of childhood.
Out of the corner of her eye, Laurel catches a flash of color. Bet Clemmens lurks near them, behind the climbing roses on their trellis, her small feet planted in the earth. Laurel doesn’t look at her directly. If she does, she’ll see it’s only a redbird, stirring the leaves of the azalea bush that stands up against the fence behind the roses. Bet doesn’t like to be caught watching. She’s there, though, at ease in the weak late-winter sunshine. She’s Laurel’s only ghost now that Molly is at peace and Marty has gone on to get whatever rest he earned.
Laurel doesn’t mind Bet Clemmens. Bet seems happy here among Laurel’s stone angels and garden frogs and the tacky plastic pink flamingo Shelby gave her for Christmas. Moreover, she is Laurel’s best reminder.
Laurel’s second-best reminder is peering over the backyard gate, scowling.
“I’ve been ringing that front bell for all eternity,” Thalia says. The gate is white and wooden, only four feet high. Thalia rattles it.
“Well, you’re early,” Laurel replies. She leaves her basket and spade and opens the latch to let Thalia through. “I was just heading in.”
Tomorrow they will get up before six and drive over to DeLop, Laurel and Shelby and Thalia. They go once a month now, on the last weekend of the month, when Thalia’s theater is dark between productions. They’ll stop by Sissi Clemmens’s place first. Sissi will watch them from her vinyl sofa as Thalia restocks her pantry and Shel and Laurel clean a little. She doesn’t seem to mind them coming. She seems past minding anything. They don’t stay long. They have only the weekend and a lot to do.
Laurel is stealing the babies.
Already Della’s three-year-old, Janina, hollers, “Miss Lall, Miss Lall!” and holds her arms up when they come through the door.
It isn’t only because of the candy and the board books and the fat wax crayons Laurel brings. It’s because Laurel looks at her and sees her, seeking out the little girl under the dirty T-shirt and the jam-ringed mouth. Laurel is learning this child and Della’s sister’s boys the same way she’ll learn the baby Raydee has made with fifteen-year-old Polly Deeks. If they want out, they’ll damn sure know they have a way. It’s a small hope that even one of them will take it, but if they do, Laurel will be there to walk them down.
“Missionary to the mud people,” Thalia calls her these days, but she hasn’t missed a trip since Laurel started.
David comes, too, when work allows. With all of them together in one car, the air takes on an electric tang, the taste of their uneasy, silent truce.
“Do you want me to have her stay home?” Laurel asked him after dinner one night, leaning on his shoulder on the sofa. “On the weekends you can come, I mean.”
After a thinking pause, David said, “No. Bring her. You have some spooky relatives, and with Thalia along, at least I know we’ve got someone to gut-shoot anyone who tries to hurt you or Shel.”
Laurel whacked him in the leg with the flat of her hand.
“What?” he said, and she realized he hadn’t been making a macabre joke. David was just being David, calling it as bluntly as he saw it. “I still don’t like her, though,” he added.
“Well, she’s crazy about you,” Laurel said, and then she got the giggles.
It feels right to have her sister orbiting her life again, even if Planet Thalia is prone to loop-de-loops and calls itself the sun. Laurel needs her now more than ever; she’s called peace with Mother and Daddy, mostly for Shelby’s sake, but it’s not the same. Laurel gives her mother party manners and kindness, and Mother, in return, chooses to have no memory of smashed dishes and profanity, all the things she can’t forgive. Laurel has forgiven, but she won’t forget.
Now Thalia looks her up and down and says, “Hey there, big fat fatty.” She leans over and cuts her huge voice loose, calling, “You in there, Mr. Puppethead? Wake up! It’s Auntie Thalia,” to Laurel’s round midsection. The baby thumps at Laurel’s bladder like it’s his own personal drum.
“Oof,” says Laurel.
Shelby has heard Thalia. She’s running across the lawn toward her, her girlfriends in her wake. Thalia strides away to meet them and catch Shelby in a hug. Laurel stands back, watching, both hands braced around her belly.
