Page 53 of When the Night Comes Knocking

Aunt Judy threw down a black-and-white photo. In it, Grace lay across a chaise lounge in a silky dress that clung to her lithe figure like she was an old Hollywood starlet.

“I did not raise my daughter to be loose, Grace Marie.”

Jim took a careful step into the kitchen, setting down the store-bought apple pie he always brought for dessert. “Come on now, Aunt Judy. These aren’t so bad—”

His aunt raised a firm finger at him. Her blue eyes had gone steely, and she was giving him the look that clearly meant, You better think real careful about what comes out of your mouth next, boy.

When Judy dropped her finger, she sighed, heavy and tired, as she wiped her hands across the faded yellow apron tied around her waist. Jim noticed for the first time that her hair was starting to look more white than the sunny blond it had been when he was a boy.

“You’ve done just about enough, Jimmy,” she told him, and even at thirty-three years old, he still felt the same shame from his childhood pool into his gut at her disappointed expression.

He knew then that his aunt had discovered the agreement he and Grace had made—that he would not disclose her secret trip down to Atlanta the following Saturday, where an acting and modeling agency was holding an open call for new clients, so long as Jim could drive her there and keep an eye on things.

Jim looked at Grace. Her blue eyes flashed apologetically before she stared down at her feet and focused on a pair of worn white Converse. “Mama, I’ve got to have headshots if I’m going to make it,” she said. Wisps of blond hair fell into her face as she looked back up, eyes watering.

Aunt Judy raised an eyebrow. “Make it? Oh, sweetheart.” She shook her head, exhaling as she looked up toward the ceiling. “Do you really think going out to Hollywood and getting yourself on some big screen is going to mean you’ve ‘made it’? Is that really what you think life is about?” She shook her head again as the rooster timer on the countertop started to ring.

Aunt Judy went to pull a cast-iron skillet filled with homemade biscuits from the oven. The smell of melted butter and yeast filled up the room as she turned to face her eighteen-year-old daughter again. “I’ve let this pipe dream of yours go on because the plays at the high school were supervised and it wasn’t interfering with you being a good Christian. But this…” She glanced at the countertop, where the black-and-white photograph lay facing upward like Sin itself. “No. No more,” Aunt Judy said quietly.

Jim felt Grace’s devastation without even looking; it was like the air had been sucked clean from the room, leaving behind only the heat of the oven and the faint sounds of a baseball game filtering in from the living room. When he finally looked at his cousin, a tear slipped off her cheek and stained the fabric of her blue sundress.

Her eyes glanced from his to her mother, who was busy plucking the biscuits out from the skillet and dropping them one by one into a basket. Grace bit down on her wobbling lip. “I hate it here,” she said before stomping out the front door.

As the screen door slammed shut behind her, Aunt Judy calmly announced that dinner was ready. Jim watched Grace’s pace pick up to a sprint as she fled away from them, her long hair a flash of shimmering gold against the evening blue sky.

Later that night, Jim’s phone started to ring sometime around ten o’clock. He was back in his own home, lying horizontal in the recliner with a lingering queasiness from too much pork chop and the bitter last glare Aunt Judy had given him as she sent him out the screen door with a container of leftovers.

He hesitated, letting the phone ring a few times before answering.

“Jimmy?” Grace’s voice came from down the line, soft and trembling.

He sat up carefully, feeling the unease in his stomach swirl around as he cleared his throat. “What’s going on, kid?”

She was silent for several seconds, and somewhere in the background the call of a bird rang out—a whippoorwill, he guessed, but the reception was too spotty to be certain.

“Can you come pick me up?” Grace finally asked. “I just—I can’t go back to that house tonight. Not with her there,” she said, sniffling as the nocturnal bird’s call grew louder.

Jim tensed, glancing out the nearest window at the heavy night that had settled over the mountain. His aunt Judy’s house was two miles down the road, yet he wondered if she might somehow be able to hear them talking. He stood up and moved to the window, tugging the curtains shut with a quick jerk.

“Look, kid, don’t you think we’ve caused enough trouble tonight?” he answered, plopping back down into the recliner. “That dinner was a shit show, not that you stuck around long enough to see.”

“Come on, Jimmy, please. Just let me stay at your place tonight. Just for tonight, I swear.”

Jim sighed, rubbing at his tired eyes. He knew he should have never gotten involved with all this actor business in the first place, should have never thought they could keep such a big secret from Judy Meadows, who, with the right look, could likely cause a perfect stranger to start confessing their sins.

“Your mama is expecting you, Grace. It’ll be me she kills if I get involved again.”

“Please, Jim.”

“Not tonight,” he told her, feeling suddenly weary of all the dramatics. He was a grown man, for Christ’s sake, with a business to open up in the morning and a list of chores and bills piling up faster than he could think. The last thing he needed to add to the mix were the problems of a teenage girl.

He cut her off when the pleading started again. “Just go home, kid, alright? Go home.”

He ended the conversation, not realizing it’d be their last.

—

The dress is still pale blue with a print of small white flowers covering it. She still appears eighteen, despite seven years having passed since she first went missing and then shortly after when her body was found animal bitten and buried beneath leaves deep in the woods of Blood Mountain.