“Sheriff Johns would like to speak to you.” Her head nods toward the parking lot where the sheriff’s vehicle waits.
A sinking feeling bottoms out my stomach.
My eyes skim to the hill behind her until they find the plantation. I can see it now: a frenzy of cars, not to mention reporters, and more sheriff vehicles.
Something is definitely wrong.
NINE
Bone-Tooth Key
Black Fern’s county jail is nothing like what you see in movies. They don’t have the thick glass with telephones on either side. No interrogation room with a two-way mirror. Instead, it’s a bunch of fold-up tables I’m pretty sure they got when the Aberdeen Baptist Church closed its doors.
Stapled to the faux wood paneling is a sign that reads Appropriate Attire with the visitor rules: No sleepwear, no tank tops, shorts can’t show your buttocks, no sexually explicit T-shirts, and undergarments are required. How they know if you’re wearing underwear is beyond me.
Deputy Rankin sits at the intake desk. His big greasy self is gnawing on a pickled pig’s foot like it’s a fried chicken leg. Disgusting. You’d think his exposed ass crack would conflict with the “can’t show your buttocks,” but apparently the rules don’t apply to him.
A fat fly lands on a dried sticky stain on the table. A lone ceiling fan pushes hot air around the stifling room. The only other sound is the tick-tick-tick of the fan’s pull-chain tapping the light globe as it wobbles in rotation.
Sweat trickles down the back of my legs. June in Georgia can burn you up if you don’t watch it.
I’m about to ask what the hell is taking so long when the jailer door opens and out walks my ex-boyfriend Oscar Torres, along with the memories of us during my last summer of high school.
Being with Oscar made you dream of white picket fences and raising babies. He deserved something better than a soulless Death Talker. Besides, a nineteen-year-old joining the sheriff’s department shouldn’t be having sex with a kid still in high school. I did what he couldn’t and broke us up.
Right behind him comes the sheriff. I stand like I’m readying for the national anthem.
Sheriff Thomas Johns is a burly man with an I’ll-kick-you-in-the-teeth horseshoe mustache. He might be gray-haired, but his biceps are meaty as a steer. He’s ex-military; army, I think.
And he’s damn fast when he needs to tackle you. I should know.
“Have a seat, young lady.” He nods.
I sit. He fires himself up a Camel, nonfilter cigarette.
“We have a few questions regarding yesterday.” Sheriff takes a stiff drag.
I knew it. I knew that damn doctor told him I was doing something witchy. Maybe I could get Miss Caroline or Mr. Latham to attest to the contrary, since I saved Worth that one time.
“Of course, you know Darbee May Wilder,” the sheriff states more than asks, throwing me for a loop.
I stare blankly at him. Obviously, this is a joke. I look to Oscar, trying to read what on earth this is about. Black Fern is small enough you know just about everybody even if you don’t want to. I know I’m a bastard child, but what’s she got to do with Ellis’s death?
“Yes,” I say through gritted teeth. “I know who my mother is.” Her name, yes. Her personally, only a handful of times. A day or two here. A week there.
Haven’t seen her since I was thirteen.
“We believe your mother was a squatter on this property.” The sheriff slides something across the table for me to look at. “Can you tell me when the last time you visited this house was?”
It’s a vintage-colored photo of my mother, a sultry young woman, wild as a fox, all slunk down in a regal chair fit for a queen—had it not been ragged and worn-out. Clad in a long gauzy bohemian dress with boots meant for a cowboy on her feet. One leg is cocked over the large wooden arm of the chair with her legs spread, but nothing is revealed, except her wickedness.
Chunky rings adorn every finger, even her thumbs. Her long blond hair dyed black, pitch as night and frightful with rage for how untamed and free it looks. It makes you fear her and want to be her all at the same time. Part of my mother’s face hides behind her curled hand that shields a wry smile. Her smoke-rimmed eyes full of sin. I know because they’re the same eyes I see in the mirror every morning.
Behind the chair, a bold ugly wallpaper with giant roses—a note of familiarity tickles my thoughts.
“I’ve never been there.” But something inside me says, Yeah, you have.
A thin ribbon of smoke trails off the tip of Sheriff Johns’s forgotten cigarette. The ash on the end grows long as the silence stretches. That tick-tick-tick of the fan’s pull-chain racks at my nerves.
“I guess you also wouldn’t know how this got buried on the property now, would you?” The sheriff’s dark hand pushes a plastic evidence bag across the table.
The thumping in my chest ramps up.
It’s a child’s Bible. Pale blue with crinkles worn in its spine. Jesus reads a story to some children on the cover. Gold lettering in all caps spell out my name, WEATHERLY OPAL WILDER.
My childhood Bible.
The one buried with me...and those twin babies.
Fear flushes over my body. How’d they find the grave?
Zeke Latham’s words flash back to me. Ellis’s foot had sunk into some kind of hole.
My heartbeat is overwhelming now, and the only sound in my head is the muffled thud-thump, thud-thump, thud-thump.
“I said...when was the last time you were at this house? Do you recall ever being there with your mother?” Sheriff Johns knocks on the table next to the picture
I blink myself out of a trance and shake my head no.
