"You're not the only one who has doubts, you know. You don't have a monopoly on that."

"Are you saying you're not sure we should get married?" Lindsay asked. She was ashamed to admit that she had never seriously considered that Warren could experience the same kinds of uncertainties and insecurities that she did. He always seemed to proceed with such an abundance of caution and care that it seemed impossible he could doubt his decisions.

"No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying it's not like I have a crystal ball that guarantees everything's gonna be okay. I thought long and hard before I asked you to be my wife. I think we make a good team, and I've never cared about anyone's opinions as much as I care about yours. And I would do anything to keep you safe. But I can't do any of that if you keep shutting me out like this. At first I thought you just needed time away from everything. It hurt, but I could handle that because I thought I understood you. But I can't handle it if the only thing you need time away from is us. Or me. How can we build a future on that? That's not a basis for a marriage. That's me driving around town until I find you holed up in your house with some other guy."

"We weren't holed up here, Warren," Lindsay said desperately. Now that her initial anger had faded, the emotion that took its place was fear-fear that she might have pushed Warren further than she meant to. "I don't know how to explain it. I was just in a weird place mentally, and the longer it went on, the harder it became to talk to you."

"Stop," Warren said quietly. "You know what? I'm done."

"Are you dumping me?" Lindsay asked.

"I love you, and as much as it kills me, there's probably nothing you could ever do to me that would change that. But it finally dawned on me that if you loved me, you'd run towards me when things get bad instead of running away."

"I'm sorry I hurt you. Please, let's talk about this," Lindsay pleaded. Tears were now streaming freely down her cheeks, in contrast to Warren's cheeks, which were bone dry.

The affection seemed to have drained from his brown eyes. In that moment, Lindsay realized that she'd brought about the very thing that was at the root of her fear of commitment. She had been afraid that there was something broken deep inside her, something that made her deserve all the bad things that had happened in her life-her parents' abandonment, her aunt's coldness, the unattainable standards her father had set for her, her first fiance's betrayal, her mother's deceptions, her victimization by Leander Swoopes-all of it. She'd thought she was damaged goods, so she'd nurtured a dark s.p.a.ce where her flaws had been magnified. Her inability to trust her instincts had left her feeling that committing to Warren might be the wrong choice, and now she'd lost her chance at a life with him. She'd been so terrified of trusting him with her whole heart that she'd locked him out of it permanently. The weight of her failures ached so much she thought she was going to stop breathing.

"Now you want to talk?" Warren answered with another bitter laugh. He shook his head. "There's nothing left to say. Good luck. Hope you find somebody who can make you happy."

Chapter 14.

"When did you get home, honey?" Simmy asked Lindsay, as she and Dunette walked into the kitchen of Lindsay's house. The two women had just returned from Simmy's weekly physical therapy appointment in Greensboro to find Lindsay sitting at the kitchen table paging listlessly through a book, with Kipper stretched out at her feet.

"Just a few minutes ago. It was really quiet at the hospital today, so I was able to leave early," Lindsay replied, forcing a smile.

In truth, her shift at the hospital had been quiet. So quiet in fact that she'd been left with too much time to wallow in her own misery. Rob had stopped into the chaplains' office during her shift to find her crying uncontrollably. It had been a week to the day since Warren dumped Lindsay, and each day it seemed to become more difficult to put on a brave face at work. Rob had done what he could to improve her spirits, but decided it would be best if he called in one of the pool chaplains and sent her home early.

Lindsay, Kipper, and Simmy had moved back into Lindsay's house the day after her fight with Warren, and although in some ways the added chaos and lifestyle adjustments couldn't have been timed any worse, it was an unexpected blessing to have the perpetually forward-looking Simmy in her home. It didn't hurt that Dunette-warm, rea.s.suring Dunette-was also an almost daily presence. So far, Lindsay had been able to keep herself together in front of them in part because she didn't want her great grandmother's arduous rehabilitation and the transition to her new surroundings to be made even more difficult by her despondency. But Lindsay had to admit that it was also pretty tough to remain glum around a woman who'd spent the morning doing outlandish, self-styled yoga poses and giving a glitter manicure to Kipper while belting out Ella Fitzgerald songs at full volume.

"How was aqua therapy?" Lindsay asked.

"Wet," Simmy said, hanging her pink metal cane over the back of a chair and using her fists to knead circles on her hips. "And that new physical therapist is a born s.a.d.i.s.t. Like Stalin in swim shorts. But on the plus side, Dunette finally took me to the liquor store. We now have what it takes to make a house a home: a fully-stocked bar." She gestured toward the paper bags Dunette had set on the countertop. "It was shameful how little alcohol you had in the house before. I know you're your father's daughter, but I'd hoped that you'd at least get some of my good traits."

