Chesapeake Tide (22 page)

Russ disappeared into the kitchen.

The girl walked slowly down the stairs until she stood even with Libby. “You're Chloe's mother, aren't you?”

“I'll admit to it,” said Libby, “although sometimes I wonder if I should.”

“She's different,” observed Tess.

“She's a Californian,” answered Libby. “That explains a lot.”

“I like her,” Tess said.

Libby looked, really looked, at this frail, ethereal child for the first time and her heart melted. “Would you do me a favor?”

Tess looked wary. “What kind of favor?”

“Would you tell her that?”

Tess looked horrified. “It's not something that would just come up in normal conversation.”

Libby's smile faded. “I guess not.”

Tess frowned, opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again without speaking.

Libby explained. “Chloe doesn't feel as if she fits in here. She wants to go home.”

Tess's eyelashes fluttered. “Why can't she?”

“I want to stay here. This is my home.”

“But it isn't hers. She wants to live with her dad.”

“Did she tell you that?”

Tess nodded.

Libby's shoulders sagged. “I know.”

“It might be better to let her go back,” Tess advised.

Libby collected herself. This heart-to-heart with a peer of her daughter's wasn't appropriate. “Maybe you're right. Shall we see about that hot chocolate?”

Tess eyed Libby's shirt. “I think I should get you something else to wear. You're pretty wet.” She eyed Libby's full breasts, clearly exposed under the soaking shirt. “I don't think anything I have would fit you. I'll check in Dad's closet.”

She was back in a minute with a soft gray sweatshirt. Libby excused herself and changed in the bathroom, leaving her dripping blouse hanging in the shower stall. Then she joined Russ and his daughter, taking a seat around the old oak table in the kitchen.

“This is nice, isn't it?” asked Russ. He appealed to Tess. “Wouldn't it be great if Chloe was here, too?”

Tess was sitting beside her father. The light from the overhead lamp shone down upon them. She rolled her eyes and looked across the table, giving Libby an unshadowed view of her face. Her eyes were brown, a deep velvety brown, without the slightest touch of hazel.

Libby looked from father to daughter and back again.
Blue eyes, brown, blue.
She looked down at her cup of hot chocolate and called up the memory of her last encounter with Tracy Wentworth.
Pale hair, clear gray eyes.
The genetic law so without exception that it was used as a model for decades of schoolchildren popped into her mind:
Two recessives can never, absolutely never, produce a dominant. Light-eyed parents do not produce dark-eyed children.
Once again her eyes moved from Tess to Russ, searching for the slightest resemblance. Then she went completely still.

“Libba.” Her name on Russ's lips revived her. “I think it needs to be explained to them.”

She looked dazed. “What?”

“The watermen. The problem needs to be explained to them in terms they understand. I think you should do it.”

“Me?” Dismay clouded her features.

Russ nodded. “Who better?”

“I can think of a number of people.”

“Think about it. These people know you. If you treat them like you're on their side, you won't be seen as the enemy, the one shutting them down.” He leaned forward. “They'll have plenty of time on their hands and you said you needed help.”

“What are you talking about?” Tess asked.

Russ spoke first. “Remember I told you there's a problem with the crabs?”

She nodded. “Everyone's talking about it.”

“We need to find out why,” Russ explained. “And we need to do it quickly or we can't fish.”

“I need trained help, Russ,” said Libby.

He shrugged impatiently. “What does it take to check out the waste systems of production plants? At least they'll know what they're looking for. C'mon, Libba Jane. Give them a chance.”

“I'll think about it,” she said reluctantly. “However, it's a big job and a lot more complicated than you think.”

Russ winked at this daughter. “Think fast because I've called a meeting for tomorrow evening.”

“You have four trawlers, Russ. How many people do you employ?”

“Twelve. But this concerns all the fishermen on the bay, not just me. We'll have the meeting in the library and we'll figure out how to get through this.”

Libby stared at him, dismayed. She'd only just returned to Marshyhope Creek and still felt like a newcomer, insecure of her welcome. The last thing she wanted was to hold a town meeting under false pretenses. Still, Russ's request made sense. She really couldn't refuse. It wouldn't hurt to have everyone know the facts, if only she was sure of what the facts were. Searching for PCB leaks wasn't a bad idea. It certainly couldn't hurt, and maybe someone would uncover something more in the process. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “I suppose it is a good idea to keep them busy. At least I can tell them about collecting their benefits.”

