Where Petals Fall (26 page)

When Katie opened the door, Junie flushed with embarrassment. She hadn’t taken her seriously, and she’d treated her badly. She fumbled with her keys until Katie reached for her. Junie fell into her arms. “I’m so sorry for being such a witch. I owe you so much.”

Katie swatted the air. “It’s okay,” she said, but Junie heard a hesitation in her voice.

“I’m sorry. I…Can we talk?”

They talked for what felt like hours but must have been only minutes. Junie explained, through tears that she could not control, what she’d recalled and how she’d repressed the memories. Katie listened, nodding at times, and finally, thankfully, she reached for Junie’s hand. Junie realized that Katie never put Brian throwing the rock together with Ellen’s disappearance, and she was relieved.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she said. “I believed you when you said you didn’t remember. I was angry, but that was just my nutty brain thinking this was all some kind of glorified sign. I mean, I know that we weren’t that close back then, but that pact.” She averted her eyes. “I thought it meant something more than it did.”

 “Why did you protect the pact for so long?” Junie asked, feeling like a cad. She should have been a better friend.

“I don’t know. I thought it was bigger than us, that I was keeping something treasured that would tie us together maybe.” She lifted her eyebrows. “It’s stupid. I should have said something. I wasn’t lucky like you, I
did
remember.” Her words were not spiteful, simply honest. “I knew that if we told the police that Brian had thrown a rock at Ellen they’d think he was behind her disappearance, or at least they’d investigate him.” She blushed. “I had a major crush on him. You know that, right?”

Katie had no idea to what degree she really had protected Brian. “My mom told me.”

“I just didn’t want him to get in trouble. Did you figure out what happened to Ellen after all?”

Junie wrapped her lie in the truth. “No, but at least there are no more secrets.”

Junie awoke from her catnap on the couch to find Sarah staring at her. Her heart sank. Her eyes dropped to Sarah’s crotch out of habit. Dry. Thank God.

“Hi, honey. Sorry. Mommy must have dozed off.”

Sarah handed her a drawing just as Ruth entered the room.

“Hey, sleepyhead. I think your emotional bucket ran dry and you crashed into sleep. It’s good for you. You needed it.”

“Sorry, Mom.” Junie sat up and dropped her eyes to the drawing. Three stick figures: one with long yellow hair, one with short brown hair, and a child, Sarah, with yellow curls drawn as swirly lines around her face. Off to each side was another person, a woman, drawn with a triangle skirt and dark hair, and a tall dark-haired man.
Mom, Peter
.

“This is beautiful,” she said.

“It’s our family,” Sarah said.

“Yes, yes it is,” Junie said.

The doorbell rang at exactly seven o’clock. Sarah ran down the stairs. “Daddy!”

Junie’s heart skipped a beat. She’d just hung up from speaking with Shane and getting the lowdown on the upcoming week’s schedule. Shane hadn’t complained about her part-time schedule, but she’d be glad when she could return to a daily routine. She missed having dough beneath her fingernails, and somehow, baking at her mother’s wasn’t the same. She even missed her indecisive customers.

She filled a glass with water, watching her hands shake. She smoothed the new blouse she’d bought and hoped her new jeans and heels didn’t look like she’d tried too hard.

“You gonna be okay?” Ruth smoothed a wayward lock of hair on Junie’s shoulder. 

Junie wrapped her hands around the glass to steady them. “Yeah, I think I am, actually.” She set the glass down and faced her mother. “He is lovable, Mom, and so was Daddy.”

The fifteen steps from the kitchen to the foyer took forever. Junie bit her lower lip, then released it. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, but she didn’t have to think about it for long. Brian met her in the hallway and reached for them.

“You look beautiful.” His eyes ran over her body, sending a shudder of desire through her.

She smiled, unable to find her voice.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Dinner and a movie?” he asked.

“Yes.” For the first time in a year, Junie didn’t fill with anger when she looked at Brian. Hope swelled in her heart. Brian and Peter were working with their attorneys and dealing with the police. Brian had put his life and his career on the line for his daughter.
Baby steps
, Junie thought.
Baby steps
.

The End

Please enjoy a preview of HAVE NO SHAME

Have No Shame

Where civil rights and forbidden love collide.

