Because thy promise I believe,

O Lamb of G.o.d, I come! I come!

I could hear Brother Fulmer's deep baritone voice roll through the room, and even Mrs. Gulbenk's wavering soprano sounded pretty today. In fact, the entire congregation sounded different, sweeter, purer. And slowly one voice among all the others became stronger and clearer, one beautiful voice that belonged to my mama.

All these years, I couldn't remember what Mama's singing voice sounded like. Lord knows I tried to remember, but the voice I kept hearing in my head all these years was just one I had heard on the radio. Turns out, my mama sounded like an angel, a heavenly angel. Mrs. Gilbert started playing real softly so her voice could be heard above the others. And one by one, every voice at Cedar Grove grew silent, leaving my mama alone to serenade my daddy as he made his way through the Pearly Gates.

The sound filling the church that day surrounded me completely. I felt warm and comforted. I felt loved, the kind of love that comes only from your own flesh and blood-and those who love you as their own. I had spent a lifetime trying to get away from this place. Funny thing, you can run away from your family, and you can run away from dreams, but, like Daddy kept trying to tell me, there's just no running away from your destiny. I knew where I needed to be.

For a while after Daddy's funeral, everybody in Ring-gold was real nice to one another. Ruthie Morgan's mama and some of the other ladies at church even hosted a baby shower for Miss Raines. Ida Belle spent two whole days making little cookies in the shape of baby bottles. Ruthie Morgan, who I started calling by her first name only, crocheted a white blanket for the baby, using a design Mrs. Gulbenk found in an old Simplicity pattern book. Brother Hawkins built a rocking cradle for the baby, and his wife painted Noah standing in his ark across the headboard. They laughed that it wasn't as good as a felt board, but they figured a Sunday-school teacher wouldn't want to waste any time in teaching her little one the Bible.

Mrs. Huckstep stopped by regularly for a month or so to bring a macaroni ca.s.serole or a vase of fresh flowers, just to brighten our day, she said. And oddly, it did. But it seems that people can only act right for a little while before their old ways get a hold of them. Probably for the best anyway. I imagine Mrs. Huckstep might have combusted herself if she hadn't finally opened her mouth and let all that gossip she had been bottling up since the day Daddy died drain out. She tried her very best to convince every churchgoing lady in town, which would be everyone but Gloria Jean and Mrs. Dempsey, that their dear departed preacher was seduced by the beautiful Sunday-school teacher nearly half his age. Women from Alabama are like that, she'd say.

Miss Raines said she had expected that kind of talk, and I think sometimes, late at night, she wondered if it was true. I kept telling her that Daddy loved her and she needed to hold her head high. Besides, I told her, no one pays Mrs. Huckstep half a mind anyway, especially now that she is consumed with planning Emma Sue's debutant party. Heck, when I was little, I figured everybody believed every word that came out of that woman's mouth. Now I know that there are very few people in this town who really pay much attention to anything Mrs. Huckstep has to say; even her precious little Emma Sue seems to ignore her most days.

Flora and Miss Mabie stayed for another three weeks or so. And even though they may not be living under the same roof with us on a daily basis, Flora and Miss Mabie are part of our lives for good now. They drive up from Atlanta every month for a visit. Miss Mabie always stays with Gloria Jean, and Flora sleeps with me, just in case there's a thunderstorm. As soon as Flora walks through the door, she heads straight to the kitchen to warm up the stove, then spends the day cooking biscuits and pineapple upside-down cake.

Miss Mabie and Gloria Jean have become real good friends. Truth be told, I think Miss Mabie is the first true friend Gloria Jean has had in a long time, since Lena Mae floated away. The two of them sit around the kitchen table and talk about old times for hours on end. I saw them drink an entire bottle of Boone's Farm wine one night when they got to talking again about old boyfriends down in Birmingham, a very favorite subject of theirs. Gloria Jean even invited Meeler up from Dalton just so he could meet her dear friend Miss Mabie.

Miss Raines settled into the Cline house rather nicely. She and the baby have Daddy's room, although it hardly looks the same with her pine furniture and pink chintz curtains hanging on the window. Flora loves tending to Miss Raines as if she were her own daughter. Heck, she doted on that woman every minute when she was expecting, rubbing her back and feeding her tummy. When that little baby finally came after one very long night in June, Flora was there to catch her. Miss Raines took one look at her baby's sweet round face and named her Flora Grace Cline. Flora took that little girl in her arms and cried like a baby. She said she never dreamed she'd know the day when a white mama would name her baby after a black woman like herself.

