When Devils Sing(48)
“Ben didn’t die,” she said weakly. “He survived—I made sure of it.”
“I know.” Maggie sniffed, then grimaced, as if she caught whiff of something rotten. “I can smell the sin on you like a stench.”
“You’re delusional,” Sam spat.
“Call me whatever names you like,” her mama said. “But I know what you did, Samantha.”
Sam struggled not to shrink herself in the face of the woman who was meant to protect her but had only ever turned the other cheek. “Tell me, Mama. What’d I do?”
“The devil came knockin’ and you answered.” Maggie didn’t look at Sam like she was her daughter but a sickly mutt that she couldn’t wait to put down. “Come hell or high water, I won’t let you ruin Ben like you’ve ruined yourself.”
Sam stood there, frozen in place by her mama’s words as Maggie picked up the food from the hospital floor. Finally, she whispered, “You and Daddy ruined us a long time ago.”
Maggie said nothing else before she called the sheriff back. “Buck! We’re done here.”
A moment later, Sheriff Buckley stood sentry at the door, and her mama disappeared within, the door slamming firmly in Sam’s face.
CHAPTER 19ISAIAH
In the silence of Isaiah’s bedroom, the singing cicadas pulsed like a frantic heartbeat outside. An anthem that could only be escaped in the night or behind the gates of Lake Clearwater. Several cicadas crawled along the window, skittering across the glass. They droned and hummed with a fervor that mirrored his own anxiety.
Isaiah was so close to something. He could feel it in his bones, and it terrified him.
“Isaiah, baby.” Grandma Bee knocked on the door, then pushed it open with her foot, poking her head in. “I forgot to give this to you the other day. Got caught up in all the excitement of the harvest. It’s the rest of the equipment that came with your camera.” She stepped into his room, a worn cardboard box in her hands.
Isaiah eyed the box’s contents. There were a few more lenses, rolls of old film, a dusty carrying case, and faded negatives nearly buried beneath it all. “Where’d you find this anyhow?”
Bee chuckled. “At the Carrion flea market, of all places.”
“That’s a lucky find,” he said, admiring the vintage equipment. Isaiah was fascinated by analog. He preferred his devices uncomplicated by modernity, appreciating the artistry of how things were made with care in the past.
Bee looked Isaiah over with her inscrutable brown eyes. “What’re you all dressed up for?”
Isaiah’s expression turned sheepish. “I’m spending the night with Dad. Finally gonna see his new house.” It was the half-truth, as he had another stop along the way, but Grandma Bee didn’t need to know that. “Sorry, I meant to tell you sooner.”
Disappointment crept across his grandmother’s face. “Oh, all right then. That’s fine. Is Laurence too busy to come here for a bit first? Or too proud?”
Isaiah shrugged as he wrapped Bee in a bear hug. “I’ll be back in time for breakfast, bright and early.”
Grandma Bee squeezed him tightly, then pulled back, cupping his face in her warm hands. “I really, really don’t like you going up to that lake every day.”
“I’ll be fine, Bee,” Isaiah said, but the words didn’t sound as convincing as they left his lips. “You act like I didn’t grow up in Alpharetta of all places.”
Grandma Bee frowned. “You and I both know that being Black up there and being Black down here are two very different things.” Bee sighed. “I only say this because I know your father won’t.”
“I hear you.” Isaiah stepped back, tugging at the collar of his shirt. The air in the room suddenly grew warmer. “But you don’t need to worry. Everyone knows Dad. They know me. And I know this town. Nothing’s gonna happen to me.”
Grandma Bee crossed the room, gazing out the window. “Lake Clearwater has always been a dangerous place, baby. It doesn’t matter who your father is, or how many connections he has in high places. Neither of you will ever really belong there.” She then slapped the window with her palm, shooing the cicadas from their perch on the windowpanes. “Don’t you ever forget that.”
* * *
ANDREA SUMTER LIVED at the end of a long dirt road, the nearest neighbors hidden behind overgrown kudzu and dense rows of slash pines. Isaiah’s BMW stuck out like a sore thumb, parked in front of the narrow trailer. But he was grateful to be shielded by the overgrowth that defined most of rural Southwest Georgia land.
Isaiah reminded himself why he was there: to learn the truth, even if it was only Andrea’s version of it. In all his investigations for the past seasons of Secrets of the South, he had learned every story had at least two sides. And sometimes, two opposing stories could be true at once. What really mattered was how those stories were told—how they were presented to an audience that wasn’t there to witness them unfold.
The doorbell was broken, the button nowhere to be found. Isaiah knocked instead, softly at first, but there was no sound on the other side of the door. No movement behind the sheer curtains that hung in the window. Then he knocked harder, praying Andrea remembered their meeting.