N
ola Ruth Delacourte's dark eyes were fixed on her husband's face, their expression of horrified disapproval so palpable that he felt as if her hands were around his throat squeezing the air from his breathing passage. Sweat broke out on his brow. Carefully, he lifted his water glass to his lips and looked back at her steadily. They were in his study. He sat behind his desk. She faced him from her wheelchair.

Her voice was surprisingly clear. “How could you, Cole?”

“The case would have been mine, anyway.”

“You're nearly retired.”

“I'm pleased you recognize the operative word is
nearly
.”

“Please don't do this.”

Cole sighed, stood and walked around the desk. He knelt beside his wife. “She's an old woman, Nola Ruth. Who else is there? She's done a dreadful thing, but not maliciously. There's no one else to help her. Surely you don't want an old woman to spend her final years in a jail cell.”

“She's a murderer,” Nola Ruth said icily. “How can you represent someone who killed a child?”

“I'm an attorney. That's what I do. I represent all kinds of people. You know that.”

“What she did was wrong.”

Cole stroked his wife's hand. Nola Ruth had lovely hands, long-fingered and graceful with beautifully kept oval nails. “That isn't the way it works, Nola Ruth. You're an intelligent woman. You know that.”

She remained silent.

Cole didn't want to play his trump card. It wasn't necessary. He would represent Drusilla Washington no matter what reservations Nola Ruth had.

“You've involved Libba,” his wife said petulantly. “I didn't want that.”

“On the contrary. You confided in Libba. You had every intention of involving her on your terms. Only something else got in the way. She's bright, Nola Ruth. Did you think she would leave it alone? Her powers of observation are strong. She'll know everything before long. She's already drawn to Verna Lee.”

Nola Ruth pulled her hand away. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

Cole frowned. This conversation was unproductive. He had work to do and the evening was getting away from him. He rose, crossed the room to open the door and then returned to wheel Nola Ruth down the hall and into her room. “I'll tell Serena you're here.”

“I don't want Serena,” Nola Ruth said coldly. “I want Libba Jane.”

Cole's patience never thinned. “I'll be sure she knows that when she gets in.” He kissed his wife's cheek. “Good night, Nola.”

She didn't answer and after a minute he left the room once again, returning to his study and the case before him. Drusilla was an old woman. Her age was in her favor. She was not a criminal nor had she been an activist, not even during the early civil rights years when nearly every black woman in domestic service was. Not a single complaint had ever been filed against her by those she'd served, and she'd served many, mostly the disenfranchised who knew by implication that Dr. Balieu would never receive them in his pristine office on the right side of Marshyhope Creek. She'd single-handedly raised her granddaughter, an educated woman who'd returned home to run her own small business. So much for character. Now, for her defense. Obviously premeditated murder wasn't a charge he needed to concern himself with. Drusilla had gone to the young sharecroppers' dwelling to deliver a baby, to bring forth life. Murder was the last thing on her mind. She was not a murderer, yet the coroner's report said the child was strangled. What then, were the circumstances that led her to such an action?

Cole picked up his pencil and notepad and jotted down the facts as he knew them: the child was horribly mutated, possibly even in pain. He struck that. Drusilla would not have known if the child was in pain. But she did know that the infant was obviously deformed. Drusilla, with years of midwifery behind her, knew it could not survive. Then why didn't she allow it to die naturally? Why had she taken matters into her own hands and orchestrated the time of death? Cole thought of various possibilities, both actual and those he could convince a jury to believe. More than likely Drusilla was afraid the child would live and two teenagers who survived hand-to-mouth picking crops would end up abandoning the child somewhere by the side of the road. A mercy killing. That would be Cole's defense. After all, it wasn't the young parents who'd questioned Drusilla's action. The plaintiff was the State of Maryland. Again he jotted down notes, questions he would ask the mother and her husband. With any luck they would be sympathetic witnesses. Perhaps Drusilla had prior knowledge of what they would do. Perhaps she'd seen something similar.

