“Have you talked to Andrew today?” I asked.

“No, but the last I heared, he’s sober now. Seen a lot of April and the girls, though,” he added dryly. “They and Maidie’s got enough to feed the five thousand. Eating table’s full of cakes and pies.”

The old rosebushes that grew around the graves of both his wives were already starting to drop their leaves, and that reminded me. I looked at Daddy, stricken. “I forgot to order flowers!”

“Don’t you worry, shug,” he said, patting my hand. “You know April won’t gonna forget something like that. And I told Duck to make sure Tallahassee has what she wants for the coffin. They’s gonna be plenty of flowers.”

The grave had been dug next to the little stone carved in the shape of a kneeling lamb that marked the grave of Daddy and Annie Ruth’s first baby boy, a stillbirth. It was as if the gods had required a sacrifice for all the strong, healthy boys to come.

And now another boy was joining him that none of us had ever met, either.

With my arm still linked in Daddy’s, we walked over to Mother’s grave and I put my hand on her stone: SUSAN STEPHENSON KNOTT. It’s not that I think dead spirits inhabit the graves of their bodies, but this was as close as I could physically get to both my parents.

I took a deep breath. “Dwight’s asked me to marry him,” I said, speaking as much to my mother as to my father.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, I found myself too choked up to continue.

At last, Daddy asked quietly, “How did you answer him, Daughter?”

“I told him yes.”

He pulled his arm free of mine, stepped back, and tilted my chin up till the moonlight fell full on my face. His own face was stern and, in this light, looked as if it, too, were carved from marble.

“Except for when you decided to run for judge, I ain’t never said a word to you about the way you lived your life, the things you done, the men you been with. Have I?”

“No, sir.”

“I figured you won’t hurting nobody but yourself and what you done was your own business. But if you marry Dwight and mess up—well, now, that’s gonna hurt a lot of people.”

“Daddy—”

He held up his hand. “Hear me out, Deb’rah. I’m right partial to Dwight. He’s a good man and he deserves a good wife. You gonna forsake all others and cleave only to him so long as you both shall live?”

“Yes, sir.” Tears streamed down my face and my hand still lay on Mother’s stone as if it were on a Bible.

“All right, then.” He opened his arms to me and held me against his chest till I quit crying.

CHAPTER 17

TUESDAY MORNING

Tuesday continued fair and sunny, but weather forecasters were predicting a change by the weekend. Normally, I like autumn rains that help the trees unleaf and let winter wheat sprout so that newly disked fields turned bright green. Now I was hoping they’d hold off till after the harvest festival ended Saturday night so that Tally and Arnold wouldn’t have a financial loss to pull them down further after the loss of their son.