M
elissa
F
oster

"A gripping and poignant novel dealing with a subject once taboo in American society."

— Hagerstown Magazine

Chapter One

It was the end of winter 1967, my father was preparin’ the fields for plantin’, the Vietnam War was in full swing, and spring was peekin’ its pretty head around the corner. The cypress trees stood tall and bare, like sentinels watchin’ over the St. Francis River. The bugs arrived early, thick and hungry, circlin’ my head like it was a big juicy vein as I walked across the rocks toward the water.

My legs pled with me to jump from rock to rock, like I used to do with my older sister, Maggie, who’s now away at college. I hummed my new favorite song,
Penny Lane
, and continued walkin’ instead of jumpin’ because that’s what’s expected of me. I could just hear Daddy admonishin’ me, “You’re eighteen now, a grown up. Grown ups don’t jump across rocks.” Even if no one’s watchin’ me at the moment, I wouldn’t want to disappoint Daddy. If Maggie were here, she’d jump. She might even get me to jump. But alone? No way.

The river usually smelled of sulfur and fish, with an underlyin’ hint of desperation, but today it smelled like somethin’ else all together. The rancid smell hit me like an invisible billow of smog. I covered my mouth and turned away, walkin’ a little faster. I tried to get around the stench, thinkin’ it was a dead animal carcass hidin’ beneath the rocks. I couldn’t outrun the smell, and before I knew it I was crouched five feet above the river on an outcroppin’ of rocks, and my hummin’ was replaced by retchin’ and dry heavin’ as the stench infiltrated my throat. I peered over the edge and fear singed my nerves like thousands of needles pokin’ me all at once. Floatin’ beneath me was the bloated and badly beaten body of a colored man. A scream escaped my lips. I stumbled backward and fell to my knees. My entire body began to shake. I covered my mouth to keep from throwin’ up. I knew I should turn away, run, get help, but I could not go back the way I’d come. I was paralyzed with fear, and yet, I was strangely drawn to the bloated and ghastly figure. 

I stood back up, then stumbled in my gray midi-skirt and saddle shoes as I made my way over the rocks and toward the riverbank. The silt-laden river was still beneath the floatin’ body. A branch stretched across the river like a boney finger, snaggin’ the bruised and beaten body by the torn trousers that clung to its waist. His bare chest and arms were so bloated that it looked as if they might pop. Tremblin’ and gaspin’ for breath, I lowered myself to the ground, warm tears streamin’ down my cheeks.

While fear sucked my breath away, an underlyin’ curiosity poked its way through to my consciousness. I covered my eyes then, tellin’ myself to look away. The reality that I was seein’ a dead man settled into my bones like ice. Shivers rattled my body. Whose father, brother, uncle, or friend was this man? I opened my eyes again and looked at him. 
It’s a him
, I told myself. I didn’t want to see him as just an anonymous, dead colored man. He was someone, and he mattered. My heart pounded against my ribcage with an insistence—I needed to know who he was. I’d never seen a dead man before, and even though I could barely breathe, even though I could feel his image imprintin’ into my brain, I would not look away. I wanted to know who had beaten him, and why. I wanted to tell his family I was sorry for their loss.

An uncontrollable urgency brought me to my feet and drew me closer, on rubber legs, to where I could see what was left of his face. A gruesome mass of flesh protruded from his mouth. His tongue had bloated and completely filled the openin’, like a flesh-sock had been stuffed in the hole, stretchin’ his lips until they tore and the raw pulp poked out. Chunks of skin were torn or bitten away from his eyes.

I don’t know how long I stood there, my legs quakin’, unable to speak or turn back the way I had come. I don’t know how I got home that night, or what I said to anyone along the way. What I do know is that hearin’ of a colored man’s death was bad enough—I’d heard the rumors of whites beatin’ colored men to death before—but actually seein’ the man who had died, and witnessin’ the awful remains of the beatin’, now that terrified me to my core. A feelin’ of shame bubbled within me. For the first time ever, I was embarrassed to be white, because in Forrest Town, Arkansas, you could be fairly certain it was my people who were the cause of his death. And as a young southern woman, I knew that the expectation was for me to get married, have children, and perpetuate the hate that had been bred in our lives. My children, they’d be born into the same hateful society. That realization brought me to my knees.