Chapter 6 #4
“No,” Michael agreed. “She wasn’t. I think that’s what made Elder Crenshaw so angry. A few weeks before she died, I woke up one night and heard her on the phone. She was in the kitchen talking to someone, and her voice was different. Not scared exactly. More like…defiant. Angry.”
“What did she say?” Dash asked.
“She said something like, ‘You can threaten me all you want, but I’m not going anywhere. George and I have every right to be together.’” Michael’s eyes were distant.
“And then she got quiet, listening. Then she said, ‘You think I care what the congregation thinks? They’re a bunch of hypocrites anyway. At least I’m honest about what I’m doing. ’”
That sounded more like the Ruby Bailey I’d been piecing together—bold, unashamed, almost reckless in her refusal to hide.
“Did she say who she was talking to?” I asked.
“I assumed it was Elder Crenshaw, based on what happened next. A few days later, I was playing in the yard after school when I saw him pull up. He didn’t come to the door—just sat in his car at the curb.
Mama went out to talk to him. I couldn’t hear what they said, but I could see Mama’s body language.
She had her arms crossed, chin up, that look she got when she was being stubborn. ”
Michael stared at the photograph of his mother.
“Elder Crenshaw was pointing his finger at her, jabbing it toward her face. She didn’t back down.
Just stood there taking it. Then he drove off and Mama came back inside.
She saw me watching and told me to stay away from Elder Crenshaw, that he was a mean old man who liked to stick his nose where it didn’t belong. ”
“And then?” Dash prompted.
“About a week later, I heard her on the phone with Reverend Pickering. It was late, maybe ten o’clock.
I’d gotten up to get water.” Michael’s voice went quieter.
“She was pacing in the kitchen, and I heard her say ‘I know where you’re getting the money, George. Don’t think I haven’t figured it out.
’ She was quiet for a minute, then she said, ‘We need to talk about this in person. Not here. Not at the church. Somewhere private.’”
The funeral home’s air-conditioning hummed steadily, a counterpoint to the silence.
“That was the last time I heard her voice,” Michael said.
“She left Friday evening, told me to heat up the casserole in the fridge for dinner, that she’d be home late.
She kissed the top of my head and walked out the door.
” His hands were shaking now. “The next morning, the police came to tell me she was dead.”
The mockingbird called again outside, its song unchanged, cheerful, oblivious. Life going on while we sat here excavating death.
“Is Elder Crenshaw still alive?” Dash asked, making a note.
“I think so,” Michael said. “He’d be in his eighties now. Last I heard, he moved to one of those retirement communities on the mainland after his wife died. Sea Pines or Oak Grove or one of those places with pleasant in the name that’s supposed to make you forget you’re waiting to die.”
Beside me, Chowder shifted, his bow tie slightly askew, his expression thoughtful in that way French bulldogs sometimes get when they’re processing something important. Or possibly gas. With Chowder, it was hard to tell.
“Did your mother ever mention anyone else who worried her?” Dash pressed gently, still watching Michael with that focused attention that missed nothing.
“Not that I can think of,” he said.
“Did you tell the police any of this?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. I could see it in the guilt that lived in his eyes.
“I was ten years old,” Michael said. “The detectives who interviewed me were scary—these big men in uniforms with guns on their hips and voices that sounded like they were used to people doing what they said. They kept asking if Mama had been happy, if she’d been sad, if there had been arguments at home.
They’d already decided what they thought happened—scandalous affair, crime of passion, maybe my dad did it, maybe it was a mugging gone wrong. ”
He stood abruptly, pacing to the window again like he couldn’t bear to sit still under the weight of memory.
“I tried to tell them about Elder Crenshaw, about the phone call I’d heard, but they weren’t really listening.
They were just checking boxes, going through motions, waiting to move on to whatever case was next. ”
“And Sheriff Milton?” Dash asked, and something in his voice had gone hard, cold, like steel left out in winter.
“He came to see me about a month after Mama died. I was living with my grandparents by then, trying to figure out how to be a kid again when I felt like I’d aged a hundred years.”
Michael turned from the window, and his eyes held memories ancient and painful.
“Milton came to my grandparents’ house about a month after Mama died.
Sat in their living room with his hat in his lap, same patient expression, same concerned voice asking the same questions everyone had already asked.
