do to us. We’ve nowhere to go, no one to talk to, not even other women. We can’t talk about these things. It brings shame on us. Not them.
“That last year, you started returning with bruises too. A busted lip was the worst of it. I looked at you when you rolled in through those very gates, and I looked at Genny, and I didn’t see on her face what I so often saw in mine when I looked in the mirror.”
“What do you mean?” I whispered, utterly transfixed by what she was saying, her southern twang soothing me even as her story riled me up.
“I mean, I felt hopeless. Because they were things I knew every woman here endured.” She closed her eyes. “I didn’t see hopelessness, didn’t even see resignation on your mother’s face, child, no, I saw an anger that was slowly building.
“The best thing for Leggy was her husband passing on. She had a freedom that few of us get, and with the insurance and her healing, she was quite well looked after.
“But that meant Genny wasn’t raised like my Allegria was. She didn’t know what it was to be beaten by a man. She’d only been a young ‘un when her pa died, and when she met Nicodemus, the stars in her eyes more than outshone this.” She spread out her hands, encompassing the mobile home park. “But she wasn’t raised to accept a man’s law, something he upheld with his fists. She wasn’t made for it, so when the news came, it didn’t surprise me.”
“What happened?”
“She stabbed him.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Over seventeen times.” Her mouth worked, and I could hear the tears in her voice. “When Child Services brought you down here, we saw why.”
“Why?”
“Busted lip, bruised cheek. You even had a little sore on the crest of your cheek from where his ring caught. Genny had had enough—”
“It was self-defense. She was protecting herself and me!” I burst out, hating my father with a passion that I hadn’t known I was capable of. Which was like the lash of a whip to my spine because I’d been so proud to be associated with him. To be Nicodemus’s girl.
I stormed to my feet, my body throbbing with outrage. The cake and the dish it sat on, along with my fork, clattered to the floor, but I didn’t see it, didn’t even hear it.
Lavinia stared at me, sadness in her tone and eyes as she whispered, “They gave her leniency. That was why she didn’t get the death penalty. But she’s got another eighteen years in there, minimum.”
For a second, I contemplated the fact that my mother would remain in a prison cell for as long as I’d been alive. I’d be thirty-six the next time she was free, then I wailed, “She was protecting me.”
“That she was. Not much recourse for women like us, child. But then, you’re not one of us, are you?” I flinched at that, but she tutted. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way. Our blood courses through your veins, making you special, but you’ve been with Gadže since Leggy died?”
I dipped my chin.
“They look after you?”
“No. But they didn’t beat me. I just didn’t always eat well.” I sucked in a breath. “The family I’m with now, they adopted me.” I didn’t tell her that the circumstances were fucked up.
Christ.
Was nothing about my life normal?
I stood there, quivering with emotion. I was too angry to cry, but also, I felt like I could explode from all the weird thoughts rattling around my head. I wanted justice for my mother, wanted to rail at my grandmother for withholding the fact Genny wasn’t dead...but what was the point?
Lavinia eyed me, then she murmured, “Take a seat, child. Finish your tea.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a command, a tone of voice I remembered well from Nanny.
I almost toppled the stool over as I sat, reaching blindly down for the dish I’d dropped. It was only luck that kept it in one piece. Allegria bustled out when Vinnie called her to clear up the cake, which she did without even a murmur, even after I apologized for the mess. Then, when we were alone, I choked on the tea and the sandwiches, but as she asked me questions about my life, I was too polite not to answer her.
She asked about Nanny, about how she’d died, and didn’t show much surprise at the truth. I told