“Granddad?” Chloe's voice interrupted him. She stood in the doorway, unsure of her welcome. He set aside his notes, removed his glasses and beckoned her into the room. “What a wonderful excuse for a break,” he said.

Relieved, Chloe curled up in a wing chair that swallowed her small form and regarded him seriously.

“Is this purely a social call or do you have something on your mind?” her grandfather asked. “Because I refuse to consider anything important unless I have a piece of Serena's cobbler with ice cream in front of me.”

Chloe grinned. “You're on.”

He stood and reached for her hand, leading her down the long hallway into the kitchen.

“So,” he said, when they were seated across from each other at the small table in the breakfast room, enormous helpings of peach cobbler a la mode in front of them. “Tell me everything.”

Chloe nibbled at the edges of her cobbler. Her cheeks were flushed. “Skylar Taft said some mean things about Bailey's mother.”

Cole knew he should say something, anything so that Chloe would continue, but teenagers were particularly sensitive. “Oh?” was the best he could come up with.

Chloe nodded. “They said she'd had a lot of boyfriends and that she didn't even know who Bailey's father was.”

“I'm fairly sure that Lizzie Jones has never taken Skylar into her confidence,” Cole said dryly.

“So, it isn't true?”

Cole considered her question. “Some of it may be true, but certainly not all of it. I'm sure she knows who Bailey's father is and, yes, she's probably had a lot of boyfriends.”

Chloe held her spoon over her plate and watched the melted ice cream drip down into the pastry and peaches. “She's sick.”

Cole nodded. “I've heard.”

“Do you think it has anything to do with, you know—” she hesitated and then continued “—her lifestyle?”

Cole studied his granddaughter under lowered eyelids. She was a small girl, slender and delicately muscled with fine features, exotic blue eyes and flyaway silvery hair, an ethereal child, fairylike. But she was much more than that. She had a quick intelligence and a seeking mind, perhaps even more than her mother had at the same age. He wondered, not for the first time, if he had done Libba a tremendous disservice by asking her to come home. His concern had been for his wife and, to a smaller extent, his daughter. But he had completely disregarded Chloe. Before he knew her, she had been Libba's daughter, a mere child whose needs and wants could be sacrificed according to the wishes of the adults around her. Now, with the living breathing Chloe before him, he saw his mistake. He loved her desperately and he was ashamed. The years rolled back, oblivious years, when he was caught up in righting the grievances of his generation at the expense of knowing his daughter. He collected himself. Chloe needed an answer, an honest one. “Are you suggesting that Lizzie might have AIDS?”

The blue eyes swam with tears. “She's so nice, Granddad. But she's really weak and she looks worse every time I see her.”

“Have you ever actually seen anyone with AIDS, Chloe?”

“Not that I know of.”

He spoke slowly, choosing the right words. “It's a relatively new disease here in America and almost always restricted to certain communities. Lizzie Jones's behavior has been completely different since she had Bailey and that was sixteen years ago. I believe that whatever she suffers from, it isn't AIDS.”

“What do you think is the matter with her?”

Cole took the time to chew and swallow his last bite of cobbler. Then he looked at Chloe's barely touched bowl. “Are you going to eat that?” he asked.

She picked up her bowl and set it in front of him. “Have you ever heard of cholesterol, Granddad?”

“That's a California word, sugar. We don't worry about cholesterol down here in the South. If it isn't deep-fried, honey-basted or smothered in cream, we want no part of it. Look at me.” He patted his stomach. “What do you think? Am I not just as lean as I was at twenty-six?”

“Well.” Chloe looked dubious. Her sense of honesty warred with her desire to please this very beloved grandfather. “You look great for your age, but I've seen pictures when you were young and you were pretty thin, Granddad.”

His eyes twinkled. “I suppose that's true. Don't tell your grandma.”

Chloe laughed. “I won't.”

“Are you feeling better?”

She thought a minute. “I guess so. Why doesn't she get help?”

“I don't know, Chloe. Have you asked Bailey?”

“He's prickly about that subject.”

Cole nodded. “You would be, too, I expect. In that case it's best to leave it alone.”

She sighed. “I don't have any choice.”

