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Mother glanced up and handed Violet a plate. “I had a feeling you’d make your way over.”
Violet declined the plate. “I’m not hungry.”
“And it’s not polite to turn away food when being offered. Never been taught that?” Mother handed her a plate full of fried chicken, potato salad, some kind of macaroni concoction and a yeast roll that hit Violet’s senses and changed her mind about being hungry. Fried food wasn’t her jam, but she acquiesced to Mother’s wishes.
“Can we go somewhere and talk?” Violet said and accepted a foam cup of sweet tea, or what would more appropriately be called sugar in a cup with some ice and a little tea.
“Of course.” Mother led the way through the commotion of games, chatter and kids running amuck in the isolated cemetery on the hill, flanked by trees and wild growing bushes. Mother opened the iron gate, and they entered the sacred ground where family and friends had been buried years before. Violet would guess fewer than a hundred headstones dotted the hilly ground.
Mother sat on a stone bench and patted a seat for Violet. She sat beside her and pulled the fried skin off the chicken and picked off a piece of the breast.
“You’re leaving the best part.”
“I hear that from time to time.” She split the yeast roll and sandwiched the hunk of chicken inside, making a chicken slider of sorts. “Have you talked to your granddaughter in the past couple days?”
“I have. But Wanda, not Loretta, told me about the scuffle at the diner.”
“I saw Ruby last night. I know why you and Wanda looked at me like you did when I came to your house. Why I remind Detective Owsley of someone and why Sheriff Modine seemed taken by me. It’s pretty obvious.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Loretta wouldn’t talk to me, but I’m hoping you will. What happened to her? How much do you know?” She almost prayed to God that this woman would help her. Could help her. But she was afraid she’d be talking to no one. Or worse, He wouldn’t care to listen. To hear her at all. And Grandmother would be right. He wanted nothing to do with her.
Mother’s ample chest rose and fell as she expelled a long, shaky breath. “It’s not my story to share, child. But I can tell you that Loretta was a stubborn child. She didn’t want to fall into line or do as she was told. Thought she knew better, was wiser than us adults who’ve lived life. Seen things. Typical teenage things, I suppose.”
Violet was well acquainted with rebellion.
“She ran off at thirteen. Scared us out of our minds, and I prayed the Good Lord would bring her to her senses and back home. She was gone for about four years. When she returned, we discovered she was pregnant with Ruby.”
“Did she say anything about the man? My own mom called him Adam. Did she speak of Adam?”
Mother shook her head. “No. Loretta said very little. She’d been traumatized, held captive and impregnated. She admitted running away had been a grave mistake, as I told her it would be every time she threatened it. She saw it my way then. Sometimes one has to experience it the hard way to truly grasp reality. We decided to let the past stay there, and we never spoke of it again.”
Mother was in her mideighties and from a different era when talking about feelings and therapy would seem unnecessary.
“But we raised Ruby and loved her as our own. Taught her in the ways of our family, and the holler accepted her as its own. She only knows the basics of her birth. But she doesn’t ask questions. There’s no point. It’s over.” She laid a hand on Violet’s forearm. “It’s over for you too. Put it to rest, Agent. I know you have a law and order mindset. But justice has been served in God’s way.”
Violet wasn’t sure about that.
“I don’t know. He might still be out there, abducting and getting women pregnant. And for what? Why? And what of Ruby? Does she take after her mama...or...?”
“We gave her our values. Our way of thinkin’. Our teachin’. She’s one of us. A strong woman. And I suspect you’re a strong woman too.”
Maybe the sociopath gene skipped Ruby. “How old is she?”
“Thirty-four this spring.”
Making Violet barely a year older than her. “Where did Loretta run away to?”
“Memphis.”
The common location. Meaning Adam had lived in the Memphis area at the very least. “Where in Memphis?”
“I don’t know. She wasn’t in the city long before he took her. I don’t know from where. I’m sorry. But again, you can’t let this gnaw at your bones. Leave Loretta alone, honey. She’s made peace, and you pokin’ around is only gonna hurt her and bring up things she’s tried to let go.”
That may be true, but if Loretta knew where she’d been taken from, Violet could get Owen to cross-reference that location with where Reeva had been abducted. He might be able to find a geolocation pattern, and she might be able to pinpoint where Adam had lived or still lived.
No point raining on Mother’s parade. “I understand. Thank you for the food.”
