was trying to place him and couldn’t. I don’t remember too many redheads from school. But if he’s that young I probably wouldn’t have run into him much. He’d have been in the elementary school still when we graduated.”
“He’s the oldest of five. He’s got four sisters and they’re all redheads. They have a farm out off Henderson Street. I only saw the whole family at church.”
“That might explain why I didn’t run into him much.”
“Yeah, you and your mama didn’t attend many church socials.”
“Try none. Mary Ellen took me to one, and it was a painful experience for all of us. I thought Mrs. Farley was going to hit someone with her pan of lemon squares.”
“That would have been a waste. She makes a mean lemon square.” J.T. slowed the truck as he pulled up the drive. It was still light enough that he could see Nadya’s polite smile. He heaved a sigh. “Look, I know you think this whole town had it out for you, and maybe with good reason, but it just isn’t like that anymore.”
“Tell that to the Campbells.”
“Okay, there might be a few narrow-minded individuals still, but things are better than they were.”
“Right.”
Her attitude was pissing him off. “You know, your mom could have made things a little easier on herself. She didn’t have to flaunt her differences in everyone’s face.”
“Excuse me?” Her tone dropped the temperature in the cab of the truck to freezing.
“I’m not saying she was the whore everyone accused her of being, but she didn’t have to wear those gypsy skirts and stuff.” He was digging himself a hole and didn’t know how to get out of it. “I mean, maybe if she dressed like the other mothers and, I don’t know, went to church, maybe they would’ve cut her a little more slack,” he ended lamely.
“So let me get this straight. You think if my mama wore jeans and a sweater set, the fine ladies like Orleane Campbell would forget that she showed up in Dale sixteen years old and pregnant, living in some rich man’s cabin? I’m sure they would have just welcomed her with open arms.” She crossed her arms over her chest, every muscle of her body tense.
“That’s not what I meant. I don’t know what I meant. Just she could have made more of an effort to fit in.”
“She sacrificed just about everything else—her sense of self was all she had left—and you wanted her to give that up too? Not likely.”
J.T. ran his hand across his chin and tried to figure out how to dislodge the foot from his mouth. By the time they reached the driveway to the cabin, he still hadn’t worked it out.
“Do you know my mother was barely literate when she came to Dale? Apparently, her father didn’t think women needed to be educated. They moved around so much, no one caught on. She would borrow my school books and I would tutor her. After we left Dale she took the GED test and passed it on the first try. With high honors.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
But Nadya wasn’t done eviscerating him yet. “Her father felt daughters were only good for cleaning the trailer and taking care of the younger kids. She didn’t even have a driver’s license, even though she’d been driving RVs for years. She got that when we left Dale too.”
“I—”
“She lost her virginity to a forty-five-year-old man who then dumped her in a cabin with no phone, no car, no family and no way to put food on the table. If it wasn’t for Mr. Farley, who found her walking in the August heat nine months pregnant, I might have been born on Deer Creek Road. My mama worked her ass off to put food in my mouth, doing all the jobs those precious ladies in sweater sets didn’t want to dirty their hands doing. And instead of doing their Christian duty and offering her a hand, they called her a whore. All the while their husbands would come around, trying to get into her pants. Do you have any idea how I learned to shoot? There was a shotgun hung over the mantel, and Mama and I practiced until our shoulders about came out of their sockets so we could fire warning shots at anyone who tried to force his way into the cabin. Don’t tell me what my mama could have done to fit in. She did everything she could just to survive.”
J.T. sat in