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“What do you mean, gone? Gone where?”

“To the lap of the Lord,” she replied.

Uncle Buster thanked whomever he was speaking to and hung up the phone. With a long face, a face weighed down by gloom, he turned and looked at me. He shook his head, his huge eyes staring woefully back at me.

“What is she saying?” I asked him.

“Horace ran off the road sometime this afternoon. Luckily, some man sticking catfish in a stream came upon the car. It had gone down an embankment, through some woods before smashing into a tree and turning over and landing top down in the water.”

“He always wears his seatbelt,” I said, shaking my head.

“That didn’t matter this time. Matter of fact, it may be why he didn’t get out.”

“Didn’t get out? You mean Daddy drowned?”

“It’s ugly,” he replied.

What little food had remained in my stomach had long ago turned into a small pool of acid. It came rushing back up my throat. I stuffed my fist into my mouth.

“He was trying to cover too much territory in one day, I’m sure,” Uncle Buster continued. “You get careless, go too fast around a turn, lose control.”

“The Lord meant for it to be,” Aunt Mae Louise muttered.

“What kind of Lord is that?” I shouted down at her.

“Don’t blaspheme now, child. Your daddy needs to be with the angels and you will want to join him someday.”

“No,” I said. “This is all a lie. You’re just trying to find another way to get rid of me.”

“Boy, I wish that were true,” Uncle Buster said.

“It is true. You’re lying!”

“I got to make arrangements. We got to try to find your mother, Phoebe. No matter what she’s done, she should know about this. You have any idea, any idea at all where she might have gone?”

I kept shaking my head.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to get the police to help us,” he told Aunt Mae Louise. She nodded.

“You’re lying,” I whispered.

“Now, you have to be a big girl, Phoebe. You have to be a good girl. This is a very hard time for all of us, and you don’t know how hard it is going to be yet,” Uncle Buster said. “I’ve got a lot to do here, and I can’t be distracted by any unnecessary trouble, hear?”

I stared at him. My heart wasn’t pounding. It felt more like it had stopped or melted. There was a deep, cold emptiness under my breast. I embraced myself.

“You see how hard life can be,” he continued. “You see how important it is to be good, to be responsible and not be wasteful. Whatever blessings we have, we’ve got to cherish and appreciate.”

He was going on and on like his father, the minister. I started to back away.

“It’s all a lie,” I muttered. “Another dirty lie. This is a house built on lies.”

“That’s it!” he screamed back at me. His voice bounced off the walls and I shuddered. “Stop that nasty talk now.”

I couldn’t stop trembling and I couldn’t swallow. All I could do was shake my head.

“All right now, Phoebe,” he said in a softer tone, “you go back to your room and get some sleep. We’ve got a lot to take care of tomorrow.” He relaxed his shoulders. “You sure you can’t help us find your mama?”

I shook my head harder.