Even now when Flora comes to Ringgold, she makes Miss Raines eat and rest, and while Miss Raines does what she is told, Flora rocks the baby in her big, strong arms, comforting and soothing her just the way she did me the day my daddy died. Flora and Miss Raines are the two best mamas little Flora Grace could ever hope to have.

Martha Ann didn't go back to school till the first of February. She said she wanted to spend some time getting to know her mama, and who could argue with that? She and Mama took long walks and spent hours looking at the same old baby pictures of the two of us. Sometimes we'd play a game of Monopoly or stand in the kitchen and cook. But the rhythm of our bodies being together never beat quite right, and most of the time, Martha Ann kept to herself, reading her books. Mr. Boyce stopped by faithfully every week to give my sister a new book or two, mostly ones written by famous women like Jane Austen and Sylvia Plath. Mr. Boyce said their lives were filled with angst and he thought Martha Ann might find it helpful to read what they had to say.

When she started back at school, I got in the habit of walking her there myself, not that she needed an escort or anything. But it is the one time of the day when we are completely alone. We talk about Mrs. Gulbenk and football and Daddy and anything else that comes to mind, but mostly we talk about Martha Ann's dreams. She says she wants to live in a world of words. She just hopes it's not that far from home.

Mr. Boyce thinks Martha Ann needs to start thinking about college. He wants her to talk to a friend of his at Vanderbilt. He thinks she could get a scholarship.

Mama left, again. She didn't drown, not this time. She just got on a bus and headed back to Willacoochee. She tried to stay and make a life with us, but too much time had pa.s.sed. The more Martha Ann and I talked about our memories, the more she realized what she had missed. Our childhoods were gone, and she could never have them back. I doubt Mama is ever going to forgive herself. That happens sometimes, Flora said. "The good Lord is full of grace but sometimes a person will just whip himself senseless before taking the forgiveness that He offers up for free."

Daddy always said he was working overtime to save G.o.d's children from a life of eternal d.a.m.nation. But now I'm thinking Daddy may have been wasting his time because it sure seems like some of us spend most of our days walking through h.e.l.l right here on earth.

I keep Lena Mae's special box in my room. It blends in with all the other treasures that have found their place back on the top of my dresser. Our mother still sends us a card on our birthdays, and sometimes she even calls us on the telephone. But our mama drifted away a long time ago.

After she left, I spent more time with my friend Lolly. I finally told her that she deserved more than a crystal vase, and then I gave her my three blue vinyl suitcases. I told her I didn't need them anymore, but I thought maybe she did. It took her five whole weeks to pack those bags. Slowly and deliberately she chose each and every piece of her life that she wanted to take with her. I've heard that her mama hasn't been doing well since Lolly left town, but I don't know if she really misses her or just misses beating up on her.

As for Catherine Grace, well, I decided it was time I planted me a garden.

After Daddy's funeral, something drew me back to the land my granddaddy loved so much, right behind Cedar Grove church. I still say a little prayer before stepping into the dirt, just like I did that very first time so many years ago. I planted one tomato vine in Daddy's honor and one purple tomato in Granddaddy's honor. That's right, Catherine Grace Cline is growing her very own tomatoes.

I also planted some corn along the garden's western edge. I water and fertilize that corn so it's certain to grow thick and tall, the perfect spot where I can go and think about each and every pa.s.sing day. It's not a hiding spot or a place to run away from fears and painful memories. I let those go the day we put my daddy in the ground.

I don't even need to sit on top of that picnic table anymore. Oh, I still stop by the Dairy Queen every now and then and eat a Dilly Bar, but mostly I just talk with Eddie Franklin. We have a patient ear for each other. We talk about profound things, like the meaning of life and how to form the perfect curlicue on a chocolate-dip cone. He let me try making my own one day, but the ice cream fell out of the cone and into the pot of melted chocolate. We had to empty the entire pot. Eddie hasn't let me try that again.

