Light to the Hills: A Novel (54)

“Your fretting like that is just gonna make the baby fuss more.” Mama sat at the table, watching Amanda nurse and rock at a furious pace. “You’re gonna wear ruts in the floor with that rocker and topple over!”

Mooney was up and dressed, little Maisie lying in a wooden vegetable crate draped with a quilt, and she stepped behind Amanda’s chair with her hands out. “Whoa, there, Nelly. What’s put a hive in your bonnet?”

“A woman at the graveyard.” Amanda kept her eyes on Miles, trying to steady his flailing fists. “She claimed to be Frank’s wife.”

Mama hooted with such dismissive astonishment that Miles startled, started up fussing again. “That’s plainly not so. I was right there when you tied the knot.”

“She showed me a picture of them, a wedding picture. It was him. She had a ring, Mama.”

“Anybody can put a ring on their finger,” Mama tutted.

“Well, no wonder you’re fit to be tied,” said Mooney. “Did you knock her into next Tuesday?” She mimed a well-aimed uppercut.

“I didn’t knock her anywhere, Mooney, although the more I sit here, the madder I get.” Amanda paused. “But not at her. I believe her. What does it help her to tell a tale like that? There’s nothing from Frank to inherit and only shame to carry. It’s me that’s a fool. I never was married for true, and now I have Miles to bear that.”

“Why would you believe her?” asked Mama, rising to her feet. “Any stranger can say anything, desperate for money or gain.” She stopped, realizing what she’d just said. “But we knew Frank.”

“No, Mama,” Amanda said, “I don’t believe we did.”

She would have continued, would have told the story about the night Miles was born—the storm, what Gripp Jessup had done and the things he’d told her, how Frank had folded and scattered her honor like ashes, leaving her there bruised, with her pregnant belly already contracting—but her father opened the door. His face was red and his breath loud, like he’d run the whole way from the graveyard. His eyes cast around to settle on the silhouette of Amanda’s mother. Amanda hastily threw a blanket over Miles as he nursed.

“Get your things, Beady. We’re heading back up home.”

“Jack?”

Mooney sat near the hearth beside Amanda’s chair. She placed a hand on the arm of the rocker. Amanda’s feet had quit pumping, and the rocker stilled.

“Never in my days have I been so cut,” he said, the familiar melody in his voice gone quiet as he tried to control the quaver. “We raised you in the Lord, Amanda. You witnessed nothing but love and kindness in our home, and we put the seeds of God’s Word in your heart. I come here fast as the water went down to see our grandbaby and make sure you was safe.”

“I know, Daddy. I know,” Amanda said. That woman at the graveyard must have spoken to him, she figured. She’d never seen her father so riled.

“I preach your husband’s funeral—your husband,” he said, “and not ten minutes after, I stand there getting a’ earful. What a shame Frank had to make his living in such a way, whiskey, bootlegging, who knows what all else, and all the while his wife was—” He choked out the words, no longer able to keep the anguish from his voice. “His wife—my daughter—was hiring herself out for money at the train station like a . . .” He stopped, a shaky finger pointing midair at Amanda as she sat still as a stone.

“Money?” she whispered, confused. The woman—Frank’s wife—had said something like that, that she’d made her own money and hadn’t needed Frank’s earnings.

“They thought the preacher should know.” Daddy drew himself up straight. “Given I’d just done the funeralizing for several of their friends and neighbors straight outta the Good Book. Thought I should know it was anybody’s guess who my grandson’s daddy might be. What a fool they thought me,” he croaked. “All these years of labor and calling likely gone to seed.”

Tears brimmed and ran down Amanda’s cheeks. She wasn’t sure which upset her father more, the disgraceful thing she’d been accused of or the black mark on his good name and reputation. Mama stood white-faced, gripping the table’s edge, while Amanda said nothing, too stunned to speak, and clutched the baby in her thin arms. Mechanically, Mama put her few things in the sack they’d carried with them and stood by her husband in the doorway. Daddy had not stopped shaking.

“You look as if you’re having a fit. Can’t we talk about all this?” Mama cast a sorrowful look at her daughter, sitting with Miles in her arms, the blanket askew.

Amanda blinked slowly, trying to take in the situation. Apparently, there was nothing to talk about. If her father could so quickly believe the tale—however convincing it must have seemed—then she had lost them already. It would be one more thing she could add to the list of what Frank had taken from her. She watched as Mama’s eyes memorized the baby’s tiny head, covered in a cap of downy hair, his lips slack and sated with milk. Amanda bent her head to him as well. He was her focus now. There sat Mooney beside her—probably they assumed she was a partner in this, her baby the child of an unholy union as well. Mama pressed her knuckles against her quivering lips as Daddy guided her out the door to their wagon. Sometimes still, Amanda would startle awake in the night, imagining the slamming of that door.