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PART ONE: THE WEIGHT OF BLOOD CHAPTER ONE: THE HOUSE ON THE HILL. The house on the hill was a monument to everything Ruth Harrison had been taught to despise, even as she had called it home for the first eighteen years of her life. It sat atop the highest ridge in Harrison County, Mississippi, a sprawling white colonial with columned porches and tall windows that caught the morning sun like mirrors and reflected it back into the world as a warning to anyone who dared approach. The grounds were immaculate—rolling lawns of emerald grass that had been trimmed by the hands of men who had never owned a single blade of it, ancient oaks draped in Spanish moss that swayed like ghostly curtains in the summer breeze, gardens that bloomed with azaleas and camellias and roses in their proper seasons, each flower planted precisely where it belonged, each petal a testament to the order that the Harrison family had imposed upon the world around them. It was the kind of house that appeared on postcards, the kind of house that people pointed to with pride when they spoke of the old families, the ones who had built this part of the South with their own hands and their own money and their own unshakeable belief in their own superiority. It was the kind of house that whispered secrets, that held memories, that bore witness to the rise and fall of generations. And it was the kind of house that Ruth had fled in the dead of night, never to return. She had grown up in that house, had run through its halls as a child, her bare feet slapping against the polished hardwood floors, her laughter echoing off the high ceilings. She had sat at the long mahogany dining table, learning which fork to use for which course, learning how to speak to the help, learning how to be a proper Southern lady. She had attended the finest schools, worn the finest clothes, and been promised a future that would be just as fine as her past. But all of that had ended the day she told her father she was pregnant. The memory of that day was burned into her mind like a brand, a moment of such searing pain that she had never been able to fully escape it. She had stood in her father s study, her hands clasped together to keep them from trembling, her eyes fixed on the Persian rug beneath her feet, the intricate patterns blurring as tears filled her eyes. Her father, William Harrison III, had sat behind his massive oak desk, his face a mask of cold fury, his eyes hard as flint, his jaw set in the rigid line that she had learned to fear as a child. His mother, Eleanor, had stood by the window, her back turned, her shoulders rigid with disapproval, her silhouette a perfect portrait of aristocratic disdain. "You ve disgraced this family," her father had said, his voice low and dangerous, each word cutting into her like a blade. "You ve thrown away everything we ve given you. Everything we ve worked for. For what? For some... some nobody from the other side of the tracks?" Ruth had wanted to defend herself, to explain that the man she loved was not a nobody, that he was kind and gentle and had promised to marry her, that he had a soul as deep and true as any man her father had ever met. But the words had died in her throat. She had seen the look