The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel (30 page)

“I’ll write the jailhouse in Mason and see what I can learn of his saddle and gear and ask after someone to see you to Austin for the train east. We’re close to Marston and his men now, and they know it. They’ll do all they can to keep their cause alive, and they’ll want no witnesses left behind who might testify against them, if they’re caught and tried. The girls could corroborate the identity of the Lieutenant and perhaps others, and for that matter, you could as well. You’ll be better off out of Texas.”

“We’d be grateful to you.” Wind stirs the leaves overhead, and sun speckles turn his skin dark and light, his eyes soft brown, then gold again. I lose all the sounds of the fort. Everything flies away a minute. “You be careful after them men, Elam Salter. You be mighty careful.”

“I can’t be shot. That’s what they say.” He smiles a bit and lays a hand on my arm. That one touch shoots though me and lands deep in my belly, in some place I didn’t know was there. I sway a little, blink, see the shadows swirl and spin. I part my mouth to say something, but my tongue stays pinned. I don’t even know what to say.

Does he feel it, too, this wind that circles us in the summer heat?

“Don’t fear,” he whispers, and then he turns and disappears down the alleyway on the long, even strides of a man who’s made his place in the world.

Don’t fear,
I think.

But I do.

BENNY SILVA—AUGUSTINE, LOUISIANA, 1987

I turn in to the driveway at Goswood Grove. The lawn is freshly mown, indicating that Ben Rideout has been here and done his work earlier today. I slow down to pilot the Bug through the left gate, which hangs open most of the way, swaying a little in the breeze. The right one has fallen closed, as if it’s not sure it wants me here. The hinges squeal as it quavers undecided.

I should get out and prop it open, but instead I gun the engine and squeeze past. I’m too ginned up to stop, and I can’t quite get past the feeling that, before we’re able to accomplish what we’ve come here to do, someone will show up and try to stop us—Nathan’s uncles, a delegation of school board members, Principal Pevoto on a mission to bring me back in line, Redd Fontaine in his police car, conducting surveillance. This town is an old dog with a bad temper. We have rubbed its hair the wrong way and stirred up fleas. If allowed to return to its slumber, it might let me stay, but it’s made sure I know that if not, it’s ready to bite.

The phone calls haven’t slowed down. Fontaine has continued his drive-bys. This morning, four men in a Suburban arrived at the cemetery and tromped around, talking and nodding and pointing toward property lines, including those surrounding my house and the orchard out back.

I’m anticipating a bulldozer and an eviction notice to come next…except that the property belongs to Nathan, and he told me he wasn’t selling. Is it possible that the land deal has already progressed to the point that he can’t stop it? I have no way of knowing. He’s spent over twenty-four hours fighting flight delays and airport closures due to a tornado outbreak in the middle of the country. He finally rented a car to get home and hasn’t found a minute to stop at a pay phone and call me with an update.

I’m relieved when I see his car, a little blue Honda, in the driveway—at least, I assume it’s his rental. I drive past it and park my Bug behind the big house where no one can see it from the road. I’m on my third day of involuntary furlough from school. My kids have been told I’ve got the flu. I know that because Granny T and the New Century ladies, as well as Sarge, have called to check on me. I’ve been letting the recorder answer the phone, as I don’t know what to say. I
am
sick, but just heartsick.

I hope whatever Nathan’s newly discovered information is, it has the power to move mountains, because that’s what we need—some sort of Hail Mary pass that saves the game in the final seconds. My students deserve a win, to see their hard work and smarts pay off.

“Well, here we are,” I tell the Bug and sit there a moment in solidarity. We’ve both come a long way since leaving the hallowed halls of the university English department. I’m not the same person anymore. Whatever happens next, this place, this experience, has changed me. But I can’t support a system that tells students they are nothing, they’ll never
be
anything—that views keeping kids in their desks as the major accomplishment for the day. They deserve the same chance friends and mentors gave me, to see that the life you create for yourself can be entirely different from the one you came from. I have to find a way. I’m not a quitter. Quitters don’t build great things. Quitters don’t win this kind of war.
You’re not defeated until you give up the fight,
I tell myself.

Nathan is sound asleep in the driver’s seat of the little Honda with the windows rolled down. He’s wearing what I have mentally cataloged as the blue, blue outfit—blue jeans with blue chambray shirt. His hair is disheveled, but in his sleep, he has the look of a man who has made peace with everything. I know that’s not the case. It’s incredibly hard for him to be here. The last time he was in this house was the last time he saw his sister alive. But we both understand that this visit can’t wait.

“Hey,” I say and startle him to the point that his elbow hits the steering wheel and the horn beeps. I slap a hand to my neck and look around nervously, but there’s no one else to hear.

