“Can we go fishing tomorrow?” Gib asked Tate, and Carson lit up.
“Yeah, can we go fishing tomorrow?” he parroted.
“Not you,” Gib said, shooting Tate a conspiratorial glance.
Tate frowned at him. “Of course you can come, Carson,” he said. “You ever fished before?”
Carson shook his head while Gib looked shocked at the betrayal. “I got stuff to do anyway,” he said sullenly.
“Like what?” Tate asked. “Don't you want to show your brother how to catch bait?”
Gib looked thoughtful, obviously considering the use he could make of his little brother, and finally nodded his head. “Yeah, okay,” he said, and Carson bounced happily in his seat. “But you can't get in the way,” he warned him.
“I've got a few houses to check out, so I'll come by late afternoon,” Tate said, helping himself to another biscuit and breaking it into his gumbo. Carson carefully copied him.
“Good,” I said. “I need you boys in the morning. We have to load the car and drop some things off to be shipped back home tomorrow, and then we have to get started on the downstairs.” They both groaned, and Mother put her hand on my arm.
“Why don't you let the boys have tomorrow for the beach?” she asked. “Estella and I will help you.”
“Mother, if you want this house cleared out by next weekend we can't keep acting like we're on vacation,” I protested.
“Well, I'm supposed to be on vacation,” Gib said.
“No, you, young man, are supposed to be in summer school, and you”âI turned to Carsonâ“are supposed to be at camp. If we're going to get everything done, then I need some help.”
“I'm already signed up for summer school for when we get home,” Gib continued. “And besides, Aunt Estella's teaching me, so I can pass it, no problem.”
Estella looked up in surprise from her gumbo. She'd been staying out of the little skirmish, steadily eating her gumbo and biscuits in silence. “Oh, I was just showing him some things,” she said. “I hope that's okay?”
“Of course,” I said immediately. “Yes, it's very generous of you. Is heâare you getting it?” I asked Gib.
He shrugged. “The stuff she showed me I get,” he said. “She explains it different.”
Estella looked embarrassed.
“Well, thank you, Estella. All right then, Carson and Mother, you're my crew until we get this done.”
There was an assortment of grins and groans, but I ignored them all, and when the phone rang I jumped to catch it. “Hello?”
“I'm sunk,” Alexander said. “Nobody can do it.”
“Oh, Alexander, I'm so sorry,” I said. “What will you do?”
“I guess I'll have to cancel the performance, tell the manager, and rely on my audition.”
“You'll get it, I know you will.” I believed it, but I could tell that Alexander was sinking into one of his depressions. “Alex, it's going to be fine.”
“It's not,” he said. “It's not, and it's never going to be again.”
“Come on,” I said, losing a little patience. “It's just a performance. We've always been there, always done well; they're not going to cancel everything else and your audition is going to go well as long as you're prepared.”
“Couldn't youâwell, couldn't you maybe come home? Just for the night? Please, Connie, I can't . . .” He trailed off without specifying what he couldn't do.
“I have too much to do,” I protested. “And now the kids are hereâ”
“June can watch them,” he pleaded. “And besides, don't you want to check up on your house?”
“You're a big manipulator,” I scolded him, but as I considered it I realized it wasn't impossible. I'd already made my case that we needed to get the house finished. I could stuff the Escalade and wouldn't have to ship as much andâyes, I could check on my house, could even have the locks changed.
“Let me think about it,” I said.
“I have to call the board,” he said, wheedling, whining.
“I'll call you in the morning,” I said firmly. “Now, don't you even want to know about me?”
“I know. I'm scum. I'm incredibly insensitive. How are things?”
Aware of everybody on the patio, I lowered my voice and told him about having to pick up Carson and his reaction, how everyone wanted to play beach vacation instead of packing up the house, and how Angie had told me that Luke was resisting mediation. He made sympathetic noises, and by the time we got off the phone my self-pity had been mollified by his support.
