She walked over to the counter, where Paula had just finished taking an order. “Do you know of any other girls that ... were ...,” Jorja stammered, her sudden resolve failing her.
“That have been raped?” Paula finished the sentence for her. “Yes, I do, but there was no way to prove that what happened wasn’t consensual. Of course, now the whole town knows.”
Jorja nodded. “And who would have believed it back then, anyway?”
“Right,” Paula said. “I’m sorry for what happened, especially if Amos was talking about you in that letter. You were one of the few who were always”—she paused when a young couple came into the restaurant with two little children—“nice to me, even if I was rebellious.”
“Thank you,” Jorja said. “And I’m sorry for what happened to you, too. None of us deserved to be treated like that.” She already felt like a few bricks of the load she’d been carrying for ten years had been tossed away, and her heart was lighter when she went back to the table.
“What was that all about?” Irene asked.
“Just talking to her a little more about Ford and how he would claim that it was consensual.”
Ruby dipped a french fry in ketchup and popped it into her mouth. “How is it that I’ve never heard of any of this?”
“Probably because the victims were too embarrassed to come forward,” Anna Rose answered. “I wonder if they will now.”
“There’s a lot of good people in Shamrock who will support them if they do,” Irene said. “Ruby and I are two of them. I always knew that Ford Chambers was shifty, but I thought he was just a big flirt.”
“I wonder if Kaitlin will stay with him,” Clinton said.
“Maybe she will play the martyr and stand by her man,” Taryn said and then hummed a few notes of the old song by Tammy Wynette.
“I recognize that song,” Clinton said. “Grandpa listens to classic country music all the time. Kaitlin might be playing it right now.”
Irene polished off the last of her fries. “I betcha that Kaitlin kicks him out. She’s not brave enough to face the gossip. She might even move out of town.”
Anna Rose’s eyes twinkled. “Speaking of old songs, the lyrics of ‘Diggin’ Up Bones’ are running through my head. One of the lines is about exhuming some stuff that’s better left alone.”
“You think I should leave it alone?” Jorja asked.
“Nope, but I bet Ford sure wished those old bones would have stayed buried,” Anna Rose answered.
“You can’t bury those kinds of bones deep enough for them to stay in the ground,” Clinton said. “’Specially when you’ve now got a little kid with those bones himself.”
“Amen,” Jorja whispered.
Chapter Seventeen
As Clinton followed Irene’s car out of town to the west, Taryn wondered what the two houses that she and her cousins now owned looked like and how many acres the farm covered. Big green melons lay in the fields on both sides of the road. Crews were busy loading them into old stripped-down school buses that looked like they’d been filled with straw. Had Amos owned all this? Were she and her cousins now proud owners of a couple of acres or thousands?
“They’ve sure got getting those things from field to bus down to an art,” Clinton said. “Reminds me of that kids’ game.”
“I remember that game. It was called Hot Potato,” Taryn said. “And we’ve all got to learn this whole watermelon process if we’re going to settle down in Shamrock.”
“I’m ready—hopefully, Forrest will teach us,” Anna Rose declared as Clinton made a slight turn and then parked behind Irene’s vehicle. A picket fence with red roses blooming on both sides separated two well-kept yards. The two white frame houses looked almost identical—wide front porches with a couple of rocking chairs set back in the shade and yellow shutters.
“Is that Forrest, sitting on the porch?” Taryn asked. “I could hear him when he came into the shop to buy flowers, but I didn’t see him. I remember him being tall and kind of lanky in school, but he’s filled out some.”
Forrest waved at them and raised his voice when they started getting out of the car. “Y’all come on in. Ora Mae has brought some cobbler over here—she’s inside already.”
He wasn’t a heavy man by any means, but his sleeveless shirt left no doubt that whatever he was doing on the farm had built up some nice muscles. His jet-black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and his straw hat hung on the back of the rocking chair where he sat. Two cats—one black and white, and one that looked predominantly like a Siamese—sunned themselves on the porch steps.
“Hello, Forrest,” Irene called out.
He met them at the bottom of the steps. “Afternoon, Miz Irene. I’m sorry I left the church before y’all went up to view Amos. I want to remember him helpin’ me supervise the watermelon crews and the cotton harvesters, not layin’ there in a casket. Miz Ora Mae has made us a blackberry cobbler, and there’s ice cream in the freezer.”
“You girls help Ruby get into the house,” Irene said as she crossed the yard and wrapped Forrest up in a fierce hug.
