Most of Dawkins County hadn’t been terribly fast to integrate. I had grown up knowing my black cousins, swimming in the same ponds each summer while the city pools had still been, unofficially, segregated—and law enforcement had done what it could to keep them that way. Together we’d built snowmen in winter when school was out, sharing books and toys and playtime.

  The family tradition continued in other ways as well. Topaz was Wallace’s daughter, and Wallace was the result of an illicit union between my grandfather Pap Hamilton and Jonetta Chadwick, who was the granddaughter of Mosetta. Family lines all twisted around, in a way that was once typical of the South.

  Topaz and Jasmine, inseparable since they were children. Jas, with her dark blond hair and dark gray eyes and pale skin, Paz with her milk-chocolate skin and green eyes and flyaway hair. Close as sisters.

  He had to hit her again on the way home, hurting his knuckle on her teeth. He hadn’t noticed she had braces. Dark hair and braces. His wife would pay for that—and for the wildness the woman had taught her. Desecration of his daughter, his muse. He sucked his bleeding hand for the last mile to the house. Their house.

  He carried her inside, through the dark living room, without turning on a light. After unlocking the basement door, he carried her down the stairs to the apartment, the bedroom done up in a delicate pink with a sitting area off to the side, dolls, toys and books on the shelves and in the closet. Pretty clothes. Carpet and four-poster bed. A TV and stereo system with CDs of classical music. A private bath. No windows except the one that let him look in on her without her knowing, to make certain that she was safe. No other windows anywhere below ground.

  He laid her on the bed and pulled out a warm-up suit and T-shirt from the closet. Her own clothes might have to be destroyed if the blood didn’t come out. That would ruin the process, but since he had already written a verse for her, perhaps it would matter less. It was, after all, the art that mattered. He checked to see that there were clean towels and toiletries in the brands she preferred.

  When he reentered the bedroom, the bed was bare.

  She stood at the door, her hand on the knob, a look of anger and fear on her bloodied face. But she wasn’t about to cower. Her eyes flashed fire. And he suddenly understood. She was the huntress! It was true!

  “What do you want with me?” she said as fresh blood dripped from her nose.

  Her voice didn’t quaver. Wonderful! “Art is the answer. Always. You’ll come back to me. You’ll wake and be whole and vibrant again, if the art is deserving, if it is worthy. I always knew it.”

  “You’re crazy as a fruitcake. Let me out of here or I’ll kill you, you sorry freak.”

  Something inside him snapped. He stepped toward her, fists clenched. “You will not speak to me in that manner, without respect. I’ll not have it. Now get out of those bloody clothes and into something clean. I put the outfit I want you to wear on the bed.”

  “You’re out of your mind, you sick old bastard.”

  He lashed out, and the blow landed on her cheek. But then instant, breathless agony took him and he collapsed to his knees. Once again, he cupped his testicles, the pain bolting through him in electric waves of torment. His knee screamed as he hit the floor. His eyes watered. She hit him again. He saw it coming but could do nothing to avoid the kick. The blow landed on his mouth. Blood flew. Tears swelled and fell and he tumbled back. She leaned over him, her fist back.

  “No!” His hand slammed her. There was a crack, a louder one as she hit the door. More blood sprayed across the room. She went still.

  He fell on the bed, cupping between his legs, moaning. Long minutes went by. Slowly the agony of the testicular contusion eased. Pain like the paean of a bell sounded through him, growing softer, only slowly. Gradually the pain in his groin died away but the ache in his knee only grew worse. When he touched it, it felt bruised and swollen, as painful as the dog-bite lacerations. She had injured him!

  When he could stand, he went to her. She was a crumpled heap, unmoving. He bent over her and listened for her breath, waited to feel it on his ear. He held two fingers to her throat for a pulse. Grief and fresh tears welled and he gathered her up. He cradled her on his lap on the bed and cried. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. Never with blood. Never with violence. Only with love, with poetry and verse, music, art.

  He kissed her temple. There was a smear of blood. Just a bit. No, it wasn’t right. It was over already. Too soon. And this one had given him the verse right away. A gift of love.

