratic as Belinda herself. The air was cool and barren, the ceremony brief. Adeline watched as Belinda, now Mrs. Gattaway, gathered the rose silk of her skirts and bestowed her new husband with her gloved hand and her smile. A light-skinned slave held an umbrella over the bride. Belinda did not look back, even to wave, but leaned toward George’s bald head, whispering. The couple’s laughter rolled over Adeline as the carriage pulled away.

The rain stopped and a fine, evaporating mist swayed up into the forsythia blooming in the churchyard. Adeline gazed around. The whole empty horizon glowed in the damp air. No one was there. Adeline was struck both by its beauty and by her aloneness. By her losses: a husband drowning in drink, her two sons both horribly dead, the daughter with whom she had never connected gone into a life with no place for her and with which she disagreed—sickeningly so. And Emily, gone in ways for which she had no words, the one who had become the daughter of her soul. What had she left of her life? And then her breath came deep, her shoulders straightened. There were the children. The children were Emily’s, but the children were themselves. The children were not Emily. What had she been thinking? How had she surrendered so to Belinda’s and Emily’s power? Rosa Claire and Lonso were her grandchildren, Charles’s children. She would see them. She would enlist Ginny. These children would know her. She was their blood.

The parson and his wife came out of the church and brushed by her, turning to murmur their farewells.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Slate?” the parson said. Adeline realized she could not recall his name.

“No. No, thank you, sir.” She smiled at the wife, whose name perhaps she had never known, and extended her hand.

“You’re all right, then. Are you sure?” the woman said.

“Yes, thank you. I shall be quite fine. Quite.”

Adeline mounted the wagon and turned it, standing, in the direction of Emily’s house.