“Mother?” I called out to the patio. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”
She encouraged me to go and promised that the boys would be fine, and my mind was made up. Feeling altruistic and motivated, I retrieved my violin from downstairs and brought it up, intending to practice in the library with the mute on so the sound wouldn't carry, but Carson was bringing his plate into the kitchen as I reached the second floor, and his eyes lit up at the sight of the case in my hand.
“Are you going to play?” he asked eagerly as Tate and Estella followed him in with their plates. They clamored for me to play too, and then Mother joined in, though Gib remained silent.
“Not tonight,” I said. “I just need to practice. I'm going to run home Saturday, stay the night for the performance, and then I'll be back on Sunday.” I half-expected the boys to insist on coming home too, but they merely nodded; Gib asked me to pick up his iPod. Carson was concentrating solely on my violin, tugging at the case as though he could get me to play if he could just show it to me, and I finally said, “We'd all love to hear you, Carson. Will you play for us?”
He ran downstairs for his clarinet. I made coffee while he got set up. Gib started to head to his room, but I gripped his arm and marched him to the couch, shoving a plate of cookies in his hand.
“Would you like to play something you learned at camp?” I prodded Carson, who was shifting through a stack of music. He ducked his head and pulled a few loose sheets of music out. We waited while he put the clarinet together, wetted and adjusted the reed three times, and briefly warmed up. Gib was getting restless, but I kept a death-grip on his arm.
Carson began slowly, sharp notes that quickly slurred into a softer, more advanced playing style. It was obvious that the short amount of time he'd spent at camp had done him good, and I waited patiently to recognize the piece he was playing. His face was red, and he was concentrating so heavily that his eyes appeared almost crossed from looking at his music down the length of the clarinet.
And then something magic happened: His eyes drifted shut, and suddenly the music lifted into a jazzy swing as he felt it. Everyone else felt it too. Gib went still beside me, and Mother and Estella were staring at Carson as if they'd never seen him before. I had to admit that I felt as though I were seeing him for the first time too.
My breath caught in my throat when I realized why I didn't recognize the piece. He was playing something he'd written himself. I glanced wildly around at everyone else, but nobody seemed to understand, until Estella looked directly at me and held my gaze. The piece was short, obviously unfinished, and he stopped abruptly, breaking the spell between me and Estella. He pulled the instrument from his mouth quickly, his eyes flying open to gauge our reaction.
Then Tate, thank God, stood and applauded, and everyone but me quickly followed suit. Estella nudged my knee with her leg and I stood rapidly, feeling light-headed. Carson let out the breath he'd been holding and grinned.
“See, that's what I was working on when I had to leave?” he said, making it a question. “The way it starts out, I didn't do that part real good, but I had already written the other part and it was easier when I closed my eyes, because I saw the music the way I wrote it, and then I had to stop. I mean it's not finished or anything.” He trailed off, embarrassed by his outburst, but Mother rushed to hug him, and he beamed up at her.
“You wrote that? It was fabulous,” she said. “Do you have more?”
“Yeah, but they're not really ready yet,” he said.
“That's okay,” she said. “Will you let us hear them when they are?” He nodded, and Mother turned to me with a look of wonder on her face. “Did you know this child was writing his own music?”
I nodded, my mouth suddenly too dry to speak. Estella pushed past me, making me sit back down on the sofa, and took Mother by the arm.
“Let's get this kitchen finished, Mother, and then we'll head up to the widow's walk.”
I sat on the couch and watched while Carson packed his clarinet away. Tate left after promising to pick the boys up the next afternoon and giving me a quizzical glance, and Estella finally got me to move with a pointed look. We all trooped up to the widow's walk to look at the stars, a show of familial solidarity that relieved me.
I tucked Carson into bed in my old room, and his eyes closed the second his head touched the pillow. I smoothed his hair back from his forehead.
“When will I see Daddy again?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“Soon, sweetheart,” I said, taken aback. “As soon as we finish up with the house. As soon as we get home, you'll see him. I know he misses you, and he can't wait to see you.”
