The Book of Lost Friends(48)

CHAPTER 12


BENNY SILVA—AUGUSTINE, LOUISIANA, 1987

I slip silently through the house, tracking the sound. I picture mice, squirrels, and the giant nutria rats I’ve seen swimming in the canals and pools of stagnant water during my walks.

Images of ghosts and ghouls and hideous insect-like aliens percolate through my thoughts. Ax murderers and vagrants. I’ve always been a horror movie junkie, proud of the fact that I can watch things like that and never take them seriously. Even after years of dating, Christopher hated that I was too busy trying to figure out the next scene and plot twist to actually be scared. You’re so stinking analytical, he always complained. It’s no fun.

It’s all just pretend. Smoke and mirrors. Don’t be such a sissy, I’d tease. Growing up as a latchkey kid, you can’t panic at every little noise.

But, here in this place, with generations of history I can only guess at, I feel my own vulnerability with strange acuity. Being alone in a shadow-filled old house is different than watching one on TV.

The sounds emanating from the kitchen area are definitely not those of someone stepping casually through the door. Whatever’s there, he, she, or it does not want to be seen. The movements are quiet, cautious, deliberately careful…and so am I. I want to see it before it sees me.

At the butler’s pantry doorway, I stop and search the long rows of tall mahogany cabinets and well-worn countertops where servants must have staged elaborate meals. The mirrors on the opposing sideboards merely reflect one another and the upper cabinets. Nothing unusual or threatening…except…

Shifting to gain a better view, I watch in consternation as a skinny rear end in jeans with silver embroidery backs its way out of the lower-left corner cabinet.

What in the world?

I recognize the jeans and color-block T-shirt. I’ve seen them in my fourth-hour class. Albeit not as much as I would like to.

“LaJuna Carter!” I say before she has even straightened. She whirls about, stands at attention. “What are you doing?”

I don’t ask if she is supposed to be here. No need. It’s clear enough from the look on that face.

She effects a jaunty chin bob that reminds me of Aunt Sarge. “I ain’t hurtin’ nothing.” Long, thin fingers circle her skinny hip bones. “How’d you think I knew about all the books? Anyway, the judge said I can come. Back before he died, he told me, ‘Stop by whenever you want, LaJuna.’ Wasn’t like anybody else ever came…unless they want somethin’. All the judge’s kids and grandkids, kept too tied up with their houses on the lake, takin’ their boats out fishing. Got to go sit on the beach, because they own places there, too. Can’t let that go to waste. You have all them houses, you are a busy person. No time to go sit in some old place with some old man stuck in a wheelchair.”

“The judge doesn’t own this house anymore.”

“I don’t steal anything if that’s what you think.”

“That isn’t what I said, but…how did you get in, anyway?”

“How did you?”

“I have a key.”

“I don’t need a key. Judge showed me all this house’s secrets.”

I’m intrigued. How could I not be? “I took your suggestion about the books—thank you for that, by the way—and got permission to come here and see what might be useful in getting a classroom library together.”

Her eyes widen around their pewter centers. She’s surprised and…dare I assume…impressed that I’ve managed to breach the ramparts of the Gossett world. “You find anything?”

My first inclination is to gush about the book hoard. The library is an amalgamation of the generations of residents in this house. The dust of their reading lives has been left behind like sedimentary layers of sandstone, year upon year, decade upon decade. New books and old ones that probably haven’t been touched in a century. Some may be first editions, or even signed. My former boss at Book Bazaar would be weeping on the floor in sheer ecstasy by now.

But the teacher in me is possessed by a completely different agenda. “I haven’t been here long…because I went to school today. That makes one of us, doesn’t it?”

“I was sick.”

“Speedy recovery, huh?” I squat down and stick my head in the cabinet she seemingly just crawled out of. Something’s not normal about it, but I can’t figure out what. “Look, LaJuna, I know your mother works quite a bit, and that you help out with your little brothers and sisters, but you need to be in class.”

“You oughta mind your own business.” The sharp-edged retort hints that she may often be in the position of defending her mother. “I hand my papers in. You got plenty of kids who don’t do their work. Go hassle them.”

“I do…well, I try.” Not that it works. “Regardless, I don’t think you should be sneaking in here.”

“Mr. Nathan wouldn’t care, even if he did know. He’s not so bad like his uncles that own the company now. All their snotty wives and all their snotty kids think they run this town. My Great-Aunt Dicey says Sterling was different. Nice to people. Aunt Dicey was right here making lunch for the harvest crew the day Sterling got sucked up in the sugarcane combine. She stayed overnight to look after Robin and Nathan while their daddy was life-flighted off. After he died, his wife packed up the kids and moved away to some mountain. Aunt Dicey knows all the business about the Gossetts. She kept house for the judge forever. Used to bring me out here when she took care of me. That’s how I knew the judge and that’s how I knew Miss Robin.”