I pulled up in Vernell's driveway, cut the lights, and slipped around to the side entrance. When I came within five feet of the door, the security lights flicked on and a strange robotic voice barked "Key in your security code or ring the doorbell." I punched in Sheila's birth date and waited.

"Accepted," the robot said.

I stepped through the door, closing it firmly behind me and locking it. This time there would be no slip-ups, no unwanted intruders like Tony Carlucci.

I stood in the mud room, just off of the garage, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light that shone in from the kitchen.

"If I were Vernell Spivey, and I was trying to hide something like my important papers or money, where would I put it?" There just had to be some way to figure out what the connection was between Nosmo and Vernell.

The stove in Vernell's kitchen glowed with the light from the hood overhead. I walked in and stood by the huge pine table, looking around at the excess Vernell had poured into his new home.

The range was a Viking, but Vernell couldn't cook. The refrigerator was a subzero, but when I opened it, all I found was beer and a shriveled lemon. The tiles on the backsplash were hand-painted. The window treatments were custom-made, something Vernell and I could never afford in all of our married life.

I looked around and realized that Vernell's palace was an interior designer's dream, and that there was not one personal item or picture from his life present in any of the rooms downstairs. Vernell and his second wife, the lovely nymphet, Jolene the Dish Girl, had bought and paid for their lives together, without so much as one idea of what true life really meant. I shook my head. Where had all of Vernell's money gone? Had he ever really had any money?

I looked across the hallway, into Vernell's darkened study. I remembered the stacks and stacks of bills that Vernell had left unpaid on his desk. At the time I'd assumed he was merely irresponsible, not unable to pay them.

I walked out into the huge marble foyer and began climbing the steps to the second floor of Vernell's home.

Vernell and I had started out poor, so poor we lived in a repossessed trailer that had been gutted by its former owners. Somehow, I remembered those days fondly. We were still in love then, puppy love, the kind where you can't see obstacles, only possibilities.

I was pregnant with Sheila, sick as a dog, and still I couldn't help but feather our nest. Vernell would drag in used bits of wood and Formica, rebuilding me a kitchen, hand-laying the tiles to form the floor. He worked for a mobile home lot as a repo man. The pay was terrible and the hours were long, but the promotions came quick. Before we knew it, Vernell was a salesman and the little bit of money he brought home bought the crib and curtains for Sheila's room.

I looked around Vernell's stone palace and shuddered. It was cold and loveless. The trailer in southeast Greensboro had been dog-ugly but filled to the brim with love. But that didn't last.

"I don't know what it's all about anyway," I muttered. I stopped at the top of the stairs and looked both ways up and down the hall. Vernell's master suite lay off to the right, the only room in the house that I'd never seen. Sheila's room and the guest rooms lay to the left.

When Sheila had lived with Vernell, he and Jolene had tried to give her all the love money could buy, and for a while it had worked, and I'd lost her. But those things have a way of showing themselves to be just what they are, and Sheila came back to me. Poor Vernell couldn't understand why she left, but then, he hadn't understood Jolene either.

I shook myself and turned to the right. Might as well step into the lion's den. It couldn't hurt me now anyway. But I was wrong. My feet sank into the thick white carpeting as I walked into his room. But when I crossed over the threshold, I stepped onto a hard wood floor. The room was dark. Dark hulks of furniture stood out, casting dark shadows in the reflection of the streetlight outside.

I reached for the light switch, deciding to take the risk. I had to be able to search his room. What I saw took my breath away. Vernell's room was a huge expanse that took up the entire end of the house, but that wasn't what stopped me.

Vernell had pulled up the carpeting that covered the rest of the upstairs and laid hardwood floors. The carpet was shoved into one of the two walk-in closets, the closet with all of Jolene's clothing. Along with the carpeting, Vernell had torn the curtains from the windows and torn the bedding from the king-sized bed, throwing it all in on top of the carpet. What he had done next broke my heart.

The yellow wedding ring quilt Mama had made as a gift for us on our wedding day covered the bed. Vernell had pulled out all of the pictures he had of Sheila, from infancy until last year, slipped them into plain wooden frames, and hung or placed them with care around the room. Against the far wall he had hung a picture from our first home, a cheap watercolor print of a forest scene. His mother's green velvet rocker stood against the window, with an ancient floor lamp beside it, and on the floor lay a bible and an empty Jack Daniel's bottle.

Vernell Spivey had done his best to come home. I stepped into the room and looked around some more. Vienna sausage cans filled the trash can, along with an empty bottle of hot sauce and an empty saltine cracker box. It was obvious that Vernell lived alone in his palace, in one solitary room, grieving his roots. No wonder Bess King had seemed like such a miracle. She was a home girl, just like I had been, just like Vernell's mama and her mama before her.

I walked over to the rocker and sat down, reaching over to pick up the heavy family Bible. The underlined words on the page blurred as my eyes filled up with tears. Vernell had been highlighting his favorite passages, reading them over and over. My curiosity overwhelmed me and I wiped the tears away and began to read.

"The righteousness of the upright saves them, but the treacherous are taken captive by their schemes… Whoever is steadfast in righteousness will live, but whoever pursues evil will die." I flipped through the pages of Proverbs, reading the passages Vernell had carefully underlined in yellow. "Misfortune pursues sinners, but prosperity rewards the righteous. The good leave an inheritance to their children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous." Then the last passage, underlined twice, read "Some pretend to be rich, yet have nothing; others pretend to be poor yet have great wealth. Wealth is a ransom for a person's life but the poor get no threats."

Poor Vernell. If it were possible, he seemed to be changing his ways, or at least considering it. A piece of paper fluttered out of the Bible as I turned the pages, falling into my lap. It was scrap paper, and on it Vernell had written "The Satellite Kingdom," then scratched that out. "The Mobile Home Kingdom," and scratched that out. This was followed by a series of names: "Vernell's Palace of the Future," "Millennium World," "Divine Accommodations," and "Seek and Ye Shall Find It All World," all scratched out. Finally Vernell had arrived at something that worked for him. "The Promised Land Kingdom of Earthly Transportation and Accommodation."

I shook my head and looked away. What scheme had Vernell concocted now? I looked across the room at the bed and saw a piece of wood sticking out from underneath the dust ruffle.

When I pulled the dust ruffle aside and looked, I found Vernell's master plan. It was a balsa wood model, carefully constructed and delicately laid out, a two-foot-by-two-foot square. Vernell's "Promised Land Kingdom." There, in miniature, was his plan to take over Greensboro's transportation and accommodation needs. An entire village of mobile homes, satellite dishes, and used cars that would sit on a huge plot of land just beyond the water park on South Holden Road.