“I don’t understand. How did this happen? How could you have done this?” To hear that her mother was anything but all the things she’d preached to Em— chastity, faithfulness—left her unable to process anything else.
“I loved Ethan first. Long before Pearl even knew he was alive, but my father, your grandpa, didn’t like Ethan. Back then, it was just different. Marryin’ the right person was important. Your parents’ approval was more important than it is today. They thought Ethan was irresponsible, and I suppose, at that time, he was. But I loved him.” Her voice cracked and her shoulders shuddered.
Em shook her head. This was all wrong. This wasn’t her mother, talking about love like she was some teenager. This wasn’t her disapproving, purse-lipped mother. This was someone who needed medication.
“So I broke it off with Ethan, and I met Thomas shortly thereafter. I cared about Thomas. I won’t have anyone thinkin’ otherwise.”
Finally, she summoned up some words, words she wanted to use to hurt Clora. Make her hurt like she was hurting. “Because Lord forgive if someone thought otherwise, right, Mama? Never create any scandal, Emmaline. Be a good girl, Emmaline,” she mocked.
Clora trembled under the weak light of the stovetop range. “I never wanted you to suffer for my misdeeds, Emmaline. I didn’t want people to talk about you the way they talked about me. If I kept you on the Lord’s path—”
“The Lord’s path? Have you lost your gourd, Mama? How is infidelity the Lord’s path?” All of the sermons, all of the beating her over the head about being a good girl were because her mother had done something despicable? She’d paid the price for her mother’s sin?
But her mother was lost in her memory, hell-bent on purging herself. “I know what we did was wrong. I don’t know how it happened. It just happened. I knew I deserved every last bit o’ the scorn Pearl set out to shower on me.”
Em clutched her purse, her hands shaking. “Pearl knew? How?”
“She caught us together.” Her mother sobbed a ragged whimper.
Em began to gag, forcing her to press her fingers to her lips.
“But she’s the only person who knows aside from Thomas. Not even Ethan knew. He went to his grave never knowin’ he had two daughters. Pearl’d never tell a soul. It would only bring her humiliation and shame, and she’d never allow that. But it’s what she used to cut me out of the Mags. It’s how she kept me rooted here in my misery. How she kept me in line. I never wanted that to fall at your feet, Emmaline. So I kept quiet.”
“Thomas knew?”
Clora nodded, her eyes filled with tears. “He left me because of it.”
“Why didn’t you tell Mr. Davis about me?” Oh, sweet heaven. He was no longer Mr. Davis.
Her mother looked like she’d just asked her if pigs flew, but her eyes sank to the floor. “How would that have been for you, Emmaline? The illegitimate child of a powerful man like Ethan Davis, livin’ in a town like this with a teenager like Dixie Davis was? She was horrible to you all your life, Emmaline. I never liked the idea of you two bein’ friends, and I like it even less now.”
Everything clicked for Em then. She heard the pieces of it snap into place. All the lessons in decorum. All the anger. All the reminders of bitter retribution were because her mother was making up for her past mistakes. She was punishing herself for sinning, for doing one of the very things she preached was wrong.
It explained her mother’s aversion to Dixie.
As though it was Dixie’s fault she’d grown up with everything and Clora had struggled all her life to provide. “Don’t you mean half sisters, Mama? You leave Dixie alone! She surely had nothin’ to do with you beddin’ her father!”
Dixie... What would this do to Dixie? She’d been Daddy’s little girl, the apple of his eye. Looking back, she remembered seeing them together. He came to all of Dixie’s games when she was a cheerleader, and he’d adored her. She’d adored him.
How would she ever face Dixie again?
Twenty-One
In the aftermath of her mother’s confession, Em looked at Clora and felt nothing but empty, a wind tunnel of nothing. Not angry or even resentful, just empty. “You will never, ever breathe a word of this to Dixie—do you understand me, Mama? If you so much as speak her name with ill regard, I’ll never see you again, you hear? You keep your secrets close to your chest the way you have for well over thirty years, but you will not hurt my friend with your angry recriminations.”
In direct opposition to Em’s dry eyes and wooden words, Clora sobbed openly. “I’m sorry, Emmaline. I’m so sorry. I never wanted you to know. I never wanted you to pay for what I’d done.”