from the crowd, so as not to appear disrespectful.
“Are you by yourself?” I ask as she reaches the tree.
“Kevin’s home with Paul. Sally’s service is tomorrow. I think one funeral is enough for Kevin right now.”
“Sure.”
She hesitates, then gives me an unguarded look. “A lot happened last night. Some things need explaining. Could you meet me at the barn today? Four thirty?”
“The Weldon barn?”
She nods. “Too soon?”
“No, I can make that.”
Jet smiles with gratitude, but then her face darkens. “How’s Nadine doing?”
I’m not sure how honest to be about this. “She’s all right.”
She nods but says nothing further. “Four thirty, then.”
“Four thirty.”
We part without touching.
Despite the Flex’s low ground clearance and the path being thickly overgrown by weeds, I make it all the way to the clearing around the Weldon barn. Jet is already there, waiting in front of her Volvo. She’s wearing the black dress from the funeral, and staring at the remains of the old cypress structure. The barn where she and I discovered each other has mostly collapsed. It’s being slowly consumed by kudzu and poison ivy. The second story sits only four feet off the ground and looks like rattlesnake heaven. I wouldn’t climb up into it unless I was running for my life.
While the barn itself has fallen in, the clearing looks exactly the same. The sun filters down through the canopy in thick yellow shafts, the only straight lines and angles the first people in this region would have seen. Lone wildflowers blossom in the shadows of the woods. I don’t know their names, but they’re more beautiful than any you’d find in the florist’s shop on Rembert Street. I see fewer and fewer butterflies in the world, but they still thrive here, fluttering among the vines at the edge of the clearing.
I park beside Jet’s Volvo, then walk over and hug her. After the cemetery, I worried that this might feel awkward, but here it seems natural. We hold each other for a full minute without speaking. We do not kiss. I feel myself responding to her body, and she must feel it, too, but we draw apart without going further. Then she leads me to the edge of the sunlight and sits in a patch of clover, tucking her legs demurely beneath her. I sit facing her with my arms around my knees.
“Do you remember the old black man who saved us from the druggies that day?” she asks.
“Hell, yes. It was night, really.”
“What was his name?”
“Willis.”
She laughs. “That’s right! He said my twelve dollars would feed him for a week. I hope it did. If I could find him now, I’d give him twelve hundred.”
She picks a white flower from the clover, then another. With delicate, assured fingers she ties one green stem around another with a tiny knot, beginning a necklace.
“What did you guys tell Kevin about Max?” I ask, stepping right into the unspoken issues between us.
Jet doesn’t look up. “We told him Beau Holland got his grandfather tangled up in some serious financial crimes. We said that Max thought Beau had been murdered by some crooked partners, and he felt his only choice was to flee the country. I tried to give him the impression that Max is living on a beach somewhere, drinking tequila under another name. Costa Rica, maybe. I did tell him that I doubted we’d ever see his grandfather again.”
“Did Kevin ever believe that Max hurt Sally?”
“I don’t think so. Once news of her illness got out, he latched on to that as a legitimate motive for suicide.”
I nod, thinking that’s probably best.
“Last night was pretty crazy,” she says, picking another flower and going to work on its stem with deft finger movements.
“That barely begins to describe it. I’d say the credit for saving us goes to you. You were ferocious. You scared those old guys to death.”
She shrugs. “We all did our part.”
“You made it sound like you and Paul are staying together.”
She looks up at last, her eyes noncommittal. “I said what I had to. I read the moment.”
“You read it well. I’m the only one who knew you were bluffing about the cache.”
She laughs softly. “I wasn’t bluffing.”
“What?”
“One hour before they threw me in that helicopter, all I had was the number of the account I’d set up in the Seychelles.”
“Then how—”
“Max’s phone. Before you and Paul left to dump his body, I took the cell phone he had on him. I punched in the first password from Sally’s necklace, and