“To my lost and found niece, Kit Walker, in the unlikely event of my death:
“As I write, I am, apart from my little heart thingy, enjoying robust and vigorous health. I have no plans to die, nor have I reckoned myself to this possibility. However, should nature overpower me, the following are my sincerest wishes. I leave the whole of my estate, the specifics of which are listed below, to you, Kit. This is not merely a formality for next of kin, but an expression of my love and affection. It is not much but will ensure you and your child will always have a home.”
A home. Kit walked away, bracing against a heavy emotion. She leaned her head on a tree trunk and felt the bark press into her forehead and belly. She had been so ready to leave and start over. Now this unimaginable gift. If this was real, how could she leave? How could she stay without Eleanor? Kit tried to tell herself Eleanor had wanted this for her; somewhere in her great, broken heart she’d made room for Kit and the baby to be. It was difficult for Kit to let herself feel how much she might have wanted to stay. Inches from her face, a cicada husk, lifelike and paper-thin, clung to the bark. When she tried to blow it off, it quivered but did not let go.
“Miss Walker, if you don’t mind,” the lawyer said. He looked impatient and barreled ahead with the specifics of Eleanor’s estate. These included title to the house and everything in it, the truck and enough savings to cover the remaining house payments for six months or so. “Please forgive the pesky note on the house. My payments are small but you’ll need a job soon to keep them current. I know you’ll figure it out.”
It was too much. She did not deserve it. She needed time to think this over.
Vaughn shook the papers at her and tapped them with a pen to indicate he needed a signature. She hated him for witnessing this moment, so dear to her, so trivial to him. She wiped her tears on the gray wool sleeve of a coat she’d taken from Eleanor. He looked at her with unveiled suspicion.
“Well, I can’t say I haven’t seen it before, long-lost relatives coming in to butter up old family members.”
Kit narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It is strange though, isn’t it? Nothing to prove you’re really family. Nothing to go on but your word?” He picked his teeth graphically with the cap of his pen. “Ellie told me she didn’t know a thing about your background and that she wasn’t gonna push the issue. Heart of gold, that woman. Worked out pretty nice for you there, don’tcha think?”
Kit was suddenly hot. “Listen, man. I’ve got a baby coming and I just buried the only family I’ve got. You think I wanted this to happen?”
His hands went up in self-defense. “Hey, look, people are talking, it’s not just me. You show up, take over her house, few months later she’s out of the way. You’d be a fool if you didn’t see it.”
She wished she could knock this turd of a man into a hole and bury him alive. How could they think she had wanted her aunt dead when Eleanor was the only good thing in her life right now? And not just him, apparently people were talking. No way in hell could she stay if people suspected her of hurting Eleanor.
“It’s always the old, sick ones, with the long-lost relatives? The lonely ones, ain’t it?”
Kit stuck her head out. She would not let this smarmy beetle of a man cut her down.
“You’re a sorry piece of shit for talking to me like that,” she said. “Eleanor was a good woman, and she would fire your ass for coming over here on the day of her funeral, making it seem like I wanted this, any of this.”
Vaughn was unperturbed. “Well?” He fluttered the papers at her.
Kit didn’t even know what day it was. How could she be expected to make this decision right now? She wanted to cry for how much she wished Eleanor were here. She didn’t know how to act right or fall in line. She had gotten used to having an ally and had enjoyed her aunt’s protection from the people in town. But whatever doubt she had had about Eleanor’s intentions, that she was acting out of guilt, Kit knew now that her aunt had wanted her to stay. That her aunt knew Kit’s child deserved an address and a mailbox and chickens to tend. Deserved to go to school and make friends and have neighbors that knew her since she was yea high. Deserved to wake up in the same house every morning with enough to eat and with pictures of her goddamn family on the wall. Eleanor was right. This baby deserved everything Kit never had.
Kit was through with running away.
She grabbed the papers and pen from the lawyer and began to sign.
“Well, congratulations, Miz Walker.” He chuckled and tucked the will away in his breast pocket. “You done very good for yourself. I expect you’ll be putting the house up for sale? Cashing in and going on your way?”
Not that she owed him an answer, but she felt like putting it on the record.
“No sir, I’ll be staying here in Pecan Hollow.”
Part III
Chapter Twenty-One
Pecan Hollow, TX, 1990
When Kit awoke she lay faceup in the grass, interlacing branches of mature pecans above her. She rested there in a daze, at first not sure where she was, letting the pieces fall slowly together. Muddled memories returned to her, less pungent than before. Pork chops and biscuits and Eleanor humming while she cooked. Hard, cold dirt and blisters on her hands; the echo of her voice in an empty house. A fresh spring of grief bubbled up, and she wished she could see Eleanor one more time, wrap her arms around the dough of her back and see the easy benevolence in her gaze. Eat one perfect meal at her table and ask every question she’d never gotten to ask about her mother.
Then the thought of Manny at her door and with it, more memories. Loud sanitary paper and iodine, a scalpel in the shoulder. Barbecue smoke, gun smoke, baby Ray’s cries. The hateful look on Manny’s face as he lunged against the men who held him. Her heartbeat quickened. She had been terrified that day, scared enough to leave her partner, her whole life behind. She had been certain that the hate she saw would not pass. It was enough to keep her from looking back.