The Book of Lost Friends(14)

“Our goal is selfsame.” The words are Frenchy-like, hard to make out at first. They run up and down quick as a bird whistle. “Perhaps our fate is in common, as well, if we are unsuccessful in our quest.”

“You will not assume we hold any similarities,” Missy snaps. I can picture them fat cheeks of hers puffing like the hog bladders the butcher men blow up with air and tie off for the children to play with. “You are no daughter of this house. You are the whelp of my father’s…my father’s…concubine. Nothing more.”

“And yet, it is you who have arranged that I come here. Who have provided for me an entry to Goswood Grove House.”

They been…Missy did…

What in the name a’ mercy? Missy was the one helped Juneau Jane get in?

I tell Tati this news, and she’ll say I’m storying.

That’s why Missy Lavinia didn’t raise a fuss last night. Might even be why Seddie didn’t come out of her room, in all the ruckus. Maybe Missy Lavinia had a hand in that, too.

“And, for all my effort in assuring your passage here, Juneau Jane, I have gained nothing. You do not know where his papers are hidden any more than I do. Or perhaps you were lying when you said you could find them…or perhaps the fact is that my father lied to you.” Missy’s low giggle follows on, them words savored like sugar crust in her mouth.

“He would not.” The girl’s voice rises high, takes on the sound of a child’s, then trembles and thickens when she says, “He would not fail to provide for me. Always it was his promise that he—”

“You are nothing to this family!” Missy shrieks, sending a blackbird to flight overhead. I start looking round for where I’ll go if somebody comes to see what’s the trouble. “You are nothing, and if Father is gone, you are as penniless as you deserve to be. You and that wretched yellow woman who bore you. I almost feel sorry for you, Juneau Jane. A mother who fears you’ve grown prettier than she and a father who has tired of the burden you represent. Such a sad state of affairs.”

“You will not speak of him in this manner! He does not lie. Perhaps he has only moved the papers to prevent your mother from throwing them to the flames. She would then claim all the holdings derived of Papa’s family. With no inheritance left directly to you, you would be forced to forever do your mother’s bidding. Is that not what you fear? Why you have brought me here?”

“I didn’t want to bring you here.” Missy’s soft and amiable again, like she’s coaxing a little piglet from the corner, so’s to string it up and cut its throat. “If you’d only been willing to tell me where Father hid the papers, rather than insisting on being personally involved in looking for them…”

“Ffff! As if you could be trusted! You would steal the portion that is to be mine as quickly as your mother would steal what is to be yours.”

“The portion that is to be yours? Really, Juneau Jane, you belong back in Tremé with the rest of the fancy girls, waiting for your mother to sell you off to a gentleman caller, so as to pay the notes coming due. Perhaps your mother should have better anticipated the day when my father would no longer be here to provide for her financing.”

“He is not…Papa is not—”

“Gone? Forever?” Missy Lavinia hadn’t got a note of sadness. Not for her own daddy. Only thing she’s hoping for is that what’s left of the plantation farms here and in Texas don’t go straight into Old Missus’s hands. Juneau Jane’s right, Little Missy would be under her mama’s thumb forever if that happened.

“You will not say these things!” Juneau Jane chokes out.

There’s a long spate of quiet then. Bad quiet that gives me the all-overs, like some evil’s come stealing up on me from the shadows. Can’t see it, but it’s there, waiting to pounce.

“Regardless, last night’s little exercise was a waste of time and considerable trouble on my part, bringing you here and ensuring your access to the library. Solving the matter will require a bit more travel for us, it seems. Just for the day, and after it’s done I’ll see that you’re provided passage on the fastest riverboat back to New Orleans. Delivered safely to your mother’s home in Tremé…to whatever fate awaits you. At least we’ll have settled the matter.”

“How can this be possible, that the matter might so easily be solved today?” Juneau Jane sounds suspicious. She oughta be.

“I know where we shall find the man who can help. In fact, he was the last person Father spoke to before departing for Texas. I have only to order a carriage for myself, and we will be off to pay him a call. It is all very simple.”

Lord, I think, squatting low in the thorn brush and the trumpet vines. Oh Lord, oh Lord. Ain’t nothing simple about this.

I don’t want to hear anything that comes next. Don’t want to know. But wherever them girls are bound, if they’re after news of Old Mister or his papers, I got to get there, too.

Question is, how?





CHAPTER 4


BENNY SILVA—AUGUSTINE, LOUISIANA, 1987

Sunday morning, I wake in a head-to-toe sweat. My last-ditch rental accommodations offer only the barely there air-conditioning of an aging window unit, but the real problem isn’t this sweltering 1901 farmhouse; it’s the overwhelming dread squatting on my chest like a sumo wrestler. I can’t breathe.