Now she lifted her head proudly, tears still streaming down her face
. And in that moment fear weakened Phillip’s knees. He moved between the girls and then sank to the sofa, sure that as she saw it, Lydia must be telling him the truth.
“Perhaps you should go and talk to Rachel,” Justine suggested, her voice soft as the breeze now ruffling Mother’s roses just outside the window
.
The flowers’ sweet scent grew overwhelming, reminding Phillip of their father’s funeral, reminding him of rotting meat
.
He nodded at her and shifted his gaze toward Lydia
. Since Father had died, she’d doted on him, always hungry for approval. Too often he withheld it, for at times her immaturity nearly drove him mad. He paused, trying to remember that she was just eighteen years old. Despite his confusion over his fiancée, his terror at the sickening ring of truth in Lydia’s story, he couldn’t crush his sister. He loved her far too fiercely.
He reached for her, embraced her tightly
. “I hope to God you’re wrong about Rachel. That’s all. I didn’t mean to hurt you. And I’ve never meant to make you think I value Justine more than you. I love your wit, your enthusiasm. I can’t imagine our house without you in it. It’s just that . . .”
She squeezed him, and the gesture helped him choose his words
.
“It’s just that,” he continued, “words can hurt
. Sometimes you seem so amused by other people’s disasters. This is my
life
, Lydia. I may be a man, and I may be twenty-eight years old, but if what you say is true, I’ll have to reconsider . . . everything.”
Another squeeze, and Justine embraced him from the other side
. After kissing each dark head, he pulled away.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I must call on my fiancée.”
*
Shae almost bumped into the hired woman near the back steps
. Eva’s coffee-colored skin gleamed beneath a layer of sweat, testimony to an afternoon spent scrubbing, if Shae knew Aunt Alberta. The woman’s dark gaze flicked impatiently past Shae, as if she could barely wait to leave.
“Don’t know how you stands that woman, Miss Shae,” Eva muttered as she untied her apron
. She made a wad of it and used it to mop her forehead. “Some days, I pray the Good Lord I don’t just up and snatch her bald-headed.”
Despite her worries, Shae pictured tiny Eva, who might weigh ninety pounds if she were soaked in syrup, leaping atop Alberta’s back and ripping hair
. Fortunately, her aunt was in no danger. Eva had been muttering threats to Shae for years, but she had too many mouths to feed at home to risk this job.
Thinking of the way her aunt ordered the black woman about, Shae shook her head in sympathy
. “Some days I think the Lord might understand.”Eva covered a flash of dazzling ivory teet
h
a silent burst of laughte
r
with one hand. Shae noticed the skin appeared chafed and inflamed.
“Would you like me to talk to her again?” Shae asked. She shifted the dusty carpetbag beneath her other arm.
“Lordy, no. She ridin’ me already like a devil woman. Much trouble as you in lately, she put on spurs if you do that.”
“You’re probably right,” Shae agreed
. “She’s still mad at me, then.”
“You could say that, Missy
. She been growling your name like a old dog at a bone. You stay out of her way, you hear?”
“I plan on trying.” Shae hesitated, wondering if she should ask the question on her mind
. After all, Eva had worked in this house for eight years.
The Negro woman nodded a curt goodbye and turned to go.
“Did you know my mother very well?” Shae’s question escaped without her conscious decision and stopped Eva in her tracks.
She turned around slowly
. “Why you askin’ me that, after all this time?”
Shae shrugged
. “I miss her today. Maybe because of everything that happened last night. I wonder if I’d be different if she’d stayed.”
Eva leaned against the railing at the bottom step
. “You still the same stubborn child as ever, that’s all. Nothin’ gonna change that, thank the Lord. Inside you, there more starch than blood and tears. Your mama knowed it, too. That the reason you strong enough to stay here.”
“Is that why she ran off?”
Eva’s snort was pure derision. “What the matter with you today? You just feelin’ pitiful, that’s all. Course not. You know your mama love you. She love you just like I loves my three boys. If she could be here, she would. I expect she can’t. Couldn’t take that woman, likely.” With the last statement, Eva jerked her head in the direction of the hous
e
and Aunt Alberta.
Then how could Mother have left her here, in this same hell, Shae wondered miserably
. Hadn’t Shae always listened to her mother? Hadn’t she even kept her secret when she’d accidentally learned of one of Glennis’s affairs? Did her mother think that she was lying when she’d sworn she’d never tell? Hadn’t she realized how very much that silence had cost Shae?
“I best be goin’,” Eva said
. “Got to get home to my boys ‘fore she thinks of somethin’ else needs scrubbin’.”
“Goodbye, and thank you, Eva,” Shae called after her. Never much for small talk, Eva didn’t linger.
Nor did Shae. She turned toward the house, her mind full of the black woman’s few words.
More starch than blood and tears.
She grimaced, thinking how much that sounded like her mother.
Still favoring her injured foot, Shae hobbled up the back steps
. When she entered the back door, dread sharpened each sense to an unnatural focus. She paused to listen for her aunt like a mouse might listen for a veteran cat.
Clutched in her left hand, caked dirt on the old carpetbag made her skin itch and prickle
. In contrast, the fussy smells of soap and wood oil stung her nostrils, and she had to stifle yet another sneeze. She paused to raise a window in the dining room, then another in the parlor.
Stop stalling
, she warned herself. She was wasting precious time on inconsequential tasks to keep from doing what she must.
Moving through the house as quietly as possible, she opened more windows and allowed the quality of light to distract her
. She could barely tear her gaze from its reflection off each long, pointed oleander leaf in the back yard, the way it filtered through the pink, translucent blossoms of the nearby bougainvillea. Late afternoon light, rich and yellow, somewhat softer than the burning rays of August. Good painting ligh
t
but not today, she realized, as she turned from her distractions. Today, she must face her fears instead.
