“Like the ladies from church who urge you to bleach my skin.”
“Those older ladies are harmless and don’t know any better. Just ignore them. For the most part”—she stopped rubbing—“people embrace you. It’s only an obnoxious few spreading words of hate and bigotry.”
I crossed my legs in front of me and pulled at the edges of my quilt again. “Doesn’t it seem awfully strange, though, that a mysterious someone telephoned Daddy, and just a short while later he stumbled in front of Joe’s car in the dark . . . and then suddenly died from a busted leg and a sore arm? After the crate had been delivered?”
Mama clamped her arms around herself and gave a shudder. “I don’t even want to imagine people in this town deliberately hurting your father.”
“I don’t, either, but I would like to go to that restaurant and see what the Franklins have to say.”
“No, absolutely not. You are not going to the Dry Dock when they have that sign hanging on their door.”
“Do you know them?”
“The Franklins are a couple from the church in Bentley. I’ve never actually met them.”
I raked my hands through my short hair, digging at my scalp, knowing what difficult question would need to be asked next. “Do you believe in ghosts, Mama?”
She frowned and stiffened. “Don’t you dare mention that again.”
“Not only have I seen Daddy during the past few nights, but I’ve spoken to him.”
She stepped back.
“He looked me in the eye,” I said, “and he told me—”
“You did not see your father.”
“He said, ‘I put full blame on the Dock’—meaning the Dry Dock. And then he told me, ‘If I’d just stayed away from that place that night, if I’d been a stronger man, I’d still be alive today.’”
“No,” said Mama. “Your father did not speak to you.”
“Yes, he did, Mama.” I rose to my feet. “I’m going to that restaurant this morning. I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly, but I’ve got to head there, or I won’t rest.”
Mama’s face shifted from me to my window, as if she could see the restaurant from two miles away, beyond all the trees and the farms. “You can’t go to the Dry Dock on your own.”
“Then come with me.”
Her throat rippled with a swallow.
“Please, come with me.” I held out my hand to her, my fingers shaking. “I’m never going to be able to sleep another night until I learn what happened to Daddy before he and Joe crossed paths on that road. And I don’t think Daddy will rest until then, either. Please. Come.”
She hesitated. I watched as gooseflesh dotted her arms, and her chest rose and fell with breaths that looked labored. But then she straightened her back and reached behind her.
She grabbed hold of my hand and held it as fiercely as if she were saving me from drowning.
POURING WHISKEY INTO A SEWER, PROHIBITION-ERA UNITED STATES.
CHAPTER 21
MOST UNNATURAL MURDER
MAMA AND I WALKED THE NEARLY two-mile stretch into town and stopped to catch our breath beneath the shade of a pine tree. Mama wiped her forehead with a handkerchief, and I peered through the needles at the restaurants up ahead.
Ginger’s was an old brown shack—a former watering hole for local farmers, loggers, and railway men. The Dry Dock, on the other hand, sat in a fine white clapboard building with fancy gables and dormer windows and two brick chimneys that rose from the roof’s black shingles. Wicker rocking chairs welcomed visitors for a moment of respite on the low front porch, and a wreath of dried flowers hung on the door, above a handwritten sign I’d always mistaken for a list of the hours of operation. The two establishments sat uphill from a creek, separated by that monstrous old oak tree with branches thicker than any I’d ever swung from as a child. Fleur, Laurence, and I could have wrapped our arms and legs around the limbs and pretended to be tigers if we’d ever played downtown instead of in the woods.
“I want to go inside,” I said.
“You can’t.” Mama mopped her flushed cheeks with the white cloth. “And don’t you dare try.”
“Would they throw me out?”
“Yes, I’m sure they would.”
I took a step closer, and my nose filled up with the sweet scent of pine sap. The tips of my fingers felt sticky, even though I hadn’t touched the tree. “Doesn’t it make you fighting mad,” I said, “that everyone else’s daughters can step inside the place, but not yours?”
My mother lowered the handkerchief from her face. “Of course it does, Hanalee. Why do you even have to ask?”
“Then take me inside.” I snapped a clump of dry needles off the branch dangling in front of my face. “I don’t want to sit down at one of their tables or take one bite of their food. I just want to speak to the owners.”
“You can’t just walk up to people and accuse them of hurting your father a year and a half ago.”
I eyed the Dry Dock.
It would take no more than twenty long strides to get myself to the front door.
I glanced at Mama.