Dora turned on Carson, her eyes flashing with fury. “Get out of here,” she shouted over her shoulder. “Haven’t you done enough damage? The last person I need mothering advice from is the daughter of an unfit, husband-stealing, drunken suicide!”
Carson’s face grew ashen. “What did you say?” she sputtered.
Dora’s face looked as though she knew she’d crossed a line, but it was too late. “It’s true. Everyone knows it’s true. No one believed that lie about the lightning. Except you.” She turned her back on Carson and tended to Nate, speaking in a low, calming voice as he wailed.
Carson didn’t respond. She stood staring blindly, feeling the sting from the slap. Something in that accusation niggled at her, like a ghost howling at the window. Bewildered by Dora’s accusation, she instinctively looked to Mamaw. Mamaw’s face drooped with sorrow and she looked every bit her eighty years. She shook her head slowly, then motioned for Carson to follow as she left the room. Harper stood by the door, her eyes wide.
“Harper,” Mamaw said, “go on and bring your sister and Nate a nice cool glass of water.” She turned to Carson. “You come to my room. It’s time you heard the truth from me.”
The thick, creamy matelassé curtains fringed in blue tassels were still drawn, leaving the room cool and serene. Mamaw sat in her favorite upholstered wing chair and motioned for Carson to sit beside her. Carson shut the door, silencing the sound of Nate’s keening wail, and joined Mamaw in the sitting area. She slid soundlessly into the soft cushions, utterly exhausted and yet still bristling with pain from the nightmare of the morning.
“Do you want something to drink?” Mamaw asked her.
“No.” Carson closed her eyes, trying to calm down. Trying to focus. She was so upset she had to concentrate to get the words out. “What I want is to know what Dora meant about my mother. She said suicide.” Carson opened her eyes and stared at Mamaw, demanding the truth.
Mamaw’s hands fluttered in her lap. It unnerved Carson to see her nervous and she tensed, sensing another hurt coming.
“Is it true?” Carson asked. “Did my mother kill herself?”
“It’s not a yes-or-no answer,” Mamaw began hesitatingly.
“She either did commit suicide or she didn’t.”
Mamaw looked at her. “No, she didn’t.”
Carson reconciled this in her mind. “Then why did Dora say she did?”
“She was wrong. That’s just malicious gossip.”
“Gossip . . .”
“Listen to what I have to tell you, Carson. It’s the truth.”
Carson clenched her hands tightly on the arms of the chair.
Mamaw sighed, then began in a slow cadence. “It was all such a long time ago, but I’m still haunted by it. Carson, your mother’s death was a terrible, terrible accident. Sophie had been drinking. She had a problem with alcohol, you see. Like Parker. She was in her bedroom, in bed, watching television or reading, I don’t know. But she was smoking. She smoked quite a lot.” She stopped and took a little breath. “A lot of us did back then. The fire department concluded that the fire started in her bedroom. The likely explanation was that Sophie passed out while smoking—that’s what the coroner determined. Your mother never meant to die in that terrible fire.” Mamaw paused. “I pray to God she died quickly.”
“But . . . but I always thought . . . you always told me that the fire started from a lightning strike,” Carson said.
Mamaw put her hands together in her lap. “Yes. That’s what I told you. There was a storm that night, true enough, with a lot of lightning. Edward and I talked about it and together we decided that you didn’t need to know the unsavory details. You were only four years old, after all. Your mother had just passed away. That was enough for you to deal with.”
Carson listened, pressing her fingers to her eyes, trying to make sense of it. “But later, when I was older. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What good would it have done? I don’t know, maybe I should have. It just never seemed the right time.”
“My mother was a drunk, too?” Carson asked, stunned by the enormity of that fact. That really stacks the deck against me, doesn’t it? When I came to you and told you I was worried I had a problem, that would’ve been the time to tell me about my mother. Don’t you think?“
Mamaw sighed and nodded her head.
“But how did Dora know?”
Mamaw’s eyes flashed. “She should never have said what she did to you. It was wrong of her. Wrong that she even knew. Her mother must have told her. That horrible gossip. Never forget that in life there is gossip and there are family secrets. We can tolerate the prattle, but to break the bonds of family is unforgivable.”
“Don’t defend the secrets!” Carson cried.
“I’m not,” Mamaw told her. “If we’ve learned nothing else this summer, haven’t we learned that secrets in a family are like a disease? One lie on top of another. The truth always comes out in the end.”
“I’m sick to death of secrets in this family. Why don’t we try honesty for a change?”
Mamaw’s eyes filled with tears. “I was with Nate when he put out the hooks.”
“What?” Carson stilled.
“Last night,” Mamaw said, holding back tears. “I caught him sneaking out to the dock with the fishing rods. So I went with him. I helped him set the bait and put out the line. We both left the rods there. I didn’t see the harm in it. He wanted to catch fish for Delphine, you see. He was trying to do something for you.”
Carson stared at Mamaw. “Why did you let me yell at Nate if you were the one who let him put the rods out in the first place?”
“I . . . I don’t know, I didn’t fully understand what the commotion was about until it was too late . . . I . . . I feel so terrible,” Mamaw said. “And when I saw that poor dolphin . . . I know the boy must feel terrible, too. He cares so deeply for the dolphin, and for you, Carson. You need to know that.”
Carson let out a guttural groan and rose from the chair. “I don’t know what to say. My head and my heart ache,” she cried. “They really, physically hurt.” She stopped and glared at Mamaw, her mind reeling from the string of revelations. It was all too much to take. It felt like the room was closing in on her, and she stumbled running from it.