“Dogwoods.”
The lawyer’s head tilted. “Dogwoods?”
Nova nodded. “The dogwoods were blooming. That’s when I figured it out. That I didn’t have a period.”
The lawyer looked confused.
He didn’t get it. How she always clocked the season by the flowers blooming. Forsythia, pansies, crabapple, redbud, dogwood. The pink and yellow and purple of spring flowering all around while she suffered through those terrible weeks. No one to talk to. Not a soul to rescue her.
“So when you realized that you’d missed your period, what did you do?”
Nova wanted to bury her head in her arms. She wanted the questions to stop. She could feel her mama’s eyes on her. “I waited. To see if I’d start bleeding. Prayed.”
“And you didn’t tell anybody?”
Nova shook her head. “We got a nurse at school. She started asking me stuff. Because I’d get sick in class in the mornings. Go lie down in her office after I threw up.”
“Was that Cocheta Bass?”
Nova nodded. “She got me a test. The kind where you go into the bathroom and pee on it. It turned blue.”
“And Ms. Bass, the nurse—she was the one who took you to see Dr. Gaines?”
“Yeah.”
“At her office.”
“Yeah.”
“How many times?”
“Just the one time. I was supposed to go back for a checkup, but I got sick and Mama called the ambulance. They took me to the hospital. That’s when everybody found out.”
“Okay,” said the lawyer, “let me make sure I’ve got this. Before you went to the hospital, Nurse Bass knew you were pregnant. And Dr. Gaines knew. But nobody else?”
Nova’s head jerked up. “Nobody. I never told nobody about it.”
Nova’s stomach hurt so much she was just about doubled over in the chair. She couldn’t be honest with the lawyer. Or her mama. She couldn’t say what really happened.
Because all hell would break loose if she did that.
CHAPTER
41
Mary Stone
BULLOCK COUNTY COURTHOUSE UNION SPRINGS, ALABAMA
I was meeting with Arch Pearce. The collections attorney who tried to steal my family’s land.
Circumstances were different this time around. We were still meeting in an office, across a desk.
But on this occasion, it was my office. My desk.
Pearce held up a manila folder. Which he’d described as theWilton v. Mary Stonefile. “So! I showed my client the documentation you provided. And the written statements from you and your sisters, and the neighbors. He found them to be pretty convincing.”
I can keep a straight face. “Well, that’s gratifying. I guess.”
