Black Cake(84)

In the bottom of the jar they find their parents’ wedding rings, both with the same inscription inside, C and G. Benny remembers seeing the inscription once and asking her mother about it. Her mother told her the letters stood for comprehension and generosity, two qualities that she said were essential in a good marriage. Now she knows that they are the initials of her parents’ original names. Coventina and Gilbert, Covey and Gibbs. All this time, their parents’ true identities have been hidden right here in this house, in these rings, in this photograph.

Finally, they turn the jar over and let the rest of its contents fall onto the kitchen table. Three cockle shells, whitish on the outside, pinkish beige on the inside. Their mother must have found these in the purse that belonged to Elly, the original Eleanor Douglas, the girl who befriended their mother and who, unwittingly, gave her a chance at a whole new life.

Byron feels a hum of excitement. He’s past some of the shock now, he’s ready to learn more. He wants to go to the island. He wants to see where his parents grew up. He wants to see the part of himself that he never knew. He has to. How will he manage this, otherwise? This disappearing of the life he once thought he had.

There is one more thing, jammed against the curve of the jar. A narrow slip of paper that says THE BOX. Byron and Benny look at each other and nod. They have already found the wooden box, the hinged ebony container that once belonged to their mother’s mother, Mathilda. Their ma kept it on a shelf in her closet. Inside are four medallions, yellow-gold disks stamped with crosses that they both used to play with, and the old hair comb that their mother let Benny wear one Halloween, wedged into her braids and covered with an old veil like a Spanish lady.

They know these items by heart. As children, they both ran their hands over the fine curves etched into the surface of the comb, over the browns and golds and grays of the tortoiseshell, over the cross on the face of each coin. Benny goes to her parents’ bedroom and comes back with the wooden box, hugging it to her middle.

Benny and Byron have already talked about the box. Their mother wanted them to give it to Marble, to give her a chance to fiddle with its contents, just as they had in their younger years. They will give Baby Mathilda a piece of the childhood that she might have experienced had she grown up in their family. They will give Marble the only objects left from their mother’s former life.

“Our ma’s box of trinkets,” Benny says. “She always said the box belonged to her own mother but that she’d found the comb and medallions in the backyard at the orphanage. We think they must have belonged to Elly, the original Eleanor.” Benny hands the box to Marble.

“We used to play with these all the time, Marble. Now it’s your turn.”

Marble smiles at the box and smooths her hand along its silky surface, puts it up to her face and sniffs at the wood, then lifts the lid. Her mouth drops open when she sees what’s inside. She puts on her glasses.

“Oh, my,” Marble says, smoothing her finger over one of the disks. “These aren’t trinkets. This is gold. From a very long time ago. These probably belong in a museum.” Marble sits up straighter and reminds them that before she wrote about food, she studied art history. She pulls her tablet out of her purse and searches the Internet for a news story about divers who recently salvaged gold coins from the site of an ancient shipwreck. She shows Byron and Benny a closeup of the coins. They are identical to her mother’s medallions.

“This comb, too, has to be about three hundred years old. Could be from the same ship.”

“Dude, you’re kidding me,” Byron says.

At the word dude, Marble gives Byron a look that he can only think of as being extremely British.

“But if we go public with these,” Benny says, “won’t we have to explain where they came from? We might have to say something about our parents. Our parents invented a narrative for a reason, to hide their true identities.”

“But they’re not around anymore,” Byron says.

“No, they’re not,” Benny says. “But some of the people they knew are still around. Where does that leave us? What happens if we alter even one part of that story? What about the murder?”

“What about the murder?” Byron says.

“We still don’t know who killed Little Man, do we?”

“Exactly,” Marble says. “Do you think it was your mother? I mean, you know. Our…”

Byron and Benny cast her the same, big-eyed look. Marble has to get used to saying our mother. Or does she? She’s glad she finally knows about her birth mother, but her mum, Wanda, will always be her mum.

“I’ve thought about it and thought about it, but I really don’t know,” Byron says. “A year ago I would have said there’s no way my mother would have killed a man, but there’s a lot we didn’t know then. In her recording, our mother never actually denies killing Little Man.”

“I wouldn’t blame her if she had,” Benny says. “The point is, our parents told us a lot of lies over the years. We might never know how much of the truth our ma has told us.”

“Maybe when we go to the island, we’ll find out.”

“We can’t go to the island, Byron. We don’t really know what we’re getting into. There are people who helped our mother escape. We don’t want to cause them any trouble, do we? Not after everything they did for her. What do you think, Marble?”