“We get the papers here just like everyone else. I saw your picture a few times too. It must’ve been terrible being in the middle of all that.”

“It was. I had to move. I live in Virginia now.”

Rhetta lit her cigarette then blew out a long plume of smoke. “I’m sorry your life got turned inside out because of Honey. I told her nothing good would come of it. I told her the first time she brought your husband around.”

Christy-Lynn felt the words like a physical blow. It never occurred to her that Stephen would have come to Riddlesville. “You’ve met my husband?”

Rhetta blinked at her through a lingering cloud of smoke. “Of course I’ve met him.”

“Here?”

Rhetta’s weathered face puckered with a sour smile. “We weren’t what he was used to, but he came around when he could.”

“I’m sorry. I just thought—”

“I know what you thought. I thought it too, at first. All that money and those fancy clothes. Never a hair out of place. I couldn’t think what a man like that would want with Honey. But then, people aren’t always what they seem.”

Christy-Lynn allowed the remark to sink in, trying to decide if it was aimed at Stephen or Honey. She was about to say that she’d learned that lesson the hard way when a shadow darkened Rhetta’s face. She had gone still, her head inclined toward the door, as if she’d caught some faint sound.

And then Christy-Lynn heard it too, a high-pitched keening that seemed to be drawing closer by the second. There was a sudden look of alarm as Rhetta tossed her cigarette over the rail and struggled to her feet. Before she could reach the door, it opened and a small face appeared.

“Nonny!”

She was a tiny thing, pale hair pasted stickily to her head, eyes luminous with panic. Rhetta reached for her, scooping her up into her arms with a harsh rattle of breath. “Hush now,” she crooned against the child’s wet cheek. “I’m right here. Nonny’s right here.”

The girl quieted almost immediately, though her breath still came in muffled shudders, her face burrowed in the crook of Rhetta’s shoulder. Christy-Lynn’s heart squeezed as she watched the scene. She recognized the aftermath of a nightmare when she saw it. And judging by Rhetta’s practiced attempts to soothe her, it probably wasn’t the first episode.

She was curled in Rhetta’s lap now, pulling furiously at the thumb in her mouth. Rhetta patted her back gently, crooning against her cheek. “That’s my big girl. We have company.”

The child turned to look at Christy-Lynn, her mouth suddenly still around her thumb, as if noticing her for the first time. She was lovely, a pale fairy of a girl with hair like corn silk and enormous violet eyes.

Her mother’s eyes.

Something cold and slippery roiled just south of Christy-Lynn’s ribs as she inventoried the child’s features. Heart-shaped face, skin like a china doll’s—and a prominent dimple in her tiny chin.

Stephen’s chin.

Rhetta’s eyes locked with Christy-Lynn’s. “This is Iris.”

The porch seemed to shift, the soft thrum of rain receding as she stared at Stephen’s little girl. The one she had vowed to never have. The one Honey had given him instead.

TWENTY-FIVE

“We’d better go inside,” Rhetta said, struggling to get out of her chair with Iris clinging to her. “No sense airing the family laundry on the front porch.”

Christy-Lynn looked up and down the deserted road, wondering who on earth might overhear them, but it wasn’t worth the argument. She stood, worrying briefly that her legs might buckle as she turned to follow Rhetta inside.

The living room was small and cluttered, the air thick with stale cooking oil and decades of old smoke. She eyed the sagging curtains, the ancient television stacked with dog-eared copies of TV Guide, the cheap bric-a-brac covering every available surface. It was like a secondhand shop where no one ever bought anything.

Rhetta jerked her chin toward the old plaid couch. Her lips had gone a funny shade of blue, and she was huffing like an old tractor. “Have a seat. I need to get her quieted down, and then I’ll be back. Meantime, drink your lemonade. You don’t look so good.”

Christy-Lynn did as she was told, easing numbly onto the edge of the couch. In the kitchen, Rhetta kept up a soothing stream of chatter as she bathed Iris’s face and neck with a cool cloth. When she was finished, she stripped off her damp T-shirt and replaced it with a clean one from the wicker basket on the counter, then set the child down in front of the television with a small dish of fish-shaped crackers.

By the time Rhetta settled into the lumpy green recliner, she was an alarming shade of gray. “I’m sorry about that.” Her head lolled back against the chair. “I didn’t mean for you to find out like this. In fact, I didn’t mean for you to find out at all.”

“Why?”

“No need to kick you while you’re down. You’ve been through enough.”

“I came because I wanted to know the truth.”

“And now?”

“I still want to know.”

She sighed, clearly exhausted. “Then I suppose you’d better ask your questions.”

“She’s Stephen’s,” Christy-Lynn said, fighting to keep her voice even. She didn’t need confirmation. She just needed a moment to sit with the truth of it. Of all the uncomfortable things she had expected to learn, the possibility of a child had never crossed her mind.