  He would have to make it right. When he could stand with her weight, he carried her into the bathroom and set her in the tub. In the four corners of the tub, he adjusted the positions of the brass statues, turning them so they could watch over the girl as he gathered his supplies and read the directions. As soon as she was blond again and dressed properly, he could continue. She deserved that much. A verse right away. Imagine what they could have done together had she lived longer…. Imagine.

  14

  T he girls left me alone, finally closing the bathroom door on the way out to answer the doorbell. The other girls were here for the partay, the music changing to some whiny singer crooning in a minor key, the volume going up a notch. I could smell fresh pizza. I turned on the jets again and lay my head against the pillow. My muscles again began to relax. It had been a long and exhausting couple of days.

  I nearly dozed off in the tub, waking with a jerk when the door opened. Jasmine stuck in her head, a big smile on her face. “What?” I asked.

  “You better get out of that tub. You’re famous.”

  “Huh?” I turned off the jets and pulled myself from the water, wrapping a huge towel around me. It draped to my calves, which was a good thing as the bathroom filled up with girls, all laughing and smelling of pizza and Clinique Happy and the newest J Lo scent. Two of the girls were chanting, arms making the circular motion of a cheer or maybe a rap singer’s backup dancers.

  “She famous. She famous. Jas’s mama. She famous. On TV. On TV. Jas’s mama. On TV.”

  That woke me up fast. “Okay, I got that part. What do you mean I’m on TV?”

  “You made the eleven o’clock news,” Topaz said, a bigger grin stretching across her face. “And we got it on tape for posterity.”

  “We didn’t know you were working with the FBI, Mamash,” one of the other girls said. She was blond with a beach-girl perkiness that made me feel old. I thought her name was Temperance, but wasn’t sure. All Jas’s friends called me Mamash.

  “The news said I was working with the FBI?”

  “And Nana called,” Jas said. “She’s ticked.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh yeah.” Jas and Paz were both laughing. “Nana and Aunt Moses are on the way over for a family conference.”

  “At this time of night!”

  The back doorbell rang, the one used by family and friends. I could have cussed. I settled on “Dantucket!”

  I sighed, exhaustion pulling at my shoulders. All I wanted to do was sleep, but that would have to wait. “Turn the music off, Jas, and take your friends to the rec room. You girls go online and chat or something. And let Nana in.” I shooed the girls out of the bath and went into the walk-in closet. I rested my head on the wall for a moment, savoring the brief silence. When I had dawdled as long as I could, I found a jogging outfit and socks and dressed. At this rate, I’d never get to sleep.

  “Mama! Mama!” Jas screamed. I froze for a single moment. The other girls began to scream. Over the sound of terror I heard the raucous barking of dogs. My fear shattered into fury. No one would hurt my Jazzy baby. I grabbed Jack’s double-barreled shotgun, racing from the closet and down the hall. All the girls were shrieking, a shrill tone of real alarm.

  I burst from the hallway, banging my elbow on the jamb, and followed the sound of fear out onto the porch. In the security light, I saw a fury of dogs, snarling, teeth bared, ruffs raised, darting about. Barking in sharp high tones. Above it all was an agonized squeal.

  The dogs had cornered a possum.

  My heart thudded in my chest, half residual fear and half frantic relief. I handed Nana the shotgun, grabbed a broom and waded in, banging dogs away, shouting, “No! Down, Big Dog. Cherry, no!”

  Like it did any good. Any dog protecting territory—and its owners—will go feral, especially once the scent of blood hits the air. But I knew my dogs. Even in a blood frenzy, they would obey. Eventually.

  It was too late to save the possum by the time I got the dogs all separated out. I didn’t have it in me to scold them for doing what dogs do. Kill prey. Kill trespassers. Protect their own. But standing over the torn, bloody body, knowing it had wanted nothing but to live and raise its young in safety, brought tears to my eyes. Tears for a rodent. I was tired.

  As if sensing that I was close to the breaking point, Nana sent the girls back inside the house and found a shovel in the barn. Silent and grim, she used it to carry the possum back to the barn, then locked the animal up in the tack room. I followed her, my eyes burning, the shotgun hanging from one hand, not sure how or when I had gotten it back.

