Chapter Text
October 14, 1978
Shady Grove Baptist Church, Alabama
A wooden radio sat silent on a narrow table by the window. The opaque glass admitted only a thin layer of gray light that settled upon objects without warming them. Nearby, a tarnished brass candlestick and a metal tray bore the marks of long use; wax had hardened into irregular drips across their surfaces.
The walls, once painted cream, now showed yellowish cracks and damp edges caused by the local climate. The air was heavy with dust so old it felt inherited.
Near the table sat Joseph Cain with his wife, Vera, and their seven-year-old daughter, Ethel Lenora Cain—named after the grandmother whose body lay at the front of the room. The funeral was for Joseph’s mother. Vera sat rigidly, maintaining the practiced composure of someone fulfilling the mourning expected of her. Joseph’s expression remained tense, held under absolute control.
The pastor’s voice filled the sanctuary with a practiced, distant cadence.
"A mother is... a gift from God," he said, his sibilants hissing slightly. "A mother is the one who stays when others leave; a mother is the closest thing to mercy we have in this world."
Joseph had personally chosen him for the service. He liked the young man, even though he often privately criticized his posture or the neatness of his suit. Beside him, Vera kept her hands tightly clasped in her lap. Ethel did not cry; she simply observed the church.
Her grandmother had been found dead in her bed two mornings earlier. The town doctor had not stated a clear diagnosis; it was said to be the result of a sudden fever that came and went too quickly to be understood. Ethel remembered entering the room before the wake. Resting on the sheets, the old woman’s motionless fingers held several pocket Bibles and small, worn wooden crosses—there were nearly fifteen of them, carved from various types of wood.
The pastor cleared his throat before continuing. It was a dry, mechanical sound, like a latch clicking into place; the woman shifted on the pew.
She kept her knees pressed together, yet her shoulders slumped for a moment, as if her body had forgotten the congregation was watching. Joseph remained still; his right hand rested on the edge of the wooden pew, pressing his fingers against the pine with a dull, insistent force—as though physical strength were the only thing keeping him from standing up and walking out.
Ethel looked down at her own hands. They were small, with soft, rounded fingernails. She turned them over once to show her palms, then flipped them back, searching for some invisible mark on the skin.
"And though she leaves us today," the reverend proclaimed, "she has not departed from the presence of the Lord."
A dry cough erupted from the back rows. Joseph snorted briefly through his nose, and Vera, without looking over, reached out to take her daughter’s hand. Outside, the day remained unchanged, bathed in the same reddish hue, as if the Alabama sky had agreed not to interrupt the Cains' mourning.
Ethel tried to find where the mercy the man at the altar spoke of might be hiding. Her father’s expression remained unyielding, while her mother’s lips moved intermittently, softly repeating verses—though the girl could not quite grasp what it was her mother was affirming.
The sermon began to dissolve into the rustle of opening hymnals. Joseph gripped the pew so tightly his knuckles turned white.
"Joseph," Vera whispered, her voice cracking ever so slightly—just enough to pull him back to the present. He didn’t answer, but the tension in his shoulders eased just a fraction.
"Let us keep her memory alive in our hearts," the pastor concluded, extending his hands. "Amen."
The collective "amen" echoed against the fine wood walls. The congregation began to stand, their shoes scuffing against the sawdust-covered floor. Ethel straightened up, feeling the collar of her Sunday dress tugging at her neck.
She glanced one last time at the coffin, her grandmother’s body, and the flickering candles, whose elongated shadows looked like twisted roots creeping up the altar. There were stories held within that space—stories no one would ever tell aloud.
Vera gave her arm a gentle tug, guiding her toward the center aisle.
As the church’s double doors swung open, the whisper of the wind through the Shady Grove pines reached them, and Ethel walked alongside her parents into the uncertain midday light.