that not what you fear? Why you have brought me here?”
“I didn’t want to bring you here.” Missy’s soft and amiable again, like she’s coaxing a little piglet from the corner, so’s to string it up and cut its throat. “If you’d only been willing to tell me where Father hid the papers, rather than insisting on being personally involved in looking for them…”
“Ffff! As if you could be trusted! You would steal the portion that is to be mine as quickly as your mother would steal what is to be yours.”
“The portion that is to be yours? Really, Juneau Jane, you belong back in Tremé with the rest of the fancy girls, waiting for your mother to sell you off to a gentleman caller, so as to pay the notes coming due. Perhaps your mother should have better anticipated the day when my father would no longer be here to provide for her financing.”
“He is not…Papa is not—”
“Gone? Forever?” Missy Lavinia hadn’t got a note of sadness. Not for her own daddy. Only thing she’s hoping for is that what’s left of the plantation farms here and in Texas don’t go straight into Old Missus’s hands. Juneau Jane’s right, Little Missy would be under her mama’s thumb forever if that happened.
“You will not say these things!” Juneau Jane chokes out.
There’s a long spate of quiet then. Bad quiet that gives me the all-overs, like some evil’s come stealing up on me from the shadows. Can’t see it, but it’s there, waiting to pounce.
“Regardless, last night’s little exercise was a waste of time and considerable trouble on my part, bringing you here and ensuring your access to the library. Solving the matter will require a bit more travel for us, it seems. Just for the day, and after it’s done I’ll see that you’re provided passage on the fastest riverboat back to New Orleans. Delivered safely to your mother’s home in Tremé…to whatever fate awaits you. At least we’ll have settled the matter.”
“How can this be possible, that the matter might so easily be solved today?” Juneau Jane sounds suspicious. She oughta be.
“I know where we shall find the man who can help. In fact, he was the last person Father spoke to before departing for Texas. I have only to order a carriage for myself, and we will be off to pay him a call. It is all very simple.”
Lord, I think, squatting low in the thorn brush and the trumpet vines. Oh Lord, oh Lord. Ain’t nothing simple about this.
I don’t want to hear anything that comes next. Don’t want to know. But wherever them girls are bound, if they’re after news of Old Mister or his papers, I got to get there, too.
Question is, how?
CHAPTER 4
BENNY SILVA—AUGUSTINE, LOUISIANA, 1987
Sunday morning, I wake in a head-to-toe sweat. My last-ditch rental accommodations offer only the barely there air-conditioning of an aging window unit, but the real problem isn’t this sweltering 1901 farmhouse; it’s the overwhelming dread squatting on my chest like a sumo wrestler. I can’t breathe.
The air is wet and muddy smelling, courtesy of a weak tropical depression spinning off the coast. The sky outside the bedroom window hangs close above the live oaks, pillowy and saturated. A drip that started in the kitchen ceiling yesterday plays a tinny tune in the largest pan I own. I’ve been by the office of the broker who rented the house to me. There was a notice on the door: CLOSED FOR MEDICAL EMERGENCY. I left a note in the drop box, but so far no one has come by about the roof. They can’t call, as my new home is phoneless at present. That’s another one of the things I can’t afford until my first paycheck comes in.
The power is out. I realize that when I roll over and look at the blank clock on the nightstand. I have no idea how late I’ve slept.
Doesn’t matter, I tell myself. You can lie here all day. The neighbors won’t say anything.
That’s a little joke between me and me. A thin bit of