She could show it to everyone, ask them one by one if they recognized the paper and then demand that they tell her its meaning. But that didn't seem like a sane act and she had been accused of treading toward madness before, so she kept the paper and its message to herself.

"Foolish old woman," she'd reprimanded herself each time she reached for the paper. "It don't mean nothing," she told herself, knowing all along that it meant something and probably everything her life depended on.

Mercy was flying; she was sailing above the tulip poplars and short-leaf pines, inhaling the sweet scent of the blue lobelia and wild hydrangea. She joined an arrow of sparrows that dipped through the blue sky above #9 before tiring and returning to earth.

Sugar had been watching her from the window. Just seeing Mercy spin *round and 'round in those wide crooked circles made Sugar dizzy and every so often she would have to grab hold of something to keep from losing balance.

She watched her so that her mind could become preoccupied with something other than Shirley Brown. She had scrubbed the sink in the bathroom and even dusted the woodwork in the hallway on the second floor, all of this to keep from walking over to Shirley Brown's house so that she could look her in the face and maybe see Bertie Mae's eyes or delicate lips.

So she swept the front porch instead and then had come to stand at the window to lose herself in Mercy's wild circles.

But now Mercy had fallen flat on her behind.

Down on the ground Mercy stretched her arms out behind her and threw her head back so that the sun could kiss her full on the face. She squinted against its bright rays and then let out a stream of childish laughter that caught Sugar by surprise.

Mercy still wasn't speaking and she remained distant, but something was changing about her, something Sugar hadn't been able to put her finger on yet.

Perhaps Mercy was getting better, Sugar thought.

Maybe she would go over and visit with Shirley Brown.

Maybe coming here was a good thing, the right thing.

Chapter 26.

THE time they'd spent in one another's company had slipped by with the patient ease of honey and had been just as sweet.

It seemed more like a month than a week. The days had rolled past in hours that no one had taken the time to keep track of. They ate when they were hungry and slept when they were sleepy. In between there had been some unrest, but more jubilance than anything else.

For seven days they had lived by an aberrant schedule that was, for the misfit occupants of #9 Grove Street, fitting.

The May evening came calling even before the sun had started its slow move east and the crickets' aria ran a tight compet.i.tion with the loud laughter that rang out in waves around the kitchen table.

"He was a scrawny thing, could barely keep his pants up around his waist." Pearl was laughing so hard that she had trouble taking in enough air to breathe. She was at the end of a story about JJ and Seth, and Sugar found herself reliving each scene as if she'd witnessed it.

Seth blushed and rolled his eyes at his mother and then looked at Sugar and shook his head. "I wasn't that skinny," he said with mock defensiveness.

"Yes you were, Son," Joe responded with a chuckle that Sugar found forced.

When the men had returned from Hodges Lake, their faces looked solemn and preoccupied. Sugar had walked out onto the porch to greet them as they climbed down from the truck, had asked if they wanted some lemonade or something a bit stronger, but they'd all shook their heads no and looked everywhere Sugar wasn't until she realized that they wanted to be alone.

They gathered together on the porch, speaking in low tones, Seth and JJ nodding or grunting when Joe mumbled something and pointed down at the flowerbed.

By the time JJ pulled out for home and Joe and Seth took their places at the table, the air around them had changed, the heaviness of whatever situation they had discussed had lifted enough so that Pearl would not notice that there was something wrong.

But Sugar knew different and she watched them, father and son, as they spoke to each other with their eyes.

Mercy seemed to be partic.i.p.ating this evening. Her eyes swung from mouth to mouth as if she were reading lips instead of listening. She even smiled in places where the rest of them laughed.

But her smile seemed too broad and absurd. It reminded Sugar of the smiles painted across the faces of circus clowns and held just as steady, even after the laughter was over and Mercy's eyes dropped closed, her body beginning a slow tilt toward the floor.

"She worse than a newborn, she just drop asleep without notice," Pearl said as she nudged Mercy on her shoulder.

Seth smirked. He had a newborn and he knew what sleep looked like. What Mercy was doing was a world away from sleep; it was closer to the slow bob and jerk of the addicts that littered the corner opposite his diner. He raised his eyebrows and gave Sugar a questioning look.

Sugar felt red hot anger begin to well up in her chest. It spread down her arms and through her hands, causing the tips of her fingers to burn. She bit down hard on her bottom lip and clenched her hands into tight fists, which she placed in her lap in an effort to keep them from reaching across the table and strangling Mercy After all she had done for that child! All of those hours that piled high into days, stretching into long restless nights.

All of that time she'd spent sitting by Mercy's bedside, mop-ping the sweat from her brow and holding her hand when the heroin fought to keep hold of her body.

Dammit! What a selfish b.i.t.c.h she was!

Sugar clenched her fists tighter.

She should have walked away, should have left Mercy right where she'd found her. Mercy wasn't interested in changing her life.

Neither were you.

Sugar's head snapped around and her eyes fell on Pearl.

"What did you say?" she asked.

Pearl drew her head back. "I didn't say anything."

Sugar's conscience was reminding her of what she had been before she'd come to Bigelow ten years ago and who she'd become by the time she left.

Pearl had saved her from herself and now Sugar had to do the same for Mercy.

Sugar's shoulders dropped in surrender and the anger in her hands cooled. She would stick with Mercy and help her kick the heroin once and for all. But first she would have to find out how she was getting it and from whom.

