Ain't No Sunshine

Love may overcome dark family secrets…but a grieving ghost could fire the final shot.

A Come Rain or Come Shine Story Boone Butler can shut out the memories that made him a war hero, but he’s compelled to follow the Sorrowful Angel’s mournful wails back to Harlan County, Kentucky. They can only mean one thing: Delia’s in trouble. Even if it’s been over between them for twelve long years, she can’t stop him from seeing her safe. Delia Concannon isn’t sure if the cries she’s been hearing in Bogey Holler are echoes of the past, or portents of more heartache in her future. All she can do is keep running her diner and wait for the next in a long string of misfortunes that started when she fell for Boone. Their love began despite their families’ longstanding feud—and ended when Boone’s brother murdered her father. Now Boone has come knocking on her door. One look, and Boone remembers why loving her was worth defying his family. He still has nothing to offer a woman like her, but he can’t stand seeing her living in the shadow of rising danger. Delia’s not running, though. Even when the Angel’s cries grow louder…

Warning: Contains a snarky best friend, her cantankerous grandmother, a hard-headed hero with a soft heart, too many pick-up trucks to count, and one mention of fried okra.

eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work. This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. Samhain Publishing, Ltd. 577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520 Macon GA 31201 Ain’t No Sunshine Copyright © 2011 by Selah March ISBN: 978-1-60928-462-6 Edited by Imogen Howson Cover by Kendra Egert All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: May 2011 www.samhainpublishing.com

Ain’t No Sunshine Selah March

Dedication

For Barbara, who never fails, and for Briana, who never doubts, and for Jay, who waits patiently for my overnight success.

Chapter One

It was late October, and Boone was standing at a blackjack table in Vegas when he first heard the cries of the Sorrowful Angel of Bogey Holler. The mournful cross between a dying whippoorwill and a faraway freight train was like the touch of a chilly finger on his heart. Boone shook it off, tossed back his shot of bourbon, and breathed in the snap and tang of deep autumn in the Kentucky backwoods. The girl curled in the crook of his arm looked up at him, the light from the crystal chandeliers glinting off her frosted-purple eye shadow. “You all right, baby?” Boone shrugged. “Bad memories.” The girl, whose name Boone had already forgotten, smiled at him in the way women sometimes do. “I bet I can fix that.” “Yeah?” He pulled her closer. “I’ll take that wager.” But on New Year’s Eve, as he battled his way up a windblown sidewalk in downtown Chicago, Boone heard the Angel’s cries again. Along with the heartbroken wailing and the raw, wet scent of winter in the mountains came the distinct image of a face he hadn’t seen in a dozen years—one with gold-tipped lashes surrounding bluebonnet eyes, and a smile as honest as the day was long. Delia Concannon. Lord, but she looks even better than she did at seventeen. He told himself he didn’t believe in visitations from angels, sorrowful or otherwise. Then he climbed into his pickup truck and drove. A while later—seventeen weeks, two days and four hours, not that Boone was keeping count—the Angel caught up to him in Lexington, where he’d holed up in a motel near the airport. This time, he didn’t bother to tell himself any lies as he pointed his truck toward Harlan. Now he was driving too fast down an unlit dirt road, radio locked on a bluegrass station and a woman’s name caught in the back of his throat. Through the open window he inhaled the scent of wild honeysuckle that meant spring was kindling in the Cumberland Mountains. He crossed the Harlan County line four hours ahead of the sunrise. Boone Butler was home.

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Delia sat straight up in bed and clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. All around her, the shadowy room echoed with the sound of another woman’s fading sobs. The clock on the nightstand read quarter past three. She slipped from under the sheets, crossed to the window, and looked down on the road that ran by her house at the mouth of Bogey Holler. Through the darkness she spied a pair of taillights on the gate of a pickup truck. It was too dim to make out the color of the vehicle. After a few seconds, the truck pulled onto the road and took off, the taillights growing smaller until they finally winked out. Delia stood watch a while longer before she took herself back to bed. Just another nightmare. Doesn’t mean a thing. She lay there, unsettled and sleepless, and with every beat of her heart she heard a name that hadn’t crossed her lips in years. You’re an idiot. Boone Butler never loved you, and he’s never coming back. Go to sleep. But when her alarm went off at a quarter to five, Delia was already on the other side of Harlan County, standing behind the counter of the little diner she’d owned for going on three years now. Here there was no ghostly weeping—only the bright, buzzing glow of fluorescent lights and the scent of coffee so mighty and all-consuming that it seemed to be another permanent fixture of the place, like the faded pink Formica or Delia’s best friend and second-best waitress, Pea Hawkins. Upon entering the establishment, Pea squinted up at Delia through her round, frameless glasses and said, “Girl, you look like seven kinds of hell. Ain’t you been sleepin’?” Delia slapped a plate of ham and red-eye gravy on the counter in front of her friend and shrugged. “Bad dreams. They’ll pass.” “The Angel again?” The sharp note in Pea’s voice cut through Delia’s muzzy head like a hot knife through day-old grits, making her flinch. “That’s the third time since Christmas. You ought to go see my granny for a charm.” “Maybe I will.” Delia was glad to have the conversation cut short by the arrival of Kathleen, her very best waitress, followed by the day’s first customers. The diner stayed busy through the morning hours and well past lunchtime—and why wouldn’t it, offering huckleberry pie with vanilla ice cream for two dollars a serving, not to mention coffee at fifty cents a cup plus free refills? Pea said she should charge double, at least, but Delia couldn’t bring herself to gouge her friends and neighbors, especially since hard times had come once more to Harlan. To hear the old folks tell it, they’d never left. It was in the middle of the afternoon lull when Delia heard the Angel’s cries again. She was peeling fruit for a cobbler, and the sound startled her, making her run the tip of the paring knife into the base of her thumb. Boone Butler, Boone Butler, Boone Butler…

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The name echoed in her head, a drumbeat beneath the Angel’s sobs. Together they drowned out the slurp and gurgle of the percolator. Swearing a purple streak under her breath, Delia reached across her workspace for something to staunch the flow of blood. As she did, Kathleen’s tobacco-and-whiskey-roughened voice drifted into the kitchen via the pass-through window. “I heard one of the Butler boys is back in Harlan,” she told a customer at the counter. Delia froze where she stood, a clean white towel clutched in one hand and blood dripping from the fingertips of the other. “What did you say?” Kathleen turned to answer, but Pea’s horrified yelp interrupted her. “Christ on a cracker, Delia, you butcherin’ roadkill back here?” Delia looked down at the pool of crimson forming on the cutting board. “Sorry,” she muttered and pressed the towel to her wounded hand. Kathleen stuck her head in the pass-through. “As I was sayin’, Luther Butler’s back in town as of three days ago, on parole from the state pen.” “Luther?” Delia asked as she bandaged her injury. “You’re sure?” “Sure, I’m sure.” Kathleen sounded ever-so-slightly offended by the question, as if the accuracy of her gossip might be in doubt. “I heard his momma’s already tossed him out for drinkin’ and raisin’ hell, and now he’s holed up at his daddy’s huntin’ camp in Bogey Holler.” Pea didn’t choose to comment on the comings and goings of one Luther Butler, but when Delia turned to meet her friend’s eye, it held a knowing look. “You need stitches?” Pea asked her. “No, it’s not too bad.” “You sure you’re okay?” Delia knew Pea didn’t mean her stabbed thumb. “I could use a nap.” Pea nodded. “Go on home. I can fry a burger and spoon slaw as good as you. Anyways, we never do much business past three on a Monday.” Delia thought about climbing the stairs to her room and pulling the shutters closed against the afternoon sun. A few shadows would fit her mood to perfection. “I just might take you up on that.” “And stop by my granny’s for that charm?” “Maybe.” Pea’s smile transformed her face from its usual pinched and sour expression to something almost pretty. “See you in the morning, boss.” Delia untied her apron and tossed it into the laundry bin. Then she closed her eyes and listened. The sobs had faded, but the name continued to thump against the back of her brain, rattling her nerves and unsettling her insides. Only now the face belonging to the name was there, too—more than a decade

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older than Delia remembered it, with a few prematurely silver glints in the auburn stubble on its sharp jaw, lines at the corners of its pale gray eyes, and even deeper ones bracketing the care-hardened shape of its mouth. But Boone Butler still looked fine enough to make Delia’s heart give a painful, yearning throb. Yes, Pea was right. A visit to her granny was most definitely in order, and no maybes about it.

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Chapter Two

Boone stood on the corner of Main and Montgomery and marveled at the transformation in his hometown. Early evening traffic flowed up and down widened streets. A chain grocery market had replaced the thrift shop where his mama had purchased most of their clothes. Someone had leveled the run-down movie palace and built a check-cashing joint on the lot, and a brand new cell phone tower loomed over the pizza place on the south end of Highway 421. Everything was different…but he’d bet all the money in his wallet nothing had really changed. Bloody Harlan. A place where a man could get shot for being too friendly—or not friendly enough—depending upon the mood of the day. Once upon a time, the county had boasted the highest murder rate per capita in the United States. Fierce clan feuds and battles between the coal-mining companies and the unions left trails of carnage in their wake. By the time Boone was born, the county’s reputation as a haven for bootleggers, fugitives, drug dealers and racketeers was carved into the stones of too many graves, those of his kin among them. Why in hell did I come back here? He scanned the street again, but found no answers to the question he’d been asking himself since he’d parked on the side of an unnamed road to watch the sun emerge from behind Black Mountain. He did, however, spy a diner where once had stood a five-and-ten-cent store. The sign above the front window said Delia’s. At the sight of it, Boone felt the touch of that familiar, chilly finger on his heart. He crossed the street, dodging four-wheel drives and rusted-out minivans, and paused with his hand on the door. What if she doesn’t remember? Simple enough. If Delia didn’t remember him, he’d climb back into his truck and leave Harlan in his rear-view mirror forever, his conscience clear. Not even the Sorrowful Angel herself could stop him. A bell tinkled overhead as he pushed open the door and stepped inside. His first impression was of glaring fluorescent lights and coffee strong enough to curl a man’s toes. Beneath that, the faintest scent of wild roses. “I declare, if it ain’t Daniel Boone Butler himself.” The woman behind the counter was too dark and far too short to be Delia. Boone recognized her just the same and forced himself to smile despite the sour look she gave him. Even as kids, his relationship with

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Pea had been what you might call adversarial, and that was his fault. The bad feeling between them had started one day in the schoolyard when he wondered out loud how a mother could look down into the face of a newborn baby and give it such a godforsaken-ugly and ill-natured name as “Peavey Sue”. “Pea Souder, as I live and breathe.” “It’s Hawkins now.” Boone shot a quick glance down the length of the long, narrow room. The four small booths and eight counter stools were empty, and Delia was nowhere in sight. “So Rufus Hawkins finally made an honest woman out of you?” “Two days after high school graduation.” “Good for him.” Boone eased himself down on the stool nearest the door. “You got any kids?” “I do. Rufus gave me three fine sons before he went down in the Clover Fork mine one mornin’ a year ago February and never came back up again.” Boone winced. “I’m sorry to hear it, Pea.” “Don’t be. We make out fine.” She commenced to wiping down the counter as she spoke. “I hear your cousin Luther got his release from prison. You come home for a Butler family reunion?” Boone shook his head. “Just a coincidence, I guess.” “An awful big one, if you ask me. Seems like you Butler boys are comin’ up in the world. Talk around town says you got yourself a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, and Luther’s got himself a college education.” “Luther always was a smart one.” Pea’s hands stilled, and she threw a sharp look over her shoulder. “Fancy degree or not, he’s still as crazy as an outhouse rat. You might want to keep that in mind.” Boone refused to be baited. “Thanks for the free advice.” With a sigh, Pea leaned one hip against the counter. “Can I get you somethin’ before I close the kitchen?” “No, but you can tell me where I might find Delia.” Pea’s eyes widened behind her glasses. “Delia Concannon?” “Don’t play dumb, Pea. It doesn’t suit you.” She was silent for a long moment, plainly weighing her options. When she spoke again, her voice had a flat quality. “She’s livin’ in the family’s old house at the mouth of the Holler. But you’d best keep away from her, Boone. She don’t need to know you’re in Kentucky, much less in Harlan.” He didn’t bother to act surprised. “I guess some things never change, do they? You still think you know everything.” “I know Delia needs a man who’ll stick, not one who runs at the first little sign of trouble.” “Is that what you call my brother shooting Delia’s daddy in the back?”

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Pea had the good grace to look ashamed, but it took her less than a second to rally. “Why are you here, Boone? The big war hero, comin’ home to lord it over the hillbillies he left behind?” “Something like that.” Pea stuck out her pointed chin, looking every bit the stubborn Kentucky backwoodswoman. “After all she’s been through, Delia don’t need you breakin’ her heart a second time.” A second time? “What in holy hell are you talking about, Pea?” The way she pressed her mouth down in a grim little line told him she’d shared all she intended to on the subject. With a sigh, he swung himself off the stool and headed for the door. When his hand was on the knob, Pea fired a final shot. “Say, Boone?” “Yeah?” “You plan on stayin’ around a while? Or is this one of those famous Butler hit-and-run operations?” He gripped the doorknob, doing his level best to keep hold of his temper. “I was eighteen years old, Pea. My father was dead and my brother was in jail for murdering the sheriff. What was I supposed to do? Let my mama pick up stakes and move to another state with just my little sister for company?” The solemn, knowing look Pea gave him put Boone in mind of her infamous Granny Souder. Her next words only underlined the similarity. “Tell the truth and shame the devil, Boone Butler. You’ve had one foot outta Harlan since the day you was born.” He let the slam of the door be his answer, and if he secretly thought maybe Pea was right, nobody knew it but him.

Delia parked her car along the side of the road and set her feet on the narrow, hundred-yard path to Granny Souder’s cabin. Halfway up Bogey Holler, the ramshackle structure and the plot of land upon which it stood had been in the Souder family since before coal was discovered beneath the crumpled hills. Delia could recall playing hide-and-go-seek in this very grove of white oaks with Pea, and Rufus Hawkins, and a half-dozen of the other Holler kids. That was before her daddy was elected sheriff, before Delia’s mother ran away, and before Delia discovered that love of any kind was a quick road to heartache. Blue dusk lay over the path, marked on either side by yellow lady slippers that seemed to glow from within like sprouted flames. Towering rhododendron bushes, ruddy with blood-colored blooms, stood watch around the cabin’s sagging front porch. From somewhere inside came the shouts of Pea’s boys and perhaps a few of their many cousins, as well. On any given day, the eighty-something Souder matriarch looked after no fewer than five of her grand- and great-grandchildren, and sometimes more. Delia knew to expect chaos from the moment she walked through the door.