Cole collected the dishes, rinsed and stacked them in the dishwasher. “Run in and say good-night to your grandma, Chloe. Little things mean a great deal to her.”

Chloe knew her grandmother better than anyone suspected. “I will, Granddad. Good night.”

Back in his study, Cole had lost his enthusiasm for his project. His mind was elsewhere, sullied with old regrets and a sense of unfinished business. What if he'd followed a different path? What if Nola Ruth Beauchamp had never sought him out that day at the beach? What if she'd walked right past and left him for a different future? His questions were pointless, of course. It couldn't have happened any differently, not unless he'd never seen her. The way her aunt kept her holed up in that house, it would have been entirely possible. But once he'd seen her, heard her speak and known her smile, Coleson Campion Delacourte was well and truly caught.

He'd courted her for six months, calling daily at her aunt's home. Her visit, which he learned was to be only for another month, turned into two and then three and then six. Her father, after a discreet note from his sister, stopped asking when she would be returning to New Orleans.

When Cole asked her to marry him, he had the blessing of both families. Nola Ruth was eminently suitable. She was French, Catholic and well connected. Louisiana-born, she voted the way her state had traditionally voted in every election since 1876, straight down the line on the Democratic ticket. She was beautiful, intelligent and educated, the perfect future politician's wife. If she was somewhat reserved when they were alone together, he explained it away as embarrassment due to inexperience. A woman who moved and spoke and smiled like Nola Ruth, a woman whose sensuality was so pronounced the roof of a man's mouth went dry just speaking to her, had hidden depths crying out to be discovered.

Every day they were together Cole delighted in her conversation, reveled in the clarity of her mind, the richness of her imagination, the complexity of her vocabulary. She was never boring, a possibility inconceivable to him. They became inseparable, attending dinners, banquets and balls up and down the James River. Everything was possible in that bright, new, anything-was-possible American era. Cole and Nola Ruth, people would say, as if the names were only complete when spoken together. He couldn't imagine a life without her.

With utmost care, he'd selected a ring. A family heirloom wasn't acceptable for the hand of Nola Ruth Beauchamp. He wanted something more, something large and brilliant with hidden fire. Settling on a diamond solitaire of flawless color and clarity, he had it wrapped in silver paper and made reservations at Armand's, a favorite restaurant in Richmond. After a perfect dinner, he posed the question.

There was a moment of awkward silence before she refused him, politely but firmly, giving no explanation other than,
Marrying me wouldn't be in the best interests of a man with your future.
Cole was brokenhearted, but he was also a Southern gentleman. Swallowing hard, he assured her that he harbored no ill feelings and encouraged her to order dessert and coffee. If he wondered why she had postponed returning to her home state for six months longer than she'd intended, or why she had allowed him to monopolize all of her time with the end result being that every gossip columnist in the capital had predicted a June wedding, he remained silent on the subject. One did not embarrass a lady simply because her affections were not engaged.

Nola Ruth returned to New Orleans and Cole buried himself in his work. An interesting case had come across his desk. Oliver Wade, a Negro railroad worker, was suing the board of education of Laurel, Mississippi, on behalf of his daughter, Susan, for the right to attend an all-white elementary school close to her home. Companion suits had already been filed and won in Topeka, Kansas, Delaware, Virginia, Illinois and Washington, D.C. But Mississippi was the heart of the South, Ku Klux Klan country. It was a case destined for the Supreme Court. Cole could feel it in his bones and he wanted in at the ground level. He was a Southerner with a two-hundred-year-old pedigree, abolitionist roots, and a reputation as the finest up-and-coming young lawyer in Washington circles. With his law firm securely behind him, Cole drove down to Mississippi.

For a man who wanted to carve out a name for himself, it was a case made in heaven. Since the Civil Rights Acts of the last decade guaranteeing blacks the right to use public accommodations, all legislation by the Supreme Court had followed the indifferent attitude of the American public.
Plessy
v.
Ferguson,
a case heard before the Court in 1896, upheld the principle of separate but equal facilities, virtually legalizing segregation. With nothing to lose, Mr. Wade, middle class, black, defensive, was willing to test the system. With his entire future resting on the outcome, Cole Delacourte, wealthy, white, powerful, was eager to give it a try.