Lolly's mouth fell open, and I threw myself across her bed. "Now that my daddy's dead, she's shown up to let me know that she loves me. You know my mama has an absolutely beautiful singing voice. I mean it would have been a sin if she had kept that gift to herself. So she went and followed her big dream, and I think that took her right back to Willacoochee. And the best part, my daddy knew she was alive, sharing her gift with a bunch of drunken men in some no-good, sleazy honky-tonk. But Martha Ann, she doesn't really care what he did or what she did. She's just so happy to have a mother, any mother, heck, she'd probably take yours," I said, without thinking about Lolly's feelings.

"I'm sorry, Lolly," I said. Somehow I'd always found some rotten comfort in thinking that no matter how unfair my life seemed, it was always better than Lolly's. But now I wasn't so sure. Mrs. Dempsey might not like Lolly, but at least she never abandoned her.

Lolly asked me about Miss Raines's baby, if what Emma Sue had been saying about town was really the gospel truth. I told her, yep, my dead daddy was going to have a baby. Lolly's mouth fell right open, but then she started talking in her kind, smooth voice, trying to rea.s.sure me that my life was not as tragic as it sounded. As the sound of Lolly's voice filled my head, my eyes were drawn to a small crystal vase sitting on the table next to her bed. I picked it up and turned it over and over in my hands. I had never seen anything so beautiful in Lolly's house.

"Where'd this come from?" I asked, interrupting her good-hearted effort.

"How about that?" she said with a smile on her face. "My mama gave that to me for my eighteenth birthday."

I couldn't believe something so fine had come from Mrs. Dempsey. She didn't seem capable of giving anything of any beauty to anyone. I kept turning it over in my hands, trying to absorb the unexpectedness of her gesture.

"Catherine Grace, have you talked to your mama?"

"A little bit. No, not really," I said. I told Lolly there was nothing much to talk about. I didn't believe there was any good reason for leaving your children and letting them think that you're dead. But what I didn't tell Lolly was that I was really afraid that the woman sitting at my kitchen table was going to tell me that she left because she just hadn't wanted to be a mama, that she wanted something else more than her girls.

"All I'm saying, Catherine, is that you of all people ought to understand what a powerful hold a dream can have on a person."

"d.a.m.n it, Lolly. Why does everybody keep telling me I should understand? I didn't float down some river leaving two little babies behind thinking I was dead."

"No. No, you didn't. But if you had been walking around in your mama's shoes, you might have wanted to float away, too," Lolly said as she moved next to me on the bed. She wrapped me in her arms and we sat there for a long time before she said another word.

"Catherine, your daddy always said that the Lord plants a small seed of goodness in each and every one of us. Sometimes that seed grows into a mighty tree, and sometimes it struggles to take hold at all. It's up to us to help the Lord nurture the good in ourselves and the people around us."

"Yeah, well, he said a lot of things that weren't true."

"Maybe. But you know there's some good in all of us," Lolly said, taking the vase into her hands. "You just got to be willing to look harder in some than others."

I fell back on Lolly's bed. Her room was so wonderfully still and quiet. I closed my eyes, trying to absorb the peacefulness through every part of my body. Then Lolly touched my hand. "Catherine Grace, I really don't know which is worse, having a mama who leaves you thinking that she loved you or having a mama who lets you know almost every day of your life that she wished you'd never been born. I just think you need to hear her out."

I pulled my body up and rested my head on Lolly's shoulder.

"Just hold on to the good," she said, still holding the vase in her hands. "Remember, Hank found the goodness buried way down deep in Ruthie Morgan." Lolly laughed, trying to lighten the mood.

"Yeah, I guess poor Hank had to water and fertilize that scrawny little vine every day to get it to take root."

"Yeah, but I think Ruthie may be heading into a hot, dry summer," Lolly said, smiling, waiting for me to beg her for more information. I tried to act like I didn't care, but Lolly knew better.