“Hey.” A lopsided smirk offers chagrin as he turns my way. “Sorry about that,” he says, and I’m struck by how much I’ve missed his voice. He opens the door and unfolds himself from the tiny car, and then I realize how much I’ve missed
him.

“You made it.” It’s tough to keep my emotions in check, but I know I need to. “You look tired.”

“I took the long way home.” And just like that, he reaches out and pulls me into a hug. Not a shoulder hug, but the real thing, the kind you give to someone you thought of while you were away.

I’m surprised at first. I wasn’t expecting…well…
that.
I was prepared for more of the uncertain off-and-on awkward dance we usually do.
Friends…or two people who want something more?
We’re never quite sure. But this feels different. I slip my arms under his and hang on.

“Tough few days?” I whisper, and he rests his chin on my head. I listen to his heartbeat, feel the sultry warmth of skin against skin. My gaze lingers on the tangle of wisteria vines and crape myrtle branches hiding the ancient structures of Goswood Grove’s once spectacular gardens, concealing whatever secrets they know.

“Tough few days all around, it sounds like,” Nathan says finally. “We should go in.” But he hangs on a minute longer.

We part slowly, and the next step suddenly seems uncharted. I don’t know how to catalog it. One moment, we’re as natural as breathing. The next, we’re at arm’s length—or retreating to our separate safety zones.

He stops halfway across the porch, turns, widens his stance a little like he’s about to pick up something heavy. Crossing his arms, he tilts his head and looks at me, one eye squeezing almost shut. “What are we to each other?”

I stand there a moment with my mouth agape before words dribble out in a halting string. “In…in…what way?”

I’m terrified, that’s why I don’t give a straight answer. Relationships require truth telling, and that requires risk. An old, insecure part of me says,
You’re damaged goods, Benny Silva. Someone like Nathan would never understand. He’ll never see you in the same way again.

“Just like it sounds,” he says. “I missed you, Benny, and I promised myself I’d just put it out there this time. Because…well…you’re hard to read.”

“
I’m
hard to read?” Nathan has been largely a mystery I’ve pieced together in fragments.
“Me?”

He doesn’t fall for the turnabout, or he ignores it. “So, Benny Silva, are we…friends or are we…” The sentence shifts in the wind, unfinished—a fill-in-the-blank question. Those are harder than multiple-choice.

“Friends…” I search for the right answer, one not too presumptuous, but accurate. “Going somewhere…at our own pace? I hope.”

I feel naked standing there. Scared. Vulnerable. And potentially unworthy of his investment in me. I can’t make the same mistake I’ve made before. There are things he needs to know. It’s only fair, but this isn’t the right moment for it, or the right place.

He braces his hands on his hips, lets his head rock forward, exhales a breath he seems to have been holding. “Okay,” he says with a note of approval. His cheek twitches, one corner of his mouth rising. I think he might be blushing a little. “I’ll take that.”

“Me, too,” I agree.

“Then we have an accord.” Nathan winks at me and turns and proceeds on to the house, satisfied. “We can talk details later.”

I float after him, filled with an anticipation that has nothing to do with today’s plans. We’re entering a brave new world…in more ways than one. I’ve never been in the front door of Goswood Grove House. In fact, I’ve never been anywhere but the kitchen, the butler’s pantry, the dining room, the front parlor, and the library. Not that temptation hasn’t tugged during my visits, but I’ve been determined to remain respectful of the faith Nathan has shown in me. In other words, not to snoop.

The entry is palatial and startling. I’ve seen it through the windows, but standing on the threadbare Persian carpet, we’re dwarfed by massive paneled walls and arched fresco ceilings. Nathan looks upward, his back stiff, hands resting on his waist. “I hardly ever came in this way,” he mutters. I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or just filling the silent air. “But I gave you the only key I had to the back door.”

“Oh.”

“The judge didn’t, either. Come in this way much.” He laughs a little. “Funny, that’s one of the things I remember about him. He liked to use the kitchen door. Steal a little food on the way through. Dicey always kept biscuits or bread or something like that around. And cookies in the jar.”

I think of the square art deco glass canisters in the kitchen, picture the large one filled with pooperoos.

“Tea cakes.” Nathan alters my mental imagery.

Tea cakes do seem more appropriate for this place. Every inch of her speaks of what she was in her youth. Grand, opulent, an extravagant feast for the eyes. She’s an old woman now, this house. One whose bone structure still shows how lovely she once was.

I can’t imagine living in a place like this. Nathan looks as if he can’t, either. He rubs the back of his neck the way he always does when he considers Goswood Grove, as if every brick, beam, corbel, and stone weigh on him.

