The Feathered Bone Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE FEATHERED BONE

  “From the beginning, this story gripped me. Julie Cantrell is a wonderful wordsmith, and The Feathered Bone offers deep insight.”

  —FRANCINE RIVERS, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  “Julie Cantrell has done a marvelous job here of telling a story about real people who are confronted with unthinkable loss and hardship, but who rise up from the ashes to become fuller, stronger, and better versions of themselves. The Feathered Bone is at once heartbreaking and uplifting, tragic and beautiful. And it is also a book that reminds us that even in our darkest hour, there is still hope, still reason to go on, still reason to forgive, to be alive, and to love.”

  —DAVID ARMAND, AUTHOR OF HARLOW AND THE GORGE

  “Julie Cantrell is not only a bestselling author, she is also a ground-breaking one. Her latest novel, The Feathered Bone, tackles the important topic of human trafficking and how a child abduction impacts the lives of a close-knit community. Through lyrical writing, Cantrell creates a page-turning story of suspense that weighs the strength of faith, forgiveness, and the resilience of the human spirit. The Feathered Bone is not to be missed.”

  —MICHAEL MORRIS, AUTHOR OF A PLACE CALLED WIREGRASS AND MAN IN THE BLUE MOON

  “Emotionally gripping, The Feathered Bone will break your heart, but Julie Cantrell’s masterful skill as a wordsmith will not leave you broken. If you believe beauty can emerge from devastation, this story is for you. If you don’t, this story is for you.”

  —SUSAN MEISSNER, AUTHOR OF SECRETS OF A CHARMED LIFE

  “Julie Cantrell does not hesitate to dive in to the deepest places of the heart. She knows it’s all there in our fallen world—the good and bad, love and evil, the brokenness and the healing. In The Feathered Bone we meet three best friends who believe that their childhood promises will keep them safe, but when tragedy strikes one of them, they all fall. Cantrell’s characters ask of us all—what would you do? How do we recover from the worst we can imagine? A stunning story that takes us through tragedy, heartbreak, and ultimately to both courage and redemption.”

  —PATTI CALLAHAN HENRY, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE IDEA OF LOVE AND THE STORIES WE TELL

  “Only a writer of Julie Cantrell’s caliber could craft a story so thoroughly moving. Filled with courage, love, and faith in the most horrifying of situations, The Feathered Bone promises to grip you until the last page, and then long after.”

  —BILLY COFFEY, AUTHOR OF THE CURSE OF CROW HOLLOW AND WHEN MOCKINGBIRDS SING

  “This is my favorite kind of book. The type of story that dismantles your heart and then puts the pieces back together in better working condition. A powerful tale of devastation and redemption. I loved it.”

  —JAMIE FORD, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET

  “The Feathered Bone is a rare find, a beautifully written page-turner that left me stunned and breathless. In Julie Cantrell’s masterful hands, the horror of Hurricane Katrina becomes a metaphor for the personal tragedies of lives torn apart and patched back together by the power of faith, courage, and love.”

  —CASSANDRA KING, AUTHOR OF THE SUNDAY WIFE

  “What a book with heart. Ms. Cantrell’s empathy for the complicated twists and turns of tragedy is woven throughout her new novel. She explores the gray area of simple decisions that come before disaster. This book is by far her best work yet.”

  —ANN HITE, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF WHERE THE SOULS GO AND GHOST ON BLACK MOUNTAIN

  “Startling and suspenseful, The Feathered Bone zips along with color and action, but doesn’t fail to underscore the issues; for instance, questions of faith, and the perpetual domestic guilt that wives and mothers seem always to feel. Julie Cantrell knows how to tell a story.”

  —LISA HOWORTH, AUTHOR OF FLYING SHOES AND OWNER OF SQUARE BOOKS

  “The Feathered Bone fulfills every expectation that Julie Cantrell occasioned with Into the Free and When Mountains Move. It is haunting and hauntingly beautiful, a heart-wrenching story about how one woman, Amanda Salassi, rises from the depths of despair to discover that freedom and miracles do exist. Seeing pure darkness enables her to appreciate the light of love and hope.”

  —ALLEN MENDENHALL, SOUTHERN LITERARY REVIEW

  “In a journey through the darkest parts of the spirit, Julie Cantrell provides a near handbook for surviving crushing tragedies. Peppered with colorful characters and places and touching on real-life topics, The Feathered Bone is a beautifully written, rawly honest look at human frailty and strength, faith and doubt, and the resilience to keep living.”

  —MARGARET DILLOWAY, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE AND SISTERS OF HEART AND SNOW

  “The Feathered Bone is a haunting look at humanity. A ferocious tale of failures and flaws and the necessity of forgiving ourselves and one another. A breathless read from the moment young Sarah disappears from the suffocating crowds at New Orleans’s Café Du Monde. Julie Cantrell has expertly captured the unrelenting terror and enduring hope of a community transformed by loss.”