"Like your iron liver?" Dunette said with a smirk.

Simmy's alcohol intake had been severely curtailed during her months in the rehab facility, and she'd made it clear that she intended to make up for lost time.

"It's my philosophy that life goes along a little easier when it's properly lubricated," Simmy replied, removing the largest bottle of Maker's Mark Lindsay had ever seen from one the paper bags. "You could join us, you know, instead of standing over there clucking like an angry hen," Simmy said, lifting the bourbon bottle by the neck and giving its contents a little shake.

"You know I don't drink on the job. And even if I did, I have church in the morning, and some of us don't think we should be showing up to the Lord's House drunker than Cooter Brown," Dunette said, folding her arms over her ample chest. She cast a sharp eye at Lindsay. "When I took a job working for a minister to look after an old lady, I didn't know there'd be so much hard drinking."

Lindsay threw up her hands and shrugged.

"Can I remind you," Dunette continued, "that Simmy's doctor said she's supposed to be eating a healthy, balanced diet to support her recovery?"

"My diet is as balanced as they come. Whatever food I eat, I balance it out with an equal amount of liquor," Simmy quipped. "I reckon bourbon is gonna be one of those things like cholesterol. First they say it's bad for you, but later they find out we should've all been guzzling it by the gallon this whole time. I'm just ahead of the curve." She raised her gla.s.s. "To Cooter Brown and good Christians!"

Dunette tried to look stern, but it was impossible not to laugh at the br.i.m.m.i.n.g joie de vivre of the tiny woman, with her perfectly bobbed wig, her neon pink lipstick, and her gypsy-style dress of diaphanous, batik-patterned silk. Lindsay smiled, too, glad to see more and more of the old Simmy beginning to shine through. Although Lindsay didn't support her great grandmother's excessive drinking, her constant adoption of the latest pseudo-scientific health fads, or the way she left a trail of messiness and dis...o...b..bulation everywhere she went, she was secretly relieved to see more and more of the older woman's vim returning. Simmy still had great difficulty maneuvering, but having Dunette around had restored much of her internal spark and confidence. Lindsay couldn't help but notice with a twinge of painful nostalgia that the banter between the two women mirrored the kind of Odd Couple back-and-forth that the free-spirited Simmy and Lindsay's stern Aunt Harding used to engage in.

"What were you reading, honey?" Simmy asked, picking up a book from the table in front of Lindsay.

"A history of Lumbee Indians, written by a Lumbee woman who's a professor at UNC," Lindsay said. "I realized when I was talking to Angel and Geneva the other day that I don't know very much about them, so I ordered this and a couple other Lumbee history books on Amazon."

"You want Lumbee history? You should come home with me sometime," Dunette laughed. "Just go into any barbecue joint where the old Lums hang out and they'll tell you about Henry Berry Lowrie like he was their daddy."

"You know, a lot of my cla.s.ses focused on Southern history in college, and I'd never even heard of Henry Berry. I was just reading the chapter about him," Lindsay said.

"Any s.e.x in this?" Simmy asked, looking the book over dubiously.

"Well, there's a romance that's even better than Robin Hood and Maid Marion," Dunette said, settling into a chair to tell the story. "Toward the end of the Civil War, the Home Guard boys got a little too big for their britches and started hara.s.sing the Indians, especially ones like the Lowries who had a bit of land and money put by. So Henry Berry and some others started fighting back. They laid out in the swamps around Scuffletown so they could raid some of the rich folks' farms and then distribute what they stole to the poor people."

"That's robbers, not a romance," Simmy interjected.

"Hold your horses. I'm getting to that part," Dunette said. "Henry fell in love with Rhoda Strong, the most beautiful girl in the whole county," she continued. "Even the newspapers wrote about how pretty she was, called her the Queen of Scuffletown. The two of them met in secret for months. Finally, they got married, and his family threw a big enfare, that's a big reception party for them. But somebody had tipped off the Home Guard that Henry Berry had come out of hiding in the swamp, and they rode in and arrested him at his own wedding reception."

"So they didn't even get a wedding night?" Simmy said. "That's why I don't read books unless they have a man without a shirt on the cover."

"That's not the end of the story," Dunette said. "A few days afterwards, Rhoda Strong came to the prison with a cake for her husband. Later that night, the prison guard found a half-eaten cake, and an empty cell with all the iron bars filed through. Henry Berry lived as an outlaw around Scuffletown for the next ten years, but he snuck meetings with Rhoda whenever he could."