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What she didn’t count on was to find Granny waiting for her in the kitchen. She’d suspect Pea of calling ahead, except there was no telephone service of any kind this far up the Holler. “Set yourself by the light and let me get a look at your eyes,” the old woman said by way of greeting, and waved a gnarled hand toward a three-legged stool at her knotty pine table. Delia froze like a possum in the beam of a flashlight. “I just came by to see if you had any more of the rose oil you sold me last—” Granny’s cutting look killed the lie in her mouth. “Set yourself, child.” “Yes, ma’am.” Delia sat. She let Granny take her hand and peer into her eyes. The thick lenses of the old woman’s glasses refracted the kerosene lamplight in strange and wonderful ways, and Delia found herself drawn down…and down… “The Concannons always were fools for love. It’s a sorry thing to see you takin’ after your daddy.” Delia blinked and Granny was on the other side of the kitchen, pouring tea from an ancient copper kettle. Her spare, bent frame looked like a house built of sticks and left to rack and ruin. “Love, you say? But—” “Quit runnin’ your mouth and listen. The Sorrowful Angel warns true lovers of tragedy brewin’. Any child born in this holler knows as much.” Delia did know. She’d heard the stories all her life, which might not have been enough to convince her. But she’d also listened to Pea describe how the Angel’s cries had chased her from her bed and followed her wherever she went for weeks before a ton of loose rock buried her husband at the bottom of a mineshaft. Delia swallowed. “How do I make it stop?” “Here,” Granny said, and set a mug of tea on the table with a thump. “Drink this for a start.” Two boys, no more than three or four years old and grubby from an endless day of play, tumbled together at Delia’s feet. Though she couldn’t have named them to save her life—or even determined if one or both belonged to Pea—she looked down at them fondly. This generation of the Souder clan was blessed with male children like a scummy spring pond is blessed with tadpoles. Around her, the room was hung with shadows not even the laughter of little boys could banish. Delia tried to imagine growing up in this cabin as Pea had, her days and nights shot through with folk magic and backwoods wisdom. She recalled sitting at this very table six months after her father’s death and begging Granny for a charm to lighten the burden of a daughter’s grief. But Granny had seen through her ruse. Instead of scolding her and turning her out of the house for lying—which was no more than Delia deserved, then or now—the old woman had cut to the chase. “It’s not your daddy you’re grievin’ after, child,” she’d said. “It’s that Butler boy, ain’t it?” “Yes’m,” Delia had mumbled, ashamed and relieved at the same time. “I know it’s wrong, and I know it’s no use. He’s not coming back for me, no matter what he said. But—”

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“But you don’t know how to quit wantin’ him, is that it?” Granny shook her gray head, as if she’d heard it all before. “Did you bring somethin’ for a charm?” Delia had reached into the pocket of her jeans and brought forth a scrap of faded red cotton. Boone had left it clinging to a rusty nail on the porch swing the night his brother, Gilley, shot her father. Other than the short poem he’d left beneath his picture in her yearbook, this shred of fabric was the only thing she had of Boone’s. She didn’t want to let it go. But Granny fixed her with a baleful stare, and Delia offered up the scrap to be wrapped about a twist of birch twigs, dunked in a jar of cider vinegar, and rolled in the ashes on the hearth. “Sleep with it under your pillow, and your beloved’s name will sleep upon your tongue,” Granny told her. “When you’re fixin’ to speak it, you’ll find you can’t, and pretty soon—” “How long?” Delia cut in, too far gone to remember her manners. “Because I can’t take much more, I truly can’t.” Granny patted her arm. “A week, maybe less. Try to keep from thinkin’ of him, and before you know it—” “I won’t think of him at all?” She must be sounding desperate. She was desperate, the pain in her heart over the loss of her father completely eclipsed by her traitorous need to see Boone again—a need she knew would never be met, since rumor around Harlan said Boone had joined the army and shipped out overseas, with no plans to return home. Delia followed Granny’s instructions, and the charm did its work with terrifying efficiency. The next day, she tried to whisper Boone’s name and found it impossible. The word lodged in her throat like a thorn, and when she coughed, speckles of blood splashed against her open palm. She didn’t try again. Two days later, she found she couldn’t picture his face. She dreamed of him at night, but his back was always turned as he walked away. When she tried to call out to him, that same thorn tore at her throat till she woke, gasping and afraid. Five days after that, she returned to Granny’s cabin. She’d lost seven pounds—one for every day the charm had worked its wonders—and her hair was falling out on the floor of her bedroom in fine, pale handfuls. “Make it stop,” she begged, more than ready to get down on her knees. “Please, I’ll pay any price.” Granny looked mournful. “Unrequited love’s nothin’ but a poison, child.” But she took the charm and tossed it into the fire. As Delia watched the stinky knot of cloth and sticks burn up, she felt the constriction in her throat ease. Still, she did not speak Boone’s name. Not then, nor ever after, did she let the word slip past her lips…except in her nightly dreams.

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Delia shook herself out of the memory and took a sip of her tea. The taste of it was like tar on her tongue, but she drank it down just the same. No one would ever accuse her of being ungracious or—Lord forbid—disrespectful of her elders. Granny joined her at the table. “How long you been hearin’ the Angel, child?” “A few times since Christmas, but that’s not the worst of it.” Delia stopped, struggling for the words to describe what she’d been feeling these last few weeks—the creeping sort of dread that began somewhere deep in her belly and spread up and out, like dark tendrils of bad intent. The cold, wet days of an Appalachian winter were a fine time for nursing a bout of the blues, but she had no excuse now. Not with the sap running thin in the trees, and the hills alive with laurel and flowering dogwood. She drew a breath and began again. “It feels like something is coming. Like something is about to happen, and I can’t stop it, no matter how hard I try.” “Nor will you. Best you can do is brace yourself, child.” Delia nodded. “Feels like all I’ve ever done is brace myself against a world of pain.” She hated the self-pity in her voice, and hated even more the tears that threatened to spill. She was stronger than this. She’d had to be, hadn’t she, when everyone she’d ever loved had left her? First her mother, then her daddy, then the grandfather who’d finished the job of raising her, and then her baby girl— only nine days old, lying still and gray in an incubator in the corner of a Lexington neonatal intensive care unit. And finally, her baby’s father, Mason, who’d been too weak to stand by her through the first raging storms of grief. As if she could hear the voices in Delia’s head reciting the names of her lost loved ones, Granny muttered, “Don’t forget that Butler boy.” Delia shook her head. Boone Butler didn’t count. How could she lose what had never been hers in the first place? Granny was watching her with sharp eyes. Now she tapped her warped fingers on the back of Delia’s hand and said, “The Angel don’t choose just any old soul to visit. Whatever’s comin’, it has your name on it. It’s your fate, child, and only you can choose how to face it.” The old woman’s words had the ring of truth. All her life, Delia had ignored her head to follow her heart, and she’d learned not to complain about the consequences—to take the bitter with the sweet. If only the bitter wouldn’t hang on so long, like an aftertaste so vile no shot of white lightning could wash it away. “I guess this means you don’t have a charm to give me,” Delia said, forcing a smile for the old woman’s sake. “Pea will be awful disappointed.” Granny harrumphed, startling the calico cat that had crept into her lap. “Peavey Sue ought to know better. There’s no charmin’ the Angel away. Not once she’s made up her mind to haunt you.” She reached out and pressed a vial into Delia’s hand. “That’s the rose oil you wanted.” “How much do I owe you?”

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Granny shook her head, her good humor gone the way of the daylight. “Go on, now, git. Can’t you see I got me a houseful of youngins’ to feed?” The lonesome walk back to her car made Delia shiver with nerves, then call herself a fool for letting her imagination rule her. The beam of her flashlight played over the path, showing nothing more threatening than the back end of a bumbling raccoon, still round and heavy in the last shaggy shreds of his winter coat. She drove back down the Holler road with Granny’s vial of oil clutched in her bandaged hand. Maybe the Sorrowful Angel couldn’t be charmed away by the scent of wild roses, but a hot bath would feel nothing but fine, and a girl ought to take comfort where she found it—or so her runaway mother used to say. Thirty minutes later, with a sad song on the radio and the bathwater nearly up to her chin, Delia almost believed it.

On any other evening, Boone could’ve navigated the private road to the Butler hunting camp with his eyes closed, so much time had he spent exploring the surrounding woods. But tonight he found himself distracted. Was it the irregular flash of fireflies that caught and held his eye so long he nearly put his truck into a ditch? Or was something else moving among the sycamores and oaks? Something even less substantial than an insect with a lifespan of one short season? The camp wasn’t what anyone in his right mind would call luxurious, consisting as it did of a brokendown shack and a fire pit on a ridge above the creek bed. Still, it served its purpose well enough—that purpose being to provide a place where the Butler clan could gather to make corn liquor, drink it to excess, and raise all manner of hell without attracting the attention of local law enforcement. On this night, it seemed Boone’s cousin Luther was hosting a celebration in honor of his release from prison. Boone found the camp populated by a group of men who were, generally speaking, long on ball caps and chewing tobacco and short on dental hygiene. Luther himself hadn’t changed much in the twelve years since Boone had last seen him. He remained narrow and sloped through the shoulders, with too-long arms, a wild head of coarse red hair, and an unhinged look in his bloodshot eyes. “I won’t bother to ask if you missed me, Boone,” he said, “since I know you weren’t aware of my recent imprisonment by the state of Kentucky, you bein’ away servin’ your country and all.” “To tell you the truth, Luther, I’ve been out of the army for almost two years now.” “Is that so?” Luther took a long swallow from the fruit jar clutched in his right hand and slung his other arm around Boone’s shoulders. “And you chose this day to return to Harlan. Any special reason?” “Just a happy coincidence, I guess.” Boone thought about shrugging off Luther’s embrace, then recalled how easily his cousin had always taken offense at the smallest slight—not to mention the hair-

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trigger nature of the Butler temper—and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. “You mind if I ask why they locked you up?” “This time?” Luther dropped his arm, but not the too-wide grin he’d been sporting since Boone strolled into the camp. “It was a weapons charge. My very expensive Lexington lawyer managed to keep it out of federal court, for which I’m grateful.” “I can see why.” “Can you, cousin?” Boone glanced around the fire pit, taking in the watchful faces of all assembled, and suddenly didn’t feel quite so welcome in this place where he’d spent such a large chunk of his childhood. “Do we have a problem, Luther? Because if you don’t want me here—” “Now don’t be foolish, Boone. Of course you’re wanted. You’re still a Butler, ain’t you?” “That I am.” “Then sit yourself down and be friendly. Somebody pass him a jar.” Once Boone had taken a seat on the damp ground and knocked back a swallow of what tasted more like gasoline than whiskey, the tension in the atmosphere seemed to ease—but only till Luther began talking again. Boone had forgotten how much his cousin enjoyed working his jaw. “So tell us, Boone, what did you do in the war?” There was a mocking edge to Luther’s words, but Boone chose to take the question at face value. “I was a sharpshooter with the Rangers.” “Afghanistan or Iraq?” “Both.” “And why did you leave the army?” “I took a piece of shrapnel in the shoulder and ended up with nerve damage. Can’t hold a rifle steady to save my life or anybody else’s.” Boone cleared his throat. “Now, if you don’t mind, I think it’s time we changed the subject.” Luther laughed, a hooting sound like the call of a crazy-eyed owl. “That unforgivin’ look on your face puts me in mind of your brother Gil.” “Does it?” “It surely does. Tell me, Boone, did you visit your brother before he passed in that prison hospital?” Boone ground his back teeth together, wishing he was anywhere but here. “Once. He refused to see me.” Luther shook his head. “A stubborn, violent young man was Gilley Butler. It was on a night like this that he shot and killed Sheriff Jeremiah Concannon. You remember that?” “Damned hard to forget.”

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“You know what I recall about that night, Boone? I recall searchin’ for you high and low, only to find you with your hand up the skirt of the sheriff’s daughter.” Luther hooted again, and this time his buddies laughed with him. “Sweet Delia, the prettiest girl in Harlan. You been to see her yet?” A tingle of apprehension crawled up Boone’s spine at the mention of Delia’s name. Too many coincidences piling up at his feet like a load of coal. “No, I haven’t seen her,” he answered, which was nothing but the truth. No one had to know it wasn’t for lack of trying. “She owns her own business now. I understand it’s quite the going concern.” Luther took another swallow from his jar and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Did you know Delia’s the only Concannon left in Harlan? The last of her kind?” “Interesting.” “Ain’t it, though? A man could do worse. Especially an educated man like myself.” Luther turned his head and spat into the fire. “Maybe you didn’t hear that during my unfortunate incarceration, I earned myself a double degree in history and philosophy.” Boone fought the urge to tell Luther what he could do with his double degree and—more importantly—his interest in Delia. “Congratulations, Luther. That’s commendable.” A few yards away from the fire, near the rusted-out carcass of an old Ford that looked as if it had become fused with the landscape, two of Luther’s guests were deep in conversation. As Boone watched, one of the men drew a wad of bills from his pocket and traded it for a plastic baggie half-filled with tiny white pills. When the second man turned, Boone caught the glint of a handgun tucked between his belly and the waistband of his jeans. See? Nothing’s changed. With a sigh, Boone rose to his feet. “It’s time I was on my way.” “So soon?” But Luther didn’t put up much of a fight, and Boone could only be grateful for small mercies. His cousin did, however, insist on walking Boone to his truck. “Don’t be a stranger,” he said. “Family ought to stick together, ain’t that so?” “I won’t be in the area for long.” Luther nodded. “Well, you know what they say about folks who stay ’round these parts longer than they ought to.” “Refresh my memory.” Luther turned his lunatic’s eyes on Boone and grinned. “They don’t ever leave Harlan alive.” Was it a threat? Boone couldn’t tell—no one could ever be certain where they stood with Luther—but he sure as hell didn’t like the sound of it.