She slowly unfolded the details of her information like she was unwrapping a beautiful package, trying hard not to rip the paper as she went. Lolly said that before I had come home from Atlanta, Hank and Ruthie had been over to my house to pay their respects to Martha Ann. Hank had asked Lolly if I was home yet, and apparently Ruthie thought he had kept an awfully close eye on the front door.

I told Lolly that didn't mean anything. Hank was just being Hank.

"Maybe. But I walked out behind them. I just wanted to get a little fresh air, so I stood out in the driveway away from the crowd that had gathered on the porch. Anyway, they started arguing about something."

"About what?"

"I don't know for sure, but I think Ruthie was mad that Hank kept looking at that door, obviously waiting to see you. But I did hear this. Ruthie said something about Miss Raines's illegitimate baby, as she called it, and then she said something about it explaining the way you turned out."

"Huh? Like what? What'd she mean by that?"

"Who knows, who cares? That's not the point. Hank was so mad he walked her straight to her front door and left her there, not even waiting to see that she got inside," Lolly said triumphantly.

My heart suddenly felt a little lighter, and yet I hated to credit Hank Blankenship with that. "Well, I guess that's a tiny bright spot in an otherwise crummy day."

"Tiny bright spot! d.a.m.n it, girl, are you blind? Don't you get it, Catherine Grace? Hank still loves you."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Finding Salvation at the Dairy Queen Mrs. Dempsey was sitting on the sofa watching The Price Is Right when I walked back into the living room. A fresh cigarette was clenched between her lips, and she was maneuvering a lit match toward its tip. I said a quick good-bye, barely raising my head as I walked toward the door. I'd learned through the years not to expect any conversation from Mrs. Dempsey, especially when she was watching one of her programs. She never offered much more than a grunt and a wave of the hand, and even the effort of doing that seemed to annoy her most days.

Today wasn't any different. But as I opened the front door, I glanced back at her, and even though the room was filling with smoke, I could see that her eyes were saying something I had never noticed before. They were wounded and dull. She looked like an animal that's hurting but can't tell you where.

When I was little, I couldn't imagine Mrs. Dempsey not loving Lolly. I couldn't imagine any mama not loving her baby. Truth be told, it scared me, but not for Lolly. I figured if Mrs. Dempsey could hate her own daughter, then maybe it was possible that my own mama hated me. I mean, if she had loved me, really, truly loved me, then she would have been more careful in that creek and not gone and gotten herself killed. That's what I used to think, but now not even that crazy talk makes any sense anymore.

Turns out, Mrs. Dempsey does love Lolly. I mean, she sure doesn't love her right, but in some small or strange way, that woman sitting on that faded old sofa loves her daughter enough to save what little money she has to buy her something as beautiful as that crystal vase.

Daddy said you can see the devil in people's eyes, but maybe the devil is nothing more than the sadness they carry around inside of them, bottled up so tight that it comes out as pure ugliness, like it does with Mrs. Dempsey. And maybe my own mama was too filled with sadness to love Martha Ann and me right. Maybe she wanted to be up on some stage so badly that she couldn't figure out a way to make herself happy without it. And maybe that's the way it is sometimes, that there are some mamas so filled with sorrow that it's better that they leave the mothering to somebody else. I needed to see my mama's eyes.

"Three hundred and forty-five dollars," Mrs. Dempsey shouted, bringing my attention back to the Price Is Right and the new Maytag washing machine that the beautiful woman on the television was caressing with her hands.

Out of nowhere, a smile came over my face, and I stepped onto the front stoop and into the chill of that January day. The sky was growing darker. It felt like it might snow. I started walking toward home but stopped and watched a wave of dark, heavy clouds settle in over Taylor's Ridge. As I stood there, something down the road caught my eye, a light blinking on and then off, and then on, warming up an unusually bleak, wintry day. It was the red-and-white sign at the Dairy Queen. I felt like it was calling me, begging me to follow its light right to the counter where Eddie Franklin was waiting for Catherine Grace Cline to come and place her order.

