The Book of Lost Friends(75)
I soldier on. “What they have in mind for the culmination of this…is this thing they call Tales from the Crypt. It’s done in cemetery tours in New Orleans apparently. They’ll research and write about someone who lived and died in this town, or even here on the plantation, an ancestor or someone they feel connected to across the centuries. For the big finale—maybe as a fundraiser even—they’ll dress up in costume and stand by the tombstone as a living witness, and tell their story during a cemetery tour. It’d let everyone see how all the histories are intertwined. Why the lives of ordinary people mattered then, and why they still matter. Why it’s relevant today.”
He looks down at the book of plantation records in his lap, runs a thumb carefully along the edge of the page. “Robin would have loved this. My sister had all kinds of ideas about Goswood, about restoring the house, documenting its past, cleaning out the gardens. She wanted to open a museum that would focus on all the people of Goswood, not just the ones who slept in those four-poster beds in the big house. Robin was one for lofty ideas. A dreamer. That’s why the judge left the place to her.”
“She sounds like an incredible person.” I try to imagine the sister he’s lost. I summon her up in my mind. Same deep blue-green eyes. Same smile. Medium-brown hair like Nathan’s, but seven years older, more fine-featured and slight-boned.
And so obviously loved. He looks heartbroken, just mentioning her. “You need her, not me,” he admits.
“But we have you.” I try to go at it gently. “I know you’re busy and you live out of town and all of this”—I indicate the papers he’s been up all night reading—“isn’t something you were interested in. I’ll be incredibly grateful if my students can have access to these papers for their research projects, but many of the kids are going to find their ancestors in the graveyard that’s not marked. We need permission to use the land behind my house, and that land belongs to you.”
An inordinate amount of time passes while he wrestles with the question. Twice, then three times, he starts to reply, then stops. He surveys the materials on the coffee table, on the end table, on the sofa. He pinches his forehead, closes his eyes. His lips thin to a grim line drawn by emotions he obviously feels the need to keep from showing.
He’s not ready for all of this. There’s a well of pain here for him, and I have no way of fully understanding all the wellsprings that feed it. His sister’s death, his father’s, his grandfather’s, the human reality of Goswood Grove’s history?
I want to let him off the hook, but I can’t quite make myself say anything that would. I owe it to my students to pursue this before heaven-knows-what happens to these documents and Goswood Grove itself.
Nathan shifts forward on the sofa so that, for a moment, I’m afraid he’s decided to walk out. My pulse ratchets up.
Finally, he props his elbows on his knees, sags between his shoulder blades, stares through the window. “I hate that house.” He fists his hands together. Tight. “That house is a curse. My father died there, my grandfather died there. If Robin hadn’t been so obsessed with fighting my uncles over the place, she wouldn’t have ignored the symptoms with her heart. I knew she didn’t look good the last time I was there. She should’ve gone for tests, but she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to face the fact that the house was too much for her to take on. She spent fourteen months fighting battles over her plans for it—battles with my father’s brothers, with the parish, with lawyers. You name it, if it’s around here, Will and Manford have their hands in it. That’s what consumed my sister’s final years, and that was what we argued about the last time I saw her.” His eyes glitter as he recalls these events. “But Robin had promised my grandfather she’d take care of the place, and she wasn’t one to go back on a promise. The only one she ever broke was when she died. She promised me she wouldn’t.”
The pain of his loss is raw, overwhelming, unmistakable, even though he tries to conceal it.
“Nathan, I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean to…I wasn’t trying—”
“It’s okay.” He rubs his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, drinks in air, straightens, tries to toss off the emotions. “You’re not from here.” His eyes meet mine; our gazes grab and hold on. “I understand what you’re trying to do, Benny. I admire it, and I see the value of it. But you have no idea what you’re stepping into.”
CHAPTER 19
HANNIE GOSSETT—TEXAS, 1875
I’m on my knees when I wake. The ground shakes and sways like I jumped a thundercloud to ride it over the land. Splinters needle through my britches and dig at my skin.
Off in the far fields, I see my people. Mama and all my brothers and sisters and cousins, they stand in the sunshine, their burden baskets set down while they raise their hands and look to see who it is calling out to them.
“Mama, Hardy, Het, Prat, Epheme,” I yell. “Easter, Ike, Aunt Jenny, Mary Angel, I’m here! Mama, come get your child! I’m here! Can’t you see?”
I reach out toward Mama, and then she’s gone, and I open my eyes to a starry dark sky. The wind batters my face, dusts it with hot bits of ash from the engine of the train that’s carrying us west. Mama ain’t out there and never was. She’s just a dream again. The farther we go into Texas, the more I see her when I close my eyes.