CHAPTER ONE

      MARILEE ABERNATHY HAD PLANNED HER suicide to the last detail. She’d gotten up at dawn, showered, and made up her face with the Mary Kay samples she’d won playing Tuesday-night bingo at church and saved for special occasions. Then she’d put on the beige linen suit and matching pillbox hat she’d bought at the Style Mart. It wasn’t Saks Fifth Avenue, mind you, but it was the only place in Chickpea, South Carolina, that didn’t have bright orange or lime-green polyester pantsuits hanging from a half-price rack at the back of the store.

      She wore her mother’s pearl choker—you simply couldn’t go wrong with pearls—and the smart, two-tone, beige-and-white high heels she’d never even taken out of the box until today. She knew her shoes were inappropriate. Labor Day had come and gone and dark brown spectator pumps would have been more in keeping with the season, but Marilee had chosen style over tradition. When folks came to her funeral, she wanted them to stand back and take notice.

      And say what a shame it was that Reverend Grady Abernathy had abandoned wife and church for some slut with implants and big hair.

      As for Josh, Marilee couldn’t even think of her son without getting a lump in her throat the size of a turnip, and the absolute last thing she needed to do was start crying again. Someone might think she’d been crying over Grady, and she simply would not have it. Not after he’d turned their fifteen-year-old child against her and moved the boy right smack into the best little whorehouse in Chickpea. That her son had gone so willingly had been the lowest blow, and the closest Marilee had come to having a coronary.

      She should have seen it coming. Josh had accused her of smothering him more than once, wanting to know where he was at all times, sticking her nose in his business, just being a regular pain in the butt as far as he was concerned. Marilee had to admit she’d become something of a nag and a worry-wart. As a result, she’d ended up alienating him—which explained why Josh was now living in Tall Pines Trailer Park with his father and a waitress by the name of LaFonda Bonaire.

      The scandal had rocked the town and the church where Grady had preached for the past ten years. His dismissal came with a notice to evacuate the house provided by the church. A stunned and humiliated Marilee had packed their belongings in record time and put everything in storage. She’d been hiding out at her poor deceased parents’ house for the past three days, hoping and praying she would wake up and discover it had all been a bad dream. But it was real. One minute she’d had a family and a life, the next minute it was gone. It was as though a giant tornado had come through and sucked up everything she’d ever known and loved.

      But none of that mattered now. What mattered was finding a way to end the pain. And she had thought she’d found it when she had pulled her car into the garage and closed the door with the engine running.

      It had seemed like the perfect way to die: sit inside a closed garage with the engine running until she nodded off. Marilee didn’t know squat about carbon monoxide poisoning except that it was supposed to be painless. Like falling asleep.

      So why in heaven’s name was she still alive?

      She gazed about her vintage Ford. She still held her son’s baby blanket and the rubber duck he’d loved as a toddler. Life had been so much simpler then. Marilee had gotten pregnant on her wedding night. Grady had sent a dozen red roses to the hospital after she’d given birth, even though he was still in seminary school and they were barely making ends meet. She remembered as though it were yesterday the day they brought their newborn home.

      Marilee remembered nursing Josh in the middle of the night, when the house was silent and all she could hear were the suckling noises he made. Even now she could close her eyes and conjure up the way he’d smelled, the feel of his downy hair against her cheek. And later, when his eyes lit up each time she walked into the nursery, his chubby arms reaching for her. She had been his world, his universe.

      Now he no longer needed her. Funny how one could dismiss another human being so easily.

      Marilee’s eyes flooded with tears, and she swiped at them and tried to concentrate on the task at hand. The engine wasn’t running. She peered over the steering wheel at the gas gauge. The needle pointed straight up to half a tank. Marilee sighed wearily. Somehow, in all the rigamarole, she’d forgotten about the faulty gas gauge. It had caused her to run out of gas several times over the past six months because she’d thought she had enough fuel to get her home.

      Obviously, it had happened again.

      Wasn’t that just her luck!

      Marilee wrenched open the door to the car and climbed out. There were still enough noxious fumes that she might be overcome after all, but she couldn’t count on it. She needed fuel. She paced a moment and then spied a dull-red gas can sitting in the corner of the garage. She paid a boy to cut her parents’ lawn twice a month. With any luck she’d come up with enough gas to get her to a service station.

      The gas tank was empty, and Marilee had to bite back the four-letter word on her tongue. She would not resort to foul language. She planned to leave this world with her morals and dignity perfectly intact. Years from now folks would comment on what a lady she’d been, right up to the bitter end. Marilee noted the lawn mower and hurried over to it. She unscrewed the cap and looked inside. It was full! Her joy was short-lived, though, as she pondered how to get the gas from the lawn mower into the gas can so she could pour it into her tank.

      Dang! This suicide business was not as easy as she’d thought it would be.

      She walked around the garage, searching. A dusty garden hose was coiled on a shelf at the back. She examined it, but there was no telling how old it was. Her father had never thrown anything away in his life. Still, it should do the job. She went inside the house for a knife so she could slice off a three- or four-foot section. A few minutes later, Marilee was trying to siphon gasoline out of the lawn mower. She swallowed a mouthful, then spent the next few minutes coughing and gagging before she gave it a second attempt. Grady had made it all look so simple the time he’d done it. Once the gas started coming, she quickly moved her end of the hose to the tank, but in her rush, dropped it. She grabbed for it but was a split second too late. Gas spewed everywhere, dousing her hair, face and eyes. It felt like someone had set her eyeballs on fire.

      “Hellfire and damnation!” To hell with dignity and morals! Marilee dropped the hose and raced blindly inside the house to the bathroom, where she bathed her eyes in cold water, ruining her perfect makeup and hairdo.

      There went all her plans for a fashionable funeral. Irby Denton, who owned the local funeral home, would take one look at her and insist on a closed coffin. Marilee sat on the edge of the tub and wept. And here she thought she’d used up all her tears.

      Where had she gone wrong? What had she done to Grady to make him hate her so? How could two people who’d once been so much in love, who’d vowed to God and themselves they’d never part, suddenly find themselves in such a mess?

      It had to be the flannel nightgowns she wore to bed. And the floppy socks that kept her feet warm during the night. It was no wonder he’d left her. She’d failed her husband. She’d let herself go. Chased him right smack into the arms of another woman.

      LaFonda Bonaire was probably allergic to flannel.

      Finally, Marilee composed herself. She returned to the garage and shook her head at the sight. What a mess. Leaning against her car and feeling defeated, she could just imagine what Grady would say.

      “Marilee,” he’d say, “if you had a brain you’d have to wear a warning label.”

      Grady had never talked to her like that in the early years. He’d referred to her as his Sweet Pea. “Sweet Pea,” he’d say, “you are a sight to behold in that new dress,” or “Sweet Pea, what did you think of my sermon today?”

      Now she was just plain old Marilee, who was rewarded with a weary sigh from him when she