It seemed unlikely, but I wondered if he’d planned on me driving him home. Done it just to get me in a place where I had to hear him out. Daddy’s voice trembled when he spoke.

“There ain’t a day goes by I don’t think about me leaving you and Ben alone. I forgot all about those beans on the stove. I’d have never went to the store if I hadn’t.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” I said.

“Your Momma forgave me. Your brother, the one with the most right to be hard-hearted, he forgave me. But you ain’t and maybe God ain’t either. You know what it says in Matthew, Maggie. You ain’t forgot all your Bible yet, have you? ‘But whosoever shall hurt one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.’ ”

I turned onto Damascus Church Road, but the house was still a mile away. I pressed the radio’s ON-OFF button, but I’d forgotten how few stations reached this deep into the mountains. Allen had the radio on the AM band. All I got was static.

“Do you know how many times that verse jabbed barb-deep in my heart? I know what I done,” Daddy said, his voice trembling, “and not just to Ben but to you.”

How damn convenient this is, I thought. You wait till you’re dying and make this dramatic confession and everything’s set straight, everything’s forgiven, a perfect Hollywood ending.

“I blame myself and always have,” Daddy said.

Don’t let him pull you into this, I’d been telling myself the last few minutes, but the self-pity in his voice made me speak.

“Then why did you treat Ben like it was his fault?” I said. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that I shouldn’t blame myself, that it was your fault, not mine? It mattered then.”

I crossed over Licklog Creek and then up the last rise. I drove up to the house and put the car in park but did not turn off the engine.

“Why can’t it matter now?” Daddy asked.

Because I don’t want to let you off that easy, I thought. Because you’re the only one left to blame.

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

Daddy got out of the car and closed the door. I watched him slowly climb the steps, his hand gripping the rail. Please don’t look back at me, I thought, and he didn’t.