"Just like a baby." Pearl laughed again as Mercy rolled her drowsy eyes over the faces that watched her.

Angel hadn't looked at him since he'd walked in. That didn't disturb him, but the fact that she wasn't cussing at the meat or swearing at the potatoes she sliced, did.

Angel was never quiet and her silence plucked at his nerves worse than any loud noise could have.

And Harry wasn't working. The chairs were still turned upside down on their seats on top of the tables and the toilet paper rolls in the bathroom were one sheet away from the cardboard scroll.

Harry was standing beside his mother, staring up at her, waiting for the moment she would say something.

Normally his presence would have irritated her and she would have chased him away with one swift wave of the knife she had in her hand. But tonight, something in the way her body leaned toward Harry told JJ she needed him there.

JJ had started to ask her what was wrong, had opened his mouth twice to scold Harry into working, but decided that he would remove the chairs and replace the toilet paper himself while he decided on the best way to approach them.

He was dusting off the liquor bottles when Angel finally came out of the kitchen and into the bar area. Harry was at her side, his index finger hooked into the waist of her ap.r.o.n.

"s.h.i.t," was all JJ could think of to say when he looked into her face.

Her right eye was purplish black and swollen completely shut, her bottom lip was split straight down the middle and there were scratches as deep as rivers on her neck.

"Oh," she said, waving her hand at his shocked expression. "It was my fault, I guess. You know me ... ha-ha ... a sucker for a good-looking man."

JJ just stared.

"He said I looked like someone he hated. Some white woman."

JJ thought that Angel didn't look like any white woman he'd ever seen.

"Not my face ... down between my legs," Angel said in a whisper, her eyes moving nervously between Harry and JJ.

"Sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d," JJ finally said, but didn't move toward her.

"Uh, yeah, I guess." Angel's voice trembled with shame.

Angel looked small to JJ and made him think about Jude.

"Who was it?"

"Don't matter."

Harry unhooked his finger from his mother's ap.r.o.n and took a step toward JJ.

JJ ignored him and asked Angel again, "Who was it?"

Harry touched the gold-colored band around the neck of the bottle JJ held in his hand and then stretched his mouth into a hideous grin and dragged his finger across his teeth.

Joe waited for Pearl's head to start bobbing before he gently touched her knee and said, "Baby, you should head on up now."

Pearl looked at him through sleepy eyes and nodded her head and pulled herself up from the couch.

"Good night," she mumbled before starting up the stairs.

"Night," Joe said and settled himself back down on the couch.

The mood that Sugar had felt earlier when the men arrived was back, black and heavier than it had been earlier that day.

Seth yawned and Joe shot him a look that Sugar caught and read perfectly: Don't you dare go to sleep.

Seth caught it too and roughly rubbed his eyes before straightening his back and trying to look interested in what was on the television.

Sugar wanted to ask what was going on, but knew for sure that they would not include her and that they were waiting for her to retire as well.

The only light that filled the room was the gray-and-white light that spilled from the television. Sugar, Seth and Joe had sat through two movies and now waited through the national anthem that announced the end of programming.

Seth looked at Sugar expectantly and Joe let off a loud yawn before patting his belly and rising to move to the kitchen.

"Well, I guess I'll go to bed." Sugar's voice was hard and her words carried an edge that made Seth twist in his chair.

She was up the stairs and in her bedroom before either man could wish her good night.

Joe pulled the butcher knife from its place in the drawer and ran his thumb along the sharp edge.

Joe had never thought of himself as a killer. Even in the war, he didn't think of himself as such. Over the years, he had separated himself from the man in uniform who'd spent days on end in ditches letting off round after round against the enemy. He had become a man that would come home, fall in love, marry and then cradle babies and cry over the dead body of his daughter.

He had made that separation a long time ago.

But now what he knew to be true brought those halves of him together.

He didn't tell the boys everything he knew. No, everything would have driven them to set off on their own after Lappy.

So Joe kept the secret he'd found written on the piece of paper that bl.u.s.tery cold night in 1955 when Pearl had begged him to go after Sugar and he had, but all he found was dozens of pieces of paper dancing across the ground and he swore he heard the words scream out to him before he'd even read one.

The hairs stood up on his arms at the thought of it and the hatred he'd harbored for Lappy Clayton increased.

No, he did not tell the boys all of it.

He let on about Mercy and what that animal had done to Sugar. But he would not tell them about Jude. He would keep that part to himself until he had Lappy begging and pleading for his life and then he would remind him of the life he'd taken from him, all of them, and he would s.n.a.t.c.h Lappy's life away from him just as brutally as he had done to Jude.

Joe indicated for Seth to turn off the television. Seth did and then joined his father in the kitchen, flicking off the light as he came. They moved in the darkness to the table and silently took their waiting places.

Chapter 27.

LAPPY would never understand what drove him to do the things he'd done.

The woman from the bar, that was just him. She had upset him by wrapping her hands around his neck and forgetting about the length and sharpness of her fingernails. She'd scratched him deep enough to draw blood and that had made him mad.

He'd slapped her once across the face and she'd laughed at him. Told him he hit like a sissy. "A f.u.c.king f.a.ggot!" she'd screamed.

He was shocked at her reaction, but it had also excited him. Angel saw the movement in his pants and heard his breathing become heavier.

She stood up on the bed and began pulling off the clothes Lappy hadn't had the chance to get to.

Bra, panties and the red scarf she'd sprayed with perfume and tied around her neck.