And when I tried to tell him about Elder Crenshaw confronting Mama, about the phone call where she said she knew where Reverend Pickering was getting money, he patted my head like I was a dog who’d done a trick. ”
The bitterness in his voice was sharp enough to cut.
“He said I was confused. That grief was making me remember things wrong, mixing up what really happened with what I’d seen on TV or heard adults talking about.
He said the investigation was over, that they knew what had happened, and I needed to stop telling stories or I’d make things harder for everyone.
He said the best thing I could do for my mama’s memory was to let her rest in peace and move on with my life.
“I became a funeral director because of her,” Michael said quietly, staring at the photograph of Ruby in her yellow dress, young and happy and impossibly alive.
“Because I wanted to give other families the closure I never got. I wanted to help people say goodbye properly, with dignity, with certainty. Every body I prepare, every service I conduct, every family I guide through their grief—it’s my way of making up for not being able to help my mother when she needed it.
For being too young, too small, too powerless to save her. ”
Tears had started tracking down his face, cutting paths through his carefully maintained composure. He made no move to wipe them away, and I realized this might be the first time he’d cried about this in decades. Some grief gets buried so deep it fossilizes, becomes part of your bones.
I felt my own throat tighten with emotion.
How many times had I conducted this same internal autopsy of my own grief?
How many times had I cataloged all the things I should have done differently before Patrick died, all the signs I’d missed, all the moments I’d let slip away because I’d thought we had infinite time?
The what-ifs that haunted you in the small hours of the morning, the guilt that wrapped around your ribs like barbed wire, making it hard to breathe, hard to move, hard to live.
“You were a child,” I said firmly, leaning forward in my chair, making sure he heard me, really heard me.
“Traumatized and alone. The failure wasn’t yours—it belonged to every adult who should have asked better questions, who should have listened more carefully, who should have protected you instead of telling you to forget.
It belonged to Roy Milton, who dismissed what you said because it was inconvenient for whatever narrative he was constructing.
It belonged to every person who knew something was wrong with that investigation and stayed silent anyway. ”
Michael looked at me with gratitude in his red-rimmed eyes.
Chowder, who’d been remarkably patient through all of this, waddled over to Michael’s desk and looked up at him with those bulging, impossibly earnest eyes.
There was something about a French bulldog’s gaze that could convey profound sympathy while simultaneously suggesting that what you really needed was a snack and a nap. It was a gift.
Michael actually smiled—just a small one, but real. “Nice dog,” he said.
“He’s exceptional,” I agreed.
Dash was quiet for a moment, letting the weight of everything Michael had shared settle between us. Then he leaned forward slightly. “Thank you, Michael. This has been incredibly helpful. We’ll look into Elder Crenshaw, see if we can track him down for an interview.”
“There’s one more thing,” Michael said, and his voice had changed, become steadier, like he’d made a decision.
“After Mama died, my grandparents gave me a box of her things. Nothing valuable—just photos and letters, a few pieces of jewelry, her Bible. I’ve kept it all these years, couldn’t bring myself to go through it.
It’s still in my attic, sealed up just like they gave it to me.
” He pulled a card from his desk drawer, wrote something on the back in careful script.
“My home address. If you want to come by sometime, look through it, you’re welcome to.
Maybe there’s something in there that could help.
Maybe she left some clue I was too young to understand. ”
Dash took the card carefully, like it was precious. “We’ll be in touch.”
Michael stood, and we did too, Chowder rousing himself from his dignified repose at my feet. At the door, Michael paused, looking back at the photograph of Ruby.
“My mother was a complicated woman. And she didn’t always do the right thing. But she was my mother. And she deserves justice,” he said quietly. “Even now. Especially now.”
“We’ll do everything we can,” I promised.
The afternoon sunlight hit us as we stepped outside, bright and warm and somehow heavier than before. The funeral home’s door closed behind us with a soft click that felt final.
Chowder’s tweed cap had gone askew, his bow tie crooked from an hour of sitting still. He looked up at me with an expression that clearly said his work here was done, and he’d like his compensation in the form of treats.
Dash and I stood on the front steps for a moment, neither of us speaking, both of us processing what we’d just heard.
A ten-year-old boy who’d carried guilt that wasn’t his.
A mother who’d tried to protect her son and paid for it with her life.
A box of belongings that had waited decades to tell their story.
But secrets didn’t stay buried forever. Ruby Bailey had known that. And George Pickering had learned it too late.