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I sat again.

"May I please go?" I asked in a brittle voice. I felt like bone china myself and feared I would shatter any moment.

"This place you lived in West Virginia--"

"Sewell."

"Yeah, Sewell. It's in the back hills, ain't it?"

"Hills. Yes, I suppose."

"Where those families have those rotgut whiskey stills and feud and marry their cousins."

"What?" I started to smile, but saw he was deadly serious. "No, it was just a coal mining town," I said.

He snorted with skepticism. Then he leaned forward, pointing at me with the stem of his pipe. "There are places in this country, havens for the devil where his own do his work. The fiend's at home there as much as he is in Hell itself," he added. "It don't surprise me Chester went to such a place directly after leaving here with Haille." He sat back again and took a puff on his pipe, rocking and thinking a moment. "Maybe Sara is right. Maybe God did send you here to be saved."

"My daddy was a good man. He worked hard for us," I said. "He was no sinner."

Uncle Jacob continued to rock and stare. Then he stopped. "You might not even know what a sinner is. You've been brought up a Godfearing girl?"

"I went to church with Daddy."

"That so? Well, maybe Chester made his peace with the Lord before he was taken. I hope so for his soul's sake."

"My daddy was a good man. Everyone in Sewell liked him. More than his own family," I added, but Uncle Jacob was lost in his own thoughts. He didn't hear me.

He blinked and looked at me again. "Who was this man brought your mother here?" he asked.

"A friend of hers who knows people who can help her," I offered weakly. He heard the doubt in my voice and shook his head.

"She know him before or after your daddy's death?" he asked, his eyes small and suspicious.

"She knew him before, too," I reluctantly admitted.

"Thought so." A wry smile was smeared over his lips.

I looked away so he couldn't see how thick my tears were getting. It stung my eyelids to keep them from flooding my cheeks. "May I please go now? I want to take a walk," I pleaded.

"Don't go far or be out there long. Sara has to take you to school tomorrow and get you started."

I rose. I wanted to turn and shout at him. I wanted to scream back and say "Who do you think you are? I thought you said no one is better than anyone else. What makes you so perfect and how dare you judge my daddy and mommy and say such things?" But my tongue stayed glued to the roof of my mouth. Instead, I fled the room and hurried out the front door. I felt like a coiled fuse attached to a time bomb. Sooner or later I was bound to explode. However, right now I wished I could run into my father's steel arms.

But there was only the strange darkness to greet me. Except for the light from the windows of the house, there was nothing to illuminate the street. Behind the house, the dunes were draped in thick darkness. A sea of clouds had closed away the stars. The wind twirled the sand. Beyond the hill, the ocean roared.

This world was completely different from the world I had lived in all my life. I felt cold and alone, without the trees and songbirds and flowers of my past. Instead, I heard the scream of terns. Something ghostly white flapped its wings against the wall of night. Someone could have easily pluck my nerve endings and hear them twang like my fiddle's strings.

Embracing myself, tears streaking down my cheeks, I walked over the cobblestones to the driveway and then went a little way out toward the dunes and the sea. I stared up at the sky, hoping for sight of a star, just one star of hope and promise. But the ceiling of clouds was too thick. Nothing but darkness greeted me everywhere.

I wondered where Mammy was tonight. Was she thinking about me? Surely her heart was as heavy as mine was at this moment.

Or was she drinking and dancing and laughing with Archie someplace? Was he introducing her to so many exciting people that I never came to mind?

I wanted desperately for her to call me on the telephone.

I started to turn to go back into the house, when Cary appeared out of the darkness like some night creature. I gasped when his silhouette first took shape and then gazed with astonishment when he drew close enough to be caught in the dim light from the house windows.

He looked just as surprised to see me.