She left John in the cabin, his hair mussed and his lips red from her kisses, and hurried back toward the house, the basket of vegetables slung over her arm.
She entered the kitchen breathlessly, placing the basket on the counter. “Hello, Mama.” Angelina smiled but her mother didn’t smile back, returning her gaze to the potato in her hand, the knife moving swiftly over the skin, which dropped into the basket at her feet in long strips.
“You need to be careful, Lina.”
Angelina’s blood chilled, but she did her best to appear unaffected, removing the vegetables from the basket and placing them on the counter. “I’m always careful, Mama.”
Her mother stood, her deep-brown, knowing eyes moving over Angelina’s face then down her body, landing on the loose button and lingering before meeting Angelina’s gaze again. Angelina felt heat infuse her skin and unconsciously she reached for the button, fiddling with it for a moment before letting go, her hand dropping heavily to her side.
Her mama looked at the vegetables sitting on the counter and reached for one, picking up a yellow squash and turning it over before setting it down again. “Seems you forgotten recently when a vegetable be ripe for the pickin’ and when it not. Funny since you been pickin’ since you be a chil’.”
“I’ve been tired, Mama. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
Her mama eyed her, and Angelina swore she saw fear in her mama’s eyes, mixed in with the disapproval. “We all tired, Lina.” She turned away. “Know who to trust.” She turned back to her, her eyes glittering as if with tears. Angelina stilled. She’d never seen her mother cry, not once in all of her life. “And who not to trust.”
Her mother picked up the knife again and continued with her work as Angelina unpacked the rest of the basket, filled with the half-ripe vegetables John had chosen, obviously in his haste to get to her.
She couldn’t help the small smile that teased at her lips. She looked at her beautiful mother, took in the ebony smoothness of her skin, the high, proud bones of her face, the wide-set eyes that seemed to see everything, and understand it on a level others did not. “Did you love him, Mama?”
Her mother didn’t glance her way as she answered, and she didn’t pretend not to know who Angelina asked about. “Love? There ain’t no place for love here.”
But her mama was wrong. Angelina loved. And Elijah’s mama had loved him. She’d wailed like a wild woman when she’d seen him strung up in that tree, and it’d torn Angelina’s heart in half. And though she didn’t express it often, Angelina knew her own mama loved her too, despite whether there was a “place” for that love or not. No, Angelina didn’t think love worked that way. “Love makes a place for itself even if there isn’t one, Mama,” she said quietly. “Love carves into the hardest of places.”
Mama Loreaux halted in her peeling again, the sharpness of her gaze piercing Angelina, as stripping as that knife she held expertly in her calloused hands. “That kina talk gone get you hurt or worse.”
She set the knife down on the counter with a harsh clack, turning her narrow shoulders toward her daughter. “No, I did not love your father, and he did not love me. We made you on the floor o’ the cellar while his wife was havin’ herself a fine tea party in the parlor. He got the idea to lift my skirts while I was puttin’ the canned beets away, and I let him do it ‘cause things easier that way.”
Her eyes narrowed, but then she let out a long sigh, her gaze softening very slightly. “He ain’t a cruel man, and he ain’t all bad neither, but he gone choose his real family over you any time, any day. You can talk fancy like them, and you can love all you want, but they ain’t never gone love you back the same way, and they ain’t never gone think a you as one a them. You got that?”
Angelina stared at her mother’s regal face, picturing the scene in the cellar she’d just described, picturing the damp, musty floor where she’d come to be. She flushed, looking away, not knowing how to feel about what she’d just learned, hurt welling up inside of her.
What had she imagined? That her father secretly loved her mother? That to him, Angelina and her mama were special somehow though he couldn’t show it lest his wife be angered? That because he’d rocked her on his knee and called her his little hummingbird, he loved her as much as his other children? Yes, she supposed she had. It had made her feel . . . worthy in a world where she was no such thing.
Heaviness descended upon her. But then she thought of John. She thought of how different things were between her and John than the way her mother had described what happened with her father. Their coupling was not a quick interlude on a dirty cellar floor. Their time together was spent in soft touches and shared laughter, with sacred promises and woven dreams. And the comparison gave her a resurgence of hope. Do you trust me? he’d asked. Yes, she’d answered, and she’d meant it. She’d meant it with her whole heart. They would find a way. Despite that there was no “place” for love between them, despite that the whole world was against them, or so it seemed. They would find a way. They would. Because where there was love, there was always, always hope.
Angelina turned away from her mother, but she felt the heat of her worried gaze on her back nonetheless, prickling her skin as if she’d stepped too close to a flame and was about to be burned.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Do it.
Jonah stared at the latch of his gate, unmoving.
Or . . . not.
He glanced back. Myrtle’s car wasn’t far from where he stood, but he wasn’t going to ask her if he could use it. For one, he didn’t want to involve her in this at all, and for two, his driver’s license had expired many years before. But the real truth of the matter was, he still hadn’t decided if he would go through with meeting Clara. He still didn’t fucking know exactly why he’d agreed in the first place.
Or maybe I do. Yes, he admitted to himself with a sigh of acceptance. I do. I know.
It was because he’d been infused with her hopefulness—her joy—and filled with the wonder of the grace she’d given him even after hearing his story, knowing each and every grisly detail. She’d offered him her compassion—her understanding—and the awe of that made him dizzy.
Meet me, she'd said, her voice so full of hope and joyful astonishment when the wall had started "weeping." Her wonder had been infectious. For a few minutes, Jonah had felt part of it. Part of Clara's vibrant spirit. For that's all he really knew of her. He didn't know what she looked like, except that her hair was the color of spun gold—he'd seen that much through the small crack in the wall—and she must have a dancer's slim, athletic body. Otherwise, he only knew she was compassionate and sensitive and deeply loyal. Come to think of it, that might be the most Jonah had ever known about any girl, even the ones he'd known more intimately in a physical sense.
His thoughts caused his mind to move to the moment Clara had kissed him. And yes, he knew it wasn’t really a kiss, and he knew they were only friends, but it had been one of the sweetest moments of his life. It had made him feel like a flesh-and-blood man again when he’d been nothing but an invisible monster for so long.
He put one hand on the latch and released a harsh exhale, pulling his collar up high and the beanie he was wearing down low so most of his face was hidden.
The sliver of moon above went behind a cloud, causing the night shadows to grow deeper. Clara was waiting for him. He could do this.
In one swift movement, he unlatched the gate, moved to the other side, and let it swing shut behind him.
His heart raced, his hands becoming clammy as he worked to catch his breath. He hadn’t been outside Windisle for eight long, miserable years.
He stood in the shadow of the gate for a moment, gathering his courage before he stepped away, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his black, lightweight jacket and moving down the empty street.
He stepped between dim patches, his head bowed as if against the wind, though there was no breeze that night. His heart continued to pound heavily the farther from Windisle he moved, and several times he almost turned and darted back to the plantation, as a child races up the stairs at night, sure there is a demon at his heels. But Jonah was the only monster on this street tonight, and he suddenly understood that it was much better to be pursued by ghouls than to be the ghoul yourself. If only he’d known.