“Really?” he asked, opening his eyes a slit, checking for the truth on my face. I hoped it was there.
“Really. You know, you're going to be able to see your daddy just as much as you want to.”
“Mark's dad never comes to see him.”
“Well, Mark's dad is a jerk, and yours isn't,” I said, hoping that it would turn out to be true. But it had not escaped me that Luke hadn't called to check on Carson. “We'll call him tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, closing his eyes again. He was asleep within a few moments, but I remained by his side, searching his face. Finally I rose, pulled the covers up over his arms, and softly closed the door. The light was on under Gib's door. I knocked.
“Yeah, come in,” he said. He was lying on his bed with his arms crossed under his head, staring up at the spinning fan. I sat on the side of the bed.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
He shrugged a shoulder, still staring at the fan going around. “You're notâyou don't
like
Tate or anything, do you?”
I laughed. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
He just looked at me, and then turned his attention back to the fan.
“Tate is an old friend. I do like him, and he's being a good friend to all of us right now. But that's all.”
“How did Carson take it?”
“Not well,” I answered. “He's going to need some extra attention from you. He's much younger than you are; he doesn't understand.”
“Who says I do?” he asked.
I sighed. “I don't either. Go on to sleep, Gib. I'll see you in the morning.” I stood, leaving him on the bed staring at the fan, and went upstairs to practice, hoping I could get Carson's music out of my head long enough to concentrate on somebody else's.
But Estella had different ideas for the night. As I climbed the stairs I heard her voice, low and strident.
“Why didn't you tell us?”
“You know now,” Mother replied, as serene as Estella was agitated.
“What else is there?” Estella asked. I stopped in the stairwell, leaning against the rail and listening carefully. “What happened to your father?”
“Well, he died, Estella. Did you expect him to still be here?” Her voice lost a bit of its measure, and I stepped heavily on the next step, warning them that I was coming. As I entered the living room, neither of them looked at me, and I sank down on the sofa next to Estella. We gazed at Mother without speaking, and when I felt Estella's hand steal onto my leg I gathered it in my own, and we waited. Mother sighed and brushed the hair out of her eyes.
“You girls,” she started, but then stopped. We said nothing. “Okay,” she said softly. “Daddy wasn't a fisherman. Well, he was, but not a very good one. When he had money it was because he'd won a game. He played cards. He had . . . a thing. A thing he did, with the cards.”
“He counted cards,” Estella murmured. Mother smiled a sly smile and tilted her head with a nod.
“That's right,” she said. “After the girls died, after we moved to Atlanta, it was all he did, and sometimes he didn't do it very well. He left me with the landlady when he was on the road. And when he got caught he'd go to jail, or sometimes the other players would take matters into their own hands. He came back once so beat up that the landlady got scared. She told him if he left me alone again she'd call the county. So he took me on the road with him. We traveled all over the Southâthe Carolinas, Alabama, Tennessee. We slept in the car if we didn't have money.”
She nodded at us. “You know the rest. I met Sebastian at one of those games.”
“Estella,” I said to my mother, and my sister's grip tightened on my hand. “That's where it came from, isn't it? Your father?”
“Well, I've always imagined so,” she said.
“Why didn't you tell me?” Estella whispered hoarsely.
“Because it doesn't matter,” Mother said, leaning forward. “It was important to your father to think he had something to do with it. And why not? What does it matter?”
I couldn't answer. For me, it didn't matter. But Estella wasn't letting up on my hand.
“How did he die, Mother?” she asked. “Don't you dare skip anything now.”
Mother stared at Estella and slowly nodded. “All right. He died in prison, Estella. He killed a man. In Macon. It was during a game, an illegal, big-stakes game, and the man came after him with a knife. He got it away from him during the fight and killed him. He was cut badly and almost died from blood loss himself. All the other players left; none of them called for help, too afraid they'd get arrested. A motel maid found them the next day.”