After the second line turned pink, David predicted another little girl. Shelby Junior. But Laurel imagined a loud little boy with a voice like a trumpet and blond hair that stuck straight up.
“He’ll want a dog,” she whispered to David in the quiet dark of their big bed.
“A dog’ll dig up all those flowers,” David said.
“I don’t much care. A boy needs a good dog, and I’m telling you, we’ve made a boy here.”
The ultrasound backed Laurel up. That very night, she felt his first small flutter. Tucked beneath the velvet of her skin, his movement was too muffled to be felt from the outside. Secret moth wings.
He has quickened and grown since then. He’s alive and strong inside her, a hidden thing. Come spring, when the last of her daffodils are tall and blooming, she’s going to do the bravest thing that she knows how to do. She’s going to open, and she’s going to let him out into the world.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Novelists always say, “This book could not have been written without list-of-people,” but no, really, this book would not ever have been finished if it weren’t for the devious machinations of Caryn Karmatz Rudy and Lydia Netzer. These two women have never met, and yet they acted as a tag team, alternating sugar with judicious pinching to keep me writing (always my best medicine) through a difficult year. I keep trying to amalgamate them into Helen Hunt so I can make Jack Nicholson eyebrows at them and say, “You make me want to be a better man,” but they both just tell me to shut up and start work on the next novel.
In order to write about Laurel’s career, I spent hours staring, awed and dumbstruck, at Canadian folk artist Pamela Allen’s work and the tarot quilts of Deb Richardson. I knew nothing about sewing, so a foaming-crazy batch of wild fabric artists called the Quilt Mavericks took me in, fed me strange berries, and taught me how to say “Bernina.” I will never be the same.
Georgia homicide detective Ted Bailey and Pensacola, Florida, assistant chief Chip Simmons explained police procedure during an investigation. Several times. Slowly. These are good, smart, savvy cops, while I am at best a shoddy criminal, so anything I got right is due to their efforts.
Yolanda Reed, Patricia Simmons, Waylon Wood, Hunt Scarritt, and the ensemble troupe at the Loblolly Theatre in Pensacola taught me about black box and its surrounding culture. I am pleased to report that the Loblolly folks don’t need nearly as much therapy as my theater people.
Grand Central Publishing remains my home thanks to the unwavering support of folks like Jamie Raab, Martha “angels want to borrow her white shoes” Otis, Karen Torres, the inimitable Evan Boorstyn, and so many more. I was honored to have Harvey-Jane Kowal working her magic in tandem with Beth Thomas, whose rampant purple pencil marshaled the forces of goodness and order to triumph over my wayward gerunds and sloppy typing. Stet! I must also thank my agent and dear friend, Jacques de Spoelberch. You don’t forget the guy who pulled you from the slush pile.
Love and thanks to crit partners Karen Abbott (forever my Potsi!), Anna Schachner, Lily James, and fifth monkey Jill James. RN Julie Oestreich has, for three novels now, told me how to properly kill, injure, drug, and maim people. Thanks, Jules!
I pause here and wave to the FTK regs, tireless guerrilla marketers who remain my Best Beloveds. For them, a little insider information: DeLop is a made-up place, but it’s based on a real mining town in northern Alabama. I call it a mining town, but at this point, there’s nothing left to dig up. Some of the people stayed, and if you are born there, chances are, you’ll die there. The Christmas letters from the DeLop kids are based on real letters. These letters are currently answered by a Birmingham church, since the real kids don’t have Laurel and Thalia. Of course, knowing Thalia, perhaps this is better.
My wonderful family—Scott, Sam, Maisy Jane, Bob, Betty, Bobby, Julie, Daniel, Erin-Fishelby-Virginia, Jane, and Allison—are my heart. I am eternally grateful for the way they work together to knit time out of nothing and give it to me so I can write.
Most of all, I thank you for reading.