"Hey there, stranger," Eddie said with that warm, expectant smile on his face that in my eighteen years on this earth had become wonderfully familiar. "Kind of thought I might be seeing you today. Sorry to hear about your daddy," he said as he shook his head to add a little more emphasis to what he was saying. "Reverend Cline sure was a great man, yes sir, a great man of G.o.d, and this town is really going to miss him something bad."

"Yeah, great man of G.o.d," I repeated, with a slow, flat voice, not even trying to disguise my sadness, "really great." Eddie Franklin obviously hadn't heard that the great man of G.o.d had been an even greater liar, bearing false witness all about town or at least in the bedroom of one special member of Cedar Grove's devoted congregation.

"So what can I get for you, Catherine Grace?"

"Oh, I don't know, Eddie. Maybe I'll have a Dilly Bar." I acted as though I had to give it a bit of thought, pretending that it didn't bother me that Eddie was still asking me the one question I was absolutely certain he knew the answer to.

"I guess now that you're living in Atlanta, you haven't had much need for a Dilly Bar, huh?" he asked.

I hadn't really thought about it till now but Eddie was right. I hadn't been to any Dairy Queen in months. I didn't even know where one was, and for some reason, I guess I felt like I'd be cheating on Eddie Franklin if I told him about my trip to the Varsity or my midnight run to McDonald's.

All those years growing up in Ringgold and hardly a Sat.u.r.day had gone by when I hadn't been standing right here right before Eddie Franklin, offering up part of my allowance just as faithfully as I had those two shiny quarters I tossed in the offering plate on Sunday mornings. I stood real still for a moment, letting the days since I left town pa.s.s before my eyes as if I were watching them on the giant movie screen at the Tivoli up in Chattanooga, hoping, I guess, to see how this story was going to end. All of a sudden I came to the part where I was standing in this very parking lot, next to a Greyhound bus, saying my last good-byes to my daddy. That seemed like a lifetime ago now, and my daddy seemed so far away.

I dabbed a few tears on my coat sleeve and looked down at the ground. "How ya been, Eddie?" I said real quickly, not nearly as interested in his answer as I was in changing the subject. Somehow it didn't seem proper to do my grieving standing at the counter at the Dairy Queen. And I surely wasn't in the mood for Eddie to try to make me feel better by saying something stupid like "the good Lord sure must have needed your daddy or heaven's shining even brighter now that your daddy's gone home." I'd heard all that talk when my mama pretended to die, and it didn't make me feel any better then either. Thankfully, Eddie just answered my question.

"Real good, to tell you the truth," he said kindly, pretending not to notice that my eyes were starting to puddle. "We haven't had much cold weather till now and that's been real good for business. You know some Dairy Queens just close up altogether in the winter, Catherine Grace, just lock the doors till the first sign of spring. I can't imagine that. Heck, I've sold more dip cones from Thanksgiving to Christmas than I ever have before. Seventy-three, to be exact."

Eddie could probably tell from my blank expression that I wasn't sure that that was intended to be an impressive number. "Oh come on, girl, that may not seem like much to you, not being in the ice cream business and all, but it makes me happy to know some people never lose their appet.i.te for a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone, no matter how cold it is outside," he said, again flashing that calm smile of his that made me think he was telling me more than he was saying.

"But enough about me. How's Atlanta? Guess it's a lot more exciting than Ringgold."

"Oh, I don't know about that. Seems there's plenty going on here."

Eddie lifted the lid to the deep freeze and then lowered his entire upper body into the frozen chest, searching for a freshly made box of Dilly Bars, the one ice cream treat Eddie Franklin created well before his customers ever ordered it. He said it took time and concentration to make a perfectly round ice cream confection that would satisfy his customers' high standards.

"Lord, you got that right." Eddie kept on talking, reporting all the goings-on in town, not even noticing if I was really interested or not.

