He never knew who raped and beat his wife so horribly just four months after they were married. Doc Walters had to do a Caesarian when Doyle was born. She was only eighteen years old. She was twenty-three when she was buried.

Thomas never knew who did it so he put it out of his mind. He had no other choice. He had a wife and a son to tend. He and his father doted on the boy over the years, putting the rape away from their minds, someplace far away where they didn't have to see or hear it or feel it. There were times when they were weeding the vegetables or digging a new pit for the outhouse with little Doyle underfoot that they would look at each other. But neither asked the other what they wanted to ask, what they wanted so desperately to know.