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Ain’t No Sunshine

He drew a deep breath, the better to keep his voice pitched even and low. “Listen to me, Luther. I want you to stay away from Delia Concannon. She hasn’t done anything to deserve trouble from the likes of you.” “You mean the likes of us, don’t you? Or ain’t you a Butler after all?” “Just leave her be, all right? As a favor to me?” Luther reached out and gripped Boone’s shoulder a fraction of an inch above the place where the shrapnel had ended his military career. “As a favor to you, cousin, I’ll consider it.” Boone opened his mouth to press his point and was interrupted by the approach of a short, heavyset man in a ball cap and steel-toed boots. “Boone, you remember Manny Sims, don’t you?” Luther asked. Boone inclined his head in greeting. Like Luther, Sims hadn’t changed much in the past dozen years. He was still the sullen type who didn’t meet your eye but was liable to stick out his foot and trip you for no good reason. Now he seemed intent on discussing some urgent matter with Luther—though he wouldn’t say so out loud, apparently content to stand by with his hands balled into fists and a disgusted look on his thick-featured face. Luther gave Boone’s shoulder another squeeze, just this side of painful. “I have some business to take care of tonight, Boone. You know how it is when a man’s been gone a stretch. Things do pile up.” Boone faked a smile, knowing it would pass for real in the half light. “Why don’t we meet tomorrow? Say around nine in the morning? We can do some more catching up.” Luther nodded, his face somber. “I look forward to it.” From the open window of his truck, Boone congratulated his cousin again on his newfound freedom and wished him a good night. Then he turned around and headed toward the mouth of Bogey Holler. Now he had a good excuse to find and speak to Delia. The best excuse, in fact, and one that had nothing to do with ghostly angels crying in the night. He didn’t intend to waste it.

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Chapter Three

They said places from your childhood tended to seem smaller and less significant when you saw them as an adult, but the Concannon family homestead loomed just as large as Boone remembered it. Not that he’d been a child when he’d last seen it, unless a cocky sonofabitch with too much testosterone and not nearly enough sense could be called a child. But yeah, the house looked pretty much identical to his recollection. The porch light was off, but someone had erected a lamppost at the foot of the stone walk, and it cast a circle of yellow that showed him the same peaked roof and same steep concrete steps. Same porch swing, too? No, it couldn’t be, since the one he remembered had been a splintered wreck, barely stuck together with a few rusted nails. This one— generously deep and painted a glossy black that glinted in the shine from his headlights—looked brand new. He cut the engine and eased the door open, but felt weirdly reluctant to approach the house. The last time he’d been here…well, he hadn’t thought about that in years, though he suspected he dreamed about it once in a while. Mostly during those times when he’d let himself drink too much and fall into bed alone. Luther was right about it being a night a lot like this one. Except, as Boone recalled it, the air had felt heavier then—thick and almost murky—and the moon had been no more than a pale smudge behind the clouds. But the wet, musky scent of spring was the same, and he remembered how it had made his blood thrum in his veins, like just another animal in search of his chosen mate. He’d tossed pebbles at Delia’s second-floor window, then stood in the shadows and waited. She’d opened the window and stuck out her head, and when she’d seen him, she hadn’t said a word. Less than a minute later she was on the porch in her bare feet and a white cotton nightie that didn’t quite reach her knees, her blond hair hanging down her back and held off her face with a cornflower ribbon. She hadn’t asked him why he was there. Maybe she’d known, no explanations necessary. What he’d written under his picture in her yearbook hadn’t been anything close to subtle, after all. “We gotta be quiet,” she’d said. “My granddad’s got ears like a cat.” He’d nodded and lowered himself to sit on the very edge of the swing. The rusted chains squeaked a warning and he froze. This was a bad idea. “I ought to go—” “No, don’t,” she said and took a seat next to him, close enough that he could feel the heat rise from her body.

Ain’t No Sunshine

All at once, Boone’s every sense was magnified. The whisper of her nightgown across the rough wood of the swing should’ve been too soft to hear. The color of her eyes ought to have been lost in the shadows, the scent of her skin too faint to catch, and yet… “Did you mean it?” she asked him. “What you wrote in my yearbook?” He looked away at something—anything—that wasn’t Delia, and cleared his throat. “Don’t be stupid. ’Course I meant it.” Her smile shined like the light of a thousand candles and made it hard for him to draw a full breath. “Then come here and kiss me quick, Boone Butler, before my granddaddy spies us and shows you the business end of his sawed-off.” Her mouth tasted of sweet tea with a splash of lemon. He lifted his hands to touch her and stopped short, afraid his calluses and ragged fingernails would somehow rub the glow off her pale skin. She pulled away with a sigh, reached for his hand, and settled it on her knee. When they kissed again, he slipped his fingertips beneath the hem of her nightie and wondered—not for the first time—if he was dreaming. After a minute or so, she tucked her face into the crook of his neck and whispered, “My daddy would crap himself a kitten if he knew you were here.” Boone laughed. “Mine, too, if he was alive to see it.” “Why do you suppose they hated each other so much?” She shifted against him as he wrapped an arm around her. “I know there was bad blood between the Butlers and Concannons a hundred years ago, but Granddad says our daddies dug coal together when they were kids. He says they were buddies, like two peas in a pod.” “I guess we won’t ever know for sure,” Boone replied. He could’ve told her the truth—how when Jeremiah Concannon and Ephraim Butler walked away from the mines in search of better prospects, they’d found them on opposite sides of the law. How from that time on, the brotherly feeling between them had turned and the pair who’d been the closest of friends became the bitterest of enemies. And though it wasn’t Sheriff Concannon’s fault that Boone’s daddy had died in a prison knife fight, it was the sheriff who’d arrested him in the first place, and this simple fact was enough to make certain the hatred of all Butlers for all Concannons ran deep and true. All but two. He could’ve told her that, but it didn’t seem to matter. Not here, in this magic place they’d made for themselves on a porch swing in the middle of a May night. But then his cousin Luther had slipped out of the shadows and called Boone’s name, and Boone knew it really had been nothing more than a dream all along. “Trouble in town with Gilley,” Luther had said. The look on his cousin’s face told Boone that whatever it was, it was bad, and while the thought made him sick to his stomach, it didn’t surprise him. At twenty-four, Gilley Butler had already served a three-year sentence for felony assault. He hadn’t been out

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Selah March

of jail a month, and now this…this trouble that Luther’s pale face and staring eyes told Boone was of the serious kind. The threads of the memory split apart and faded away like curls of smoke, and Boone found himself standing at the foot of the front steps with no memory of leaving his truck. Why was he here, instead of driving hell-bent out of Harlan on his way to just about anywhere else? To warn Delia about how Luther might stop by the diner and ask her to the movies? Or was there other business between them that needed finishing? Delia wouldn’t remember it like he did. He knew that much for certain. All she’d recall was on the night Gilley Butler made her an orphan, his younger brother had called her down from her bed and tried to cop a feel. So really, there was no cause to let himself go on this way—flayed alive by the recollection of something that had happened a lifetime ago, to some other person. He wasn’t the teenaged son and little brother of the county’s most notorious thugs anymore. He didn’t have to write bad love poems or toss pebbles at windows to get the attention of the sheriff’s daughter. He was his own man, goddammit, and he was here for a purpose. Boone climbed the porch steps and rapped his knuckles against the wooden frame of the screen door.

Delia’s attempts at sleep proved useless. Her visit with Granny Souder had stirred up a mess of emotion nothing short of hard liquor or a double dose of sleeping pills was likely to quell. Trouble was, she had no such thing in the house. To compound the problem, she found herself listening for the Angel’s cries, almost hoping to hear them. Anything would be better than all this lonesome silence. After a while, she gave up, slipped a short robe over her nightgown and wandered downstairs to make herself some cocoa. Which was why she was standing at her stove, applying a squeeze bottle of chocolate syrup to a pan of simmering milk, when Boone Butler walked back into her life. She knew his shadow against the screen like she knew the shape of her own hand. That same loose, easy stance belied by the tense set of his shoulders, and the way he ducked his head at her approach, appearing almost shy till you caught the bright glint of danger in his eyes. “Well, look at you,” she said and pushed open the door, stepping barefoot onto the porch. A sudden wave of been-here-done-this washed over her, strong enough to make her eyes water. All at once she was seventeen again, face-to-face with the only boy who’d ever made her look twice. He whispered her name as if that single word was all he could manage. The few feet of space between them seemed too far to bridge, like the distance between stars. When he reached out his hand to touch her cheek, she stepped into it, turning her face into the heat of his palm.

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Ain’t No Sunshine

“Delia,” he said again, and then his mouth was against hers, quick and clumsy, as if he’d never kissed a woman before. Still, she felt the slow twist of desire in the pit of her stomach, and a flutter in her throat that stole her breath. He pulled away and grinned—that righteous, go-to-hell grin she still saw in her dreams—and in that instant she wanted nothing more than to let him chase her down the path of her own destruction. “Hope I didn’t wake you,” he said and she laughed out loud. Sleeping Beauty she’d never be, but if she were cold and dead in her grave, Boone’s kiss would rouse her. She knew it for a fact. From somewhere far away, she heard a splash and a hiss, and remembered where she was. “My cocoa’s boiling over,” she told him. “Come on inside.” She felt his eyes on her as he followed her into the house, and the sensation made her keenly aware of the shortness of her robe and the bareness of her legs. While she cleaned up the mess on the stove, he wandered around her kitchen, running his fingertips over the shape of every canister and examining the toaster as if he’d never seen one before. Finally, she tossed the dirty rag into the sink and turned to face him, her arms folded over her chest in a defensive gesture she already knew was completely useless. Boone was staring at her like she was the last working source of light in a fifty-mile radius. “You look good, Delia.” “Do I?” Maybe he hadn’t noticed the faint lines at her eyes, or the extra pound or two at her hips, or how the difference between seventeen and twenty-nine might as well have been a lifetime. “Why are you here, Boone?” He glanced away, and she knew the next words out of his mouth would be a lie. “Just passing through,” he said, careless and offhand. “Thought I’d stop by and see how you’re getting along.” “Passing through?” She sounded half-witted, parroting his words as if she didn’t have any of her own. But she couldn’t seem to absorb the fact of him standing in her kitchen, tall and solid—broader through the shoulders and thicker at the biceps than she remembered—and most definitely not a dream. He shrugged. “I’ve got a job coming up in Atlanta next month organizing security for some politician and his family. I thought maybe…” He stopped and pressed his lips together like he’d said more than he’d meant to. Her own lips tingled where he’d kissed her. She wanted to ask him a million things, but mostly she wanted to close the distance between them and run her fingers over the rough stubble on his jaw. A second kiss wasn’t out of the question, either. They’d do it right this time. She’d see to it. He lifted his head and sniffed the air. “What’s that I smell? Not the cocoa—something else?” “I fried up a mess of okra for yesterday’s supper.” He squinted at her. “You make that with tomatoes?”

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She nodded, undone by the bizarre turn in the conversation. “Balsamic vinegar, a little lemon juice, salt and pepper.” “Sounds good. You’ll have to write that down for me.” She couldn’t help laughing. “A tough guy like you does his own cooking?” “A man’s gotta eat to live.” He reached out and swiped at a dribble of chocolate syrup she’d left on the counter. “And not by bread alone, or so they say.” She watched him suck the syrup off the pad of his thumb and felt her body flush with heat from the bottom up. His eyes sparked against hers, flint to tinder, and she had to look away. “Tell me why you’re here, Boone.” He went still, leaning against the edge of the counter and staring at the floor. “I don’t know,” he said. It sounded like the truth. She took the pan off the stove, set it in the sink, and filled it with warm water to loosen the burnt milk. When she’d finished, she turned to him again. “I waited for you.” She dried her hands on a dishtowel and hung it on its hook next to the stove. “You remember? You asked me to wait, and I did.” It was the last thing he’d said to her before his cousin had dragged him away, muttering something about trouble in town with Boone’s brother, Gilley. “Wait for me,” he’d said, and she had. Long after he’d enlisted in the army, long after Granny’s charm had left her hollow-eyed and spitting blood, she’d waited. Five years, to be exact—which, in the lifetime of a girl who’d never been past the state border in any direction, counted as almost forever. The look he gave her now went straight to her heart, opening a fracture she’d believed was mended with solid concrete. “You shouldn’t have waited,” he said. “I never should’ve asked you. It was never any good, you and me.” Anger shot through her, as hot as the desire she’d felt only moments before. “You came all the way back to Harlan to tell me that, Boone? To tell me I wasted my time, and we weren’t ever going to be together?” “Delia, listen—” “Don’t you think I would’ve figured it out on my own, eventually? I know I’m nothing but a dumbass girl from the Holler, but I guess by the time I was eighty and you hadn’t shown up—” “Delia—” “What, Boone?” She fisted her hands at her sides to keep from reaching for the nearest object to throw at him. “Why are you here?”

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Ain’t No Sunshine

For an instant, his face twisted, marred by what looked to her like pain with a side order of selfloathing. Then he squared his shoulders and cleared his throat. “Maybe I’m here to apologize. Maybe I thought it was high time somebody said they were sorry for all the grief my kin caused yours.” “That wasn’t you, Boone. I never blamed you.” “But I’m a Butler. Cut from the same cloth. That’s what everybody said at the time.” The anger flared again, and this time she wanted to beat her fists against his chest for being stupid and stubborn. “Do you really think I would’ve let you put your hands on me if you were anything like your father and brother?” “How could you see the difference? We barely knew each other.” That much was true, at least. They’d spent most of the four years of high school circling each other like a pair of bobcats, spooked by the hatred between their families, but attracted just the same. Only in the last few months of their senior year had they ventured to share a few words—and then only in whispers, in shadowed corners and empty hallways, forever in secret and always afraid. “But don’t you see, Boone? It wouldn’t have mattered whether you were different or not.” He lifted his head, his eyes burning with whatever agony had driven him to seek her out after all these years. “How could it not matter?” She gave him the only answer she had. “I loved you.” He exhaled, and Delia felt it in her own chest, as if Boone were breathing for both of them. After a stretch of silence like a weight on her very soul, she sighed and let herself take a risk she’d surely regret. “You can stay if you want. Just for tonight.” He made a move in her direction, as if working on pure instinct, then checked himself. She watched as the cautious part of his nature—the part that seemed built into him alongside muscle and blood and bone— took over. “No. I ought to go.” He made it all the way to the kitchen doorway before she stopped him with a few words born of pure desperation. “Do you remember what you wrote in my yearbook?” “Delia—” “Tell me you remember, Boone. Tell me I’m not the only one who’s been carrying this around inside me all these years.” He turned, his face blank and his eyes hooded. “I remember.” “Then say it. Just once. After, if you want to go, I won’t stop you.” She watched him swallow and scrub a hand across his jaw. When he spoke, his voice had a broken quality that put her in mind of a boy on the cusp of manhood.