“I just don’t…care about this stuff, you know?” he says, as we move to the bottom of double staircases that spiral in opposite directions like twin sisters. “I never felt a connection the way Robin did. The judge would probably turn over in his grave if he knew I was the one who ended up in charge of it.”

“I doubt that.” I muse on the stories I’ve heard about Nathan’s grandfather. I think he was, in some ways, a man uncomfortable with his position in this town, that he struggled to navigate the inequities here, the nature of things, even the history of this land and this house. It haunted him, yet he wasn’t ready to fight the battle in big ways, and so he compensated in little ways, by doing things for the community, for people who’d lost their way, by buying books from charity auctions and sets of encyclopedias from kids working to pay for college or a car. By taking LaJuna under his wing when she came here with her great-aunt.

“I really believe he’d trust your decisions, Nathan. Personally, I think he’d want to finally acknowledge the history of Goswood and the history of this town.”

“You, Benny Silva, are a crusader.” He cups a hand along the side of my face, smiles at me. “You remind me of Robin…and I don’t know about the judge, but Robin would have liked your
Underground
project.” He chokes on the words, pushes his lips together, swallows hard, and shakes off emotion almost apologetically as he lets his hand drop to the well-worn bannister. “She would’ve liked you.”

I feel as if she’s there in the room with us, the sister he loved so much and grieves so deeply. I’ve always wanted a sister. “I wish I could have met her.”

Another intake of breath, and then he shrugs toward the landing above, inviting me to start upward first. “My mother said, whatever Robin had been working on, that she’d been doing a lot of research, compiling papers but keeping them private. Something to do with the house and things she learned from the judge’s files and journals. You didn’t find documents like that in the library, did you? Robin’s or the judge’s?”

“Nothing other than what I’ve already shown you. Nothing recent, for sure.” A note of intrigue plays in my head. I’d give anything to have even one conversation with Robin.

One probably wouldn’t be enough.

I see a photo of her finally, upstairs in her room. Not a childhood photo, like the faded studio portraits downstairs in the parlor, but a grown-up one. The driftwood frame sits on the delicate, spindle-legged writing desk, offering an image of a smiling woman with pale blond hair. She’s slight and narrow-faced. The deep blue-green orbs of her eyes seem to dominate the photo. They’re warm, beautiful eyes. Her brother’s eyes.

She’s standing on a shrimp boat with Nathan, then a teenager, in the background. They’re both laughing as she holds up a hopelessly tangled fishing rod. “The boat was our uncle’s.” Nathan looks over my shoulder. “On my mom’s side. She didn’t grow up with money, but man oh man, her dad and her uncles knew how to have a good time. We’d hitch on the shrimp boats once in a while, ride along wherever they were going. Drop a line if we could. Maybe get off here or there and stay a day or two. Paps and his brothers knew everybody and were related to half the population around there.”

“Sounds like fun.” I picture it again—the shrimp boat, Nathan’s other life. His ties down on the coast.

“It was. Mom couldn’t stand to be back in the swamp for very long, though. Sometimes people have a thing about where they come from and how they were raised. She married a guy fifteen years older and rich, and she always felt like people on both sides faulted her for it—gold digger and that kind of thing. She didn’t know what to do with all that, so she moved away from it. Asheville gave her the art scene, sort of a new identity, you know?”

“Yeah, I do.” More than I can possibly say. When I left home, I expunged every bit of my past, or I tried to, at least. Augustine has taught me that the past travels with you. It’s whether you run from it or learn from it that makes all the difference.

“It’s not as hard as I thought it would be…coming in here,” Nathan says, but the stiff way he carries himself says otherwise. “I have no idea what we’re looking for, though. And to tell you the truth, whatever it is, it could be gone. Will and Manford and their wives and kids let themselves in and appropriated most of what they wanted right after Robin died.”

Even though Robin has been gone for two years, our search of her room feels uncomfortably invasive. Her personal belongings are still here. We carefully check drawers, shelves, the closet, a box in the corner, an old leather suitcase. All of it looks as if it has been previously rummaged through, then dumped haphazardly back into place.

We come up with nothing of significance. Credit card bills and medications, letters from friends, holiday notes, blank stationery, a journal with a cute little gold hasp on the front. It’s unlocked, the key still tucked among the pages, but when Nathan leafs through, all he finds is Robin’s reading list, complete with favorite quotations jotted down, mini summaries of each book, and the dates she started and finished. Sometimes she read several books in a week, everything from classics and Westerns to nonfiction and the
Reader’s Digest
condensed editions from the boxes downstairs.