Chapter 10: Church Supper

The fellowship hall smelled like coffee and sugar.

Sixty people sat at long folding tables under paper lanterns, passing platters of ham and sweet potatoes down the rows.

At the far end, by the dessert table, my mother stood in her blue apron slicing a pecan pie.

She was smiling at a deacon's wife.

Everyone in the room thought she was a good woman.

Odette stood at my right shoulder, and Luke at my left.

"You don't have to do this in front of them," Odette said.

"I do," I said. "Nobody here ever heard my side."

I walked down the center aisle.

Forks stopped. A baby cried and was hushed.

By the time I reached the dessert table, the whole room had gone quiet.

Mom looked up.

For half a second her face went blank.

Then she put down the knife and opened her arms.

"Ginny! Oh, baby, you came home."

Heads turned toward us. Someone said, "Thank the Lord."

"I didn't come home," I said. "I came to ask you something."

"Sweetheart, let's step outside."

"No. I'd like to ask it here."

She tried to laugh.

"Everyone, forgive her. My daughter has been going through a hard season."

"Mom." I held up a plastic hospital bracelet and let it hang from my fingers. "What is this?"

The deacon's wife leaned forward to read.

I read it for her, loud enough to carry.

"Baby Girl Landry. Calcasieu Memorial. Eleven fifty-two p.m., August fourteenth, eighteen years ago."

I turned in a slow circle so everyone could see.

"That's the minute I was born. It was in the locked cedar chest in my mother's sewing room, under the quilts."

A murmur ran down the tables.

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