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“Coal’s black Water’s wet Romeo Loves Juliet.”

She smiled at him, eyes brimful with tears. “Thank you,” she said, and prepared herself for his exit. She’d told him she wouldn’t stop him, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t bleed when he was gone. He didn’t move from the doorway. She took a step toward him, and then another, drawn like iron filings to a magnet. Feeling just as splintered as a handful of filings, too. I’ll be sorry come morning. Lord knows this can’t lead anywhere good. He watched her approach, and didn’t say a word till she was close enough to feel his breath on her face. “I loved you, too,” he whispered and kissed her, his lips gentle in their pull and release, tempting her with a current of sensation that uncoiled itself down into her belly and seeped outward, melting her bones. Heat flared wherever he touched her, making her feel reckless and wanton, like no one else had ever done—no, not even Mason, the man whose child she’d carried, the man she’d been prepared to marry. When Boone first went away, it had felt as if he’d taken a layer or two of her skin with him, leaving her raw and far too slow to heal. It would be worse this time, she knew, and the knowledge frightened her. She tucked her face into the side of his neck and whispered, “Do you think it was kind to come here and do this to me after all this time, Boone Butler?” “Is that what you want from me, Delia? Kindness?” She considered it, but only for a moment. “No, that’s not what I want. Not tonight.”

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Chapter Four

Boone woke to the gray light of morning in Bogey Holler, where the sun only cleared the hills sometime between nine and ten, and was gone from sight no later than five in the afternoon, even in high summer. He slid out of Delia’s bed, doing his best not to wake her, and dressed in near silence. He looked down at her sleeping form. There were faint lines at the corners of her eyes, like footprints on a sandy beach—evidence that her life had gone on without him, full of laughter and tears, late nights and early mornings. And that’s as it should be. You didn’t expect to find her on a shelf somewhere, like a jar of peach preserves, did you? He crossed the room to examine the few articles arranged on the top of her pine dresser. A photo of her daddy in his sheriff’s uniform, another of her grandfather as a young soldier in World War II. A fine lock of soft brown hair tied with a pink ribbon. This last he touched with the tip of his finger, wondering. “Good morning.” He turned to find her sitting against the headboard, the sheet pulled up to cover her breasts. Her cheeks were flushed with sleep. “Mornin’,” he murmured, only half-ashamed to have been caught looking at her things. “Do you need to get to the diner?” “Pea opens on Tuesdays.” She brushed a pale tangle of hair out of her eyes and smiled an invitation at him, and he found himself wanting her again. Wanting nothing more than to crawl back into her bed and pretend he belonged there. It was wasteful and pointless, really, the way he desired only the things he knew he shouldn’t have. He shook his head. “We need to talk.” She lifted her chin and let the sheet slip a few inches. “Really? That’s what you want to do? Talk?” “Hush now, and listen.” Her smile faded. “Are you always this bossy first thing in the morning?” He eased himself down on the edge of the bed, all at once aware of the weight of his bones, like leaden rods beneath his skin. She reached out her hand to him and he took it without thinking, letting her tug him forward till they met in a kiss. Her lips parted under his, warm and soft and willing, and it was all he could do not to follow her down into the nest of heated, rumpled sheets. He took her by the shoulders and held her away. “Hear me out, Delia.”

Selah March

“I’m listening.” Her tone was more resigned than annoyed. “It’s about my cousin, Luther. You remember him?” “Of course I do.” “He’s back in Harlan. I saw him last night and he—” Boone paused, wanting to choose his words carefully. “Well, let’s just say he expressed an interest in you.” “What do you mean?” “It’s possible he might ask you out on a date.” Delia sighed and swung her bare legs over the other side of the bed. “I doubt it.” “Why?” “Because he already did that eight years ago.” She reached down and retrieved her nightgown from the floor. “He took me to the movies. Acted like a perfect gentleman, to tell the truth. Paid for everything, never touched me once except for a very respectful kiss on the cheek at my front door.” Boone felt a possessive kind of rage rise up from his gut. He pushed it back down and addressed the issue at hand. “For God’s sake, Delia, why would you go anywhere near him? Don’t you know what he is?” “He’s your cousin.” She pulled the nightgown over her head and looked at Boone over her shoulder. “At the time, that was good enough for me.” “Delia—” “It was only twice, Boone.” “Where’d you go the second time?” “He brought me to Sunday dinner at his folks’.” Boone laughed. “You’re kidding.” “I don’t remember it as being particularly funny.” She rose from the bed and smoothed the nightgown with both hands in a gesture that even Boone, in his distracted state, knew to be self-conscious. “I thought your Uncle Caleb was gonna shoot us both right there at the table. He dragged Luther off to the back of the house and commenced to call him a lot of filthy names.” Boone nodded. “That sounds about right.” “Your Aunt Patty stood at the stove and stared at me like I had six heads or something. After a while, I excused myself and started to walk home. Luther picked me up about halfway down the road, but he wouldn’t talk to me or even look at me.” “And after that?” “He went to prison a few months later. I haven’t seen him since.” Boone rubbed at his eye with the heel of his hand. “I’ve got reason to believe he’s going to approach you again.” Delia shrugged. “He won’t get very far.”

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“Just the same, I want you to be on your guard.” He reached for the boots he’d left by the side of the bed and slipped them on, yanking on the laces like they’d called his mama something nasty. “In fact, if I were you, I’d consider getting out of Harlan altogether. This is no kind of life for a woman like you.” “What do you know about me or my life, Boone?” He looked up and discovered the sleepy, pink-cheeked girl was gone, replaced by a woman with her defenses up and fully engaged. “There’s nice folks in Harlan, too. It’s not all crystal meth labs and domestic violence, you know.” “Is that so?” “Don’t you patronize me, Boone Butler.” She came around the bed to stand in front of him, temper snapping like blue lightning in her eyes. “There’s folks in Harlan who serve on the school board, and teach Sunday school, and hike to the top of Black Mountain to raise money for charity. Folks who’ve never harmed another soul in their lives, and wouldn’t know a meth pipe if it jumped up and bit ’em.” “I’m sure that’s true, Delia.” “Are you, Boone? Because it sounds to me like you’ve written us off, the whole bunch of us.” She brushed past him to grab her robe from the hook on the back of the door. “Are things really so much better out there in the big world? Because I watch the evening news, and it doesn’t seem that way to me.” He offered his next words in the most non-threatening tone of voice he could muster. “I’ve found places I like a whole lot better than Harlan.” She turned to him, her anger replaced by a sad smile. “And yet here you are.” He waited for her to ask him why, as she had the night before. But she only stretched up on tiptoe and kissed him, fleeting as a late spring hailstorm and just as potentially damaging. When she moved away, the scent of roses lingered. “We’re not done talking about this, Delia. This thing with Luther could get ugly.” “You come by the diner and I’ll fix you some okra,” she called over her shoulder as she disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later, the shower switched on. He left without saying goodbye. It was the right thing to do—to make himself scarce before he gave in to the urge to corner her under the hot, wet spray and make her see his point of view. When he got to his truck, he looked back at the house and thought about that night twelve years ago. “Wait for me,” he’d told her. At the time, he wasn’t even sure what he meant by it. Wait for how long? Till Monday morning, when they’d see each other in homeroom? “Wait for me,” he said, and she answered, “I will,” and gave him the ribbon from her hair. He stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans and, in the godforsaken mess that followed, forgot all about it. Weeks later, he found the jeans folded at the bottom of a cardboard box in a corner of their new apartment in Memphis. He searched the pockets twice, but Delia’s cornflower ribbon was gone. When he asked his mother about it, she told him she’d thrown it away.

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Selah March

“You can’t look back, son,” she said. “Not if you want to survive. You can only look forward.” And ain’t that the truth. But the taste of regret was like burnt sugar on the back of Boone’s tongue as he climbed into his truck and went to meet his cousin.

Luther wasn’t at the hunting camp. The fire pit was filled with cold ashes, and the front door of the shack stood halfway open, as if someone had left in a hurry. Boone wandered around the property and let his mind wander with him. He finally came to rest beneath the spreading branches of a sycamore. From here he could see the ridge on the opposite side of the creek where he and his brother, Gilley, had erected a lean-to as a shelter from the weather and from their father’s unpredictable rages. Ephraim Butler’s fury had been an awesome thing—even by Butler standards—and it had been at its worst in the winter, when the days were short and dark and damp. Too many nights Boone and Gilley had spent hiding there, with their bedrolls and brown paper sacks packed with sandwiches and a thermos full of hot cider between them. When it was too cold to sleep, Gilley would tell stories about the exploits of distant ancestor Daniel Boone and how he planned to grow up to be just like him. That was before Gilley began to change. Before he dropped out of school and started slipping around in shadowy corners of town, with money in his pockets he couldn’t account for, and friends their mama didn’t like. The growl of an approaching vehicle broke Boone’s reverie. He watched as an unfamiliar SUV sporting a rack of badly preserved deer antlers as a hood ornament crested the hill and parked ten feet from the fire pit. Boone stepped from behind the tree in time to see Manny Sims slam the door of the vehicle and head toward the shack. Without thinking, Boone called out a greeting. Sims turned and pulled a handgun from beneath his jacket. At the sight of Boone, he lowered the gun, but didn’t put it away. “If you’re lookin’ for Luther, he ain’t here,” he said, with a matter-of-fact kind of hostility. Boone took a few steps closer, his hands lifted in front of him to show he wasn’t a threat. “I see that. Mind telling me where he went?” Sims shrugged. “Payin’ his respects at some boneyard.” Boone nodded. “Thanks.” The old Butler cemetery. Has to be. He turned his back and walked to his truck, part of him expecting to take a bullet between the shoulder blades at any second. But Sims only stood and watched him go, his hand on his gun and his face a study in mindless hatred.

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Ain’t No Sunshine

Four miles farther up the mountain, where the creek narrowed to little more than a trickle, Boone parked his truck on rocky ground. He hiked the rest of the way to the rusted barbwire fence that marked the family burial plot. He remembered this place well from the hours he’d spent playing here while his mother and aunt tended the graves. The air felt heavy and smelled of wet earth, and the gravestones poked from the brown grass like broken teeth, just as they did when he was a kid. The last time Boone had visited this place, he’d held his little sister’s hand and watched as his father’s casket was lowered into the ground. I don’t know why I’m here. But that was a lie he’d been telling himself since he crossed the county line. He knew damned well he was here because he wasn’t like his daddy or his brother. Because he was a man who followed through on his obligations. He wasn’t sure when Delia Concannon had risen to the top of that list, but his gut told him she belonged there, at least for the time being. He slipped into the cemetery through a broken place in the fence and spied Luther standing maybe thirty yards away, staring at the monument erected to their great-grandfather’s younger brother. “Manny tell you I was up here?” Luther asked when Boone reached his side. “He sure did.” Boone glanced back the way he’d come, half-expecting to see that Sims had followed him. “Manny’s a good friend of yours, is he?” Luther laughed and spit into the dirt. “That low-down triflin’ dog? No, sir. But he’s useful to a man in my circumstances, if you know what I mean.” “And what circumstances would those be, Luther?” But his cousin only shook his head and turned again to the large, pockmarked stone before them. “Here lies Benjamin Boone Butler, born July 1, 1917, assassinated by the deputy sheriffs of Harlan County on February 9, 1937.” Luther pulled a flask from the inner pocket of his coat, unscrewed the lid and took a swallow. “Bitch of a way to die, ain’t it? Shot clean through the head at his own supper table for nothin’ more than speakin’ up for the union against the coalmine operators.” Boone could only agree. “That was a bad time, no doubt about it.” “It’s worse now, cousin. They’ll destroy these hills with their timber clearin’ and their strip minin’. You wait and see if they don’t.” Luther tossed back another swallow from his flask and put it away without offering any to Boone. The cool spring breeze blew stronger here, near the top of the mountain. A chill found its way beneath Boone’s jacket and settled into his bones. He looked away from the monument and saw the graves of his own kin who’d died from diseases like tuberculosis and influenza, and accidental drownings, falls and burns, and not a few from gunshot wounds, including a twelve-year-old girl by the name of Lucille Marie Butler, his third cousin twice removed. Gilley’s grave was here, somewhere. Boone didn’t know if his mother had taken the trouble to have a stone made because he’d never bothered to ask.

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Will I be laid to rest here, in this lonely place? Will anyone care enough to put up a stone? The wind picked up, and in it Boone thought he heard the distant cries of the Sorrowful Angel. Maybe she, at least, would mourn him. With a grunt of irritation, he shook off the wave of melancholy and turned to face his cousin. “I want to talk about your plans for Delia Concannon.” Luther looked delighted by the change of subject. “Oh, I’ll be payin’ Delia a visit just as soon as I can. I want to congratulate her on the success she’s made of her life.” His face took on a dreamy expression. “The very last Concannon.” “And then what?” Boone asked him. “You want to take her to the movies again? Maybe Sunday dinner with your mama and daddy, for old times’ sake?” Luther laughed. “Somebody’s been listenin’ to gossip.” “Answer the question.” “Cousin,” Luther said, and laid his hand on Boone’s shoulder, “the Butlers and the Concannons have been feudin’ on and off since the War of Northern Aggression, when the Butlers took up for the blessed Confederacy, and the Concannons chose to march into battle under the Union flag.” “I know the story, Luther.” “Then you know this is a rare chance for me to erase the Concannons from Harlan forever.” Boone knocked his cousin’s hand away roughly. “Erase her? Good Lord, have you lost what passes for your mind?” But Luther only laughed his spooky laugh and shook his wild head. “Now you’re bein’ foolish. I mean I want to marry Delia. Give her the Butler name, give that name to all our children, and end the evil between our families forever.” Boone knew he needed to tread carefully. If he suggested Luther wasn’t good enough for Delia—that no Butler would ever be good enough for Delia—he’d only rile his cousin. “And what if Delia has other ideas?” Luther shrugged. “I’m aware of my shortcomings as a prospective husband, but a man can hope, can’t he?” “So if she turns you down, that’ll be an end to it?” Luther nodded slowly, his eyes wide on Boone’s. “I’ll put an end to it, yes.” “What does that mean, exactly?” “It means I won’t make a pest of myself.” Luther offered him what looked like a genuine smile. “I’ll only ask her once, Boone. I promise you that.” Boone felt a small fraction of the dread he’d been carrying melt away. What more could he ask? Luther had a right to court Delia, and maybe it was better this way—to let his cousin get it out of his system and move on.

