The Seventh Mother (28 page)

I
n the end, Brannon confessed to nine murders, including Damon Rigby’s. He ran Damon off the road that night and left him to die in a ditch. And he confessed to killing Mrs. Figg, too. He’d pushed her down the stairs and then watched her die on the floor of her own house. He blamed her for my fall.

He confessed so that Jenny wouldn’t have to testify at his trial. At least, that’s what he said. But I think he probably confessed so he could avoid the death penalty. MommaJean and I went to his sentencing—life in prison with no possibility of parole.

He told the police where he’d buried the bodies of all those women who’d lived with him. And so, finally, Hailey came home. We had a graveside memorial service on a beautiful day in June, surrounded by family and friends. Jenny held MommaJean’s hand throughout the service. Both of them cried.

The publicity was terrible at first. It seemed like everywhere we went, people stared at us and whispered. Reporters called Lorelei’s and MommaJean’s and the bookstore, trying to get interviews with me and Jenny. Our pictures appeared in newspapers and on the TV news. I tried hard to shield Jenny as best I could, and I watched proudly as she learned to cope with microphones and cameras and reporters yelling questions.

And then, two weeks after the first news story appeared, MommaJean got a phone call at the bookstore. My little sister, Clarissa, had seen my photo on the news all the way out in Los Angeles, where she had gone after leaving her own disastrous arranged marriage. A week later, she flew to Indianapolis. It felt almost surreal, seeing her again. All grown up with two young children of her own, she lived with her new husband in California. She had been trying to find me for years, she said. So I guess, in a way the publicity was both a blessing and a curse.

My worries about how to support Jenny and the baby were eased a bit when I got a call from a lawyer in Texas who represented Ami Gordon’s family. There’d been a reward for information about her murder, a reward of fifty thousand dollars. I didn’t want to take it at first, but MommaJean convinced me to accept it.

“You gave that family the same peace you gave me, honey,” she said. “That’s worth all the money in the world.”

We used the money to buy a little row house just two doors down from MommaJean. I enrolled Jenny in school and took a job at the coffee shop, replacing the barista who’d called the police that awful day when Brannon arrived with the gun.

We’ve been down to Campbellsville twice, Jenny and I, to see Angel and Lashaundra, Resa and Harlan, Shirley and Jasper. I asked Jenny if she wanted to move back there, but she wanted to stay in Indianapolis, where her family is. We have a big family now, a big, beautiful, noisy family. Jenny has gotten to know her cousins, and on days when I work she often goes to Rudy’s house after school to play with his daughters.

My belly is getting bigger every single day, it seems. We’ve been decorating the nursery with ducks and bunnies. Jenny loves to buy things for the baby. She is going to be such a good sister.

We haven’t told MommaJean yet, but we’ve decided to name the baby Hailey.

A READING GROUP GUIDE

Sherri Wood Emmons

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

The suggested questions are included to enhance
your group’s reading of Sherri Wood Emmons’s
The Seventh Mother.

1. Zella Fay tells Emma that Brannon is carrying a lot of baggage. Are there any red flags in Brannon’s behavior in Idaho that Emma misses? Is she foolish to leave Idaho with Brannon and Jenny? Have you ever taken a risk that big? Did that risk pay off, or not?
   
2. Emma grew up in the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints community, which upholds the legitimacy of polygamy. Do you believe polygamous marriage can ever be okay, or is it fundamentally wrong?
   
3. Angel asks Emma if she thinks “white folks are the only ones who can hate,” and says her father hated white people because of the way he had been treated in the South under Jim Crow. Does that hatred make Angel’s father a racist? Or do you agree with filmmaker Spike Lee, who said in a 1991 interview with
   Playboy
   magazine, “Black people can’t be racist. Racism is an institution.”?
   
4. What role does Jasper Rigby play in the story? Is there hope for his becoming a better man than his father, or has his upbringing sealed his fate?
   
5. After Mrs. Figg’s death, Lashaundra tells Jenny that people who don’t believe in God probably go to hell. Do you believe in heaven and hell? Is belief in God a prerequisite to heaven?
   
6. Sister Frances tells Emma that all churches are human creations, but she still believes in God. Does that jibe with your experience of church? Why or why not?
   
7. Lorelei tells Emma that their meeting at Loretto is “a God-thing.” Is that something you believe in, or is their meeting simply a lucky happenstance? Have you ever had an experience you would call a God-thing?
   
8. Jenny comes to believe that Emma is different from all of her previous “stepmothers.” Yet it’s Jenny’s actions that precipitate their flight from Brannon. Is Emma really different from her predecessors, or has Jenny simply become old enough to start asking questions about her father’s life?
   
9. Is Emma right to accept the reward money offered by Ami Gordon’s family? Or does it seem like she is profiting from Brannon’s crimes? Would you feel comfortable accepting such a reward? Why or why not?
   
10. Given Brannon’s childhood experiences, is he simply a product of terrible circumstance? Does his background in any way mitigate his crimes? Is he in any way a sympathetic character?
    
11. Emma’s first marriage was to an abusive man. After she left him, she tells Jenny, she followed a man from Salt Lake City to Rexburg, Idaho, because she thought he was “really nice.” But he turned out to be not a good guy. Finally, she marries Brannon, who also has an abusive history. What in her background leads Emma into one abusive relationship after another? Is she doomed to keep repeating that pattern?
    
12. Jenny has seen her father’s uncontrolled anger, and even episodes of violence. Is she in any way complicit in Brannon’s crimes? Does she have a responsibility to warn Emma, or is she simply too young to be accountable?
    

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Copyright © 2014 by Sherri Wood Emmons

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-8046-6
eISBN-10: 0-7582-8046-7
First Kensington Electronic Edition: August 2014

ISBN: 978-0-7582-8045-9

ISBN-10: 0-7582-8045-9