Chapter 5

Sunday supper at Bellrose Cotton Gin was a ritual. Twenty people around a long table under the string lights, white cloth, silver, sweet tea in cut-glass pitchers, the smell of fried chicken and field peas drifting through the open gin doors.

Mari had told Delphine she was bringing a guest. She hadn't said who.

When Eli walked in behind her at seven o'clock, the conversation at the table died in stages-first the end nearest the door, then the middle, then the far end, until the only sound was a ceiling fan ticking overhead.

Delphine set down her glass. "Marigold. What is this?"

"I invited him," Mari said.

"You know what he is."

"I know what he was accused of. There's a difference."

Clay stood up from his seat at Mari's right, napkin still in his hand. He was thirty-one, broad-shouldered, pleasant-faced, and used to getting his way in rooms like this one. He looked at Eli the way you'd look at a stray dog in a restaurant.

"Sweetheart, this isn't the time," he said.

"It's exactly the time."

Delphine recovered faster than Clay. She smiled-a thin, hostess smile-and gestured to the far end of the table, near the door to the kitchen, where the hired help ate when there was hired help.

"We'll set another plate," she said. "At the service table."

The service table was a small folding table near the kitchen door, set with mismatched silver and a paper napkin. It was where the caterer's staff ate between courses. Everyone at the main table understood what she was doing.

Mari understood too. She walked to the service table, picked up the plate Delphine had indicated, carried it to the main table, and set it down between her own place and Clay's.

"He sits here," she said.

Clay's face flushed. "Mari."

"Clay, sit down."

"I'm not sitting down while-"

"Then stand."

Delphine watched the whole exchange with her hands folded. Roy, seated on her left, hadn't said a word. He was fifty-four, soft around the middle, with the same pale eyes as his sister and a habit of mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. He was doing that now.

Eli sat where Mari pointed. He kept his hands on his knees and his voice low. When Delphine's sister-in-law asked him what he did for a living, he said he was a mechanic. When she asked where, he said Arkansas. He didn't volunteer anything else.

Mari passed him the biscuits. He took one. The meal went on.

Then, at 9:20, the lights flickered.

The ceiling fan slowed. The string lights outside dimmed to orange, then went out. The gin hall dropped into near-darkness, lit only by the candles on the table and the storm flickering green-white outside the tall windows.

Thunder rolled across the cotton fields hard enough to rattle the glass.

Clay laughed nervously. "Generator must have tripped."

"Roy," Delphine said. "Go."

Roy didn't move. His handkerchief had stopped halfway to his forehead.

"Roy."

"I'm going," he said, and stood up so fast he knocked his chair over.

Eli watched him go. Then he looked at Mari.

"Generator's in the electrical room off the gin floor," he said quietly.

"I know where it is."

"The log for the hangar is in there too. Roy's repair log."

Mari's hand closed around her fork. "How do you know that?"

"Because I used to write in it," Eli said. "Your father kept it. Roy took it over after the crash. If it still exists, it's in that room."

Outside, the rain hit the tin roof like a drumroll. Somebody at the table started singing "Happy Birthday" to Delphine's sister to keep the mood up, and a few people joined in, off-key and too loud.

Eli stood.

"I'll help him with the generator," he said.

"Eli-" Mari started.

"Stay here," he said. "Keep her talking."

He walked out of the gin hall into the dark, toward the electrical room, with the rain hammering the roof over his head.