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Ain’t No Sunshine

“I don’t know when I’ll be seeing you again,” Boone said, with a sense of regret that surprised him. “I’m leaving Harlan tonight.” Luther embraced him. They parted ways at the broken place in the fence, and Boone started down the mountain. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw his cousin standing near a fallen tree, watching him go. He didn’t look back a second time.

Delia was no fool. She knew men lied to women, especially in bed. But all through the day, she kept hearing the quiet words Boone had murmured the night before—words like “so damned sweet”, and “need you so bad”, and “never want to let you go”. They might’ve been lies, but their memory brought a warm, liquid feeling to her limbs that was one part comfort, nine parts arousal. Common sense told her the effect would fade in a matter of hours, so she indulged herself, knowing full well she’d pay for it later. So maybe I am a fool, after all. “Lord, girl, what did them poor birds ever do to you?” At the sound of Pea’s voice, Delia set aside the meat mallet and surveyed the half-dozen boneless chicken breasts spread out on the cutting board before her. She’d meant to flatten them for deep-frying, but she’d pulverized the pitiful things. Shaking her head, she pushed the cutting board away and moved to the sink to wash her hands. “Bad day?” Pea asked. “Bad life. I expect to come back as a dung beetle in the next one.” “You been a Buddhist a while now, have you?” Delia shrugged. “I believe reincarnation is one possible theory among a whole bunch of other possible theories. I wouldn’t call myself a Buddhist.” “What would you call yourself, then?” Delia turned from the sink and tossed the dishtowel on the counter. “Open-minded.” Pea snorted. “Open-minded enough to let Boone Butler into your bed?” “How in God’s name did you—” Pea lifted a hand to forestall the inevitable question. “He was here askin’ for you yesterday evening.” “And you just assume I slept with him?” Delia asked, her voice a bit more shrill and accusatory than she’d intended. “Or is that the Souder second sight working overtime?” Pea harrumphed, sounding eerily like her granny. “No need for second sight when you’ve got it written all over your face.”

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Selah March

“Do I?” Delia reached for the mirror she kept on a high shelf above the sink. Sure enough, there were dusky circles under her eyes and a tense line between her brows. She wasn’t certain how that added up to spending the night in Boone’s arms, but she wasn’t about to argue the point. “I told him where he could find you.” Pea squinted at her through the thick lenses of her glasses. “Did I do wrong?” “No. It’s high time we put paid to whatever’s between us.” “Oh, is that what you did?” Delia ignored the skeptical note in Pea’s tone. “I can only speak for myself, but Boone must’ve wanted something pretty bad to show up at my house twice in twenty-four hours. Maybe now that he’s had it, he’ll move on.” “Twice?” Delia nodded. “Somebody in a pickup truck stopped outside the house at around three yesterday morning and sat there a while.” “And you’re sure it was Boone?” “Who else would it be?” Pea stared at her a long moment. Delia could tell something was bothering her friend, but when Pea turned away with a shrug, she didn’t push the issue. Of course it had been Boone sitting outside her house in his truck, because no matter what Luther might’ve said, a man fresh out of prison had better things to occupy his attention than some random girl he’d dated years before with bad results. And besides, men talked a lot of nonsense when no women were around to check them. It didn’t mean anything. But now the warm buzz of afterglow had been replaced by a hollow feeling in the pit of Delia’s belly and an itchy sort of tingle running along the surface of her skin—the kind of thing her granddad used to call the “creepin’ megrims”. When five o’clock rolled around and it was time to leave the diner to work her weekly shift at the soup kitchen down the street, she found herself standing at the back door, surveying the parking lot and wondering if she’d remembered to lock her car that morning. Don’t be an idiot. Luther Butler hasn’t any interest in you, and so what if he did? You know how to politely decline an invitation. She lifted her chin and walked deliberately across the gravel lot, and if the distant sound of a train whistle made her think of the Sorrowful Angel and shiver, nobody knew it but her.

The sun was a red ball suspended above the western hills when Boone walked into the diner looking for Delia.

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Ain’t No Sunshine

“She ain’t here,” Pea told him, and Boone wondered if he appeared particularly stupid today, what with everyone telling him things he could see with his own damned eyes. “Where’s she gone to?” he asked, and didn’t bother to be polite in his tone. “Like I’d tell you.” “Then give me her cell number.” “She only uses it for emergencies. Never turns it on otherwise, since you can’t hardly get a signal outside of town.” She smiled at him. “Guess you’re outta luck, soldier-boy.” “Listen, Pea—” “No, you listen.” All at once, Pea’s eyes blazed behind her glasses. “Whatever you want with Delia won’t do neither of you a bit of good. You’re nothin’ but trouble to her, Boone. Why don’t you see that?” “I do see it. That’s why I aim to tell her goodbye and get the hell out of Harlan.” “I’m glad to hear it, but you don’t need to see her. I’ll say it for you.” Boone shook his head. “I need to tell her a few other things before I go.” Pea stared at him like he was a puzzle she was trying to solve—taking him apart and putting him back together, trying different configurations to make the pieces fit. “How can I trust you’ll really go? Harlan’s a tar-baby, and better folks than you have got themselves stuck before today.” “I found my way out of Harlan once. I can do it again.” Pea laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “That’s like sayin’ you ain’t gonna drown ’cause you can see the beach from here.” “What’s your point, Pea?” To his surprise, she stripped off her apron and came around the counter to sit on a stool and face him. “Be careful, Boone, that’s all I’m sayin’. For your own sake as well as Delia’s.” He understood. Nobody who’d grown up in Harlan could mistake her meaning. “Tell Delia to meet me at the steakhouse on Highway 421. Will you do that for me, Pea?” “I don’t know.” He drew a deep breath and made one last effort to convince her. “I know I’ve never been good enough for Delia—” Pea snorted. “—but I’m a better man than you and most everybody else in this godforsaken county ever gave me credit for.” “What’s your point, Boone?” she asked, mimicking him. He shrugged. “Folks from all over the country hire me to keep ’em safe. They trust me with their lives and the lives of their families. Just once, I’d like to get the benefit of the doubt from my own people.” For an instant, Pea’s expression softened. “I expect it wasn’t easy growin’ up your daddy’s son.” “No, ma’am, it surely was not.”

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Selah March

“And I guess maybe you do deserve a chance.” “I don’t need one. I only want to say goodbye, and then I’ll be gone for good.” Pea eyed him for another few seconds. “Well, all right. I’ll give Delia the message. But I swear on my babies’ eyes, Boone Butler, if you make a third visit to the Concannon homestead—” “Let me guess…you’ll serve up my balls with biscuits and red-eye gravy?” “If you’re lucky.” He stepped onto the sidewalk and felt a chill in the air that hadn’t been there thirty minutes before. As he walked to his truck, he was struck by Pea’s last words to him. A third visit? He glanced back at the diner, then checked his watch. There was just enough time to drive out to his motel, shower, and pack before the eight o’clock dinner reservation. He gave a final, puzzled glance at the diner’s front door, which now boasted a Sorry, We’re Closed sign. Then he flipped up the collar of his jacket and stuck his cold hands into his pockets. When he reached his truck, he turned the heat up high.

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Chapter Five

By the time Boone reached the restaurant, the clouds obscuring the moonrise were four different shades of sooty gray and moving like they had a train to catch. He stood outside the front door and waited, refusing to check his watch again. She’d either come, or she’d stay away. He sure as hell wouldn’t give her more than forty-five minutes to show. An hour, tops. He heard the tap-tap-tap of her heels before he saw her. When she turned the corner from the parking lot, his first impression was a swirl of blue and gold. She came toward him in a dress the color of a clear April sky, her hair down around her shoulders and a smile on her face. She had the look of a woman who knew exactly where her next meal was coming from—mostly because she’d earned the money to buy it herself—and she wore that look well. He wanted to reach out and run his fingertips over the curve of her cheek, to thumb the hollow of her throat and wake the scent of roses. To breathe her in like the pure, clean air of the mountaintop. He wanted a lot of things, each more impossible than the next. Instead, he drawled, “Evenin’, Miss Concannon.” Delia grinned at him. “And a good evening to you, Mr. Butler.” As they were seated at their table, he found himself glad Harlan was a dry county and he couldn’t buy the drink he craved. Liquor would only make him more susceptible to the way she was gazing at him—like he’d hung each individual star in the sky just for her. They ordered their meals, and then Boone did his best to keep the conversation going, asking her about her business and improvements she’d made to the house. He was on the ragged edge of bringing up the imminent change in the weather when she stopped him with one warm hand on his. “Why are we here, Boone?” God damn, but he was getting sick of variations on that question. “I told you this morning we weren’t done talking.” She blinked at him. “So this is about Luther?” He nodded. “I spoke to him again this morning.” “And?” She took a sip from her water glass. “And he’s probably going to ask you to marry him sometime in the near future.”

Selah March

An instant later, Boone was on his feet, pounding Delia’s back as she choked and sputtered. When she’d regained her composure, he sat down and took a big swallow from his own glass. “Like I was saying, Luther’s got it in his head that he wants to marry you. I thought you should know.” Delia stared at him. “You thought I should know.” “Yeah.” Boone shifted in his seat, her scrutiny making him uncomfortable. “And that’s the reason you asked me here?” “I also wanted to say goodbye. I’m leaving Harlan tonight.” The waiter arrived with their salads, which gave Boone an excuse to turn away from the hurt blooming in her eyes. When he glanced at her again, she’d shuttered her feelings behind a bland smile. “I’m sorry to hear it,” she said and picked up the pepper grinder. Boone watched her make a show of fixing her salad to her liking, but he noticed she left the first bite on her fork at the edge of the plate. Finally, she lifted her eyes to his. “I know how you feel about Harlan. And you’re right. It’s a long way from perfect.” “You can say that again.” She inclined her head. “You ever been to a perfect place, Boone? Do you even know what perfect looks like?” Her choking had caused her mascara to smudge, and her lipstick was nothing more than a memory, but he meant it when he said, “I’m looking at it now.” She blushed, and bit her lip. At that moment, he would’ve sworn she was seventeen. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet but steady. “I’m kind of attached to this place. Folks here were kind to me when I needed it.” “You mean after your daddy died?” She nodded. “And later, too, when things got…hard.” His mind went to the lock of brown hair tied with the pink ribbon he’d seen on her dresser. Delia touched his hand again. “All in all, I expect the past twelve years have been pretty tough on both of us.” He tried not to laugh at the understatement. His father had always told him the world would gladly kill him if he let it. He’d said a man couldn’t be weak, not even for a second, because the world would take that weakness and use it against him, deadly as any sawed-off shotgun. And though Boone hadn’t believed it—had wanted to think the world outside Harlan was a better, kinder place—it had turned out to be true, and a month after leaving Harlan, he’d discovered that a GED wouldn’t get him a job that even came close to supporting his mother and sister the way they deserved. So he found himself standing in a recruitment office, signing up to use his skill and familiarity with firearms on strangers somewhere on the other side of the world, where it truly was kill-orbe-killed.

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Ain’t No Sunshine

There was a long pause during which the waiter appeared again to remove their uneaten salads and set steaming plates of red meat and roasted potatoes in front of them. When the waiter left, Delia sighed and broke the silence. “You know, when Pea gave me your message, I thought…” She fiddled with her napkin and didn’t meet Boone’s eyes. “What?” She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, as if she’d made up her mind about something important. “Boone, there are some things you know, right down deep inside. You can run from them all you want, but they’ll always catch up to you.” “And what is it you know, Delia?” “I know you and me, and I know we’re meant to be together.” When he tried to interrupt, she held up a hand. “Doesn’t mean we will be, just that we’re supposed to be. Lots of things that are supposed to be don’t turn out right. But I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you. And I thought you should know.” He didn’t say anything for several long seconds, mostly because everything he considered sounded stupid even inside his own head. Finally, he came up with, “Like I said, I’m leaving Harlan tonight. I think you should go, too, as soon as you can. I hear the diner’s doing well. You could probably sell it without too much trouble. The house might be harder to unload, but if you price it right…” He let the words fade away, knowing in every cell of his body he’d said exactly the wrong thing. Delia was watching him with narrowed eyes. “I don’t suppose you’re suggesting that I follow you to wherever you’re going? Atlanta, isn’t it?” “That’s a temporary job. In a few months, I’ll be somewhere else. That’s no kind of life for you. And besides—” “There’s more?” Her voice rose, and the people at the next table stopped talking. “How many reasons have you got for rejecting me, Boone? Other than your being a coward, I mean.” The last person to call Boone a coward and get away with it had been his drill sergeant, but he could only stare at Delia—at the way her temper made her face glow and her eyes flash. She tossed her napkin on the table and reached for her purse. “So you think I should pack up, leave my life behind, and go off by myself, is that it?” “You could build another kind of life. A better one. It could be a second chance for you.” She laughed. “I don’t believe in second chances.” “Since when?” “Since about a minute ago, when I told you I loved you and you looked at me like you’d never seen me before.” She stood and brushed breadcrumbs from her dress. “Where’re you going?” “Back to the Holler where I belong.”

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39

Selah March

“Delia—” “No, Boone. You don’t get to tell me my whole life is worthless and expect me to thank you for it.” She drew a long breath and let it out. “What I said is the truth. I love you—I’ve always loved you. But I’m done waiting for you to find your way home.” Boone knew despair when he saw it. Sometimes it looked like a little kid with a dirty face and hungry eyes, and sometimes it looked like blood soaking into dust, and sometimes it looked like another gray, empty morning in a long line of gray, empty mornings. But he knew it, and this—this look on her face, this way of carrying herself as she turned and left him sitting there, as if she were moving toward something with a purpose and not just trying to outrun the pointless grind of living? This wasn’t it. If anyone could survive Harlan, it was Delia Concannon. He’d been a fool to think otherwise. And if she was the only light he’d ever known, and if he lived the rest of his days in the dark without her? Well, that’s my problem, ain’t it? He tossed a handful of bills on the table and walked out into the night.

