Unto These Hills Read Free Page B

effort.
    Slowly, his head moved from side to side. “No, honey. She’s not coming.”
    Tears sprang to my eyes, of hurt, of anger. Of myriad, unnameable emotions. “Why?” I didn’t want to know.
    “Because,” his knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “She’s gone.”
    “Where did she go?” Hysteria shimmied my voice up to shrill.
    Francine huffed in disgust, tossed her thick tousled wheat mane back against the seat, and melted into its crease. Sheila didn’t move an eyelash. She sat frozen, her fingers dancing…dancing.
    Timmy’s big Cocker Spaniel eyes, focused on me, drew my notice — his dark lashes were as thick as any girl’s — and as I gazed into them, I saw a plea glimmering in the golden depths. Make it all right, Sunny, they whimpered.
    I gulped at the enormity of his need. Thought I’d drown in it.
    Daddy took a deep, ragged breath then slowly blew it out and, as he did so, his lean torso slumped and his forehead connected with the steering wheel. “Only way out was the back exit.”
    Hope seized me. “But maybe — maybe she was inside and you just didn’t see her. Maybe she was —”
    Beside me, Francine’s snort of dismay failed to dash my burst of optimism.
    But when Daddy’s dark mahogany head lifted, pity spilled from his eyes, snuffing hope as a fire hydrant’s flush would a candle-flicker. “Mr. Mason saw her duck out the back door, Sunny. She got into a car there.”
    “Why am I not surprised?” muttered Francine and viciously crossed long bronze legs protruding saucily from flaming shorts.
    Because, the thought flitted through my reeling brain, it takes one to know one and was instantly ashamed of the disdain I felt for my own flesh-and-blood sister.
    “What’s wrong?” Sheila’s green eyes gazed up at me with a trust that hit me like a sledgehammer. It scared the daylights out of me. Then, amazingly, calmed me. It made me able to smile at her, to pretend everything was okay. To toss Timmy a feeble wink of encouragement.
    And in some fuzzy corner of my psyche my role snapped into place. I would be the kids’ caretaker. On some level I knew.
    When Daddy cranked the Ford — an act that declared Mama gone — the mundaneness of the revving engine struck me as surreal.
    And I knew. Deep, deep inside, I knew. Don’t know how or why. But I knew.
    Mama was not coming back.
    ~~~~~
    Three things blasted a mill hill woman’s good name to smidgens; sexual immorality, neglecting one’s kids, and a filthy house, in that order. Though Nana’s vigilance spared Mama from the latter, her own folly cost her the entire substance of respectability.
    The horror of it all traumatized me in ways I’d never before experienced.
    Men began leering at me, a thing that sent me scurrying home to soak for hours in our old rust-stained bathtub, trying to wash away the shame Mama had foisted upon me.
    “Ruby Acklin’s name is worse than mud; it’s slime,” I murmured days later to a sympathetic Doretha as I swirled my straw in watery Coke at Abb’s Corner, where she, Daniel, and Emaline commiserated with me on the turn of events. From the jukebox, Jimmy Wakely empathized with One Has my Name (the Other Has my Heart ). “People don’t blame you for her mess, Sunny,” insisted Emaline, sweet optimistic Emaline, her green eyes sad as a Bassett’s.
    I snorted. “Not only has she done across-the-board adultery, this time she’s run off with the village doctor, who is,” I rolled my eyes, “ten years younger’n her. And to think, I used to think he looked like Tim Holt.” I shook my head in disbelief, scowled and blinked back tears. “Now he’s got horns and fangs that drip blood.” I gazed at my buddy through tears. “ Our blood.”
    I sighed heavily. “I’ll bet Doctor Worley don’t appreciate her tomfoolery forcing ‘im from retirement.”
    Across the café I spotted teenaged Buck Edmonds, paying for his order and as he turned to leave he blatantly caught my eye and winked.