into my father’s study, and looked at the mahogany highboy and thought back again with shame to Maynard’s game of rummaging among things that were not his own. It was an absurd shame—nothing in this house, on this land, indeed on this earth, could be called the rightful property of Howell Walker. And yet, being Quality, being a pirate, this never stopped him from laying claim. It was only natural that Maynard do the same. Perhaps I should too.
When I pulled at the small bottom drawer and saw the ornate rosewood box, its silver clasps gleaming, I cannot say I knew what was inside. But when I rubbed my hands over the top of the box, I sensed that should I choose to open it, nothing could ever be the same again. And so it was.
What I saw was a necklace of shells, and in an instant I was sure that it was that same necklace that I had seen the night my brother died, shaking from the neck of the dancer, shaking from the neck of my mother. And what I did now was bring the necklace to me, reaching behind my own neck to put it on, and when the hook-and-eye clasp locked into place like a lost jigsaw, a wave rippled out through my fingers, through my wrists and arms, into the deepest part of me, so that I stumbled back. When I regained myself, I knew that the wave, which was only then subsiding, was the force of memory. The memory of my mother. And now, all that I had known as the words of others formed into portrait and pictures. The fog and smoke of my years blew away, so that I saw my mother in her full form, in all our short years together, and too, I saw her end, and I saw exactly how that end had come and I saw precisely who had brought it about.
I tell you, it took all of my restraint to not rush down those stairs and into the garden where the spade and fork were still planted in the cold ground, pull them out, and relieve my father of that brief splash of life that remained in his mortal vessel. And that I did not is only testament to what I felt then at stake, to those whom I loved, who I then knew were counting on me to remember, and to remember I had to live.
I closed the box and shoved it back into the highboy. Then I tucked the necklace of shells under my shirt. I walked back downstairs and saw that my father was now awake, and looking out the window I could see that evening was upon us. It occurred to me then that what felt like mere seconds had been much longer. I went out to the kitchen and saw that my father’s meal was being prepared and remembered that he was not to be dining alone that evening. I walked up the first course—bread and terrapin soup—and found waiting there at the dinner table with my father Corrine Quinn. She never betrayed anything that evening, but at the end, as they repaired to the parlor for tea, she mentioned to me that she believed Hawkins wished a word with me.
I walked outside and down to the stables, well anticipating what he would have to say. Hawkins was tied to the Virginia Underground and thus to the word of Corrine Quinn. It was her figuring, no doubt, that if she could not stop me, perhaps someone who had once seen the world as I had would make me understand. It was now late. The air was crisp and cold. A bright moon hung high in the sky. I found Hawkins seated inside the chaise, puffing on a cigar. When he saw me, he smiled and held out his hand to offer me a seat.
“I know why you here,” I said. “Ain’t nothing you can say to change what’s coming.”
“Huh,” he said. Then he reached into his pocket and said, “My only notion was to offer you a cigar.”
“That ain’t your only notion,” I said.
“Naw, it’s not.”
He handed me the cigar.
“My feeling is that I have been hard with you,” he said. “It is by virtue of my position, but it is also by cause of what I have seen and how I come to the position. You understand that me and my Amy, we were pulled out by Corrine, yes?”