Delia waited till she was sitting in her own driveway before she let the tears fall. Idiot. Should’ve listened to Pea. Her friend had done everything but get down on her knees and beg Delia not to meet Boone again. Pea’s face had been pinched and pale, and her eyes big and spooky behind her glasses when she said she had a “bad feeling” about tonight. But Delia brushed aside her premonition, as hopeful and excited as a girl on her way to prom, thinking maybe…just maybe… And now she had no one to blame but herself for the fresh and possibly fatal wound to her heart, because even Boone had warned her. He’d said he was just passing through, but she hadn’t paid him any mind. She’d been greedy, asking for more than she had coming—fishing for sunshine in a rain barrel, as her granddad used to say. And that never led anywhere good. No more sunshine for me. Should’ve listened to Granny Souder when she said unrequited love’s nothing but a poison. She switched off the engine and let the night drift in through the open window. The cicadas were silent, and no fireflies flickered beyond the glow cast by the lamppost at the foot of the walk, but the breeze had blown itself into a wind that moaned and whistled through the treetops, and the air was thick in a way that portended rain. She closed her eyes and breathed in the Appalachian springtime, and with the familiar scent came all the old memories—specifically, a clear recollection of a night too much like this one. A night during which she’d lost both her father and the only man she’d ever love. Maybe Boone’s right. Maybe I should leave all this hurt behind me.

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Ain’t No Sunshine

But what good would it do? No matter where she went, she’d still be Delia Concannon, daughter of Jeremiah, secret lover of Daniel Boone Butler. Maybe Boone could make himself forget, or turn himself into someone else, but she never would. She had neither the strength nor the desire for such total transformation. She pushed open the car door, set her high-heeled sandals on the gravel driveway and began the short walk to the house. It was only then she realized she wasn’t alone. “Evenin’, Delia.” Luther smiled at her, and the glow from the lamppost glinted off his teeth. “Hello, Luther. Boone said you might be dropping by.” “Did he, now?” He moved toward her, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she made out the shape of a second, shorter man behind him. “And did my cousin happen to say why I’d be payin’ you a visit?” “He said you were planning to ask me to marry you.” “That’s right.” Luther’s smile widened till it seemed to swallow his whole face, and Delia understood that he wasn’t even a little bit sane. “Shall I get down on my knees?” Luther’s companion had begun to circle around them, and she knew she had only seconds to retreat to her car. She swallowed her fear and took a step backward, and then another. “No sense in getting your jeans dirty, Luther. I think you know I can’t marry you.” Another step backward, and she could nearly touch the front fender. Luther’s smile never faltered. “Can’t, or won’t?” “Won’t,” she said, trying for confident and clear, but her voice wavered on the word. Then her heel struck a stone, and her ankle turned, and the short, thick man was behind her. He grabbed her upper arms, squeezing so tight she knew she’d have bruises come morning—assuming she lived that long. Luther loomed over her. His smile was gone. “I promised Boone I’d only ask once, and I’m not a man who breaks his word.” He shifted his gaze to the man who held her. “Put her in the truck, Manny.”

She thought about fighting—about using those treacherous heels as weapons, about scratching and biting and spitting till they had to let her go or risk losing an eye. But something told her it would be useless. This was how her story ended, at the hands of yet another Butler. It felt fated, somehow, and she couldn’t find it in herself to be surprised. Still, as she was led to the truck that idled a quarter-mile down the Holler road, she sent up a prayer to whomever might be listening. Over the rising wind came the answering wail of the Sorrowful Angel.

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41

Selah March

Boone drove south out of Harlan like he was outrunning the shock wave of a nuclear blast. He crossed the Tennessee state line doing ninety, his hands cold as blocks of ice on the wheel. No matter how he fiddled with the heater, he couldn’t seem to get warm. The weather finally broke, and when he paused for gas at a rest stop, the rain rolled under his collar and down his back in icy rivers. As he walked back to his truck, he was struck by the memory of lying warm and content in Delia’s bed, feeling better than he had in years. Maybe ever. He forced himself to think forward-moving thoughts. I got a month before that job in Atlanta. Could drive to California and back in that time. Or he could go to Vegas. Back to where he was before he heard the voice of the Sorrowful Angel. Or maybe New Orleans, where he could lose himself in some of the finest liquor and female companionship he’d ever known. But these forward-moving thoughts left his mouth tasting like ashes, so he gave them up and tried to concentrate on the slick unspooling of blacktop before him. He was an hour out of Kentucky when the Angel’s cries broke through the static on the radio. He made himself ignore the sound, but it only grew louder the faster he drove, till his ears rang with it and his belly was full of a lead-shot weight he recognized as foreboding. He switched off the radio, pulled over, and watched the string of taillights fade into the watery darkness, wishing the rain would stop battering the roof of the truck so he could think. I don’t believe in omens, or curses, or fate. I sure as hell don’t believe in ghostly visitations, or warnings from beyond the grave. But denial only went so far when he’d been cold to his bones for more than twelve hours. When the taste of grave-dirt he carried in his mouth wasn’t washed away by the strongest coffee, and the damp air in the cab of his truck had taken on the metallic scent of blood. Truth be told, whether he believed in them or not, he’d been running from ghosts all his life. The next exit was another fifteen miles down the road, so Boone made a rough U-turn over the median and headed back the way he’d come. When he switched on the radio a half-hour later, the Angel’s voice had faded into static once again. He could only pray her silence didn’t mean he was too late.

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Chapter Six

The roof of the one-room shack at the Butler hunting camp was as leaky as an overtired toddler, and particularly weak over the spot where Delia sat, which meant her dress was soaked through not ten minutes after the rain began. Luther didn’t seem to notice, busy as he was staring out the cracked window near the front door. He seemed to be waiting for something, or maybe someone. Delia tried not to let her teeth chatter, lest she call attention to herself. Not that she thought for a moment it would make a difference, because Luther was going to kill her either way. He’d already shown her the knife. “I’ll make it quick,” he’d said after his buddy—the one he called “Manny”—had used the big roll of silver tape to secure her to the splintery old chair. “Don’t want you to suffer none. That ain’t what this is about.” “Then what’s it about, Luther? Why are you doing this?” He hadn’t answered her. Instead, his eyes had got a funny, dreamy look to them, and he’d wandered away to the window. Now they were alone, as Manny had left and not come back. Delia’s limbs were going numb with cold and lack of circulation. As a distraction from the fear crackling like a live wire in the pit of her stomach, she glanced around the shack. The light from the single kerosene lamp threw distorted shapes against the walls. Aside from the window at the front where Luther was posted, there were two others at the back, both showing nothing but blackness and rain through their broken panes. Between them stood a second door, barred from the inside. Why a building of this size needed two exits she could only guess, and all her guesses added up to the illicit activities for which the Butler clan was famous. As a child, she’d learned from her father to associate the words “Butler” and “lowlife scum”. With the exception of Boone, she’d never met a member of that family who’d given her cause to doubt the accuracy of her daddy’s opinion. There was a desperate, miserable air to this place that unsettled her, running deeper than the filthy, broken-down furnishings, and colder than the air slipping in through the cracks in the walls. Bad things had happened here, and her death would just add to the layers of darkness, one shadow on top of many. “Drink this,” Luther said, and Delia jumped, startled by his sudden nearness. He held a battered flask in his hand. Before she could protest, he lifted it to her lips and forced her to drink. The whiskey went down like turpentine, sharp and sour. It made her eyes water.

Selah March

Up close, Luther looked skeletal, with concave cheeks and sunken eyes. “I bet you’re wonderin’ why I brought you up here when I could’ve done the job on your own front porch.” Delia coughed and twisted her head to wipe her mouth on her shoulder. “I guess you’ve got your reasons.” Luther chuckled. “I do, indeed. This here is the place where my cousin Gilley and I met to plan the murder of your father.” While Luther wasn’t looking, she’d been working at the tape binding her wrists to the sides of the chair. After all, it was one thing to accept what trouble was coming to her—what the Angel had been wailing about these last few weeks—and another to lie down and give in to Luther’s special brand of loony. Her right hand and forearm, in particular, were strong from wielding knives and spatulas and meat mallets, and there was no good reason not to try. She’d managed to work a fraction of an inch between her wrist and the chair, and was holding tight to the faint hope of escape under her own power. At Luther’s words, a shot of pure fury fueled her determination to get free. She quelled the urge to spit in his face, and schooled her expression into wide-eyed blankness. “Let’s not talk about that now.” “Well, what d’you want to talk about? I’m open to suggestions.” He lifted the flask to her mouth again. This time the whiskey had more of a pleasing burn going down. It splashed into her empty stomach and warmed her from the inside out, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before she’d be too drunk to struggle against her fate. Probably exactly what he has in mind. “Why don’t you tell me about your family, Luther? I don’t know much about the Butlers as a whole.” It was true enough, as far as it went. After Boone had left Harlan the first time, she’d done what she could to piece the complicated family relationships—the Butler cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews scattered through the hills as far west as Corbin and well into the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. But they were a secretive clan, inclined to birth and educate their children at home, and die with little fuss in their own beds—with the exception of those who died at the wrong end of a gun—so she hadn’t got far in her research. “My family? Don’t you mean Boone’s family?” Luther’s smile had grown sharp, and he was watching her with knowing eyes. “You think I don’t know about you and Boone? About how he wasn’t back in Harlan twenty-four hours before you took him into your bed?” She hadn’t thought she could get any colder, but his words sent a chill over her skin. He was spying on us? Maybe watching through the kitchen window while we… Luther kept on talking. “But that don’t matter a lick now, does it? Because tonight it’s you and me, and the devil makes three.” He hooted with laughter and took a deep slug from the flask. “You wanna know about my family? Well, Caleb Butler was my daddy, and Ephraim Butler was his brother, and two more different men you couldn’t hope to find.”

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He paced back and forth before the front window as he talked, sipping whiskey and looking out at what he could see in the darkness. “My daddy was jealous somethin’ fierce of his little brother, did you know that? Hated him for havin’ a prettier wife, a better head for business, and most of all for havin’ two fine sons who didn’t shame him.” Delia wondered what she was expected to say to that bit of information, but Luther rambled on, seeming not to need her acknowledgment. She began to work at freeing herself once more. “My daddy called me ugly and stupid every day of my life, did you know that? Used to whup the tar outta me just for lettin’ my hair fall in my face or leavin’ my shoelaces untied. Made me kneel barelegged on a pile of coarse salt till I bled, or sit naked under the pump in the winter till I about turned blue. Said it was s’posed to make me strong, like Gilley and Boone.” Luther looked at her over his shoulder. The lamplight caught on the tears in his eyes. “But it never did.” Delia stilled her efforts. “That’s an awful thing. No child should ever have to live that way,” she said, and she meant it. “Why didn’t your mother stop him?” Luther’s face twisted. “You met my mama. She ain’t what you’d call a loving woman.” “I’m so sorry, Luther.” She had no better answer. It grew quiet in the shack, with only the sound of the rain pounding the roof to break the silence. Luther had turned back to the window. One hand held the flask, the other gripped his knife. Delia continued to worry at her restraints, rotating her wrists against the tape and feeling friction burns begin to form. Then, from the corner of her eye, she caught movement at one of the back windows. Her heart skipped a beat and thudded forward, and it took all she had not to cry out when Boone’s face appeared in the square of a missing pane. He lifted his finger to his lips, then pointed at Luther, crooked his finger, and pointed at her. Delia nodded once. She waited till Boone was gone from the window and cleared her throat. “Luther?” “Yeah?” “It doesn’t have to be this way,” she said, her voice sounding squeaky and girlish in her ears. “You could let me go, and we could get to know each other better—maybe see another movie, or go out to dinner?” He turned his head. “That’s mighty generous of you, Delia, but there’s no point. You already said you won’t marry me.” “But—” “Hush.” His dead-eyed stare cut her off, but she rallied, knowing her life—and likely Boone’s as well— depended on her providing a distraction. “I’m cold, Luther.”

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That brought him away from the window. A second later, he’d set the knife on the nearby table, removed his jacket, and slung it around her shoulders. It stank of tobacco and alcohol, but she was grateful for the warmth as well as the cover it provided for her attempts to escape her bonds. Before he turned away again she said, “Is there anything you want to ask me?” He looked at her like she was the one who was certifiably crazy. “Huh?” “You told me about your mama and daddy. I was wondering if there’s anything you’d like to know about me.” He stared at her through narrowed eyes. Abruptly, he said, “Why’d you come back to Harlan after your baby died?” She rocked in the chair as if he’d slapped her. “How…how did you hear about that?” “I had a few visitors in prison. You know how it is. People talk.” “People talk too damn much about too damn little,” Delia told him, all too aware of both the bitterness in her voice and the fact that Boone could probably hear every word of their conversation. “So they do, but now it’s just you and me, Delia, and I won’t be spreadin’ no tales.” There was something in his tone that made her wonder what he meant, but now was not the time to puzzle out the mysteries of Luther Butler’s mind. “You want to know why I came back to Harlan?” He nodded, his eyes avid on her face. “I came back because when all you’ve got in the world is sunk deep in the ground,” she said, thinking of her father, and her grandfather, and the baby girl she’d buried in a plot between the two, “you find it awful hard to abandon that particular patch of earth.” The soft, distant sound of a woman’s sobs rose over the falling rain. Delia glanced upward, and Luther followed her gaze with his own, as if he could hear the Angel’s cries too. He opened his mouth to speak, and was interrupted by a shout from outside the shack. Luther turned and made for the window. Now Delia saw the gun tucked into the back of his jeans. She pulled against the grip of the tape on her wrists and felt it give a tiny bit. Her eyes strayed to the knife Luther had left lying on the table. To hell with fate. She’d survive this night if she possibly could and live to tell the Sorrowful Angel what she could do with her feeble warnings.

Boone struggled to his feet, cursing himself for an idiot. He’d been so blindsided by the talk of Delia’s dead child he hadn’t paid proper attention to his surroundings. He should’ve known Luther would have backup around the camp. The blow Manny Sims had struck to his face had done more harm to his pride, but he didn’t have time to waste with second-string players in the rain and the mud.

