My whole body was stiff, my heart pounding. I didn’t realize I’d stopped breathing until she said those last words—and I remembered seeing Amelia in that hallway, just on the other side of the double doors in the clinic.
“She told you that?” I asked.
“Not out loud,” June said. “It wasn’t like that, but I just…I felt itdeep, even when I was out of it and hurting so bad. The light you said I was muttering about? It was her. She was in that truck with us, at the clinic with us in Perry.”
I swallowed hard, closing my eyes…then I let myself sink into one of the pews.
“I saw her that night, too,” I said. “Figured I imagined it or that it was a bad omen, not…well, whatever the fuck is happening right now.”
I didn’t open my eyes, but I felt June sit down next to me and take my hand. When I was ready, I didn’t look at her—I found myself looking up at the altar instead.
The altar I’d made with my own two hands…the altar where I’d fucked June for the first time, not that anyone in town would ever,everknow that. There was a hexafoil carved into that altar, and I knew then…Amelia wasn’t evil. She wasn’t a warning.
She was a revelation.
“Girls in these churches have to look out for each other,” June said, reaching for my hand again and squeezing it gently. “Maybe she just…knew that.”
I stared at the altar—our altar—and I didn’t look away. Not even when my eyes burned or my throat started to ache.
“I’m glad she was there for you,” I said. “She was a…fuck, she was areallygood person.”
June smiled at me. “I can tell.”
We sat there a while longer, the voices in the fellowship hall blending into a soft, comforting chorus. Here, we were alone…safe, maybe with our guardian angel looking on. Finally, I looked down at June, exhaling.
“So what the hell do we do now?” I asked.
June hummed. “We go back into the fellowship hall,” she said. “We eat some good food and talk good church. And then…” She paused. “Then we make sure Amelia gets justice.”
CHAPTER 21
June
The Ward housealways smelled like herbs from the garden—rosemary and lavender, sage and thyme. Tonight, it smelled most strongly of sweet potatoes.
And it seemed little Hazel Ward didnotlike that.
Baby Hazel was fussy, and none of Rhett and Willow’s usual tricks were working. Delilah had tried singing to her—some completely made-up song about Uncle Whit and the No Good Very Bad Preacher Man—but the song didn’t seem to satisfy her. Whit offered a song of his own about the Delilah the witch (complimentary, of course), but she didn’t like that song either.
And, of course, Milo tried licking Hazel’s face.
That usually worked, but not even that could get a giggle out of her
Willow bounced Hazel gently on her hip, pacing between the table and the fridge like that alone might settle her. “She skipped her nap,” Willow said, shaking her head, “and she’s mad about it. Plus the fact that everything smells like sweet potato.”
“Hey—I get it, baby girl,” Beau said, trying to catch Hazel’s attention. “I don’t like sweet potatoes either.”
“Not all of us can have good taste,” Rhett chuckled.
Hazel, as if personally offended, let out a high-pitched wail.
“Okay, okay,” Willow soothed, shifting Hazel to her other arm. “I know, baby. I know.”
Hazel let out another wail, longer this time—big enough to make Milo slink under the table.
“I think that one cracked a window,” Delilah muttered.
“She’s just overtired,” Willow said, clearly trying to stay patient. “Rhett, can you go grab her blankie from the car?”
