“Why?”
Christy-Lynn thought back to her conversation with Wade, to his theories about penance and atonement—about her trying to fix the past. But whose past? Hers? Stephen’s? Or was this about Charlene Parker, who, like Honey, had turned her back on her daughter? Perhaps Wade had been closer to the mark than she wanted to admit.
“My reasons aren’t important, Rhetta. But Iris is. We agree on that, don’t we?”
Rhetta nodded mutely.
“Then you’re saying yes? You’ll let me do this for you?”
Rhetta nodded again, with a little gulp, then buried her face in her hands.
Iris was instantly at her side, a tiny arm wound about Rhetta’s neck. “Nonny, don’t cry.”
Rhetta sniffed loudly and managed a smile. “Nonny’s fine, baby. Sometimes grown-ups cry when they’re happy. That’s what I’m doing. I’m crying because I’m happy.”
Iris shifted her gaze to Christy-Lynn and then back again, clearly perplexed. Rhetta took hold of her shoulders, turning her to face Christy-Lynn squarely. “You remember Miss Christy-Lynn, don’t you? You liked her so much you gave her a fish, and she put it on her icebox.”
Iris nodded almost dreamily.
“And now she’s come back to do something nice for you, like an angel sent from heaven. Can you tell her thank you?”
Christy-Lynn dropped her eyes uncomfortably. She wasn’t an angel; she was merely trying to right a wrong. But Iris had clearly taken her great-grandmother’s words to heart. Hesitant at first, she broke from Rhetta’s side, eyes lowered as she approached. And then, with a shy smile, she laid her teddy bear in Christy-Lynn’s lap.
She was gone in an instant, scurrying from the kitchen in her stockinged feet. Christy-Lynn met Rhetta’s eyes. They were moist again.
“She likes you,” Rhetta said softly, her voice full of emotion.
Christy-Lynn dipped her head. “I like her too. And she deserves a good life. Hopefully this trust will help give her one.”
Rhetta shook her head, dashing away a tear with the back of her hand. “I don’t know how to thank you for your generosity. After what Honey did, I can’t imagine what would make you want to help her little girl, but I can’t find it in my heart to say no. Things have been so hard, and now . . .”
“Now they’ll be better.”
Rhetta looked down at her hands, studying nicotine-stained nails. “Yes,” she said, as if trying to convince herself. “They’ll be better.”
“You’ll be able to afford a new house. One with lots more room and a yard for Iris to play in. It would be nice to be closer to town, don’t you think, and not be so far away from everything? And I can help you look for a good school when it’s time.”
“School,” Rhetta said, as if rolling the idea around in her head for the first time. “I’d like her to go to a good school, to make something of herself someday.”
Christy-Lynn was hesitant to bring up another matter, but at some point, Rhetta’s health—or lack of it—was going to become a factor. “I’d like to help in other ways too, if you’ll let me. I’d like to try to find you a new doctor, a pulmonary specialist who might be able to help you breathe better and feel better.”
Rhetta abandoned the study of her hands, meeting Christy-Lynn’s gaze head-on. “No need for all that. My doctor’s no specialist, but he knows what’s what. Can’t erase fifty years of cigarettes, any more than you can erase any of my other mistakes. But there is something else you could do for me. For us.”
“What’s that?”
“Take us to the cemetery.”
Christy-Lynn blinked at her uneasily. “The cemetery?”
“Iris didn’t go when her mama was buried. No one did but me. Ray didn’t want his sister buried at his church. He paid to have her shipped home, and for the box and marker, but there wasn’t a funeral. I just buried her at the cemetery on the edge of town like he told me to. Hardly anyone goes there anymore.”
“And you want me to take you there now—with Iris?”
“It’s the dreams,” Rhetta said with a hitch in her voice. “They’re so hard on her. Started right after the accident—Honey calling her name.”
A cold prickle traced its way down Christy-Lynn’s spine. “She can . . . hear her?”
Rhetta nodded ruefully. “Claims to. Poor thing wakes up in a panic, and then she’s looking all over the house, trying to find her mama. I’ve tried explaining that she’s with the angels, but she doesn’t understand that—or that Honey’s never coming back. I thought if she saw the grave . . .”
Christy-Lynn’s loathing for Ray Rawlings ticked up a notch when she pulled through the sagging chain link gates and saw the sign for Green Meadows. It was a stunning misrepresentation of what lay before them. Perhaps there had been grass once, to make it green and meadowlike, but at the moment, it was nothing but a treeless patch of dun-colored ground studded with listing headstones and an assortment of dead leaves and blown trash. What kind of man would bury a dog in such a place, let alone a sister?
Rhetta pointed to the northeast corner of the cemetery. “She’s at the back, out of the way.”
Christy-Lynn followed the pocked ribbon of pavement until it ran out, then parked the Rover and went around to help Rhetta unfasten her seat belt and climb down. By the time her feet touched the ground she was wheezing openly, her lips faintly blue.