“Hmph,” Delilah snorted. “Well—there’s no sushi, for one thing.”
“Delilah—”
“And no hospital,” she cut in, “as you areall too aware. Plus…well, we’ve had our problems here. Fifteen years ago, the Remnant Fellowship had a chokehold here. It wasn’t so unlike other little towns in Georgia—no good for anyone who didn’t believe in God, for anyone who didn’t look like your happy little white American family. But…I don’t know. Shit changed.”
I tilted my head. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged, casual but definitely questioning. “Just—people started coming back who’d left, like they wanted to reclaim what was theirs and what they’d always been told wasn’t. Jamie Wright came back home with Cooper in tow, they opened their little bookstore, adopted their little girl…Francine Farber had dipped out for a while, but she came home with all the righteous fury of a woman who always knew the Remnant’s brand of faith was wrong. Hell, I came back from New Orleans and knew I was safe here.”
“You make it sound like the town had its own gravity,” I said—not as a joke, but because I was actually wondering how the hell my navigation had brought me here.
She drummed her fingers on the table. “I mean, Willow was driving nowhere when she ended up stranded in Rhett’s driveway, of all places. I came home even though I’d never intended on staying in this hodunk town. And you…?” Her eyes flicked to Silas, still swaying with Hazel in his arms. “You’ve been heading this way a long, long time, whether you realized it or not.”
A chill went down my spine, the recognition that something had its hand on us—maybe the thing I called God, that great mystery. The woods outside the window rustled, even though there wasn’t any wind, like the trees were saying,Yes, God’s out here.
I turned my head toward the window, trying to catch whatever had stirred. The night outside was still, but the trees felt…alert.
Not menacing, just present.
Like they were listening.
Delilah shrugged and smiled knowingly. “All this to say, maybe you should buy that house,” she said. “I mean—you’re not planning on leavin’ anytime soon, are you?”
I shook my head, smiling as I found Silas again, rocking that baby like he was born to be a father.
“No,” I said, “I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”
CHAPTER 22
Silas
I knewsomething was different the second I started walking.
June had given me an address for what she described as some new place in town, asking me to meet her there. It was walking distance from the church, so I got a little gussied up, at least tidied my hair and trimmed my beard, then I headed down Main Street. It was just a couple blocks away, in an area I could have sworn was still residential—before the strip of small businesses and town hall.
And that was confirmed for me when I came to the address:222 Main Street.
A house, not a restaurant.
It was small, older, probably built in the Thirties like the other houses around here. It had a deep porch with scalloped trim painted the soft kind of blue that only shows up in baby blankets. The whole front yard was un-landscaped, but in a way that made sense: native grasses, goldenrod, tufts of black-eyed Susans still holding on as fall crept in.
And the windows glowed gold, like a candle cupped in two hands.
I looked down at her text message, making sure I was in the right place, but…yeah, this was it. My gut churned with anxiety, hoping she hadn’t roped me into some kind of social gathering for her fellowship by surprise. I didn’t like surprises, and I had to brace for crowds—but she knew that, so I figured that couldn’t possibly be the case.
So I trusted her.
I stepped up and knocked on the door.
And it opened almost instantly.
June stood there barefoot, wearing a dress I hadn’t seen before—loose and soft, the color of red wine, cinched just enough to show the line of her waist. Her blonde hair was down in long waves curling past her shoulders, freckles vivid after the summer we’d had, her lips pink and curled into that knowing smile that always made my brain short out.
“Hey,” she said, like we hadn’t just seen each other that morning, like I hadn’t fucked her slow and well in the dawn light.
I blinked. “Hey yourself.”
“You wanna come in?”
