“Now we’ll see how much he really loved his mother,” Everett said. “If it’s real gold, it won’t burn.”
I had a sudden vision of Joan of Arc, tied to a stake and going up in flames. It was an image that had haunted me since I was a child, like Christ on his cross with his rivers of blood. “You’re betting it’s not.”
“Fake gold is iron and aluminum. They have a lower burning point.” At my look, Everett shrugged. “I help in my dad’s garage. I’ve learned things.”
I watched the necklace closely. The answer was important. How much had Renard loved his mother? Enough to redeem him, and damn us? A moral judgment hung in the balance.
“Look,” Everett said.Mommawas blackening at the edges, the littleastarting to curl. His voice was dry. “Guess he didn’t love her that much after all.”
“Don’t say that.” The words came out harsh. “Just because someone can’t afford something doesn’t tell you what kind of person they are.”
It wasn’t just me and college I was talking about, it was my fear thatI’d be trapped here and years from now when people passed me, they’d see a woman like everyone else, not the Ruth Cornier who’d tried to escape. I also felt an urge to protect Renard’s mother, to keep her son’s love for her true. I didn’t know anything about the woman except she was out there somewhere, grieving the loss of her child. The son we’d taken.
“People’s money might not tell you who they are, but their actions do.” Everett was looking at me with the oddest expression. “You’d defend the man who hurt you?”
I looked away. My eyes were pricking and I didn’t want him to see. “No one is all bad. I refuse to believe it.”
“Says the reverend’s daughter about her would-be rapist.”
I flinched.
“Do you want to say something, then?”
The change was abrupt enough to make my head snap. “What sort of thing?”
Everett shrugged. “I don’t know. Whatever’s in your head. You can be the preacher.”
I looked into the crackling flames, where Renard’s heart darkened and burned, and was surprised to find I did want to say something. But I didn’t have words of my own. So, like I’d done my whole life, I leaned on others.
“‘I am part of all that I have met,’” I recited softly. “‘Yet all experience is an arch through which gleams that untraveled world. Whose margin fades—’” I looked up from the fire to Everett, who watched me closely. “‘Whose margin fades for ever and forever when I move.’”
A smile ghosted his lips. “For ever and forever. Amen.”
The fire popped. I looked at him. “That day in the swamp. You held my hand.”
His lashes fluttered. “Did I? I don’t remember.”
I hadn’t wanted to be touched since. The Sunday after, my motherhad come into my room with a floral pin for my hair. I’d shrunk against the wall, but she’d insisted. So I’d stood rigid in front of my mirror, and as she tugged and scraped the tines against my scalp, I’d remembered my daydream: a boy’s fingers moving gently through my hair. My eyes had filled with tears.
But for some reason, Everett was different. I kept thinking about the way his hand gripped mine that day at the swamp.
Now he looked down at my side. “I don’t normally like to…”
“It’s okay,” I said softly. “No problem.”
He looked into the fire, pale skin turning the lightest shade of rose. Then he took my hand, his skin remarkably cold for a summer’s day, and laced his fingers between mine. He examined our locked hands with an indecipherable expression.
“What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.” He swallowed. “You give a good funeral, is all. Do mine one day?”
I squeezed his hand. “Be serious.”
“I am. I think we should be friends.”
“I thought we already were.”
We sat in silence, warmed by the fire, until the necklace was close to disappearing.
