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“How’s your mama?” Mother asked.
“I don’t suppose she’s ever been what she was before. We...she kept me, but she never wanted me.” Not like Mother and this community had received Ruby, embracing her and loving her regardless of how she’d been conceived. “She thinks I’m my father’s daughter.”
Wasn’t she?
Mother took Violet’s plate and wrapped her arms around her in a hug she felt clear to her bones. Had any woman ever hugged her?
“Now, you listen to me. No woman belongs in a man’s hands without it being her own choice. I’m sorry about your mama. But that’s no excuse not to love you. To raise you right and teach you to be a woman who holds her own dignity and strength. That man was not your father. He has no power over you. You stop talkin’ like he does. He sired you only. God has made you strong and capable. You aren’t weak, child.”
Violet’s eyes burned. Why hadn’t Reeva seen her this way? Why couldn’t Violet have been Loretta’s daughter? She might have had a different life, one with family who loved her.
“We might start out havin’ to survive, Agent. But we can turn survivin’ into thrivin’. I’ve had to do it on more than one occasion, and I’ve taught my own daughter and any daughters of the heart the same thing.” She reared back and cupped Violet’s face. “Ya hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mother patted her cheeks. “Now, go get some banana puddin’ ’fore it’s gone.”
Violet headed for the food tables. She tossed her plate in a tall metal trash can and bypassed the desserts then wandered back toward the church. John and Tiberius were playing horseshoes with some of the men, including Dr. Crocker. Dr. D.J. Lanslow bowed his fiddle with the rest of the band. Seemed to her he’d been up here more than just a time or two like he’d said when they first met. She tucked that nugget away.
Inside the church, she crept toward the altar. She didn’t have the same unsettled feeling here as she did at the B and B or anywhere in the holler, but she was unsettled all the same. She fished her cell phone from her pocket and found Reeva’s name and pressed it.
The phone rang six times until she finally answered.
Violet put it on speaker and laid her head on an altar stair. “Hello, Reeva. How’s Grandmother?”
An irritated breath filtered through the line. “She’s gone to the rehab facility, but she’s tough. Are you in Kentucky?”
“I am. I need to ask you a question. I met someone here who I think you might know.” Would she open up? Talk?
“I have no kin in Kentucky, Violet.”
“What about Loretta?” She held her breath and hoped.
One beat. Two.
“I don’t know a Loretta.”
Violet inwardly sighed. “She has the same mark as you. She’s from Night Hollow. That ring a bell?”
“No. We didn’t exactly share addresses and numbers. It wasn’t summer camp.” Her words were clipped and bitter.
“No. I know that. But she has the mark, and she was taken by the same man in Memphis. The man you call Adam. My father.”
“Violet, you don’t need to be anywhere within miles of him. He’s evil. And you keep wanting him, gravitating to him. Maybe that’s why he wanted to fill and populate the earth with his precious offspring.”
“Is that what he said? What he was trying to accomplish?”
“I don’t know or care. I don’t want to talk about him.” Her tone was resolute. Violet would get nothing more.
“Okay. Reeva, why didn’t you give me up for adoption?” She’d never asked that before. Too afraid of the answer, but now she needed to know. It mattered. “If you couldn’t love me, someone else might have been able to.” Mother, Wanda and Loretta had loved Ruby.
A slow, shallow breath released. “Because it was my job to keep an eye on you. Because no one else would have known what you are. Who you are. Because they wouldn’t have known your father. A liar. The devil himself. I kept you in check. I made sure you didn’t do more damage than you could have. That’s why. You are your father’s daughter. I saw it when he held you for the first time.”
Violet squeezed her eyes shut. “I see.” Her stomach quivered, and she balled her hand to control the trembling. She’d hoped that there might be a hint of love, even a sliver. But she’d been kept to be monitored and held back from unleashing evil.
“Is that all?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s all.” She ended the call. She wasn’t going back. To keep hoping.