"Mrs. Gulbenk had some more bout of pneumonia last month. We were all real worried it might be her last Christmas on this earth. Now stop me if Martha Ann has already told you this. But then that sweet old lady made some sort of potion out of a can of stewed tomatoes and a jar of horseradish and she was right back on her feet helping Miss Ida Belle serve New Year's Eve supper at the fellowship hall. She even had this idea to put real sparklers in the flower arrangements. They looked great until some kid took a match to one of them and nearly caught the entire table on fire. Ida Belle warned that she better not find out who put a big brown mark on her best white cloth. They'd be shucking corn all summer long!

"And Mrs. Huckstep, oh my, you wouldn't believe what that woman is up to now, Catherine Grace. She's planning the town's first debutant ball. Tell you the truth, I'm not really sure what that is but she said Emma Sue needed to be officially presented to society, and she could do that only at a debutant ball. And I'm not really sure what society she's talking about neither, but I am pretty certain she don't mean me. I think Emma Sue may end up being the town's first and only debutant unless Ruthie Morgan can convince Mrs. Huckstep that she's not too old for a formal presentation."

There was so much power and confidence in Eddie's voice that I could hear every syllable even with his head buried deep inside the freezer. He has always acted so sure of himself, never seeming regretful or bored with the life he had chosen. Sometimes I wondered if making those dip cones so perfect was harder than it looked.

"Oh, heck girl, I'm sure I'm just boring you." He reappeared, holding a Dilly Bar in his right hand, his fingertips turning red from the cold. He presented it to me with a da da da dum as if I'd won it at the clown toss at the state fair. I put my forty cents on the counter and turned to walk away when I heard Eddie calling me back.

"You know, Catherine Grace, I've seen you eat at least a thousand of those Dilly Bars right there on top of that picnic table. And I've watched you stare up at Taylor's Ridge for hours, straining so hard sometimes it looked like you were actually trying to move that dadgum mountain with some kind of superhuman powers, like Wonder Woman. But I, uh . . ." And Eddie, who had never been at a loss for words in his life, paused for a moment. He looked me straight in the eyes as if he were desperately trying to figure out the best way to finish what he had started. All of a sudden his eyes grew deep and bold, and it felt like he was the one with the superhuman powers.

"What is it, Eddie? My Dilly Bar's going to melt." Of course, we both knew that wasn't true since I was standing there with snowflakes in my hair. But I could feel my heart starting to beat a little faster just antic.i.p.ating what was about to come out of Eddie Franklin's mouth.

"Well, it's just that I find it kind of funny that you've been so busy looking at that mountain that you've never seen what was right here under your nose."

"Eddie," I said impatiently, my voice growing as chilly as the night air, "I don't care that Emma Sue is going to be a stupid debutant."

"No, I'm sure you don't care, Catherine Grace. That's my point. But I guess finding out the Sunday-school teacher is having your dead daddy's baby is something worth caring about. Not to mention your mama coming back to life and all. And it just seems that-"

"Eddie Franklin," I stopped him with the right amount of indignation in my voice to hide my hopeless resignation. I guess it was ridiculous to think that just this one time I could keep my business a secret, but apparently everybody in Ringgold, even Eddie, already knew that my daddy was a fake, nothing more than a cheating liar, a cheating, lying, adulterating man of G.o.d. But some things are just too big to hide, and Miss Raines's growing belly and my mama's sudden resurrection were two very big things.

"You better hush," I warned him, but he didn't seem the least bit scared. "And wipe that stupid grin off your face. There's nothing about this situation that's the least bit funny."

"Oh come on, Catherine Grace. What'd you expect? No one's a stranger here, and n.o.body's laughing, either. To tell the truth, and I'd put my hand on the Good Book to prove it to you, everybody's real worried about you, even Emma Sue."

