Chapter Thirty

CELIA SAW CLEAR AS DAY that Ruby Lynne was delighted to be teaching children again. How Reverend Willard had pulled that off, she couldn’t imagine. Ruby Lynne no longer taught Marshall—nobody did—and everybody made sure that neither Olney nor Marshall was scheduled to work outside Garden’s Gate when she came. Still, there were lots of younger children, colored and white, who needed “tutoring,” as Miss Lill called it.

Ruby Lynne taught only the white children—her daddy’s orders, though she left cookies for children of both colors and hair ribbons for the girls when they came in to use the library. Giving just seemed to brighten Ruby Lynne’s soul and that raised her high in Celia’s estimation.

Miss Lill had kept to herself for weeks through the summer and on into September, past the start of school. In the house she kept to her room. Outside, she took long walks up the mountain, never wanting company. Finally, one afternoon Miss Lill came downstairs and found Ruby Lynne at the kitchen table teaching the alphabet to seven-year-old Rebecca Mae, Ida Mae’s grandniece by marriage. The child’s laughter—like water bubbling over brook stones—seemed to wake Miss Lill, open her eyes and ears. Celia figured she still viewed the world a little cockeyed, maybe, but at least no longer looked like a woman in a trance.

Even so, Miss Lill wasn’t the same as before Miz Hyacinth passed. None of them were. A light had gone from Garden’s Gate, a light no one seemed able to find again.

Miss Lill took to sitting evenings at Miz Hyacinth’s desk in the parlor to write letters of thanks to folks who’d tended her aunt in any way during her last days and to those who’d brought food or flowers to the house after the funeral. She intended to write to Biddy Chambers, Celia knew, because she’d heard Miss Lill ask her mama what she knew of the woman one afternoon in the kitchen.

“Only that Miz Hyacinth considered Biddy her dearest friend—‘friend of a lifetime,’ she’d say. Reverend Willard knows more,” her mama mentioned, peeling potatoes at the sink without turning round. “He’s the one read all Biddy’s letters out loud once she lost her sight, and he’s the one wrote down everything Miz Hyacinth wanted said in return. I think he’d be proud if you asked him.” Her mama turned to Miss Lill. “He misses Miz Hyacinth something fierce. It’d be a mercy to give him the opportunity to talk about her.”

“I can’t do that.” Miss Lill shook her head. “I know you don’t understand why. I’m sorry.”

Celia kept quiet and stepped back into the hallway, just outside the kitchen door, knowing that the only way she’d hear more was to make herself invisible.

“Reverend Willard doesn’t understand. Why do you shut him out so? He’s a good man, Lilliana, a kind man, a man you can trust. And he’s grieving, just like you. You’d be company for one another. That’d make Miz Hyacinth smile.”

The sigh Miss Lill released as she pulled a chair from the table and plunked down sounded like the weight of the world rested on her shoulders. “Aunt Hyacinth might like it, but she wouldn’t expect it.”

Celia heard another chair slide over the floor and pictured her mama sitting across the table from Miss Lill. She peeked around the corner in time to see her mother clasp both Miss Lill’s hands in her own. “Tell me what’s burdened you so. You weren’t this miserable the day we laid her to rest. What is it?”

Miss Lill choked back sobs. “You wouldn’t believe it . . . at least I don’t think you’d believe it.”

“Try me. Holding darkness inside never gave anybody peace.”

“I’m so confused. My family is burdened in secrets. Aunt Hyacinth told me—oh, never mind. There’s just so much I wish Aunt Hyacinth had explained to me, things I know she meant to—things I wish I could ask her. She was so in my corner, especially where Gerald was concerned, and now . . . Navigating this life without Mama or Aunt Hyacinth is so hard. It’s . . .”

“Exhausting?”

“Yes!”

“I do understand that. Lilliana, I know you’ve endured terrible losses. I know Gerald is a horrible threat that you live under day by day—Miz Hyacinth told me and I see it in your face. But you’re not alone in this.

“You have to know you’re not the only one struggling with a man gone bad. My Fillmore ran moonshine for two years before he was caught and arrested. Every night he’d go out, I’d hold my breath, scared to death he’d be caught or shot. Every night he came home drunk from his victory over the run. He wasn’t as mean a drunk as the Wishon boys, but nasty enough, and I was so ashamed. Ashamed to stay and afraid to go. Where would I go? I loved him and I hated him, wished him safe and wished him caught.”

Celia swallowed. She’d never heard her mama talk like that, had never really known what she thought of her daddy’s public shame.

“And every Sunday, I pinned my hat in place and marched into that church as if I were a God-fearing woman whose man worked a respectable job, selling honey from our bees and scratching a bare living from the garden dirt behind our cabin and selling pelts in Ridgemont.” Now Celia heard her mother sigh. “That bit of work was all a sham, a cover-up for what he was really doing . . . running moonshine for somebody who paid him as much to keep his name secret as he did for running the risk of being arrested—or shot dead.”

“You never learned who hired him?”

“He never told a soul—not even me, no matter that the revenuer said he’d let him go if he gave the man’s name.” Celia heard the weariness in her mother’s voice. “I have my suspicions. I believe Fillmore was just too scared to say who—scared of what they might do to him or to the kids and me. I believe he bought some kind of protection for us by going to jail. How can I not love a man who does that?”

“There’s so much I don’t understand about this place.”

“Well, now,” Celia’s mama said, “isn’t it that way everywhere? The thing is, we can’t let our fears or things we don’t understand weigh us so far down that they keep us from picking up and going forward. We’re still on this earth for a reason. Your mama and Miz Hyacinth were called to their rest, but you weren’t. Now, why is that? What are you here to do? I reckon that’s the point to figure.”