Black Cake(32)

Through the growing twilight, Bunny saw that the storm was coming in quickly. Covey would know this, but Bunny was no longer certain that Covey would have time to swim to safety without being cut up on the rocks, or forced out to sea. This was not about strength or speed. This was about being made of flesh and bone and blood. This was about having respect for the power of nature. And, just like that, Bunny understood what Covey might try to do.

Of course, Bunny thought. Of course. Bunny grabbed Pearl’s hand and pulled her all the way to Covey’s house.





Pearl





“She’s not dead,” Bunny told Pearl. “I don’t believe it.”

Pearl looked at Bunny. She felt a softness in her heart for this girl. She had known her almost as long as she’d known Covey.

“Bunny,” Pearl said.

“No,” Bunny said, and the stubbornness in her voice brought Pearl close to tears. Bunny, like Covey, had turned into a young woman overnight. Bunny was still a little thing when she first ran into this kitchen with Covey to show Pearl her first swimming medal, waving the bronze-colored disk at Pearl and sending potatoes rolling off the counter and onto the floor. She still tended to trip and knock things over, that child, but she had grown as big and strong and beautiful as a tree.

Bunny’s mother told Pearl that the clumsiness had begun with a fever. Sometimes, Bunny still got the aches and, when she was tired, she limped. The fever had left something in her, Bunny’s mother said, but nothing that couldn’t be managed if Bunny would only concentrate. The swimming had helped her to do that. Now at seventeen, Bunny towered over Pearl, her shoulders broad and square, a look of clarity in her eyes.

“Pearl, if anyone can survive out there, Covey can,” Bunny said. But more than four hours had passed since Covey’s disappearance and the last traces of peach had left the sky.

“That big race you were training for,” Pearl said, “were you girls ready for it?”

“Almost, yes.”

“And how many hours would it take to swim it? As long as she’s been out there now?”

“No, less.”

“So, how could she manage out there alone, and with a storm coming in?”

Bunny shook her head. “I don’t think she could, Pearl. But that’s my point, don’t you see?” Bunny said, banging her elbow into a pot behind her and sending the cover clattering onto the counter. “I don’t think she would even try.”

Pearl put her hands on her hips and shifted her head to look at Bunny with her good eye. “What are you saying, Bunny?”

“There’s a place we know,” Bunny said. “Close to the shore. If she’s there, she might be all right,” Bunny says, her voice cracking.

Without another word, Pearl handed Bunny a battery-operated torch, a modern luxury from Mr. Lin’s shop. She put a canvas ice bag on the kitchen table and stuffed it with a towel, dry clothes, and food. She left the room and came back with a small wooden box with bank notes inside. The box was the only item of value Covey’s mother had ever had, a beautiful thing with carvings around the border of its lid. After Mathilda left, Covey used to sit on the edge of her parents’ bed, holding the box and lifting the lid then letting it drop, lifting it then letting it drop, over and over again.

Pearl tore a strip from a sheet of brown paper and wrote down the name and address of someone who could be trusted. She was someone who could be trusted because, like Pearl, her value was largely unrecognized, except by certain influential women who had come to rely on her. She was someone whose name was never pronounced in the company of their husbands, whose presence they pretended to know nothing about.

As Pearl handed over the ice bag, Bunny knocked the flashlight into a bottle of oil, sending it toppling.

Concentrate, Bunny, Pearl thought.

“I’m so sorry, Pearl,” Bunny said, grabbing the bottle of oil as it spilled its contents on the counter.

“Leave it,” Pearl said, picking up a rag. “I’ll do it.” Pearl couldn’t trust Bunny in this kitchen but she knew that she could trust her to get to Covey, if Covey was still alive. Bunny knew the coast as well as Covey did.

“You know I can’t go with you, Bunny,” Pearl said. “Little Man’s people are all over the place. You’ll have to go on your own. Just act normal-like, Bunny, and if you find her alive, don’t stay with her, just leave her these things and go. And walk slow. Be quiet, don’t trip on anything.”

Pearl jabbed at the name written on the piece of paper. “You make sure Covey understands she’s not to talk to anyone, except this person here. They will know what to do.” She pushed Bunny toward the door now.

“And under no circumstances are you to come back here until after daylight, do you hear me?”





Covey





Covey was cut up and bloodied by the time she crawled onto the sand, dressed only in the slip she’d worn under her wedding dress. First came the nausea. Then she blacked out. When she woke up, she was being pelted by rain. She burst into tears. What had she been thinking? Where could she go? Who could help her? She’d heard the voices coming off the beach that afternoon. Covey had run off. The police assumed that she had murdered Little Man. Her only advantage now was that everyone would think she was dead.