But most of my garden is planted with strawberries, beautiful, red, juicy strawberries. Brother Fulmer let me borrow a little land from him where I've planted another couple hundred plants, maybe more. I harvest strawberries all summer long, freezing thousands of them by the time the first frost forces me to stop. By the end of the day my hands are blood red, permanently stained with the juice of my berries. Gloria Jean says my hands may remain a bright shade of pink till the day I die. That would be fine by me.

Come September, I spend most of my days in the church kitchen, where I've found the s.p.a.ce I need to work making some sixty jars of Preacher's Strawberry Jam every single day. Gloria Jean taught me how to make jam, but my time at Davison's department store taught me how to make it special. And now my jam is shipped to gourmet food stores throughout the South, including the specialty food department at Davison's department store. Mr. Wallis said he was proud to carry my jam in his store. He said he knew I was going to make something of myself someday. He even invited me down to Atlanta to greet the customers and personally sign my jars of jam.

Ida Belle helps me out when she's not busy cooking church dinners. And Miss Raines and Gloria Jean keep track of the orders and the payments. Next year we're planning on buying another stove so I can increase my annual production by some fifteen hundred jars. Who would have thought that big-city folk would consider my jam to be a gourmet food product?

Hank comes by to see me every morning and every evening. He loves to watch me working in the garden. He says he can't get enough of looking at the big-city girl down on her knees with her hands buried in the red, rich Georgia dirt. Of course, Hank doesn't have far to walk. He's been preaching at Cedar Grove for the past ten months. The search committee was looking for a new preacher and asked Hank, since he had been Young Life leader and all, if he would consider preaching a couple of Sundays.

Brother Fulmer said the first time he heard Hank behind the pulpit, he thought he was listening to his dear friend, the great Reverend Cline. Before long, Hank knew he was meant to be a preacher, not a dairy farmer. The committee called off their search.

Everyone at Cedar Grove would love to see the two of us get married. Of course, only time will tell, but seeing Reverend Cline's daughter as the preacher's wife, well, they seem to think it'd be like carrying on the family name or something. Hank's mama keeps reminding me it was always her dream that the two of us would find our way back to each other. She says we're almost there.

Maybe. But dreams are a funny thing. Not so long ago, I was consumed with my dream, so consumed that I saw any other possibility as a disappointment. I was convinced that the Lord didn't giveth much of anything. I was convinced that He just spent all His time taking away, especially from Catherine Grace Cline.

Daddy said that Jesus talked in parables because people have a tendency to hear but not listen. They look but don't see. I guess I was no different than anybody else. I looked and looked for that dad-gum golden egg, and I finally saw it, just like Daddy said I would. Funny thing is, I didn't want it anymore.

About the Author.

SUSAN GREGG GILMORE has written for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Los Angeles Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband and three daughters. This is her first novel.

Acknowledgments.

Neither Catherine Grace nor I would have found our places in the world without the following people: Shaye Areheart, my editor, whose wisdom and kindness and pa.s.sion for things Southern has made her as much trusted advisor as friend.

Barbara Braun, my agent, who pulled me from the slush pile and gave me this opportunity to tell a story. I am forever grateful for her faith in me and her constant guidance and sage advice.

Bonnie MacDonald, reader, mentor, counselor, friend, who has read so many words I have written, generously providing countless hours of instruction from the grammatical to the spiritual.

Lee Smith, who not only taught me to diagram a sentence in the seventh grade but has continued to teach and inspire.

My big sisters: Mary Hall Gregg, Alice Gregg Haase, and Vicky Gregg; and all my Bradford-Street girlfriends: Suzanne Holder, Lisa Morse, Athena Wood, Tricia Partridge, Jane Herzog, Susan Regas, Cindy Norman, Mich.e.l.le Doney, Sally Storch, Carey McAniff, and Mich.e.l.le Whang whose early readings and enthusiastic encouragement were as rea.s.suring and comforting as the discovery of the perfect tomato.

Fred Gregg, the big brother Catherine Grace never had.

Mark Wax and Mark Herzog, the movie men who thought it best I write a book.

Anne Berry, always patient with even the simplest of questions.

Claudia, who snapped her mother's picture.

My husband, Dan, and daughters Claudia, Josephine, and Alice, who took care of themselves and gave me hugs when the gang in Ringgold demanded all of my attention.

And, of course, my mother, Mary, and father, Fred, who made me go to church every Sunday.

And my grandfather, Pop, who took me to get a Dilly Bar.

end.