"Well then I guess her daddy did a good thing taking her to New York. I guess he was right, they have better doctors and hospitals there. Even though it killed my poor brother, Wiley, taking that last bit of Merriam away from him. He talked about that little girl until his last breath. I reckon, somewhere in the middle of Webster's cemetery, there is a ghost wandering around talking about his granddaughter and all the other ghosts are looking at him like he's crazy, running off at the mouth about some little girl named Peach."

Sparks ignited inside of my chest as soon as she said her name. "He called her that?"

"Of course he called her that. She was a little Georgia girl," she laughed.

"Will you tell me more about him?"

She sighed. "Boy, you are handsome as the devil. Why would you ever get involved with the troubles of this family? Go find yourself a nice girl who doesn't have a daddy that'll kill you. They make plenty of those these days. Specially round Atlanta."

I smiled. "I don't want a nice girl with a daddy that won't kill me. I want to die loving this one impossible girl that I might not ever see again."

"Hmm," she measured me, "No wonder he doesn't like you . . . you're just like him. It's why my brother didn't like Timothy. The fool never backed down, no matter what."

I picked up her basket full of tomatoes. "I'll work here with you, all day for free, doing whatever you need done, as long as you'll tell me about this."

"Why?" she sighed. "Why does it matter so much?"

"Because . . ." I searched for Everly . . . there . . . under my ribs . . . that's where she had been hiding. "I need hope."

The woman stared pitifully at me and then waved for me to follow her to another bright cluster of tomatoes. "Your hands are too clean to be a farmer," she commented. "Don't tell me you're a tax collector or lawyer or something foul."

"More foul," I laughed, "I'm a doctor."

She crossed herself.

I laughed harder.

"Well, I have two rules in this garden, Callum Andrew. One, my name is Pearl, not ma'am. I'm aging, not old. Two, you best be careful with my tomatoes. They are my pride and joy."

"I will, Miss Pearl. I promise."

"With both pinkie fingers?"

My hand paused, mid reach for a tomato. Ah, there she was again.

Pearl cooked fried chicken, corn pudding, and a cucumber and tomato salad, for supper. We drank iced tea that was sweet enough to kill a diabetic if they simply looked at the glass. I asked her for three servings. I didn't want to leave her house. She didn't have air conditioning, didn't want any, and her couch smelled like every cat that had ever lived there, but she showed me pictures of Everly Anne as a kid with her grandpa. Pearl smiled honestly when she spooned food onto my plate, and she had a heart that reminded me of the one I was missing.

"Ah," she nodded, "Yes, this was Merriam." She handed me an article clipped from an old newspaper. "Wiley was so proud seeing his little girl in the paper."

I stared at the picture of a blonde-haired woman on the arm of a tall, wide-shouldered man. A second glance showed a third person, hidden beneath a floral-print dress.

"She was pregnant with Everly here?" I tipped my glass toward the paper. "That's her?"

"Mm," Pearl hummed, "That was her all right. One big happy family."

"She does look like her," I said. "It's pretty incredible, actually."

"You have a picture of Everly all grown up?" Pearl asked.

"Um, yeah." I pulled my cell out and scrolled back to the weekend in Montauk. "That's my Everly Anne." I showed her the phone. "Beautiful, right?"

"Mm, sure is. Definitely Merriam's kid."

I admired Everly's face before I tucked the phone back into my pocket. Pearl got up and went into the kitchen as I flipped through photos inside a shoebox. When she came back she had two heaping slices of apple pie with vanilla ice cream.

"You're spoiling me, tonight," I laughed. "And possibly giving me diabetes."

"Hush with that. Eat your pie."

As I took a bite she collected the photos from the table and then looked at me. "She ever tell you about how her daddy got Wiley to surrender?"

I shook my head. "Everly doesn't know much about Merriam. Timothy doesn't talk about her."

"She must've forgot Wiley telling her then." Pearl took a deep breath as she though. "Let's see. He was a doctor already, I recall that part, and I think Merriam was about to graduate high school. But they dated for so long. That was why Wiley had such a problem with Timothy-his age. He was scared of his girl being taken advantage of by an older man. But Merriam was head-over-heels for that man. They got into so much trouble sneaking around. Anyhow," she sighed. "Timothy had a good practice going for himself, and then he did something with a study, and they wrote about him in this magazine or something . . . and after that, he was someone to know. They had him flying all around the country just for his opinion!" She barked out a laugh, and then took a bite of pie. "He was in New York for a while, and then when he came back, it was like he was on fire. He marched right up to Wiley in the middle of church-CHURCH, I tell you!-and told him, "Mr. Ottaline, I am here to marry your daughter, Sir." Can you believe that? In CHURCH?"