"Well, I guess that's better than nothing," Simmy said.

"Speaking of the Lowrie Gang, have you ever heard of a place called Burnt Island?" Lindsay asked.

Dunette furrowed her brow in concentration. "There's a Burnt Island Road out in the county. But there's nothing out there. Maybe a house or two, but I've never been back in there. I only know about it because I grew up out there and the school bus would go past. Why do you ask?"

"Burnt Island Road just dead-ends into forest and swamp. But I'm sure that has to be the Burnt Island Boughtflower mentioned. He also mentioned a man that died. It fits too perfectly to just be a coincidence. One of the Lowrie Gang's hideouts was Burnt Island Swamp, but there's nothing really left of that place. The area's all been drained, and the rivers and creeks keep moving, so there's nothing left of what was there in Lowrie's time. And we know Boughtflower was there or at least close to there, during the Battle of Hayes Pond."

The front doorbell rang, and Lindsay pushed her books aside and rose to answer it. In what had become an involuntary ritual each time the phone rang or the doorbell sounded, she closed her eyes and willed the person to be Warren. She'd had no communication from him at all since the previous Sat.u.r.day, despite her repeated attempts to contact him. He'd turned the tables on her, and now she saw how it felt to have the object of your affection suddenly drop out of reach.

Kipper raced ahead of Lindsay and stood in front of the door, emitting a series of ferocious barks.

"Kipper, heel," Lindsay commanded. The dog took a step backwards but retained his laser-beam focus on the door.

The face that appeared in the gla.s.s pane of the front door was one she never could've antic.i.p.ated-the small window framed the round, ruddy visage of Otis Boughtflower's son-in-law, Yancy.

Lindsay unlocked and opened the main door, but left the screen door closed to keep Kipper from lunging at the visitor.

Before she could utter a word of greeting, Yancy's mouth fell open.

"You?!" he said.

She met his baffled expression with one of her own. "Mr. Philpot. How can I help you?"

"What are you doing here?" he sputtered.

"I live here," she said slowly. "You're at my house."

His momentary confusion transformed into an expression of rage. "I should've known you were in on it. No way would that old b.a.s.t.a.r.d have voluntarily talked to a chaplain. If you even are a chaplain..."

"I can a.s.sure you that I'm a chaplain. I'm not catching your drift, though," Lindsay said. "Why are you so surprised that I live in my own house?"

"She's here, isn't she?" he demanded.

Kipper growled. Clearly he didn't like Yancy's tone any more than Lindsay did.

"It's all right, Kipper," Lindsay soothed. Then, turning back to Philpot, she asked, "who's here?"

"That Oxendine woman." He was peering around Lindsay, keeping one hand on the outside handle of the screen door.

"Do you need to speak to her?" Lindsay began, but stopped herself. Yancy looked nothing like the jovial, past-his-prime athlete she'd met at the hospital the previous week. Instead, he filled the doorframe like a shadow, intent on some dark purpose. "Wait, did you follow her here?"

By this time, both Dunette and Simmy had emerged from the kitchen and were walking down the short hallway that led to the front door.

"Yancy?" Dunette said, her forehead furrowed with confusion. "That you?"

"I'll wring your neck, you conniving little..." Yancy tore open the screen door, but before he could enter the house, Kipper advanced toward him with a menacing growl.

"You call that dog back," he demanded.

"Not until you explain yourself, bub," Simmy snapped. "How dare you barge into my great granddaughter's house making threats? You have five seconds to start behaving yourself or you're gonna meet the pointy end of a 90-pound Doberman."

"I don't need to explain myself to you or anyone else," Yancy said. Although his voice was full of bl.u.s.ter, he stepped back and removed his hand from the door. "Y'all just better watch yourselves. Ain't no way I'm gonna let this stand. You hear me?" He stabbed his finger toward Lindsay and Dunette. "Ain't no way I'm letting some little midget minister wannabe and that fakety-fake injun steal from me!"

With that, Yancy turned on his heels. The day before, Dunette had placed three small clay pots planted with geraniums, snapdragons, and blue salvia on the steps leading up to the porch. Yancy kicked each one of these in turn, sending pottery fragments hurtling across the yard and smashing into the line of pine trees at the edge of the property.

The three women stood in shocked silence, while Kipper continued to bark and lunge at the closed screen door. Once Yancy drove away, the dog moved to the front window. He put his paws up on the sill and glared at the spot where the car had been.

"What in the world was that man jabbering on about?" Simmy asked.

"I have no idea," Lindsay replied. "You did a great job handling him, though. I don't know who was scarier, you or Kipper." She turned to Dunette. "Do you have any idea why he wanted to talk to you?"

