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Thanks for nothing, I thought, and strolled up to the diner’s entrance. As I opened the door, the state policeman drove off. I entered the diner. The sound of some country-western female singer with a very heavy twang in her voice came through the small speakers on the wall behind the counter. Two elderly ladies sitting at the farthest booth on my left turned to look at me and then went back to their conversation like two swimmers who had raised their heads for a breath.

I walked down to Uncle Buster’s booth and stood there. Where is Aunt Mae Louise? I wondered. Why would she miss an opportunity to tear into me as soon as it was possible for her to do so?

“What’s going on, Uncle Buster?” I asked. “Why did that policeman bring me here?”

“Sit down, Phoebe,” he ordered gruffly through his clenched teeth. His eyes burned up at me like two small candles flickering in a hot breeze. Rage tightened his lips at the corners. Here we go again, I thought.

“Before you start,” I said after I put down my suitcase and sat, “I wanted to see my mother. I should be able to see my mother if I w

ant.”

“You don’t pack a suitcase to go visit someone, Phoebe. Don’t you ever stop lying? Even when you’re caught with your hand in the cookie jar, you claim you didn’t do it.”

“I took my suitcase because I thought…”

“Thought what, Phoebe? Huh?”

“I was hoping Mama would want me to live with her again,” I said quickly.

He lifted his eyes toward the ceiling and pressed his lower lip up into his upper, scrunching his chin.

“You thought she would want to live with you again? Come on, Phoebe. The woman ran out on you and your daddy. If she was so worried about you and wanted you with her, she wouldn’t have done that, now would she?”

“People change. I was hoping—”

He slapped his palm on the table.

“None of this is the point,” he said sharply. “You were released from police custody into our care, and in order for that to happen, I guaranteed the district attorney and the judge that you would not run off and you would be there to answer the charges. How did you get down to Macon?”

“Bus.”

“Where did you get the money?”

“I had some money.”

He straightened his back and peered at me.

“I kept some of the money those boys gave me.”

“What boys?”

“You wouldn’t listen to my side of the story,” I said, “so you don’t know.”

“Listen to me, Phoebe. It’s one thing to slap someone, to kick someone, even to punch him, but when you hit someone with a statue and so hard you hurt him seriously and put him in the hospital, you are always going to come out looking like the bad one, so whatever your story is, you better first face up to that.”

“If I hadn’t done it, they would have jumped me, Uncle Buster. That’s what they got me over there to do that night. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

The waitress came to the table.

“Just some more coffee,” Uncle Buster said. “You want something, Phoebe?”

“Coffee’s fine,” I said.

“What were you doing over at the house with all those boys anyway, Phoebe?”

“We were there to…”

“To what?”