  —KAREN SPEARS ZACHARIAS, AUTHOR OF BURDY

  “Julie Cantrell, like all brave writers, puts her protagonist Amanda Salassi through unimaginable loss. And like all great heroes, Amanda battles to the brink of her own destruction . . . to be saved, ultimately, by her own enduring faith and love.”

  —NEIL WHITE, AUTHOR OF IN THE SANCTUARY OF OUTCASTS

  “Powerful and riveting. As a therapist who works with women in destructive marriages I was encouraged to see this topic explored without the ‘just try harder’ solution many women receive.”

  —LESLIE VERNICK, COUNSELOR, RELATIONSHIP COACH, SPEAKER, AND AUTHOR OF THE EMOTIONALLY DESTRUCTIVE MARRIAGE AND THE EMOTIONALLY DESTRUCTIVE RELATIONSHIP

  “Julie Cantrell confronts the horrors that hide in the shadows of our modern world with love and grace. I read this novel in a great inhalation, and maybe it was the tenacity of her heroine, or the gamut she runs, from awful sadness to revelry and redemption, that kept me clinging to this story of real people in painful circumstances. The Feathered Bone reminds us of the value of letting in the light.”

  —JAMIE KORNEGAY, AUTHOR OF SOIL AND MANAGER OF TURNROW BOOK COMPANY

  © 2016 by Julie Cantrell

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

  Published in association with the literary agency of WordServe Literary Group, Ltd., www.wordserveliterary.com.

  Interior design by James A. Phinney

  Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

  The “Beatitudes of a Christian Marriage” are courtesy of the plaque in the Blind River Chapel near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Author is unknown.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-7
180-3763-5 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cantrell, Julie, 1973-

  The feathered bone / Julie Cantrell.

  pages ; cm

  ISBN 978-0-7180-3762-8 (trade paper)

  I. Title.

  PS3603.A597F43 2016

  813'.6--dc23

  2015028781

  16 17 18 19 20 RRD 5 4 3 2 1

  For the people of Livingston Parish, no matter where adventure leads me, my story always begins with you.

  For Carol, Chris, Gina, and Kerri, you have taught me the power of true “sister friendship.”

  For Teresa and the entire Murray family, thank you for calling me one of your own. Carry the torch. Pen a happy ending.

  For Larry (and Dean), you entered my life at exactly the right season, reminding me we are here to love in spite of, not because of. For that, I owe you “every day by the sun.”

  And for the students of Still Creek Ranch, you are the bravest spirits I have ever known. Keep fighting for the light.

  Contents

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part 2

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part 3

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  A Note from the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  Part 1

  Love is the child of freedom, never that of domination.

  —ERICH FROMM

  Chapter 1

  Friday, October 29, 2004

  The Day

  A MAGIC MOVES THE DAY AS IF ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN. PERHAPS it’s the pulse of jazz in the air, or the rhythmic churn of the riverboats, or the warm winds that swoop the levee, but there’s a hint of mystery surrounding us. Something has charged the marrow walled within my bones. Pay attention, it says. And so I do.

  It’s the week of Halloween—not the best time to bring a sixth-grade class on a field trip to the Big Easy. But three rain delays pushed back the date, so here we are in New Orleans, where thick, milky fog rises from the river like steam. It nearly blocks our view of a shiny white tugboat and her long string of barges nosing their way through the coffee-colored currents.

  We wait at Mardi Gras World, the famous tourist trap where my daughter, Ellie, and her classmates have come to learn the history of carnival season. Unlike the cars that buzz across the Crescent City Connection, or the boats that linger lazily beneath the bridge, we are landbound. We’re also surrounded by mermaids, each elaborately carved and painted by Blaine Kern’s studio artists.

  Around the sculptures, a festive crowd filters through. They are free spirits, wearing rainbow face paint as they scuttle for a better view of the Mississippi. “A cape?” my friend Beth whispers. “Cute.”

  “Getting that party started early.” Raelynn eyes the most flamboyant tourist before taking a seat beneath the pergola. “Argh, it’s wet.” She pulls beads around her neck, adjusting the plastic pendant that serves as our admission ticket for the guided tour.

  Across the waterfront patio, a brass band pipes through scratchy speakers. Potted palm trees dance in the breeze. From the river, a dull horn bellows, causing our students to roar. The raucous tourist swings by again, her cape whipping wildly, her cheeks all aglitter. While this scene might be expected during Mardi Gras, it’s unusual for a Friday morning in October.

  My daughter shuffles through the crowd, staying close to her best friend, Sarah. A heavyweight redhead wearing dollar-store fangs jumps in front of them with a deep and masculine “Boo!” Ellie startles, and the jokester jolts away, laughing. This leaves our students wide-eyed, the chaperones on edge.

  “Let’s go ahead and get the children back inside,” Miss Henderson instructs. She is young and not yet burned out from the never-ending demands of public education. Even now she remains pleasant as she taps one of her more rambunctious students on the shoulder, nudging him down from the railing where he’s at risk of falling into the dangerous currents.