"I don't know what he was talking about. I've never stolen anything in my life," Dunette said, shaking her head. "That's the way it goes. If something goes missing, people always blame the hired help. But I never took anything from Otis Boughtflower other than my paycheck."

"How well do you know Yancy?" Lindsay asked.

"Hardly at all. I just don't understand. He was always fine to me when I worked for the old man. A bit too big for his britches maybe, but nothing like that."

While they were still all standing in front of the open screen, a black sedan pulled into the driveway. A well-groomed man in grey dress slacks and a b.u.t.ton-down shirt emerged and approached the front door. Again, Kipper had to be commanded not to attack.

"Dunette Oxendine?" the man asked. When Dunette nodded, he continued, "I'm a process server who's been commissioned to deliver a doc.u.ment to you on behalf of the Alamance County Court. Your cousin told me I could find you here. I need you to sign for this personally." He produced a large envelope marked, from the law offices of Marshall Pickett, LLC, and held it out to her. "Please sign here to confirm receipt," he said, indicating a form on a clipboard.

Dunette glanced at Lindsay and Simmy briefly and then signed the paperwork.

The man headed off with only a brief word of parting, and again the women were left in shocked silence. A crow descended from the sky and perched on the railing of the porch. Its beady black eyes moved across the front of the house. It cawed three times and then took to the sky again.

Dunette gripped Lindsay's arm. "That crow was a toten."

"What's a toten?" Lindsay asked.

"That's what we call a bad omen," Dunette whispered, glancing anxiously down at the envelope in her hands.

They returned to the kitchen where Dunette began to page through the doc.u.ments she'd been handed, while Simmy poured them all generous gla.s.ses of Maker's Mark over ice.

"What in the world?" Dunette whispered as she read. When she finished, she pushed the papers across the table to them. "The first one's a letter from Boughtflower's lawyer. It says he's leaving everything-all his money, the proceeds from any property he has, stocks, bonds-to me to distribute for the benefit of 'my people.'"

"What?" Simmy and Lindsay said in unison. Even Kipper looked at Dunette with a quizzical expression.

"That's what it says. I get everything. The only other beneficiary named here is Jess."

"What does she get?" Lindsay asked, scanning through the doc.u.ment.

"An astronomy guide and a key," Dunette replied.

"A key?" Simmy said. "Maybe he left her his house?"

"Can't be. Mike told me he sold his house to Morgan Partee and his wife last week," Lindsay said.

"What then?" Simmy asked.

"It doesn't say." Lindsay found the pa.s.sage and read it aloud. "To my beloved granddaughter, Jessica Boughtflower Philpot, I leave a key, which my lawyer has placed in a safe deposit box for you to claim. May it remind you that you are a young woman who has the ability to unlock anything. I also leave my cherished star chart. May it remind you to reach for your highest potential. I'm counting on you to make us all proud."

"It's hard to picture Boughtflower being sentimental. He didn't really strike me as the poetic type," Lindsay observed.

"Well, people do surprising things when it comes to family," Simmy replied. She and Lindsay exchanged a meaningful glance, remembering their shared history. "Anyway, that explains why the son-in-law came thundering over here. He must've just found out about this and gone out looking for you."

Dunette didn't appear to be listening. With a shaking hand, she grabbed the gla.s.s Simmy had poured and took a long swig of bourbon. She coughed a bit and then said, "I'm gonna send it back."

"Send what back, honey?" Simmy asked.

"The money and whatnot. I don't want that man's money. Why would he do this to me?"

"Don't be a ninny. Of course you should keep the money. From what you've said, he must've been loaded. You'll be set for life," Simmy said.

"You saw Yancy," Dunette replied, the color draining from her face. "Money makes people act like that. The more money you have, the more trouble it brings."

"But doesn't Yancy have his own money?" Lindsay asked. "I thought he had some high-level executive job."

"Yancy?! Oh please. He's a produce manager down at the Kroger in Burlington, and I think he only got that job as a favor to Boughtflower. I wouldn't let that fool put gas in my car, much less run some kind of fancy business." Dunette took another sip of her drink. "Why would he leave all that money to me? And who does he mean when he says 'my people'? I don't really have any close relatives."

"What about your cousin?" Simmy said.

"Angel's not even my real cousin. We just call each other that. My mama was sick with cancer for years and years, so Angel's grandmama always took care of me like I was one of her own. Pretty much anybody who's Lum is some kind of cousin or relation of mine. If he means family, though, my mother was an only child, and both my daddy's brothers died before they had children."