  “There’s no reason to bury it this late,” Nana said, her voice as blunt as a mallet. “I’ll send one of Moses’s young’ uns over in the morning to dig a hole. It’s going to be a job getting a hole deep enough to keep the dogs from digging the possum up again. They seem to have developed a tendency for grave robbing.”

  At the words, the tears I had been holding in fell, a fast, hard scouring that left my throat aching, my eyes burning and my skin scalded as I sobbed, my face cradled in one arm and pressed against the tack-room door. Nana stood silent as I cried, once or twice patting my shoulder. More kindly, she finally said, “Don’t worry about it, Ash. Life’s throwing you a lot of curve-balls just now. But you’ll do.” It was a lot more words of comfort than Nana usually gave, and was her way of telling me I’d make it through the crisis.

  I laughed shortly. But I felt better after her version of a pep talk and wiped my face, nodding when she suggested that we return to the house. “Thanks, Nana. I’m okay.” I leaned into the hand she cupped on my shoulder.

  “Course you are. You’re a Chadwick.”

  When I laughed, the sound was stronger, more calm. “Yes. I am.”

  When we got back to the house, the girls had already gotten over the excitement of the possum. The TV was on and young voices chattered in the rec room.

  Nana and I stopped in the doorway. The rec room was free of the business furniture and hunting trophies that had hung there when Jack had been alive and this had been his office. After his death, I had found a photo of Jack lying naked on the maroon carpet, with Robyn, my best friend in all the world, naked above him.

  I shuddered at the memory and Nana again comforted me with a gentle pat, though she surely attributed my reaction to the possum and not to old pain. I had ripped up my husband’s power-red carpet, sold his furniture, slapped a couple of coats of paint on the walls and turned the office into a teenager’s party room.

  In just that way, I ripped away my own reactions to old pain. Jack was dead. Long dead, years dead. And I was whole and had people who loved me, right here in this room—my nana and my daughter.

  There were six girls in the rec room—young women, really, all twenty or so—but none of them hid a bottle or glass when I entered. I didn’t smell alcohol or smoke of any variety, and I was proud of Jasmine. If she had experimented, I had never caught her. Which might mean that she was just more sneaky than I, but I preferred to believe that she was the perfect daughter. It was easier on my heart. Nana snorted and walked past me, carrying a lowball glass full of good bourbon to a chair in the corner, a scowl on her face. Her eyes were on the TV and her goodwill had evaporated.

  The headline banner on the evening news was pink, emblazoned with bold red words, AMBER ALERT. “Turn that up,” I said. Realizing I had made it an order when one wasn’t necessary, I added, “Please.”

  Topaz extended a hand with the remote and turned up the volume. The reporter, a young man, was live on the scene in a Columbia, South Carolina, neighborhood. “It’s been twenty minutes since the abduction of Sharon White, a thirteen-year-old girl who played soccer, was a red belt in karate and had just taken up white-water rafting. The young athlete’s mother, a single parent, is currently with the police. They have just released this picture of the girl, who was abducted by a man in an older model station wagon.” The reporter held a photo of a pretty girl with dark hair and eyes full of life, up to the camera. All I could think was She isn’t blond. She isn’t blond.

  “Police do not have a license-plate number,” he continued, “and the only description of the kidnapper is that he is a white male. Again, a white man in an older, white station wagon has abducted a thirteen-year-old girl. Anyone who might have seen a white wagon leaving the Dutch Square area of town is asked to call police immediately. Anyone seeing a white station wagon with a white male driver, with or without a passenger, is asked to call police.” He glanced back over his shoulder.

  The anchor asked a question, but I didn’t hear it. On-screen, Jim Ramsey’s long, lean form walked across the lawn, tension in every limb.

  “We’ll have more shortly,” the reporter said. “The police have stated they will issue a statement at 11:45, and with the urgent nature of an Amber Alert, I expect little in the way of delays. Back to you, Shelly.”

