Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

that drowns my heart. Beyond all doubt, I know that he wishes with all his being that the shoulder he touches, the lips he brushes, the breast he caresses, belonged to the body of another.
    When he looks through me, I will always pretend that I don’t know that it is the love of another he prays to possess. To my God, this day, I resolve to be the best white wife who has ever lived in Tennessee.
    Eula McNaughton
     
    In letters no more than tiny pricks of the pencil to the middle-aged eye, the words printed on the right-hand edge of the paper running up and down read Alexander McNaughton loves Annalaura Welles .
    She punched the pencil deep into the book, but she could not bring herself to scratch out the words. Carefully closing the journal, Eula pulled her usual kitchen chair to the safe, climbed on it, and reached to the top shelf to move her silver-tipped wedding tureen. She tucked her journal behind it knowing she would never touch it again.
    Not bothering to look where she landed, Eula stepped off the chair, grabbed a pitcher, and walked into the shambles that had been her porch. She pushed aside her now dented tin bathtub to reach the pump handle. Filling the pitcher with water, she returned through her kitchen, picked up the butcher knife, and retreated to her bedroom. She barely glanced at the bed as she poured water into the blue-flowered basin she had bought for herself as a remembrance of her tenth wedding anniversary. Bending over the water-filled basin, she saw the reflection of an old woman, her face lined with care, staring back at her.
    Eula dipped her hand into the clean depths, her fingers splashing away the image. She would never look upon that woman again. She patted her face with the water, but she couldn’t tell if it was hot or cold. With her hands dripping, she smoothed her hair and tugged the wrinkles out of her dress. She gave the knife only a quick glimpse as she picked it up and aimed its point at the fleshy part of her finger. Like everything else this morning, and for the rest of her life, she couldn’t feel its sharp point jab into her flesh. When the bubble of blood oozed to the surface, she took her finger and smeared its redness across both cheeks. She pulled open a bottom drawer of her dresser and took out the hand mirror that she’d never seen a need to use. She checked her cheeks in its glassiness. The care-lined old woman was gone.
    She was ready. With the lead from her shoes and stockings quickly disappearing, Eula walked through her parlor, past her kitchen, out through the now unhinged porch door, and over to her buckboard in the barn. She must ready her horse for a trip to Fedora’s. It was time to redeem herself. When she sees her sister-in-law, of course she will act as though nothing unusual has happened in the McNaughton household these last ten months. Her fainting spell was just part of the change of life. Fedora will recognize that. All in all, she will act as though she understands everything and knows nothing. She will be the good Southern wife. After all, that is the only thing that Alex has ever loved about her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
     
    “Cairo. Cairo, Illinois.” The porter walked down the aisle of the just-stopped Illinois Central train.
    Sitting bolt upright in the stiff seat, Annalaura looked out the window into the lamp-lit dimness of the railway station. A few passengers from the car just ahead walked the platform, puffing on cigarettes. The letters, C-A-I-R-O, stared back at her from the sign suspended just over the round-faced brass clock that showed ten p.m. But she read only A-L-E-X.
    Annalaura, the children, Becky, and John had boarded that first train fourteen hours earlier in Clarksville, and after a three-hour layover in some Kentucky town too small to notice, John had settled them all into the dusty, colored-only coach bound for Chicago. Now, the porter, in his white railroad jacket, paused briefly beside Annalaura’s seat. The man give her a slight wink as he pretended to check the destination on her ticket.
    “Chicago, Illinois. Land o’ Lincoln.” He let a slight smile play across his lips.
    Did he want to make sure she understood that he had just announced her arrival into the Promised Land? But was it?
    Annalaura looked down at Lottie, lying beside her, deep in sleep, her little girl braids resting heavy against Annalaura’s shoulder. Doug and Henry sat across the aisle with Aunt Becky, all three sound asleep—Henry curled up on