Before We Were Yours(114)

My heart squeezes again.

Everything I wanted my life to be, it won’t be now. The path that brought me here is flooded over. There’s no going back. That’s the real reason, when we find Zede’s boat, I tell him that the Seviers will sure be glad to get Fern and me back. “I just need Silas to take us upriver.” I don’t want Zede to come along. I’m afraid he won’t let us go when it gets right down to it.

He looks through the open door into his shanty like he’s trying to decide if he can keep all of us for good.

“Fern’s got lots of nice clothes and toys back at the Seviers’. And Crayolas. I’ll start up with school pretty soon.” My voice quivers, and I swallow hard to steady it.

When Zede’s eyes turn my way, it feels like he’s looking right through me.

Fern reaches for him, and he picks her up, tucking his head over hers. “Li’l bit,” he chokes out, and then pulls me in and hugs us both hard. He smells of ashes, and fish, and coal oil, and the big river. Familiar things.

“You ever need me, you get word to the river,” he says.

I nod, but when he turns loose of us, we both know this is goodbye forever. The river is a big place.

Sadness lines his face. He wipes it away before he nods, then sets his mouth and puts Fern in the Jenny so we can leave.

“I oughta go along, seein’s you don’t know the slough,” Arney says. “But I ain’t stayin’ once we get there. I’ll take my pa’s jon boat and leave it tied up someplace near. You can let him know where to find it. I don’t want nothin’ of his.” She doesn’t wait for an answer but goes after the jon boat. Even with all her family’s done to her, she’s been worried how they’d get by without it.

I don’t cry when we shove off again. The Waterwitch has to fight our way upstream, but eventually we make it to the mouth of the slough. The trees lean close after we turn, and I take one look back. I let the river wash away something inside of me.

It washes away the last of Rill Foss.

Rill Foss is princess of Kingdom Arcadia. The king is gone, and so is the kingdom.

Rill Foss has to die with it.

I’m May Weathers now.





CHAPTER 25


Avery

“And that is where my story ends.” May’s blue eyes, clouded and moist, study me across the lamp table in an alcove of the nursing home. “Are you happy that you know? Or is it only a burden? I’ve always wondered how you young ones would feel. I expected that I’d never find out.”

“I think…it’s a little of both.” Even after taking a week to think about it since our visit to the river cottage and Hootsie’s farm, I’m still struggling to assimilate this history with my family history.

Over and over, I’ve weighed Elliot’s admonitions that I’m playing with fire—that the past should be left in the past. Even the startling revelations from my visit to the Savannah River cottage haven’t changed his opinion. Think about the repercussions, Avery. There are people who wouldn’t…see your family the same way anymore.

By people, I have a sense that he means Bitsy.

The sad thing is, Bitsy’s not the only one. If all of this became public, there’s no telling what would happen to political futures, reputations, the Stafford name.

Times have changed, but the old doctrines still apply. If the world were to find out that the Staffords aren’t really what we’ve claimed to be, the fallout would be…

I can’t even imagine.

That scares me in a way I don’t want to contemplate, but the truth is that I can’t bear the thought of my grandmother and her sister spending the last of their lives separated from each other. Ultimately, I have to know I did what was right for Grandma Judy.

“A time or two, I’ve considered telling my grandchildren,” May offers. “But they are settled in their lives. Their mother remarried to a man with children after my son passed away. They’re wonderful young people raising their own broods among gaggles of aunts, and uncles, and cousins. It’s much the same with my sisters’ families. Lark married a businessman who built a department store empire. Fern married a prominent doctor in Atlanta. Between them, there were eight children and two dozen grandchildren and of course great-grandchildren. They are all successful and happy…and busy. What can ancient history give them that they don’t already have?”

May looks at me deeply, watches me teeter on the dividing line that has shifted from her generation to mine. “Will you share the story with your family?” she asks.

I swallow hard, at war with myself. “I’ll tell my father. It’s his decision more than mine. Grandma Judy is his mother.” I have no notion of how my father will respond to the information or what he’ll do with it. “Part of me thinks Hootsie is right. The truth is still the truth. It has value.”

“Hootsie,” she grumbles. “This is the thanks I get for selling her that piece of land next to my grandmother’s old place so she and Ted could have their farm on it. After all these years, she tells my secrets.”

“I really think she felt it was in your best interest. She wanted me to understand the connection between you and my grandmother. She was thinking of the two of you.”

May swats at the idea like it’s a fly buzzing around her face. “Pppfff! Hootsie just likes to stir the pot. She has always been that way. You know, she was the reason I ended up staying with the Seviers at all. By the time we reached their home, Silas almost had me talked into taking to the river with him. He stood on the shore and grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me. The first time I’d ever been kissed by a boy.” She giggles, her cheeks reddening and her eyes taking on a childlike glitter. For a moment, I see that twelve-year-old girl on the banks of the oxbow lake. “?‘I love you, Rill Foss,’ he said to me. ‘I’ll wait here an hour. I’ll wait for you to come back. I can take care of you, Rill. I can.’