Before We Were Yours(85)
“Leslie, he’s a friend. He was helping me track down some family history. That’s all.”
“Family history? Really? Here?” Jerking her chin up, she snorts in frustration. “Of what sort?”
“I’d rather not say.”
Leslie’s eyes flash. Her lips squeeze into a thin line. She takes a breath, blinks again, levels a heated gaze at me. “Well, let me tell you something. Whatever I just witnessed there is exactly the kind of scene you cannot afford. Nothing that could possibly be spun, used, or misinterpreted, Avery. Nothing. You have to be pure as the driven snow, and that did not look pure from a distance. Can you imagine how it would have played in a photograph? All of us, the entire team, are putting everything we have into you. In case you’re needed.”
“I know that. I understand.”
“The last thing this family can withstand is one more battle to fight.”
“Point taken.” I paint a layer of confidence over the words, but inside I’m confused; I’m embarrassed; I’m aggravated that I have to deal with Leslie right now. I’m torn between appeasing Leslie and running after Trent. I’m afraid to even look up to see whether he’s made it to his car yet.
The engine starts, and answers my question. I hear him back out and drive away. It’s probably for the best, I tell myself. Of course it is. I had my whole life planned before I went to Edisto. Why would I want to jeopardize that over…ancient family history, things that don’t matter anymore, a man with whom I have no connection other than a story that even those who lived it want to forget?
“There’s been a development.” Leslie’s words take a moment to register even though I’m looking right at her. “The Sentinel just rolled out a massive exposé about corporate-owned nursing care and the responsibility dodge. It’s only a matter of time before the major media pick it up. The article highlighted the South Carolina cases. They have cost comparisons between Magnolia Manor and the kind of care facilities that have been named in some of the injury lawsuits. They have photos of victims and their families. They titled it ‘Aging Unevenly,’ and they headed it up with a long-range picture of your dad and your grandmother walking in the gardens at Magnolia.”
I stare at her, openmouthed, a feverish anger igniting deep within me. “How dare they! How dare…anyone! They have no right to harass my grandmother.”
“This is politics, Avery. Politics and sensationalism. There is no safe ground.”
CHAPTER 20
Rill
The man’s name is Darren, and the woman’s name is Victoria, but we’ve been told that we’re to call them Papa and Mommy, not Darren and Victoria or Mr. Sevier and Mrs. Sevier. It doesn’t bother me much. I’ve never called anyone Papa or Mommy, so the words don’t have a place in me one way or the other. They’re just words. That’s all.
Queenie and Briny are still our folks, and we’re still going back to them, soon as I can find a way. It won’t be hard as I thought it might be. The Sevier house is big and filled with rooms no one uses, and out back there’s a wide porch that looks over fields of tall trees and green grass, and all of it slopes on down to the best thing ever—the water. It’s not the river; it’s a long, skinny oxbow lake that drains off into a place called Dedmen’s Slough…and Dedmen’s Slough goes all the way down to the Mississippi. I found that out because I asked Zuma, who cleans this place and fixes the meals and lives over the old carriage house, where Mr. Sevier parks his cars. He has three cars. I’ve never even met anybody that has three cars.
Zuma’s husband, Hoy, and their girl, Hootsie, live out there with her. Hoy keeps the yard and takes care of a pen of chickens, Mr. Sevier’s hunting dogs that bark and howl all night, and a pony Mrs. Sevier has been telling us for two weeks now we can go riding on if we want to. I said that we don’t like ponies, even though it’s not true. I let Fern know she better not say any different.
Zuma’s husband is big and scary and black as the dickens, and after being at Mrs. Murphy’s, I don’t want some yardman getting me or Fern off by ourselves anyplace. I don’t want us alone with Mr. Sevier. He’s tried to take us out to the pony too, but only because Mrs. Sevier made him. He’ll do just about anything to keep her from wandering off down the path to the garden where two babies born dead and three that were never born at all have graves with little stone lambs on top. When Mrs. Sevier goes out there, she lays on the ground and cries. Then she comes home and gets in her bed and stays. There’s old scars across her wrists. I know why they’re there, but I don’t tell Fern, of course.
“Just sit in her lap, and let her fix your hair and play dolls with you. Make sure she’s happy,” I tell Fern. “No crying and don’t wet the bed. You hear me?” That’s the only reason the Seviers brought me here in the first place—because Fern wouldn’t stop crying and bed-wetting and carrying on.
Mostly, Fern’s been doing pretty good now. Some days, though, there’s not a thing that’ll help Mrs. Sevier. Some days, she don’t want to be touched by another living soul. She only wants the dead.
When she lays up in her bed and cries over the babies she lost, Mr. Sevier hides in his music room, and we’re stuck with Zuma, who thinks having us around makes too much work for her. Mrs. Sevier used to buy things for Zuma’s little girl, Hootsie, who’s ten, two years younger than me. Now Mrs. Sevier buys things for us instead. Zuma ain’t one bit happy about that either. She’s weaseled enough information out of Fern to know where we’re from, and she can’t see why somebody fine as Mr. and Mrs. Sevier would want river trash like us anyhow. She lets us know it, but she can’t say it where Mrs. Sevier might hear, of course.