Page 1 of Ardently Yours

Head Above Water

Charlotte

December 1994

“Every woman needs three things: Self-respect, a strong heart, and a shovel in the trunk of her car.”—Charlotte Miller

My father shuts offthe key to the ancient brown Ford F-150, and silence invades the cab. He sits unmoving, his weathered knuckles white on the steering wheel. Waiting. I press my cheek against the frigid glass of the passenger window and rest my hand against my swollen belly. Baby Girl kicks against my palm. Even my unborn child is telling me to stop sitting here andopen the damn door.

I can’t. Not yet. My courage disappeared somewhere in the fifteen miles between my family’s farm and here. Somehow, I left the person I was—the one with the backbone of steel—standing on our front porch and growing smaller in the distance with every turn of the winter-tread tires.

“I’ll turn the truck around. The thing with your friends at the theater was enough. We can go down by the river where we used to fish,” Dad says in a gruff voice. “We’ll say goodbye there.”

Today isn’t about saying goodbye. It never was. “It’s the last time I’ll see him. They have no right to keep me away.”

From her position in the middle of the bench seat, Mom rubs my shoulder. “If this had happened two weeks from now, you’d have already been married. You could have protected him from thesepeople.”

Her face is pale under her brown curls, but furious color burns high on her cheeks. Anger is so much easier than the rest of it.

“That kind of talk isn’t going to help anyone,” Dad says.

Mom hesitates before speaking in a calmer tone. “You might not see him in there. You have to be prepared for that. It’ll depend on if . . .”

“If . . .”The oxygen in my lungs freezes solid, a heavy weight trapped behind my ribs. Before this moment, I hadn’t let myself think of the possibility.Breathe. Just breathe.

My brother Max’s black pickup pulls into the lot. Max and my sister Teresa, a virtual carbon copy of our mother, climb out of his truck, solid doors thunking closed behind them. The two of them head in our direction.

At some point this morning, a plow truck scraped away the ice and snow, leaving only the crunch of road salt beneath their feet. I shove my door open and lumber out to join them.

Max towers over my five-foot-seven height. He’s traded his usual T-shirts and flannel for a button-down stretched across his barrel chest and a black sport coat worn with his newestWrangler jeans. In place of his Pabst Blue Ribbon hat and bushy red beard, he’s combed his hair and trimmed up to be presentable. Not for the people here, I know. For Steve.

Brow heavy, Max offers his arm, and Teresa comes around to the other side to take my hand.

“Do we have a plan if they try to force us to leave?” Teresa asks.

“No one is laying a finger on you girls. They’ll have to go through Dad and me first, and that ain’t happening,” Max rumbles.

“They can’t pretend they’re martyrs if they do. Just don’t give them anything they can use as an excuse,” Mom says.

My best friend, Rochelle, parks her compact car. We wait for her to join us. When she reaches me, she takes my face in her slender hands, her dark eyes serious as she searches mine. I stiffen my spine and nod. She swallows hard, nods back, then steps behind me.

Mom and Dad step in front of the four of us. The advance guard. I keep my chin up as we head for the front doors of the sprawling red-brick church.

Six of us against hundreds of them.

It’s been five years since I set foot in this place as a naive fifteen-year-old. I never think about it. Except . . .sometimes. . . when I cross a path that sparks a flash fire inside me before I manage to stomp out the flames.

The moment we step through the second set of doors and into the gleaming lobby, a hush falls over the murmuring crowd. Then they erupt with whispers and muttered gossip loud enough to be heard across a room. I recognize the sound of the pastor’s wife’s voice. “I can’t believe she has the nerve.”

I don’t flinch.My fiancé is dead.I refuse to care what they think. It would be like fussing about the grass needing to be mowed while the house burned to the ground behind me.

I turn away from Bianca Polford, the way she did to me five years ago. Fifteen-year-old me had begged that woman to tell the truth. Face bone-white, she’d looked at her feet and hadn’t said a word. I didn’t hear from her again until she found out I’d tried to file a police report against her husband.

Expression blank, I step forward, and we hang our coats. Then my family and I enter the immense sanctuary. A giant projector screen hangs behind the altar, flashing photos of Steve as a child.

Across the expanse of the high-ceilinged, windowless room, I search.

If Steve knew Jeremy Polford was the one leading this service, he’d be rolling in his casket. He was obsessed with the idea of finding enough evidence to put him away. Steve said men like Polford never commit those crimes only once and move on to live blameless lives.

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