"I don't need Emma Sue Huckstep to be the least bit worried about me. I'm just fine. Better than fine, I'm good. I'm real, real good," I said, raising my voice like a mama about to scold her child. My head started spinning again. I had too many thoughts coursing through my brain, and I needed to put them in some kind of basic order before my head spontaneously combusted. I read in one of those newspapers stacked by the checkout at the Dollar General Store that your body can actually explode with no warning at all. And figuring the way my day was going, I thought it was quite possible my head was about to blow like a stick of dynamite.

"Eddie Franklin," I shouted as I turned to walk away, "just for the record, you don't know a d.a.m.n thing about me. Oh, yeah, you may know that my daddy was a first-rate sinner and that my mama floated right out of my life 'cause she had something more pressing to do than taking care of me and Martha Ann. But you don't know one thing about me, Catherine Grace Cline, or what I need or what I should do or what I'm thinking about on top of that picnic table. All you know is that I like Dilly Bars. So just stick to your ice cream and maybe you'll sell a hundred of those d.a.m.ned things before the end of the month."

I sounded so mean and hateful. It was like I was throwing knives right out of my mouth and straight into Eddie's heart.

"Just 'cause I like serving ice cream, Miss Cline, don't make me stupid. Or are you too smart to figure that out, too?" Eddie said. The smile drained from his face.

"G.o.d Almighty, Eddie, I don't think you're stupid," I shot back, knowing good and well that up until this moment that's exactly what I had thought. I had never given Eddie Franklin the chance to be anything more than a country boy with a knack for soft serve.

"Right, sure, well, you've never been very good at hiding what you're thinking so just go sit your big-city b.u.t.t on top of that picnic table and eat your Dilly Bar, like every other time, not thinking about anything or anybody but yourself, especially not Hank or Gloria Jean or your dearly departed daddy, who, yeah, turns out was a sinner just like every one of us, or even your poor mama or any of the other people who'd do d.a.m.n near anything for you. Listen," and Eddie's voice was suddenly soft again, "I know your heart is hurting bad, but maybe this time, while you're sitting up there, you can takes your eyes off that mountain for a minute and take a good, hard look at yourself."

I wanted to scream at Eddie. I wanted to tell him that I hated him and I hated that mountain. But more than anything else, I wanted to tell him that right now I hated my mama and I hated my daddy. I hated the way they both left me here. But nothing came out of my mouth. All I saw was a redheaded boy who had never gotten much more from me than an off-handed thank-you. I held on tight to my Dilly Bar and climbed on top of the picnic table, turning my back to Eddie Franklin and the blinking Dairy Queen sign that now seemed like it was there only to taunt me.

My fingers were so cold and stiff that I put the white paper bag between my teeth and grabbed the stick with one hand and pulled the ice cream out, revealing the most beautiful Dilly Bar I had ever seen. The curlicue was perfectly shaped and positioned right in the middle of the bar. The chocolate was smooth and seamless, and the ice cream was just hard enough so I didn't have to wait for it to soften before my first bite. I ate the chocolate sh.e.l.l first and then let the ice cream melt on my tongue until it was so soft and creamy that it slid right down my throat.

Eddie was right about one thing. That was for sure. I had spent an awful lot of time on this table plotting and scheming my way out of here. But he didn't understand. He didn't understand that the day my mama died, I just wanted to go with her, and every day after that. Now she was back, Daddy was gone, and a baby was on the way. And somehow I felt more alone today than I ever had before.

Taylor's Ridge was hidden behind a wall of falling snow and gray, heavy clouds. I looked down at what was left of my Dilly Bar and wondered if Eddie Franklin looked up at that lonely mountain. Did he ever find himself sitting up here on this picnic table, eating his very own Dilly Bar with the snow swirling about his head? I guess I already knew the answer.

I figured Eddie Franklin must have been a lot like my own great-granddaddy, who walked over that ridge to come and do the Lord's work. William Floyd never doubted where he was meant to be, and I don't think Eddie has, either. And yet that's all I've ever done, doubt where I'm meant to be. My body began shivering and shaking, but I wasn't cold anymore. I felt warm, wet tears streaming down my face, stinging my cheeks as they fell. With the very last bite of my Dilly Bar melting in my mouth, I became more convinced that my life was about to change in a way that I had not come close to imagining. And I had a strange, call it prophetic, feeling that I was heading into a storm of biblical proportions.

