If Tim Prescott found her like this, she would strangle Campbell True with her bare hands.
In the years since she’d moved to the south, she’d gotten used to humidity so thick it was like breathing mud and tea that wasn’t called sweet for nothing. Used to pinecones in her garden and straw littering the drive in the fall. Used to nuts boiled in the shell and the way her name often came out sounding like Fontaner. Used to chit-chat in the grocery line and waving, even when you didn’t actually know someone.
What she’d really gotten used to wasbelonging—as much as she’d ever allowed herself to.
Perhaps for the first time in twenty-seven years.
Rummy trotted over and slumped between her splayed legs, his tail thumping her dirty boot. She tugged at the frayed laces, wishing money was plentiful enough to buy new ones. Only, her sister had bought books for fall semester last month—two hundred and forty dollars worth. Fontana wasn’t complaining about anything she spent on Hannah. Cash just got so tight.
Then the nightmares returned.
Her father all over them.
She dropped her head into her hands, a sinking feeling settling in as she wondered how much the Jeep would cost to fix this time. And to prove bad luck traveled in pairs, that arrogant ass was planning to take away the closest thing to a home she and Hannah had ever had.
The decrepit shanty out back.
Seething, Fontana traced the jagged scratch running from the tip of her index finger to the middle of her palm, an injury from pruning rose bushes. She touched the scar on her wrist. Cutting sections of zoysia sod last spring.
All work done on True land.
Digging in the modest patch of dirt behind that decrepit shanty, she’d accepted the first slice of contentment in a life filled with grief and disgrace.
Her mistake?
She had allowed herself, for one fleeting, dream-filled moment, to believe the land she loved with all her heart and cared for unconditionally washers.
KIT
Someone was looking for him.
Christopher Ryland True flicked a cricket from his arm and stared at the house on the hill. One after another, lights sparked, then died. Top floor, right window—his grandfather’s bedroom. Wouldn’t find anyone there. John Nelson had gotten a littledottyand Zoozie Hamilton had taken him to her house for the night. Dotty was the same as drunk, Zoozie said, but sounded gentler on the lips. She was a librarian, and about as ancient as his grandfather, so he believed her.
Gentle speech, mild manners, Kit understood these were the hallmarks of a true Southern gentleman. He had the required three generations on his father’s side, but as for his mom’s...well, better to just pretend.
The thought of her brought a sting to his eyes, but then he went and remembered one of the bad times and it blew the sting out like breath to a match. Like the time she slapped him when he’d asked her about growing up in some crappy neighborhood in Philadelphia, just curious if he had family there. Like, someoneelsein case Promise didn’t work out. She’d marked his face with her yucky, red nails, then made him lie and say he got into a fight when he went to soccer practice that afternoon.
In the end, things had worked out okay. Sophia Dell had given him a second look that day, kinda like he’d proven his coolness by beating someone up.
It was good coming from bad, just like Fontana always said it could.
If Sophia decided to, well, kiss him by the end of the school year, he wouldn’t be the one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Which, of course, his grandfather had warned him not to do, though Kit had never quite understood what thatmeant.
Grass tickling the back of his neck, Kit shifted, propping hishead higher on his crossed arms. The cicadas’ call was almost as loud as the air rushing from his lips. He loved the sound, longed for it. Another light flickered. His bedroom this time. Holding his breath until it hurt, he let it swoosh from his lungs. Still numb inside, deep in his chest. Not dead like Celia, for sure, but...numb. Not sad-numb, either. He'd been sad when his father died, because the old man had tried to be dad-ish, in that sickly, slobbering, spit-down-the-sides-of-his-mouth way.
Kit could still remember pushing past Camp and seeing his father’s body sprawled in his cracked leather chair, lips blue like the berries behind the house. Staring at the gross, stiff corpse—like something out of a movie—he’d done what no Southern gentleman would ever do and puked in the wastebasket.
His father’s favorite, the metal one with the American flag on the front.
Camp had held his hand at the funeral, let him cry on his shoulder, ruining some expensive sweater, while his mom acted all weird, like usual.
But his brother hadn’t stayed long.
Kit guessed Camp thought he would dirty another sweater this time, in some bigger life way.
Except Kit didn’t want to ruin any sweaters.
Not now.
