“I lied. I . . . I . . . Do you think babies born in sin go to heaven if they die?” She scrubbed at an imaginary blemish on the clean surface.
Pearl sucked in a breath.
“My daddy told me when he kicked me out of the house at sixteen that me and my baby would burn in hellfire.”
Pearl placed a hand on her shoulder. Her expression searching, desperate.
Rose gripped the soiled rag to stop the trembling. “He was born too early. Probably my fault, not getting to the doctor regular.”
“He?” Pearl’s expression flickered. Almost as if she were disappointed, but then, the expression softened. “Oh, honey. All children are precious in the Lord’s sight. They don’t choose how they come to be. Sometimes losses happen, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Jesus loves your baby boy.”
Rose stared at the fake wood grain of the laminate table. The weight she’d borne on her shoulders for the past five years lifted by a degree. More buried words found the surface. Stories she’d sworn she’d never speak. But the way Pearl looked at her, touched her shoulder with more gentleness than she’d known in her lifetime, it was more than she could bear.
“I didn’t think what he said sounded right.” She went back to her scrubbing. Trying to hold control, gripping the rough fabric of the soggy rag. She refused to give in to the things her counselor said weren’t real—that lurked just below the surface waiting for her to become weak. The phantom baby cries. Seeing Vance’s hulking figure around every corner. The counselor told her a hundred times she was safe. Maybe she should try to believe it. Say out loud what haunted her day and night.
“I didn’t have nobody when I lost my baby boy. Daddy wouldn’t let me come back home. My boyfriend wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with me. I got real sick, and this older guy, Vance, took me in. He seemed so nice.” She swallowed. Heat roiled in her middle. “He wasn’t.”
Pearl sank onto one of the long wooden benches. Sorrow widened her eyes. But all Rose could feel was rage. There was no room for the grief she witnessed on the woman’s face.
“He had a real love for alcohol. Drugs too. More important than the light bill. But anytime he ran short on cash, he’d call up one of his buddies. Money would exchange hands, and I’d be dragged to the back bedroom of that tin-can trailer.” She glanced out the window of the dining hall, steeling herself. “If I didn’t go willingly or if I embarrassed him, as he so put it, he’d make me pay later. I tried to get away once, and he found me. I was a stupid, scared kid.”
“Oh, Rose.”
She shrugged off the compassion, determined not to crumble. If she let it all loose out into the world, maybe it’d stop rotting her life from the inside out. “I got pregnant again. Don’t know who the daddy was. Baby wasn’t made in love like last time, but with pain and rage in my heart. When I went into labor, Vance told me he’d take me to the hospital later on but then he drank himself stupid.
“I left. There was someone I thought might help me. I met him out by the highway the last time I tried to get away. Said he lived nearby. Such a dumb plan, but it was all I had.”
She shook her head. “Baby was coming too fast. One of Vance’s friends found me and convinced me to get into the back of his musty old Cadillac Seville. Wasn’t nothin’ else I could do. I don’t remember much but blood and pain. And that baby’s first cry. I hear it every night in my ears when I’m trying to fall asleep.
“I passed out, and when I woke back at that old trailer, Vance told me my baby died. That it was too weak. But he did something to it. That cry I heard before I blacked out was full of strength. That baby was a fighter. Not like me.” Her voice came flat and detached, even to her own ears. Like someone else told her story.
“How . . . how long ago did you lose your second child?”
“It’ll be five years in September.” The date was tattooed on the inside of her. A part of her.
Pearl’s wrinkled cheeks were drenched with an emotion Rose had long ago forgotten. So many things flickered in the woman’s expression as she’d spilled her story. Concern. Sorrow. Confusion. And something Rose couldn’t understand for the life of her.
Light and . . . hope.
Confessing her story to Pearl was supposed to make things better. Release her from her chains. But as the week passed, the bonds only seemed to tighten. Rose wandered through the stable, horses nickering as she passed.
Pearl had been so strange since that day. Quieter. As though her mind was filled with things. Too many things. It wasn’t judgment in her eyes though. It was worry. For what, Rose didn’t know.
She approached the stall of a dapple-gray pony and hooked her elbows over the stall door. The pony snuffed and shifted in the stall.
A dark figure sat in the corner. Rose flinched and gripped the stall door. Never had he been so close. All the times she’d seen him before it had been across a field. Or lurking at the edge of the woods.
She squeezed her eyes tight and pressed her hands over her ears. He wasn’t real. He wasn’t real. No one could see that phantom figure but her. But no matter how much she chanted the words inside her head or how tight she pressed her hands over her ears, it wouldn’t banish the stale scent of his hot breath on her face or his cold, cruel whisper.
“Come with me, Laney.”
She quaked, knees turning to gelatin as she curled against the stall door. “No.”
“I’ll hurt the old woman. I know she helped you escape. I followed her home. I know where she lives.”
“No,” Rose moaned. “You’re not real. You’re not.”
“I’m as real as the air you breathe. You’ll never get free of me.”
Rose stood on shaking legs and raced from the stable, refusing to look back. From inside her cabin, she peered between the crack in the curtains.
Vance stood at the edge of the woods, looking her way. But there was nothing fuzzy about his form this time. All hard angles and strength. Solid. Real.
Her only choice was to run.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
OCTOBER 20, 1994
“What on earth are you doing out here?”
Harvey startled awake at the sound of Pearl’s voice. He sat up from where he’d slouched, asleep in the porch swing. She didn’t look angry. More sad than anything.
“I . . . I just needed some air.” He slunk away from Pearl and ducked into the house. She wasn’t supposed to catch him sleeping on the porch. The truth was, he couldn’t get comfortable in the borrowed bed. The borrowed room. The borrowed clothes. The borrowed everything.
The outdoors was different. It was more his than anything else. Maybe because the outside air couldn’t be owned. No one could negate his right to walk down the side of the road. He shucked off his dew-damp clothes and turned on the shower as hot as it would go.
As the steaming water poured over him, he replayed the night before. Did Pearl realize he’d offered her the only story, the singular memory he had of his life before the accident? He’d never told anyone that one precious piece of his life. Not the social workers, or the counselors, or any of his foster parents.
Of course, she’d wanted to know what happened next. But it was too much. The similar weather. The flashbacks. He might have lost it, and she already thought he was half out of his mind. No reason to thoroughly convince her.