They both nodded. I could tell Jordan had been crying.
“Well attended, I expect?”
Nellie put her napkin on her lap. “People were asking after you.”
“Well, I hope you told them I had a full schedule at the courthouse. I had cases set. If I could’ve been there, I’d have gone. I feelterrible about Cocheta. Always liked her. I kept track of her after her divorce.”
Jordan leaned forward. “He showed up. The husband.”
I clapped my hand to my chest. “Oh, no, he did not.”
Jordan lowered her voice to a whisper. “He threw himself on the casket. Carrying on and crying like a baby.”
Nellie nodded. “Nobody believed it was for real. All for show. Pastor pulled him off.”
I could picture the scene playing out. I’d seen Karl Bass’s theatrics in my courtroom. “The son of a bitch.”
“The man ought to be in jail,” said Nellie.
I felt the same way. If not for murder, at least for decades of mistreatment and abuse.
To my sisters, I said, “I keep thinking about Cocheta’s body. I can’t put the sight out of my mind.”
The three of us fell silent, experiencing a shared pain.
“What happened to Daddy that night on the way to Birmingham”—I stammered, then fell silent again until I could conquer my fears—“that ain’t gonna happen to me.”
Nellie said, “We never even said anything after what happened to Daddy. He just got back in the car and we went home.”
I shivered at the memory.
“Jordan,” I said. “You weren’t born yet, so you never had to see Daddy getting beaten by that deputy who said he was driving too fast.”
“I always hated that story,” Jordan said. “Especially the part about how scared Mama was for our whole family.”
The brass bell over the entrance jingled. I looked over as three white men entered the restaurant. My gut turned. The man in the lead was Mason Phelps, a notorious town troublemaker. He’d caused plenty of problems over the years. DWIs. Bar fights.Disturbing the peace. He’d been in my courtroom more than once.
Phelps and his buddies all had the same basic wardrobe. Torn denim jeans, mesh snapback caps, gray T-shirts.
Phelps’s tee bore the wordsSAVE OUR HERITAGEunder the image of the Confederate flag. His companions’ shirts had a different logo.GOD BLESS THE SOUTHwas screened under a design of the rebel flag draped over the cross.
Wait. I’d seen that same design before. At the march in town. On the man who rescued me.
It was a hard image to forget.
Nellie nudged me. Nodded in Phelps’s direction. “I swear I’d heard that Phelps had finally given up. Some folks at school were saying his Neo-Confederate Club disbanded.”
Jordan gave a nervous glance over her shoulder as Phelps started putting up posters of the same Confederate flag he wore on his shirt.
“That’s what Trayvone said. He heard the same thing. Folks were saying the white supremacists lost their nerve after Charlottesville.”
I couldn’t believe how naïve my sisters sounded, considering they’d both lived their whole lives in the Black Belt of Alabama.
“Are you kidding?” I asked. “They didn’t disband. Just went underground for a while. Like hot coals under a layer of ash. People think the fire’s out, but sooner or later it’ll come back to life and burn the whole house down.”
Phelps and his men chose a table with a clear view of us. They settled in and stared with an intensity in their gaze that sent fresh shivers down my spine.
“I don’t like the way they’re staring at us,” Jordan remarked in a hushed tone.