  Mari had been in police custody only a few hours. Already the kidnapper had abducted another victim, and this time in a very public way. I had taken enough psychology courses and read enough mystery novels featuring profilers to know that meant he was beginning to decompensate. But she wasn’t blond…. Did it matter? Was it the same guy? Was it a copycat kidnapper? I had heard of such possibilities.

  “Mama? You know her?” Jasmine asked.

  I raised my head and looked into my daughter’s gray eyes. She was worried. Again. I had made her worry a lot after Jack had died, losing myself in my own selfish grief and I had sworn not to let that happen again. I took a deep breath. Honesty and forthright speech with my child was not second nature to me. It was downright hard, but I was learning to be honest. I met Nana’s eyes and she nodded fractionally, as if she understood what I was thinking.

  “The girl’s body that was buried on our land, the serial kidnapper the police and FBI have been talking about, and the fact that you saw me on TV are all related.” I took a seat on the edge of the big cushy couch and the girls scooted down to make room for me. “I am, marginally speaking, on the task force.”

  Jas’s eyes sparkled with excitement. She opened her mouth and I held up a hand to stop her. “I will tell you nothing. Not one word of what I learn about this situation. Don’t ask.” This time when I issued an order, I felt perfectly okay with it. It was hard to know just how to act with a daughter who was on the verge of womanhood but hadn’t quite reached it, but my decision to treat this just as I would any confidential patient information made it easier. Jas shut her mouth, looking mutinous.

  Nana’s brow lifted, letting me know she would not be included in any gag order I gave myself. I said to the girls and Nana, “I gave my word not to talk about it.”

  Nana’s scowl deepened. She was big on keeping one’s word. “Your name and face were on the news,” she said. “That means the killer knows who you are. Are you safe? Is this house safe? Is Jasmine safe?”

  I looked at her in horror and scanned the room. Females in rural areas were generally safer than big-city girls. Fewer rapes, fewer assaults, fewer everything. Maybe there were simple reasons for that—less stress in rural living, fewer places to go where trouble might brew, a slower, easier lifestyle. But Nana was right. I looked at Jas. “Can you stay over at Topaz’s for a while?”

  “No.”

  My brows went up all by themselves. “I beg your pardon?”

  Jas stood and held my eyes. When she spoke, it was to her friends. “Party’s over, guys. See you later. Paz, will you see them all out?”

  “Sure, cuz. But I’d rather stay and see the fireworks.”

  “Not this time,” my daughter said. Behind her, Nana grinned as she sipped and swiveled her chair so she could see us both better.

  “My house, y’all,” Topaz said. “Bring the pizza.”

  Moments later we heard them clatter out the door. Silence settled on the room as Jasmine and I studied each other. I expected to see rebellion on her face, but instead I saw determination and a stubborn intensity that reminded me of Jack. Jack, as I had known him to be before all the hurtful secrets and lies had come to light. A curious, painful tension in my chest eased, as if a tight band was loosened and I could breathe. Somehow, seeing Jack’s expression on Jasmine’s face brought relief to my heart. A sense of peace I hadn’t known I was missing. I fought a smile down and won. “No? What happened to ‘No, ma’am?’”

  “No, ma’am.” Jas shifted her feet into a balanced position, as if ready to do battle. “I know you’re worried about me, but I’m not leaving you alone in this big ol’ house. I’m not moving out just because there’s trouble. I’ll keep my gun loaded and near me at all times. I have that holster Daddy got for me. I’ll hang around the barn only when Elwyn is here, and I’ll go inside the house and set the alarm when he leaves, if you aren’t home. I’ll call Nana if I think there’s trouble. And the police. But I’m not moving out.” Jas glanced at her great-grandmother and licked her lips. “And you can’t make me.”

  Nana chuckled into her whiskey glass. A moment later I laughed, too, the sound rueful. “Your gal’s growing up,” Nana said. “I’d say she’s got a spark a me in her.”

  “God help me,” I said. “Okay. You can stay. But you keep your cell phone on you and turned on at all times. And if the press shows up, call the sheriff’s department. I’ll notify C.C. that you’re here alone. See if he can schedule a patrol now and then.”