Selma turned to Sarah again. “Ask Uncle Felix. He will tell you so. He drew up all the papers she signed. Pauline is free; Lovey and Ezra are free. And so is Floyd free. They may all go, if they choose. Or stay, if they love us.”

Sarah went out and downstairs, where she found Felix and Leon. She related briefly her conversation with Selma, and Felix said, “Yes, it’s true. I was not going to bring it up until after the funeral. She signed papers for Lovey and Ezra and their children, Floyd and Pauline.”

Sarah looked at Leon. “Will they leave us?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, but he looked troubled.

Felix shrugged and laughed. “Where would they go?”

“Why, anywhere,” Sarah said, and went off then to find Lovey.

When Sarah had put the matter to her, Lovey grunted.

“Are you glad? What will it mean, Lovey?”

“I been my own all my life,” Lovey declared firmly. Her bosom rose and fell irregularly as she strove to hold onto her emotions. Then she let go. “How come she try to make me less than I am by giving me back to myself?” She shook her head angrily. “I will never forgive her. Everything else she did, I tried to forgive. That I will not. I knew her thirty-five years and never knew her at all. Nor she me. That is a loss. That is all loss.”

“Will you and Ezra stay?”

“Beulah Land is our home,” Lovey said, her voice sounding cold to Sarah for the first time.

“Will Floyd and Pauline stay?” Sarah persisted.

Lovey studied a while over that, not because she didn’t think she knew, but because she had to be careful how she put the answer. She said at last, “They got ties, you see. I wish to God—ah, well.”

8

Perhaps the only true mourner at Deborah’s funeral was Rooster Davis, who sat for the service in a pew with his wife Trudy, their children Adam and James and Annabel and Doreen, his mother Edna, and his brother Bonard. In the front pew, of course, Leon and Sarah sat with Nell and Felix and Penelope.