Free Burying the Honeysuckle Girls by Emily Carpenter

me gone, decided to let me have my space. This, and the fact that his keys were still sitting on the kitchen counter, were better than an answered prayer. It was a divine gift.
    I headed outside and slid into the fragrant leather seat of Jay’s BMW. Pressed my fingers to my temples.
    Don’t think, just go. Go.
    I said a quick Veni, Creator Spiritus in penance—even though I was pretty sure it wasn’t that kind of prayer—and threw the car into drive. I headed upriver about three miles, to a sprawling, stone-and-glass contemporary house that lay almost adjacent to the mouth of the bay. The sight of the place always caused my gut to twist and my pulse to speed up, but if I was going to get information about my mother, this was where I had to start.
    Miraculously, there were no cars in the drive, so I parked and knocked on the double front doors. A maid answered, thank God. (A maid, not a housekeeper, mind you, a woman who had to be over seventy and who still wore one of those gray-and-white uniforms from back in the day.)
    I said I was an old friend of Hilda Oliver’s—well, all the Olivers really—and wanted to say hello. She told me that although Mrs. Oliver was out, she did know that Mr. Oliver was playing golf at the club with Rowe, their son.
    Nervous excitement bubbled up inside me as I nosed the car toward the country club. I sang snatches of the song on the radio, trying not to think about how easy it was to slip back into my old ways. What a terrible person I must be to feel this good about lying, stealing, and speeding eighty-five miles an hour toward another bad decision.

Chapter Eight
    Sunday, September 16, 2012
    Mobile, Alabama
    Mobile Country Club’s rolling golf course shimmered in the waves of heat. I parked at the edge of the lot, under the shade of an old oak, and punched at the baffling row of buttons above the windshield until one of them closed the sunroof. I slid the cigar box under the driver’s seat. Along with my phone.
    The kid in the pro shop told me the Oliver foursome was close to finishing. I was thinking about getting a golf cart when I spotted the snack cart parked outside on the path. They were always hiring the biggest dingbats to run the carts: morons with mermaid hair, big tits, and skirts so short you could see a faint swell of ass under the hem. In other words, women who could sell an ungodly amount of beer and turkey clubs. I sauntered out. No surprise, the key was in the ignition. I started it up and took off down the cart path.
    After whizzing past a couple of players who attempted to flag me down, I parked at the fifteenth hole, just in time to see Rowe Oliver tee off. I sat in the cart, under the stand of pines, trying to collect myself. It had been a long time. Years. But now that I was this close to him, I felt like a thirteen-year-old girl again. A trembling, panicky, thirteen-year-old girl.
    Rowe was dressed in an atrocious combination of purple, kelly green, and yellow with a wide white belt holding his pants under a substantial gut. I did some mental math. He was forty-two. His face was bright red, salt-and-pepper hair sprouting above the white visor, stained with sweat.
    I could handle him, I told myself. I could. And not just because I knew his weaknesses but because he was nothing to me.
    Nothing.
    Rowe squinted down the fairway, leaned on his driver, and swore. The rest of his group headed to their cart. I slid out of my seat. Struck a pose—legs apart, one hand on my hip, chest out.
    “Thirsty?” I called out. My voice sounded strong. Saucy. And, like a puppet on a string, Rowe Oliver turned my way. I smiled.
    He returned his driver to his bag and waved at his father and the other two men. “Y’all want a beer?” They declined, and Rowe walked toward me. “You’re new,” he said, whipping off his sunglasses, wiping his face with his arm. His eyes roamed over my body. My stomach turned.
    “You want something?” I asked.
    He narrowed his eyes at me, and