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“How is your mom?”
“Broken.” She shared her childhood with Loretta. Her mom’s words to her. Why she kept her. “She said I’m exactly like him. Cunning and clever and diabolical. I suppose that’s true. I can be.”
“Is that all she ever said?”
“’Fraid so.”
“Can I tell you one more story about Reeva? The Reeva I knew was a smart aleck and defiant. She was always tryin’ to escape and hatch new and better plans to do it. Each time, they almost worked. She endured pain the rest didn’t. She fought back, tried to convince the rest of us there was hope. Tried to help me see that what was happenin’ to me was wrong. But she had no idea that in my mind, it wasn’t that bad. I wasn’t on the streets. I was eatin’ and not beggin’ for food. I was...with only one man.”
“I’m sorry,” Violet murmured then tried to imagine Reeva full of spirit to fight back. The woman she knew wasn’t much of a fighter unless she was punching at Violet through her words.
“When you were born, it was like you were wailin’ to be set free. And your mom couldn’t console you because she was afraid for once. Babies do better in capable arms. When Adam held you, there was no fear in him, no weakness, and you quieted. I was there for that.”
“You helped birth me?”
“I did. Your mother loved you. At first, she didn’t respond well, but then I saw that maternal love and her anxiety at not being able to help you, fear for what Adam would do—or not do, like lettin’ her leave with you.”
“But I quieted in his arms and not hers, and she didn’t see a baby that belonged to her, but one who belonged to him, therefore I must be like him.”
Loretta sighed. “I think so. Adam named you, and she clearly let the name stand.”
To remind her that Violet was her father’s daughter, not content anywhere else but with him.
“When I gave birth, I chose Ruby. Violet was a royal name to me. Red was too. Strong. It was the only way I knew to bond two sisters. The only girls Adam ever conceived.”
How could she know that? “If he let girls go after the babies were healthy, how did you get to leave when you didn’t even know you were pregnant? Did he think you wouldn’t and release you?”
Loretta’s lip quivered, and a tear slipped down her cheek. “No. Your mom...she came back for me. After he let her go, it was a couple of weeks, I suppose. Adam had gone to work—Reeva knew the routine. Clever girl. She’d been able to see underneath the blindfold. That’s what he did when he took us—blindfolded us so we didn’t know where we were. Then when we produced and the baby was healthy, he blindfolded us again and took us back to the place we left with him.”
But Reeva had seen. Calculated the route and returned. That was brave and bold. Clever and cunning even, but why hadn’t she called the police?
What happened to that courageous girl?
She’d remained broken and unhealed.
“You know what she said?”
Violet shook her head.
“She said, ‘Eve, you can’t see what’s going on, but I can, and I’m gonna see for you. You ain’t got to go home, but you got to get out of the baby basement.’ At that time, I was the only girl left—for the moment. She didn’t bring me to her home but to a pay phone near the bus station. I called my mom. She came and got me. When I got back, Mother told me, ‘That’s what happens when you leave the holler. You don’t get to live your own life, make your own choices.’ God saw fit to bring me back, and I would submit, but then I found out I was pregnant and that delayed it—for a while.”
Violet shivered under her coat. Her mind whirred and buzzed. “Mother said Adam is here.”
“He is. He and I...we had a relationship—”
“No, you had Stockholm syndrome.”
“Maybe. Probably. He came for me days later. I’d told him everything about my life, where I was from, but it never crossed my mind he’d show up.”
She was his Eve, and he didn’t think she’d produced. Little did he know.
“He underestimated who Mother was and the people she controlled.” Loretta walked to the back corner of the cemetery to a boulder. She pointed to it. “He came, but he never left. He’s been buried here for decades, Violet. Never to hurt another soul.” She turned and looked at Violet. “He never got the chance.”
Guess now it didn’t matter why Reeva hadn’t told the police. It wasn’t even worth asking.
But now she had no answers to the questions she had always wanted. No way to look Adam in the eye to see if it was true. Was she her father’s daughter?
“Reeva didn’t have to come back for me, didn’t have to save me. But she did. You didn’t have to save Ruby either. You could have left her down there. I think you’re your mother’s daughter more than your father’s.” She cocked her head. “Or maybe you don’t have to be either. Maybe you can just be who you want to be.”
