I closed the connection, my hands downright shaking. I’d said words to JJ that I’d had rotting in my mouth for twenty years. I felt oddly fresh, almost minty, clean in the wake of saying all those words. I’d wanted to ask him to promise me that he would contact Lavender, but I hadn’t. His promises didn’t mean jack, and his tears didn’t either. He might be feeling sorry for JJ, weeping for poor Jake, and not for Lavender at all. He would call or he wouldn’t. I couldn’t control that. But God, it had felt so good to speak the truth at last, biting into him and chewing like a rattlesnake until my venom sacs were spent and empty.
I wanted to savor it, but a glance at the clock told me I had about six minutes before Birchie and Wattie would be walking out the door. I ran a brush across my tufty bed head and pulled on my voluminous Digby-hiding skirt again. At this point I was pretty much living in this skirt, my sweatpants, and pajamas. I rested my hands on my belly and took three deep breaths to slow my heartbeat. With so much happening, my emotions were a pinwheel, paper light and spun by any wind. Once inside the walls of First Baptist, I could not lose my temper or speak my mind.
I sent a little prayer up toward heaven as I hurried down the hall. Birchie was not herself, and she was walking into the lion’s den of a riled-up small-town Baptist church. I would not let her go without me. Not when she was the one who had riled it.
12
We headed across the road in a tight battle formation. Me and Lavender first, each of us eager to lead the way for our own reasons. Then Wattie and Birchie in their hats and floral dresses and low-heeled shoes, the elderly-southern-lady version of the Armor of the Lord. Rachel, solemn and silent, brought up our rear.
Our bad luck, Martina Mack was standing outside by the door into the sanctuary in her own floral dress, passing out the bulletin. Behind her was the familiar redbrick building with its tall white steeple reaching up into the bright morning sky. When she saw us, her bug-eyed face flashed surprise and then a fervent, ugly joy. She wiped both expressions away so quickly I wasn’t sure anyone else saw. We kept right on coming, and Martina thrust her stack of bulletins at her hench-crone, Gayle Beckworth, who was passing them out on the other side of the doorway. Martina came forward across the wide front porch to meet us at the top of the stairs.
The Grangers and the Lesters were heading inside, but they paused when they saw Martina step to meet us. I could see the Fincher family, walking to church from all the way across the square. Jerry Fincher was the youngest deacon, and his wife had her fingers second-knuckle-deep in every church pie. When they saw us, Polly Fincher picked up her toddler and thrust him into her husband’s arms. Then she sped up so much her baby’s stroller jounced up onto the curb.
Lavender, oblivious to matriarch nuance, trit-trotted up fast, then squirted around Martina and headed inside, looking for her friends. I stayed in front, the last line of defense between Birchie and Martina. The three of us climbed slowly, in deference to Wattie’s knees. As I reached the top, Martina Mack’s scrawny neck lengthened, and she straightened her spine, looking over my shoulder at Birchie.
“I’m so happy you came,” Martina Mack said, and she wasn’t lying. She smiled a smile so chilling I almost saw Violence in it, a hunger running deep enough to qualify as cannibalistic.
“Happy to be here,” I said, even though she wasn’t talking to me.
She spoke to Birchie as if Birchie were alone. More than alone. As if Birchie were a lamb staked out on a hillside.
“Did you know I think my grandson’s going to take a little trip to . . . Charleston?” She said it like Dr. Evil, but the question itself was so innocuous I blinked, surprised. I’m sure I looked confused. Charleston? What fresh hell was this?
“How nice. It’s lovely beach weather,” Birchie said, pleasantly enough. Wattie’s wide-set eyes narrowed.
Martina pitched her voice loud to say, “Cody won’t have time to hit the beach, I wouldn’t think. He’ll be visiting all of those historic graveyards.”
My jaw tensed up at the mention of graveyards. This was something to do with the bones, then? But the Birches’ time in Charleston was ancient history. Martina Mack was ancient history in human terms, well into her eighties, but she was not Civil War old. If the bones dated back to Charleston, that ought to be good news for us.
Nothing in Martina’s sharky smile, so broad that the sun gleamed overbright off the uniform row of her dentures, said she had good news for us. Sally Gentry and the whole Boyd family came spilling back out of the church to see what was happening. Behind us I heard more people climbing the stairs. Martina was playing to a growing audience. A baby started crying, and I glanced back. It was Polly Fincher’s. He hadn’t liked the jouncing, so she’d had to stop her sprint toward this weird drama in order to soothe him. The Gentrys and the Cobbs were on their way up, too. No Frank Darian anywhere.
“Stomping all over cemeteries sounds like a misery in this heat. But we each have our own odd pleasures,” Birchie said. She was so herself this morning.
“Speaking of the heat, my grandmother shouldn’t be standing out here in it,” I said.
I stepped forward, but it only brought me closer to Martina Mack. She held her ground, smelling of thin, sour sweat and boiled egg under baby powder. We were now uncomfortably close, but she wasn’t moving. Birchie and Wattie had stepped forward when I did, crowding me into the middle of a furious-old-lady sandwich. I sidestepped, and now Birchie and Wattie were facing her directly.
There was a breathless feel of waiting in the folks crowding around us. Whatever damning gossip Martina Mack had learned or invented about the bones, she had already shared it. I could tell, because the gazes of the townspeople had changed since last week, when they brought us all those cakes and casseroles, curious and concerned. Now some looked speculative, some wore an odd, hurt brand of confused, and a few were downright bristling with hostility. I pulled my phone out and shot a quick text to Frank Darian: What does Martina Mack know that we don’t?
Martina said, “Cody’s sure to find your father’s grave. Isn’t he? He could do a gravestone rubbing for you. I always did think it was odd, burying your father over in Charleston. When you got on that train, we all thought you meant to bring his body home. You’ve never visited Charleston again, not once, not in all the years I’ve known you, so it might be nice for you to have a rubbing of his stone.” Martina Mack’s voice was rich with fake musing.
Small hairs on the back of my neck stirred as she spoke. Was she saying the bones belonged to Birchie’s father? She couldn’t know that, but if it was purely invented, it was quite a leap. Had Cody told her something?