I stepped down from the picnic table and, throwing my ice cream wrapper in the trash, I looked back at Eddie Franklin. He was washing down the soft-serve ice cream machine, smiling as he stood behind the counter, moving his wet rag across the stainless steel.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

The Prodigal Daughter Claims the Promised Land Mama was sitting on the front porch by the time I got home. The house was lit up like a Christmas tree and I could hear Gloria Jean and Miss Mabie laughing inside the kitchen. They were probably sitting around the table, sipping the day's last cup of coffee, reminiscing about boys they had loved back in Birmingham. But Mama, wrapped snugly in a crocheted blanket, was sitting alone, swaying back and forth in one of the old aluminum gliders that Daddy had bought years ago at the Dollar General Store.

"How's that chair feel?" I asked her.

"Great," she said, obviously relieved I had spoken first.

"That was Daddy's favorite place to sit," I told her, knowing good and well that the wooden rocker was the only chair on this porch he ever sat in. I just wasn't sure how to talk to her about my daddy.

"Catherine Grace," Mama said with an urgent tone that told me she had been waiting a long time to say what was on her mind. "I have dreamed about this moment since the day I left Ringgold. I've practiced what I wanted to say to you for, well, at least a million times. But now that I'm here looking at you, I'm just not sure how to say it all."

I needed her to try. After all this time, I needed her to try. So I just stood there, waiting a little bit longer.

"You know, when I was your age, you were already one year old. I was so young, Catherine, maybe too young, too young to be a good mother. There were all these places I dreamed of going, places far away from Willachoochee and Ringgold. And there were all these things I dreamed of doing, and your daddy, G.o.d rest his soul, wouldn't hear of any of it. He said I took a vow before G.o.d to be a wife and mother and there was no going back on my word. I couldn't have it both ways, he said. But as soon as I made that vow, I started praying, begging the good Lord not to hold a sixteen-year-old girl to a promise like that.

"You know my own mama, your grandmamma, didn't understand me wanting to be a singer. She never had much money or much patience for my foolish way of thinking, and she figured your daddy was making me respectable or something.

"And your daddy did promise me something better than I knew, it just wasn't what I wanted . . . or it wasn't what I thought I wanted. A lot of mistakes were made along the way."

"Did Daddy hurt you? Was he unkind to you?" I asked, not certain I was ready to hear the answer.

"No. No. Get that thought out of your head. We just wanted different things, and he couldn't accept me not wanting his life completely. You have to know this, Catherine Grace, I never told your daddy I was leaving. It just happened. I was standing in the river, watching the leaves float away on the surface of the water, and something deep inside told me to run."

Somehow that revelation felt like a little blessing amid all the confusion. Just knowing Daddy hadn't helped mama with her drowning felt like a gift.

"Sometimes, Catherine Grace, you spend your life looking for the one thing you had all along," she said softly, a single tear rolling down her cheek. "I am just so sorry, more than you will ever know." Her body was shaking underneath her blanket, and I walked in front of her and got down on my knees. I took her hands into mine and I looked her in the face so I could see square into her eyes.

"Did you love me? I mean when you left, did you truly love me?"

She quit shaking and I leaned in even closer. Mama didn't flinch. She sat quiet and still as I moved my face directly in front of hers. I stared deep into her eyes, and for a minute, I knew I was looking right into her soul. Those beautiful brown eyes, every detail of which I had memorized in my sleep, were full of sadness. My mama's heart was broken too. It had been broken for a long time. I could see it for myself.

"I love you, too," I said, holding my mama's hands tightly in mine.

As I held my mama's hands, all I could think about was my daddy. He used to love to tell me the story of the lost sheep. He told me so many times I knew it by heart. Sitting here with my mama, I could hear him telling me again.