Miss Delilah Boone Remembers the Storm

It’s been fifteen years, yet the smell of rain that night still clings to my memory like damp linen.
I can hear it plain as I hear my own heartbeat, the thunder rollin’ slow over Terrapin Creek, the lightning flashin’ white across the graveyard like the Lord Hisself was takin’ inventory.

Tommy Wayne was just a child when he came to me. He’d found that letter, poor soul, and come runnin’ to the one person he thought would tell him the truth. “Your husband preaches it every Sunday,” he said. “Tell me what’s right.”

How do you answer a question like that?
His mama, God rest her, had secrets best left between her and heaven. I told him some truths are meant to stay buried until Judgment. But the boy had fire in him, righteous and wild. He ran from my kitchen before the rain even started.

I tried to stop the gossip. I truly did. Went to Lily Pearl’s that night, rain hammerin’ my umbrella, heart hammerin’ harder. But when she opened that door, her face was all fury and hurt, and I, well, I said things the Lord’s been remindin’ me of ever since.

After that, it was out of my hands. The congregation wanted a story clean enough to pray over, and so they made one up. By Sunday, it was the talk of every hymn and every whisper. I let it happen. Maybe that was my sin.

Now he’s back. I saw him today from my porch, standin’ by the church fence where the ivy’s near swallowed the gate. He looked up at the steeple like a man countin’ the cost of forgiveness.

And I’ll tell you plain: the ground shook just a little when he stepped onto the walk. Not much, mind you, just enough to remind me the Lord don’t forget, even if Piedmont pretends to.

There’s talk already, of course. Clyde’s told half the county. But it ain’t talk that scares me, it’s silence. The hush before something breaks loose.

If Tommy Wayne’s come home for truth, he’d best be careful what kind he digs up.
The dead here don’t rest easy, not when their stories was never finished proper.

*****

New Yesterdays is available through the following links: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.