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Manny snorted like a bull and came at him again. This time, Boone was ready. He dodged the clumsy roundhouse punch, all the time wondering why Manny didn’t use the handgun stuck in his belt. Then he heard Luther’s voice from the window of the shack. “Boone! Get your sorry ass in here, boy. We’re fixin’ to have a party in your honor.” That’s when he understood this was all part of the game. Somehow, Luther had known he’d return for Delia. Maybe this had been the plan all along. Manny started toward him once more, heaving like he was six inches short of a heart attack. “Move, Butler. Inside,” he grunted, plainly too winded to say more. Boone dragged his feet and waited for the inevitable. Sure enough, Manny slugged him again, his fat fist colliding with Boone’s shoulder at just the right angle to make Boone’s left arm go numb to the fingertips. Boone counted to three, reared back, and clocked Manny upside the head. The other man dropped like a sack of cement. Boone made short work of removing the weapon from his unconscious body. “Luther?” he called in the direction of the shack. “C’mon out here and let’s talk about this, man to man.” “No, I don’t think so, Boone.” “Luther, there’s no need to involve Delia in this. You let her go, and then you and me will have us a talk.” “No can do, cousin. Now I suggest you get in here before I lose my temper. No tellin’ what might happen then.” Boone saw Luther’s shadow move against the window, and knew he could squeeze off a shot that would catch his cousin dead center in his heart. The stingy slant of the lamplight through the dirty glass was just enough to make it possible. But he didn’t want to kill Luther, or even maim him if he could help it. He’d already seen too much death and suffering in this life—a life that had been, to this point, an endless stretch of brown nothingness punctuated by one or two bright spots and more than his fair share of tragedy. A dead-end road lined with the burned-out husks of abandoned cars under an empty gray sky. He had a feeling this was his lot, his fated path. Doesn’t mean I can’t fight the odds. He tucked the gun out of sight beneath his jacket, walked to the shack and knocked. The door swung open, and he was treated to the sight of Delia duct-taped to a chair in the center of the shadowy room. The mind is a strange and miraculous thing, with its ability to store what seem like insignificant memories and retrieve them on the basis of a single, tiny trigger. The sight of Delia seated in that chair, with her damp hair hanging down her back, reminded Boone of the first time he’d ever seen her. They’d been in homeroom on the opening day of high school. Boone had never attended public school before, and he recalled being nervous, but too proud to show it. When he walked into the classroom, Delia

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was sitting in the front row. A beam of sunlight from a nearby window illuminated her hair and skin, and Boone stopped and stared at her, sure he couldn’t be seeing what he thought he was seeing—an angel dropped down from heaven in the middle of Harlan High. Now the lamplight gave her that same, otherworldly glow. And though she was older, and her dress was dirty and soaked through with rain under Luther’s jacket, and her face was pinched with fear as she looked at him, he could see that same girl before him like he was fifteen again. He’d loved her then. He loved her now. And in spite of his best efforts to deny it, he knew he always would. He let his gaze take in the rest of the room. He saw the knife on the table, within Delia’s reach, if only her hands weren’t bound to the chair. He saw how the back exit was barred, and knew it wouldn’t be easy to clear it with any speed. All of this took just a few seconds, and when he turned to face his cousin Boone knew what he had to do. “Why are we here, Luther?” Luther laughed, high and free, the way he used to when they were kids. “I think you know, Boone. It’s time to pay the piper.” Luther’s gun was trained on Boone, but he kept sneaking glances at Delia, as if he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Boone didn’t blame him. “And what, exactly, are we paying for?” he asked, and watched as Luther’s expression darkened. “Aren’t we all sinners in the eyes of God, Boone? Isn’t that what the preacher told us when we were kids?” Boone nodded. “That’s true, but I was wondering if there was something specific you had in mind.” Luther shrugged. “I guess maybe we’re here to figure that out.” “All right. But since you mentioned the preacher, I want to ask you something.” Boone moved slowly, his hands lifted before him, edging closer to Luther. “I wanted to ask if you remember the time my mama took us to that baptism down at Millers Pond. It was in the summer, and so hot you could fry an egg on your forehead. You remember that?” “I do, Boone. I think of it often, as a matter of fact. That was a beautiful day.” Luther smiled, and the muzzle of his gun dropped a fraction of an inch. “It surely was.” Boone glanced over his shoulder at Delia. “You know Millers Pond?” She shook her head. “That’s a shame. The Clover Fork Holiness Church used to hold baptisms there all the time. What was the name of that preacher with the real deep voice, Luther? The one we called Reverend Bullfrog?” Luther snorted. “His name was Reverend Price, and don’t think I can’t see what you’re tryin’ to do, Boone, though I commend you for the effort.”

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“I’m not trying to do anything but talk to you, Luther, and make you see reason. Now if you’ll put down that gun—” “Do you think I’m stupid, Boone?” “You know better than that.” “Do I? Because it surely looks to me like you think I’m no smarter than a stump, and got no more feelin’ than one, either.” Luther moved toward Boone till there were just five feet between them. “Looks like you think you’re the only one who’s ever suffered. Looks like you think you’re the only Butler purehearted enough to be haunted by the Sorrowful Angel.” In his surprise, Boone fell back a step. “I…how did you—” “That’s why you’re back in Harlan, ain’t it? Because the Angel called to you, just like it did to Delia?” Boone glanced at Delia. She met his eyes, steady and true, and nodded once. He turned back to Luther. “Yes, I’ve been hearing the Angel. Are you saying you’ve heard her, too?” But Luther was staring at Delia now. “Always so busy lookin’ at Boone, givin’ him all your attention. Never even noticed me, even though I’d been lovin’ you with a true heart for years before his mama let him go to school with us heathens.” Delia appeared downright horrified by this declaration. “You never said a word—not a single one. Not even when we went out those couple of times. How could I have known?” Luther’s laugh sounded like the hoarse sob of an old man. “Don’t make believe it would’ve mattered, darlin’. You’re too close to meetin’ your maker to be tellin’ lies.” His hand shook as he turned the gun on Delia. Boone reached for Manny’s weapon and brought it up level with his cousin’s heart. “I don’t want to shoot you, Luther. Don’t make me do it.” Luther closed his eyes and muttered something too low to hear, but he lowered the gun. “Let me tell you somethin’ else, Boone, so long as we’re sharin’ deep, dark secrets. Your brother Gilley died for nothin’. He shouldn’t ever have been in that prison, ’cause it was me that shot Jeremiah Concannon.” Delia’s gasp seemed to bounce off every wall of the shack. Outside, the wind blew and the rain fell, and over it Boone heard the familiar cries begin again. Luther glanced up at the ceiling and smiled. “There she is. I knew when the time was right, the Sorrowful Angel would come for me.” “Don’t worry about her,” Delia said, her voice clear and her eyes focused like lasers on Luther’s face. “Tell me about how you shot my father.” Luther shrugged. “Gilley was gonna take him out. Said he was ready to spend the rest of his life behind bars to avenge his daddy and the Butler name. He was gonna make the sheriff kneel on the ground and beg for his life—that was the plan, anyway. I was just there for backup.” “Go on,” Delia said. “Finish it. Don’t leave anything out.”

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Luther cut his eyes away from her and swallowed. “It worked pretty much like Gilley wanted till the very end. Your daddy came ’round the corner, and Gilley stepped right up to him, no fear at all, and got him turned so his back was to me.” Boone took a step forward. “Luther, don’t do this.” “You keep quiet,” Delia said, “and let the man tell his story.” Boone started at the rock-hard tone of her voice. When he looked at her, he saw that her face had a funny kind of otherworldly glow, which brightened as the Angel’s cries grew louder. A shiver tightened the skin across his shoulders, and cold sweat broke out along his brow. The air around him tasted bitter and metallic, and crackled with unseen energy. He glanced at his cousin, wanting to know if Luther was experiencing similar symptoms. But Luther was still lost in the past. “You always had everything, Boone, but you never appreciated it none. A decent house to live in, a mama who adored you, and on top of it, like the cherry on a sundae, the sheriff’s daughter sweet on you. But I’d loved her for so long—ever since she was in pigtails, and that’s the honest truth.” Tears had begun to collect in his big, crazy eyes. Boone took a step toward him, but Luther held up a hand to ward him off. “I was mad. Couldn’t have Delia, couldn’t harm you none ’cause my daddy would’ve caved my head in if I had. But I thought if I hurt Delia…” He slid a guilty, sideways glance in her direction. “Two birds with one bullet. So I pulled my weapon, and I took my shot. Concannon went down with the back of his head blowed off.” Boone winced. “Jesus, that’s enough.” But Luther was too far gone to stop. It showed in the tremble of his hands, and the way his face had drained of color. “I remember how Gilley kept askin’ me why I done it, but I didn’t have no good answer ’cept pure cussedness. Finally, when we could hear the sirens, he made me switch guns with him. Said it was one thing for him to go to prison for killin’ the man who did in his daddy, but he’d be damned if he’d see me toss away my life when it was his plan all along.” Boone swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. Yeah, that sounds like Gilley—noble in his own twisted way. “I didn’t even try to talk him out of it,” Luther said. “Just took off runnin’ to get you, Boone. And guess where I found you?” Now the tears were running down Luther’s face in rivers. Boone could hear Delia sobbing behind him. Beyond the walls of the shack, the storm growled and seethed, and above it all the Sorrowful Angel keened. “You know,” Luther said, “I never even went to see Gilley? He confessed to killin’ the sheriff and took the plea they offered him, and I never even thanked him. Never said I was sorry, never asked his forgiveness, neither.”

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“He would’ve forgiven you, Luther,” Boone told him, sure of it right down to his bones. “Gilley loved you like a brother. He proved that, didn’t he?” Luther smiled—a fleeting, tremulous thing—and turned to Delia. “What about you? Can you forgive me?” Boone started to interrupt, knowing it was too much to ask anyone, but Delia’s voice came back strong. “With all my heart, Luther.” The strange light was gone from her face, and the air in the shack had lost its weird, energized zing. Boone closed his eyes, knowing what was coming next. “And you, cousin?” Luther asked. “Do you forgive the man who sent your brother to prison in his place and kept you from claimin’ your one true love?” All at once, Boone’s mouth was very dry. “Put down the gun and we’ll talk about it.” “No. I need to hear you say it.” Boone struggled with himself. Butlers were known for holding grudges that lasted decades, and he’d had barely a minute to process the great wrong Luther had committed. But if Delia could do it… Delia, whom Luther had made an orphan just for spite… Boone opened his eyes. “I forgive you, Luther.” The smile that broke across Luther’s face was purely beautiful, and contained not a shred of sanity. “Now I can do what I came here to do with a clear conscience.” He lifted his gun and turned it on Delia once more, and Boone shot him in the chest. Delia screamed, coming halfway off the chair, a piece of silver tape trailing off her wrist where she’d somehow managed to work it loose. Luther stood there a moment, the beatific smile still spread across his face. Then he fell, and Boone was there a second later to tear his shirt down the center. He’d intentionally missed Luther’s heart, but he recognized a fatal wound when he saw one. He pulled off his own jacket and wadded it up to apply pressure, knowing even as he did that it was no good. Luther lifted his eyes to Boone’s face. “Thank you, cousin.” “Shh. Lie still.” Boone glanced back at Delia, who had grabbed the knife off the table and was sawing at the rest of the tape. “Can you get a signal on your phone?” She shook her head. “I left it in my car.” Boone looked toward the door. Beyond it was his truck, and the phone plugged into the dashboard was a satellite model, which could get a signal anywhere, even this far up the mountain. But the likelihood of an ambulance getting here before his cousin bled out was slim to none. “Boone,” Luther whispered. “Don’t make a fuss. Just let me go.” A second later, Delia joined them. Luther looked past Boone to where she crouched beside him. “Never meant to harm you, darlin’. Knew Boone would take me out if I tried.” He coughed, spraying them with a fine mist of crimson. “You heard of suicide by cop? I just did suicide by kin.”

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“You sonofabitch.” “Aw, don’t be like that, Boone. I’m the one who started this mess. It’s only right that you’re the one to end it.” Blood bubbled from his lips with each word. “Delia, would you do somethin’ for me? A dyin’ man’s last request?” Delia scooted closer. Tears stained her face in dirty tracks. She reached out and brushed back the red hair from Luther’s crazy eyes. “What do you need?” He sucked in a painful-sounding breath. “When I was little, I used to sleep over at Boone’s house on the weekends, and his mama told us stories before bed. You remember that, Boone?” Boone nodded, words beyond him. “Will you tell me a story, Delia?” Luther asked. “Before I go to sleep, will you tell me one last story?” And so Delia wiped the tears from her eyes and began to speak. “Once upon a time, in a place called Bogey Holler, there lived a young coal miner who loved the daughter of a wealthy mine owner. This was in the time when the unions were battling the mine operators for decent pay and better working conditions, and violence ran like a blood-red river along the back roads of Harlan County.” At the sound of her sweet voice, Luther seemed to relax and settle himself against the shack’s filthy floor. “The love between the girl and her young man was forbidden by their families, and so the two met in secret, sharing stolen moments in the shadowy corners of the Holler, and making plans to be together one day.” Boone listened as Delia told the story of the Sorrowful Angel. She made it seem beautiful, like something from a book, instead of the ugly tale of class prejudice and hatred that tore two lovers apart. She told of how the girl’s father discovered their love, and threatened to disown his only daughter, and of how the miner vowed to marry her as soon as he’d earned the money to keep her in comfort. “But the girl’s father was a hard man, and not above making murder look like a tragic accident. One day the young miner didn’t return from the tunnels. On that day, the girl swore she’d haunt Bogey Holler forever, calling out a warning to lovers who ran afoul of cruel fate. “They found her body hanging from an oak tree at dusk, a photograph of her beloved lying in the dirt at her feet. She wore the white lace dress she’d sewn for her wedding day. Folks say she looked just like an angel.” Delia choked out the last of the story around her sobs, her tears falling on Luther’s empty, peaceful face. Gently, Boone reached out and closed his cousin’s eyes. Then he gathered Delia in his arms, and together they waited for the light of day.

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Chapter Seven

Five hours later, after the sheriff had taken their statements and made them promise not to leave the county until after the mess was cleared away, Delia led Boone through the front door of her house and up the stairs to the bathroom. The long, hard night was behind them and, as far as she was concerned, they had much for which to be grateful—they were alive, the early morning air was sweet and clear and full of birdsong, and her old claw-footed tub was big enough for two. “Did you lock the front door?” Boone asked her, his words slurred by exhaustion and the swelling of his split lip. “Manny Sims is still at large.” Delia nodded and turned on the tap. Then she went to fetch clean towels from the dryer. When she returned, she found Boone slumped on the floor, his back against the wall and his head in his hands. “Come on, into the water,” she said and nudged him with the toe of her very dirty bare foot. He caught her hand and pressed his lips against her knuckles. Idly, as if from very far away, she noticed that her fingernails were not only broken, but filthy as well. Probably Luther’s blood under there. Hope it comes out. She shivered, feeling sick and hollow inside, as if the horror of the night before had scooped her out and left her empty. She couldn’t imagine what Boone must be going through, mostly because he refused to talk about it. Hard headed, like every Butler before him. “I want to tell you something,” he said, and tugged her down to sit next to him. “And you need to listen.” “If this is going to be another lecture about how I have to get out of Harlan—” “No. You were right about that. I’ll never ask you to leave Harlan.” He sighed and let his head fall back against the wall. “Not permanently, anyway.” “Then what?” She eyed him, watching the way he tried to smile at her with his poor, battered mouth. “I guess I’m kinda stupid, huh? Trying to fight fate and all.” “Beg pardon?” He shrugged. “For the longest time, I thought the best thing I could do was to leave you the hell alone. If I loved you—and I did—I’d have to love you enough to stay away, ’cause you deserved better.” “Better than you?” She leaned into him. “Yeah, you’re pretty stupid.”