While she’d opened windows, she heard neither voice nor footstep to help her place her aunt
. With any luck, Alberta hadn’t heard her come inside. Surely, she was lurking somewhere close-by at this hour. In her own room, more than likely, doing needlework or reading a copy of
Godey’s Lady’s Book
. The old woman was probably studying the latest points of etiquette and plotting hopeless strategies to force them onto Shae.
With her heart tucked in her throat, Shae crept forward
. Still no other footsteps, not even the sound of quiet humming. Good. Alberta might even be asleep upstairs. Soon, Shae stood at the doorway of her father’s study. She had never entered it before.
A man deserved a goddam place where he could have some peace and quiet.
King’s admonition echoed like a memory of thunder. Though she’d been young, Shae still remembered how he’d frightened her, and how emphatically she’d promised she would never go inside.
Dare she break that vow?
She frowned, thinking of her own sanctuary above, on the second floor. With her painting, with her birds. She forced her mind to focus on her beach scene, now a smeared stain on the hardwood, on her birds, reduced to feathered bits of clay.
He’d
violated her privacy first, she told herself. He had trespassed and destroyed. All she meant to do was have a look around, be certain there was nothing here to . . .
A memory of her mother’s smile intruded, along with the warm pressure of a kiss upon Shae’s cheek
.
“Be a good lass, Shae
. Won’t that essay you wrote set those lofty boys on their ears? I shouldn’t be surprised if you take top honors in composition this year.” As Shae prepared to leave for school, nothing about Glennis’s embrace marked it as different. Nothing had marked it as the last time Shae would feel her mother’s touch.
Tears welled in Shae’s eyes, and her stomach threatened new upheaval
. She couldn’t bear to remember anymore, to think about that afternoon, when she came home to a family forever shattered. How long did she stand at the parlor window and listen at every passing voice, at every horse’s hoof beats? How long did she hold out hope her mother would return?
Shae shook her head in an attempt to banish distant pain
. From some reserve inside her, she found the strength to put her hand on the forbidden doorknob, the will to close her fingers. With a whispered prayer, she turned the knob, then pushed the door and peered inside the long-forbidden space.
Heavy curtains obscured the golden light of the September afternoon
. Dusky paneling and nearly black walnut furniture deepened the dimness into something animal, unsettling, like the darkness of a cave. She stepped into the gloom, then had to feel her way across the room to open draperies so she could see. Beyond the cobwebbed glass, the oleander bushes still waved with the breeze, as if to testify that outside, day yet reigned. Motes of dust swirled in the shaft of light that joined Shae in her intrusion.
Inside the room, a massive desk, completely clear, claimed one end of the room
. Behind it, several cabinets loomed, with drawer after drawer marked with no hint of its contents. The other end of the rectangular room contained a pair of burgundy chairs, covered in worn leather. The one closest to the small stove had a slight tear in the seat. A dust-covered copy of
Moby Dick
lay on a small table, the only book in evidence. The whole place felt close and smelled musty, for Eva, too, with all her rags and brushes, had been kept outside.
Where do I begin
?
Shae’s gaze drifted to the huge desk, nearly large enough to qualify as a leviathan in its own right. With hands quivering, she sank into the leather chair behind it and pulled open the top drawer. Or tried to. It was locked.
She stared at the keyhole and then shrugged and tried the drawers on the left side
. The top one held a derringer her father carried when he transported funds from the store’s safe to the bank. She closed it carefully and moved to the next drawer, which revealed documents that meant little to Shae: a deed to this property, a bill of sale for the wrecked gig. (She winced at the cost and swore a silent oath that she would never steal anothe
r
barring extreme emergency, of course.) Though she rifled through several dozen neatly arranged files, she found nothing of interest. Finally, bending low, she pulled the handle to the lowest left-hand drawer.
It stuck, so Shae worked the handle back and forth in an attempt to free it
. When finally it opened, the roller screeched in protest with a sound as harsh as fingernails on slate.
Shae froz
e
and in the dusty silence listened for the telltale footsteps that would end her hopes to find the truth. Outside the room, the entry clock chimed five. Between each stroke, she heard her heartbeat hammer in her ears. Long after the clock fell silent, she waited, until at last a design drew her eye downward. It was the decorative lettering atop a marriage license. Samuel Kingston Rowan and Glennis Maureen McElbee, May 5, 1854.
Shae pulled out the heavy paper and set it on the desk before her.
That date couldn’t be right. Why, she’d been born that same year, on July twenty-first! If that were so,
then . .
. Sudden comprehension flooded over Shae. Aunt Alberta’s comment, “Always trash, right from the start She was.” Her father’s overzealous vigilance, meant, he insisted, to protect her from herself. His obvious dismay each time anyone mentioned her resemblance to her mother. Glennis McElbee had gotten pregnant out of wedlock.
Shae rolled her eyes at the notion
. From the way King acted, one might imagine Mother had done the deed alone! She was no great expert on the origin of infants, but even she could guess her father’s role in the situation. How unfair that after their union was blessed, the shame of the rushed wedding had fallen only on her mother.
Out of Shae’s earshot, had her aunt hounded Glennis with cruel reminders, snide remarks
? Maybe Eva had been right. Maybe after a while, Mother couldn’t stand it and ran away forever. Or maybe Father, in one of his infamous tempers, had brought up Mother’s old “offense” once too often. Or perhaps he’d found out about her afternoon excursions. The ones that Shae had never mentioned, the ones she might have stopped.
She shuddered with the memories, then thought of the note she’d found inside the carpetbag
. The few scrawled words implied it had not been a lover that took her mother from this house. But wasn’t it possible she hadn’t been killed either?