Chapter 29: Tell Them

"Lorna," Ward said into the microphone.

He realized it was on and turned it away from his mouth.

"Sit down, darling. You're upset. Think of your heart."

"My heart is fine."

My mother-in-law walked up the center aisle between the folding chairs.

She wasn't leaning on anything.

The whole county watched her go by, three hundred faces turning one at a time, and she didn't look at any of them.

She climbed the steps on her own and stopped beside me.

She didn't take my hand and I didn't offer it.

"I'll say this once," Lorna said, and her voice carried to the barn.

"Forty years I have stood behind that man's chair in every photograph on that wall. I'm done standing there."

"Lorna." Ward's voice was low and warning. "Not here."

"You wanted the county, Ward. You have the county."

She looked at Lottie, who was chewing a corner of Kit's collar.

Something crossed her face, quick and soft, and was gone.

"That child is your daughter," Lorna said.

A sound went across the lawn like wind through dry grass.

"Say it," she told him. "Or I'll tell this county what I wrote you."

He stared at her.

"You wouldn't."

"I told you to let them think she was Jesse's. I put it in a letter, and I'll start with that."

She said it to three hundred people, and she did not lower her eyes.

I'd never seen Ward Renner afraid.

He wasn't loud about it.

He just stopped moving.

"Mr. Renner," the sheriff said from the third row, standing. "I think you'd better answer your wife."

"This is a private family matter."

"You made it a public one," the sheriff said, "about twenty minutes ago."

Someone laughed, short and angry.

I took the folded bundle out of the quilt.

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