Selah March

“I’m not done.” He scrubbed a dirty hand over his face and drew a deep breath. “Luther was right. I don’t appreciate what I’ve got. It’s a serious failing.” “And?” “And I’m going to need your help with fixing it.” He did smile at her then, and blood oozed from his lip. “You think you’re up to it? Might take fifty years or so to put it right.” She nodded slowly. “I think we can arrange something. I take it you want me to go to Atlanta with you?” “If Pea can cover the diner. If not, then Senator Big Shot will have to find somebody else to keep his dissatisfied constituents at a safe distance.” Boone leaned over and pressed his forehead against hers. She reached up and cupped the bruised side of his jaw. “We should get some ice on that.” He shook his head. “Pea would say you’re a fool for trying to nurse me like a motherless pup. After all, I’m a Butler, and we’re known to bite.” “Promise?” He laughed, and more blood oozed. “Maybe later.” She kissed him then, heedless of the sticky, metallic taste. The razor-edged sweetness of friction was like kindling between them, and she knew they’d never make it into the tub if she didn’t pull away now. “Come on,” she said. “I want to get clean.” They undressed silently. For all their lighthearted talk of future plans, Delia was mindful of Luther’s shadow stretched between them like an uncrossable line, and she wondered if they’d ever be able to erase it. She stuck her hand into the pocket of her dress, expecting to find nothing more than a stray piece of used tissue. Her fingers came out clutching a faded scrap of red fabric. She recognized it instantly. But I watched Granny throw it into the fire… “Delia?” Boone was by her side, lowering her gently to the closed seat of the toilet. “You’re as white as any two sheets. What is it?” “Check…” She stopped and cleared her throat. “Check your pockets.” He gave her a funny look, but did as he was told. A moment later, he held a length of blue ribbon in his hand. “I’ll be damned,” he said. The toilet was taken, so he leaned against the wall, his face as white as any three sheets and maybe a pillowcase or two for good measure. “I’d just about convinced myself it wasn’t real. I wanted to believe, but…” He shook his head. “And now? Do you believe now, Boone?” “I guess I don’t have much choice, do I?” He pushed away from the wall and stood up straight, facing her. “What do you think it means?”

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Ain’t No Sunshine

She took a moment to choose her words carefully, knowing without a doubt the Sorrowful Angel was somewhere nearby, listening. “I think it’s a sign the bitter is finally finished, and now we get to enjoy the sweet.” He stared at her through the rising steam from the tub. After a moment, he grabbed her hand and drew her to her feet. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” It took two tubs filled to the brim with hot water and soapsuds to get them clean. An hour later, they leaned on each other all the way to Delia’s bed, where they made a slow, sleepy, healing kind of love—a love ripe with the promise of endless days and nights together, from now until forever. And if they fell asleep in the late-morning sunshine listening for ghostly, sorrowful cries that never came, nobody knew it but them.

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About the Author

Selah March is a wife and mother who lives in upstate New York, where she enjoys solitude, bracing winters, and long walks after nightfall. She holds a degree in English Literature, and has been writing romantic fiction for ten years. She can be found online at www.SelahMarch.com.

Hollywood made him a star. She makes him want to be a better man.

Let Me Call You Sweetheart © 2011 Gwen Hayes A Come Rain or Come Shine Story Charlotte Jeeves, “Charlie” to anyone not pulling her over or collecting her taxes, is the only one in town who’s not excited about her new neighbor, TV actor Jeeves Allencaster. It’s not “cute” how they share a name, and so not charming that he steals her muffin before they’ve even met. The last thing she wants is some slick Hollywood type turning her safe, small-town haven into a circus. If the locals have their way, though, she and Jeeves will be dating by…well, it depends on who you ask—and how much they’ve invested in the betting pool. Jeeves hates Hollwood. Mostly he just hates the way it’s changed him. Port Grable is the total opposite of LaLa Land—the perfect place to rediscover himself. His plan didn’t include hooking up with the bitter—yet undeniably lush—girl next door. She’s not his type, yet he can’t get her off his mind. Trouble is, to thaw the ice around her heart, he’ll have to show her the real man behind the Hollywood charade. If he still exists… Warning: Baked-good larceny is prohibited by law in many states. Please seek competent legal advice before trying this at home.

Enjoy the following excerpt for Let Me Call You Sweetheart: “I suppose you want to dance,” Jeeves said after she ignored him some more. “Not particularly,” she answered without looking at him. “Well, I want to dance.” Charlie gestured to the room. “Have at it. I have a feeling even Cheapskate Chuck would be amenable to a turn around the floor with you.” Jeeves stood and came around the table with his hand out. He was far too good looking and he knew it. All smug and square-jawed. Too tall and dressed like a guy playing the role of a small-town hero. “I said no,” she protested. “No, you said ‘not particularly’ which is not no.” “It means no.” “Miss…hey what is your last name?” Charlie pressed her lips together firmly, and Myrtle, the goddess bitch, took great pleasure in answering, “Jeeves. Her last name is Jeeves.” Surprise washed over his pretty face. “Well, what do you know about that? Jeeves and Jeeves. Now you have to dance with me.”

“I don’t want to dance with you,” she said, putting her hand in his and getting up, resigned to it. He led her to the floor just as Sam finished the song. Charlie swung around to leave, thinking it was her lucky night. “Not so fast, Jeeves.” “Don’t call me that.” “Okay, not so fast, Cleaver.” He had his hand on her hip, and she tried to get exasperated, but instead she felt extremely selfconscious. Sam began singing again. Tom Waits this time. Jeeves pulled her closer. He was light on his feet, of course. Because he was good at everything he did, most likely. “This will be our song.” “‘I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love With You’? I guess if we were going to have a song, which we aren’t, this would be a good one.” “How long have they been married?” “Sam and Myrtle?” He nodded. “Twenty years.” He made a whistling sound through his teeth. “Wow.” She wished he would stop pulling her closer. “They were high school sweethearts.” “Did you grow up here?” “No, I wish. I moved here ten years ago.” “From where?” Charlie didn’t even like saying it out loud. “Milwaukee.” “What made you move—” She cut him off. “Are you planning on mowing your lawn?” “Huh?” “It’s getting pretty long. It looks bad. You’re making the whole neighborhood look bad.” “The neighborhood is us. We’re the only two houses on the bluff.” She couldn’t think of what to say. His grass was a little long, but not even really that bad. “This isn’t our song.” She hated this flusterstorm gathering in her stomach. “Well, technically, when a couple dances to a song, their first is called ‘our song’.” “We’re not a couple.” “We’re a couple of something.” “That doesn’t even make sense.” She didn’t like being this close to him. He didn’t smell right. He was supposed to smell like rich-guy cologne or something fake. She inhaled deeply. He smelled like he’d just come off the clothesline after a day in the sunshine. Charlie looked up in time to see him avert his eyes. “You were looking down my top.” He shook his head no but answered, “Yes.”

She sputtered on a response. “Of all the…what kind of…why?” “Why?” Jeeves jerked his head back a bit. “Well, because there are breasts in there.” “Does this work on women? I mean, I’ve seen pictures of you with really attractive, talented women. And this is how you get them?” Models and actresses wearing size two and four-inch heels. He looked up as if he was trying to remember. “No. This isn’t how I usually go about things.” Jeeves pushed her away a step and turned her in a circle, slowly bringing her back into his arms. “I’m actually quite charming. And most of the time, I don’t get caught looking. I look—I just usually employ more stealth.” “So, I’m not worth the stealth?” “You aren’t going to date me. You hate me. I figure I have more wiggle room since you already think I’m a jerk.” He turned her in another circle. “I figure I can be my true self with you.” “I feel so blessed.” “I’m probably still going to try to get you to sleep with me. It’s the principle.” She sighed. “Everyone in this bar knows you don’t want to sleep with me.” “Why is that?” He moved her in a combination of some sort that ended with him behind her and her wrapped snug in both his arms. They continued to sway. She was not going to get starstruck. She just was not. “Well, for one thing, I’ve been a total shrew to you. Don’t think that didn’t get around town eight minutes after you stole my muffin.” “So you’re a challenge,” Jeeves said, low in her ear. She fought the shivers that wanted to shimmy with the sound waves from his voice. “Why else?” “I outweigh your usual girlfriends by at least fifty pounds.” He rested his chin on her shoulder. “Is that how we do things in the country? I guess I need to rig up some kind of fish scale on the deck or something, so I can properly weigh and measure my women.” “I’m not your woman.” “Yet.” Charlie rolled her eyes. “Wait. What’s that?” She wriggled her bottom and laughed at the small poke. “You really do want to sleep with me.” “That’s a roll of breath mints, but thanks for the vote of confidence.” Jeeves rolled her back out then back into his arms. “You’re going to be tough on my ego.” “I’m not going to be anything to you but the person who lives on the same street.” “There’s a powerful attraction to the-girl-next-door for a man.” No reply for that came to mind, so instead, she let him draw her flush against the length of him and rested her head on his shoulder. He was so annoying, but he smelled good and it had been too long since she’d been held by a man. Knowing nothing would happen made it safe, pleasant even. Jeeves Allencaster

was a temporary condition. She might as well enjoy the attention. She could verbally eviscerate him a different day. She was completely safe. Except that roll of breath mints had switched pockets and was most assuredly not a roll of breath mints.

It’s bad enough losing the wedding rings, let alone your heart…

Something Blue © 2011 Serenity Woods A Come Rain or Come Shine Story Josh Hamnett is best man at his mate’s wedding, and he’s determined that nothing’s going to go wrong on the big day. That’s before ex-girlfriend Kate Summerton appears in the church, looking mouthwateringly good in her tight red satin dress. Her maid of honor’s dress. Ceremony, reception, speeches, the first dance…he’s got to go through them all by the side of the woman who still haunts his dreams. And to top it off, she’s not wearing any underwear. Their break-up three years ago was explosive, and Kate was sure she’d never forgive how he behaved. But now all the memories are coming back—the good as well as the bad. As their wedding duties keep throwing them into each other’s company, Kate can’t ignore the resurging chemistry between them—or the nagging thought that maybe, this could be the start of a second chance. Warning: Contains sexual chemistry hot enough to turn sand to glass—best read while wearing oven gloves and dark shades.

Enjoy the following excerpt for Something Blue: “Kate, promise me you won’t get drunk tonight and do something you’ll regret.” Kate looked across at Becca. They were standing outside the reception hall, waiting for Alex to join them and start welcoming the guests. “I’m accident prone when I’m not drunk and in three-inch heels—do you really think I’m going to enhance my special abilities, especially on your wedding day?” “I’m just saying…” “Becca, you don’t have to. Honestly, nothing’s going to happen tonight. That relationship ended a long, long time ago. I have no intention of starting it up again, even if it was possible, which it’s not.” The bride snorted. “I saw the way you looked at him—as if he was an ice lolly and you wanted to lick—” “Becca!” “Deny it. Tell me you weren’t thinking about him in bed.” “I…can’t.” Kate pouted. “He’s hot and he was really, really good at it.” She turned and took Becca’s hands, looking her in the eye. “But I’m not stupid. Well, not completely. We didn’t end well, Becs. I know I’ve told you before, but it wasn’t an amicable parting. I don’t want to dredge it all up again, and I don’t want a re-enactment. It was kind of nice to see him again, but you haven’t got anything to worry about.” She smiled. “Now come on, this is your big day and all we’re talking about is me. You’ve got to greet your guests and have a fantastic time—please don’t let me spoil it.”

“Oh, Kate, you’re not spoiling it at all.” Becca’s eyes went suspiciously glassy. “I just so want you to be happy and find what I have. You deserve it—you’re such a nice person. I’m so glad you’re my friend, and that you came all the way out here for me.” “Of course I did. I couldn’t not come to the wedding of my best friend.” Kate’s own tears spilled over and the two women hugged.

“Oh yes,” said Josh as he and Alex walked over. He admired the two women, who were wrapped around each other. “Very nice. Don’t let us stop you.” They broke apart, both glaring at him, and he grinned. “Guests are ready.” He bent to kiss Becca’s cheek. “You look ravishing, sweetheart.” She hugged him and he shook hands with Alex before grabbing Kate’s hand. “Come on.” He strode off, pulling her into the reception hall with him. “Will you let go?” She tugged on his hand, forcing him to stop. He kept his fingers tight on hers, however, enjoying touching her. “We need to check the top table and make sure everything’s in order.” “You can do that—I need to visit the Ladies’.” She yanked her hand out of his. “You can’t order me around just because we once went out together.” He looked at her blankly. “I order everyone around. You’re not getting special treatment.” She glared at him. “Where are we sitting? I swear, if I’m next to you, I’m going to take off my knickers and strangle myself with them.” He stopped in his tracks and turned her to face him. “Seriously? You’re not going commando? Damn it. Talk about pop a guy’s bubble.” He looked at her butt and gave her a hard stare. “Wait a minute… There’s no way you’re wearing anything under that dress.” He could tell by the way she blushed that he was right. He smirked. “You haven’t changed a bit,” she said icily. “Nope.” He had meant the remark to be funny, but he saw the amusement fade from her eyes. He knew she was thinking how difficult it had been at the end of their relationship. The accusations they’d thrown at each other. The cruel things they’d said. He would give his right arm to be able to wipe their memories clean. But it was too late, it was all said and done and that boat had long since sailed. “No hard feelings.” He brushed her arm. “It’s nice to see you. You look good and I was just window shopping.” She gave a small smile. “You look good too. That suit suits you. If you know what I mean.” “I do. But every dude looks good in a tux.” She shrugged. “But you more than most.”

He studied her face, noticing she had new smile lines at the corner of her mouth and more freckles across her nose. “That was never a problem, was it? Being attracted to each other, I mean.” “No. That was the least of our worries.” “Okay.” He sighed. “I’d better start showing people where to sit.” She nodded. “We’re both at the top table, I guess.” “You are next to me, you know.” She started to walk away, then turned back. “Well, I can’t strangle myself. As you know, I’m not wearing any knickers.”