  “Girls?” Beth and I both call for our daughters. In response, Sarah and Ellie skip into line, their arms laced together, their steps in sync. As they prance beneath a strand of purple and green party lights, Sarah’s blond hair catches a glow, exaggerating her angelic complexion. Her innocent blue eyes twinkle with a sort of naïve joy not normally associated with raucous Bourbon Street celebrations. I whisper to Beth, “She could model for American Girl dolls.”

  “They’re both beautiful.” Raelynn drags behind. “The only problem is, which one will get to marry my Nate?”

  “Yuck!” they protest, and Miss Henderson laughs, closing the double doors behind us.

  Inside the gift shop, students explore rows of spirit dolls and voodoo pins, while Sarah and Ellie move to the collection of intricate masks. They have just begun to dance in disguise when a shopper steps up from behind. She’s older than us. Close to fifty, I’m guessing. At thirty-five, fifty is sounding younger to me by the day.

  “They sisters?” She asks this while watching Ellie and Sarah giggle in feathered face gear.

  “Might as well be,” Beth answers. “Born on the same day. Best friends since birth.” She doesn’t bother explaining that our girls are without siblings and have learned to rely on one another to fill that role.

  “Figures. My daughters wouldn’t have been so nice to each other at that age.” She looks at me a little too long, and I shift away, adjusting my heavy backpack. It’s crammed with first-aid gear and water bottles—just in case.

  The woman leans closer. “You’re from Walker?” She points to my bright-green shirt, the one Miss Henderson designed. It shows a school bus surrounded by classic New Orleans symbols: Mardi Gras masks, musical notes, and the traditional fleur-de-lis. At the bottom it reads LP to NOLA 2004, suggesting we’ve all traveled more than an hour east from rural Livingston Parish to explore our state’s most famous city, “The City That Care Forgot.”

  I nod. “We’re here for a field trip. You?”

  “Albany,” she says. “You may not remember, but are you a social worker? In Denham Springs? Amanda Salassi?”

  My heart sinks. Is she one of my clients? Why can’t I place her?

  I scrape my brain, trying to pull this file—her round face, the gnawed fingernails, the tiny Hungarian hamlet of Albany known for its strawberries and quiet way of life. I draw nothing but blanks.

  “You go out on call sometimes, with Sheriff Ardoin?” She keeps her voice low, hesitant.

  Chills rise. I remember. She weighed at least a hundred pounds less when I last saw her, but her soft voice, something about that thin smile. “Mrs. Hosh?”

  She nods, and we offer one another a warm glance.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. Your hair was a lot longer. And brown.”

  “Yeah.” She says this with a half chuckle, reaching up to feel her short blond crop.

  It’s all coming back to me now. The tight-knit settlement. The protective way her kinfolk circled, unwilling to let me in. Her late-night calls to my home phone, in secret, asking to talk.

  “I want you to know”—she dabs her eye with the back of her finger—“I couldn’t have survived it without you. Knowing you cared. And you didn’
t judge. Getting the others to call me. That helped. More than you can understand. Just knowing they had survived it.”

  I gesture for Beth to watch the girls. Then I lead Mrs. Hosh to the side. “You’re here,” I whisper. “You survived it too.”

  “One breath at a time. That’s all I can do.”

  “That’s all you have to do,” I tell her, drawing her into a gentle hug. “Just keep breathing.”

  She holds me close, so tight her shoulder clamps against my throat, but I don’t dare pull away. It doesn’t matter that we are in a public gift shop, surrounded by chaperones and strangers. Or that my daughter and her friends watch us as they toy with touristy trinkets. All that matters is that this woman, right this moment, needs a hug. So that’s what we do. We hug.

  After the emotional exchange with Mrs. Hosh, I hurry to catch up with Ellie’s class. They are following a cheerful tour guide into the theater, where he instructs us to zip sparkly costumes over our clothes. I grab four hangers, each with a long satin shirt that’s been studded with sequins. Ellie chooses turquoise, her favorite color. It works well with her olive complexion and dark curls, which she inherited from Carl’s Italian roots. In contrast, Sarah snatches hot pink, a bright anchor to her blond ponytail. Beth and I settle for the leftovers, while Raelynn snags a set for Nate and crew.

  “Choose a hat.” Beth points to a stand filled with plush velvet caps. We select a few and hurry to the back of the room, where a three-dimensional Mardi Gras mural has been built for photo ops.

  Sarah waves her hand like a princess and stands straight. “I’m the Queen of Endymion.”

  “And I’m the Queen of Bacchus,” Ellie adds, bending her knees in a dramatic curtsy. I snap her photo, certain it will make the cut for this year’s scrapbook.

  Just on the other side of the wall, a café keeps our space swirling with scents of chicory coffee, a temptation that is becoming hard to ignore. “Man, I need a cup of brew,” Raelynn admits. She rushes past us with her group of boys, a motley crew of hunters and fishermen who would rather be on a boat or a four-wheeler than anywhere near a city. But they are being good sports, pretending to fight over which one of them gets to wear the pastel pink shirt for the photo.