Carolina Moon

obliged to pay back what we sacrificed for you, but you were too selfish. We had a decent life in Progress, still would if you hadn’t ruined it.”
    “Sarabeth.” Helplessly, J.R. gave her hand quick, light pats. “That’s not fair and that’s not true.”
    “She brought shame on us. Brought it the minute she was born. We were happy before she came along.” She began to cry again, harsh, racking sobs that shook her shoulders.
    At a loss, J.R. put an arm around her and made shushing noises.
    With her face and mind blank, Tory bent down and began to clear the litter from the table.
    Sarabeth was up like a thunderbolt. “What do you think you’re doing?”
    “Since you’re determined to stay, I thought I’d clean this up for you.”
    “I don’t need you criticizing me.” She slapped the plates to the floor. “I don’t need you coming here with your hoity-toity ways and your fancy clothes trying to make me look bad. You turned your back on me years ago, and as far as I’m concerned, you can keep on walking.”
    “You turned yours on me the first time you sat quiet while he beat me bloody.”
    “God made man master of his own house. You never got licked you didn’t deserve it.”
    Licked, Tory thought. Such a friendly word for horror. “Is that how you sleep at night?”
    “Don’t you sass me. Don’t you disrespect your daddy. You tell me where he is, damn you. You know, you can see. You tell me where he is so I can go take care of him.”
    “I won’t look for him. If I stumbled over him bleeding in a ditch, I’d leave him there.” Her head snapped back when Sarabeth slapped her, and the raw red print stained her cheek. But she barely flinched.
    “Sarabeth! God Almighty, Sari.” J.R. grabbed her, pinned her arms while she struggled and sobbed and screamed.
    “I was going to say I hope he’s dead.” Tory spoke quietly. “But I don’t. I hope he comes back to you, Mama. I dearly hope he comes back and gives you the life you seem to want.”
    She opened her purse, took out the hundred-dollar bill she’d put in it that morning. “If and when he does, you tell him this is the last payment he’ll ever get from me. You tell him I’m living back in Progress, that I’m making a life there for myself. If he wants to come and raise his hand to me again, then he better make it last, he better beat me dead this time. Because if he doesn’t finish me, I will him.”
    She closed her purse. “I’ll be in the car,” she said to J.R., and walked out.
    Her legs didn’t start to shake until she sat down and pulled the door closed. Then the trembling started at her knees and worked up so that she crossed her arms over her torso, pressed hard and with her eyes closed, waited for it to pass.
    She could hear the weeping, rolling like lava out of the house, and the monotonous cluck and squawk of the chickens hunting for food. From somewhere close by was the deep-throated, angry bark of a dog.
    And still, she thought, over it all the birds sang, in determinedly cheerful notes.
    She concentrated on that sound, and willed her mind away. Oddly, unexpectedly, she found herself standing in her kitchen, her head on Cade’s shoulder, his lips brushing her hair.
    Resting there, she didn’t hear her uncle until he settled in the seat beside her and closed his door.
    He said nothing as he pulled away from the house, nothing when he stopped a half mile away and just sat, his hands resting on the wheel and his eyes staring away at empty space.
    “I shouldn’t have let you come,” he said at last. “I thought—I don’t know what I was thinking, but I guess I had some idea that she’d want to see you, that the two of you might be able to make some of it up with Han gone off this way.”
    “I’m not part of her life except to blame for things. He is her life. That’s the way she wants it.”
    “Why? For God’s sake, Tory, why would she want to live like this, live with a man who’s never given her any joy?”
    “She loves him.”
    “That’s not love.” He spat the words out, along with anger and disgust. “That’s a sickness. You heard the way she made excuses for him, how she put it off on everybody but him. The woman he attacked, the police, even the goddamn bank.”
    “She wants to believe it. She needs to.” Seeing he was more upset than she’d realized, Tory laid a hand on his arm. “You did all you could.”
    “All I could. Gave her money and left her there, in that hovel. And I’ll