When the Bones Sing

Epilogue

Daddy finds my mama’s bones when they go to recover Ira’s body from the bottom of Moonlight Crag. He brings her home and we bury her at the back of our property, tucked in among the peach trees and the wild honeysuckle.

We have a little ceremony for her that next Sunday. Daddy reads a poem. “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways” by William Wordsworth. The last stanza makes me shiver.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

It’s supposed to just be me and Daddy and Nana and Lo and Granny Pearl. The whole town comes to gather with us, though. There’s no new preacher down at the community church yet, so they come to seek God in our back garden. They leave flowers on Mama’s grave and take our hands. They murmur about how they were afraid of the wrong thing. How sometimes evil carries a Bible and sometimes evil grins, but that doesn’t make it any less evil.

Someone rings the funeral bells down at the church for Mama.

Nobody rang them for Ira.

We’re standing at my mama’s graveside after the memorial ceremony. Lo is holding my hand and the sun is warm on our heads.

“Do you think Ira was born with that evil in him?” he asks me. “Or did somethin’ get inside him when he was livin’ in that cave?”

It’s something I’ve been wondering about, too. We both felt something bad in that hole in the mountain. Something dark and ancient and deadly.

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Some of both, maybe.”

Lo nods like that makes sense. “Brother Turley used to baptize his flock in water that came outta those rocks. He’d stand right in the middle of Lucifer’s Creek on Sundays.” I shiver, thinking about how the preacher dangled Lo over that raging torrent of sulfur. His Bible is still stashed on a shelf in my closet, and I remind myself to get rid of it. I don’t want it near me. “Maybe him and my granddaddy—”

“Maybe,” I say.

Or maybe Turley was just wracked with guilt.

And Saul was a plain mean drunk.

Maybe Ira was nothing but a greedy killer.

There are some mysteries we’ll never have answers to.

When Nana comes to stand beside me and take my hand, we stare down at the fresh mound of earth at our feet, and I take that moment to ask her a question that’s been on my mind. “How come I never felt her bones? All those bodies singing to me, but never my own mama.”

Nana lays a cool hand on my cheek. Her silver braid shines in the sun and she smiles at me. She’s holding a white rose in her hand. “Your mama was at peace, Dovie girl. She was hurtin’ so bad after Claire died. Couldn’t stand bein’ separated from her like that. Much as she loved you, she knew you’d be all right with Del and me.” She hands her rose to Lo, and he kneels down to lay it on Mama’s grave. “I expect she was glad not to be missin’ Claire no more. And she didn’t want you finding her like that. Just bones. She wouldn’t have done that to you. Or me. That’s the truth of it. She wasn’t grievin’ in her death.”

I think about Nana feelin’ those bones. How that talent came to her as an adult, after she lost Pearl.

And how Mama’s ability came to her as a woman, too. After she lost Claire.

Then there’s me. The music of the bones started humming in my own body when I was just a little girl. Way back when I lost my mama.

“It’s grief,” I realize. “That’s what connects us to them. To the dead. It’s loss. It’s sorrow. It’s grief.”

“Clover women mourn deep,” Nana tells me. “We always have.”

I look across the yard to where Granny Pearl is sitting in a lawn chair in the shade. As I watch, a couple of girls I know from school walk up to her. They giggle together, then one of them leans down low to whisper in Granny Pearl’s ear. Pearl gives the two of them a little knowing nod, then she pulls a tiny bag from her pocket and puts it in the girl’s palm. The girl takes it and blushes. Her friend looks over her shoulder and smiles at me before they walk back to where their mamas are gossiping under the branches of a peach tree.

“Go talk to her,” I tell Nana. “It’s time.”

Pearl looks up and I see her catch Nana’s eyes. Then Nana starts across the grass in her direction.

Later that afternoon, Lo and I hike up the Aux-Arc Trail together. It’s still in the woods. Peaceful and calm. For the first time in years, nothing that walks here walks in fear.

We leave the trail and fight through the ripping thorns to the spot where Lo buried Riley Alden. The spot where I unburied him. We’re bleeding from scratches up and down our arms by the time we settle on the thick, soft grass by the rock where the mountain violets grow. But sometimes you have to bleed.

Sometimes it’s the only way to heal.

We pause to catch our breath and pay our respects to Riley, then we pull ourselves up the steep ravine to the Wilder cabin. Granny Pearl isn’t home yet. She was still sitting on the front porch talking to Nana when Lo and I left the house. Daddy said he’d drive her up the mountain later this evening.

I sit with Lo on the bench beside his mother’s grave, in the clearing behind the cabin. The light is starting to fade. The sky is turning deep purple over the hills. A mourning dove cries in the trees, and Lo leans down to kiss me. I feel his lips against mine. They’re soft and warm and tender. So gentle that it might be the kiss of the mountain breeze. He tastes like honey from the tea we had earlier. Sweet. It makes me hungry, and I pull him closer.

This is familiar now. We know exactly how we fit together in this new way. His hands tangled in my hair. Mine on his chest. The pressure of his lips against my neck. I tilt my head back and open up for him. I breathe his name into the Ozarks. Eyes closed. Mouths open. Fingers searching. This is one more way we have each other memorized.

One more way for us to know each other.

When he pulls away to breathe, Lo whispers that he loves me.

We glance toward the tree line as darkness sweeps down from the hills, and we gasp in unison when we see them. A dark-haired woman and a woman with hair as white as frost walk hand-in-hand through the tall grass. We can’t see their faces, but they glow ghostly and pale under the mountain moon. Just before they reach the shadows, they turn toward each other.

I hear Lo’s breath hitch when he sees them. “Dovie,” he whispers.

“I see them,” I whisper back. “I see them.”

Three generations of Clovers and Wilders reunited.

A curse broken.

A circle completed.

There are things I read in my mother’s diary. Things I haven’t shared with Lo yet. I haven’t been keeping them from him. I’ve just been letting him breathe a little. Waiting for him to be ready. Because it won’t be easy to hear what I need to tell him.

I know that Ira was Lo’s father. Not Turley. Claire said it was Turley because she was desperate for a better life for her baby. Ira didn’t have anything. And maybe she sensed that evil lurking in him, even way back then. So she lied.

It didn’t do her any good, though. Turley wouldn’t have her or her baby.

Mama wrote the truth in her diary, then she buried that metal box under the crepe myrtles before she left our house to reveal the secret that she knew. But Ira never gave her the chance to tell him he was a father.

And she never made it back home.

She was leaving that diary for me. Maybe she knew that. Or maybe she just felt it somehow.

I know for sure that’s why she started coming back home to visit.

Why she revealed herself to Daddy. And to Nana. And eventually to me.

Because she wanted me to find that box and put a stop to what Ira was doing.

“Dovie. Look.” Lo points to his mama’s grave and a single white rose lies across it. “Did you know white roses were the first roses that existed?” he asks me. “The story goes that the pure white roses were tainted with the blood of Aphrodite when she cut herself on the thorns. That’s what turned ’em red.”

“There are things I need to tell you,” I say. “Things I read in Mama’s diary.”

“Okay.” Lo’s eyes are dark and deep tonight. He reaches up to run his thumb over my cheekbone. “I don’t have a diary,” he admits. “I’ve never written anything about you.”

“We don’t need to write about each other on paper,” I tell him. “Our secrets are written on each other’s bones.”