Under a Gilded Moon(113)

In another few minutes—or longer, given this state she’d fallen into—the chapel had all but emptied. Except for Ling and Moncrief, chatting while Zhen went skipping outside, only Kerry and Rema and the twins remained, along with one last mourner. John Cabot was approaching, tentatively—eyes soft, face grave. “Kerry—”

“Thank you for coming,” she told him, the edge of her voice beginning to fray. “Truly.” Part of her wanted to step into his arms—a comfort, a buttress to help hold her up. But she felt as if leaning into anyone right now might mean collapsing entirely.

“Kerry,” he began again.

Voices outside the chapel were rising, though. And now a man was shouting. Raging.

Kerry and Rema exchanged glances. And ran ahead of John Cabot and the rest to the door of the church.





Chapter 55

“Make a move for me, and I shoot. Hear me?”

Dearg Tate’s voice from the other side of the clearing in front of the chapel. And there was the man himself beneath the pines not but thirty feet away. Holding a pistol, he aimed unsteadily at the crowd that formed a crescent to the left of the chapel door.

Kerry froze in the doorway.

With his own gun trained on Dearg and his eyes darting to the cowering crowd, Sheriff Wolfe made the third point of a triangle, several yards from his target.

Beside Wolfe, Madison Grant leaned against a post oak, his top hat on, collar in perfect, starched wings. He appeared entirely unfazed by the crisis—almost enjoying it. “Come now, Tate,” he said. “Just because Wolfe has discovered the evidence all points your way doesn’t mean you’ll be locked up for the entirety of your life. Necessarily. He’s come to arrest you. Let the man do his job.”

“Not a step closer!” Dearg glanced Wolfe’s way, even as he kept his aim on the crowd.

Wolfe took a step back. “Easy now, Tate. Just lower that gun. You don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“Certainly not,” Grant said. “At least not again.”

As if struck physically by that last comment, Dearg wobbled a step, but steadied his aim.

“Damn it, Grant,” Wolfe hissed. “Shut the hell up.” To Dearg, Wolfe spoke more soothingly, “Easy now. Just lower that gun. All we got to do is talk. Just talk.”

Little Zhen, her father peering over Kerry’s shoulder in the chapel doorway, meandered into view from the crowd’s far margin, and just that quickly was free of it. Starting across the fifteen or so feet toward Dearg Tate and his crazed, contorted features—and his weapon.

It was the awful, shiny thing in his hand she wanted. The girl’s dark eyes appeared utterly transfixed by the muzzle of the pistol, glinting bright in the spring sun.

Ling made a choking sound behind Kerry and pushed past her. Dearg, though, swept his pistol arm to aim at Ling, then at the stunned crowd, then back to Ling, who froze in place, his eyes flitting in horror from his daughter to Dearg.

“Dearg.” The word came from Kerry strangled and dry. But she had to get him to hear—to really listen.

Head cocked, little Zhen kept on across the chapel’s clearing toward Dearg and his pistol, reached toward the flashing silver as if it were a toy.

Dearg’s hands shook, making the gun’s barrel quiver. “You,” he growled at the child. “Stay back.”

“Dearg. She’s just a little girl.” Kerry’s voice had returned to her. She took a step toward him, then another. Tried to keep her voice steady. “Put the gun down. Please. Listen to me.”

“I didn’t mean no harm to that Jew. You hear me? No real harm.”

“I know you didn’t, Dearg. Easy now. Put the gun down.”

“All I meant,” he cried, “was to rough him up just a little. Lady paid me to scare him back to New York was all. Just scare him off the story was all, some New Orleans story she said he’d gotten all wrong but wouldn’t let it go.”

Lilli Barthélemy. It must have been.

“Nothing but scare was what I was aiming to do. But then there he was, and I was thinking how it was folks like him that’s been pushing us out, all them coming and coming, infesting all the good here.” His voice had become plaintive. Almost childlike.

Kerry walked slowly on toward him. Step by gentle step. “Dearg. Please. Lower your gun.”

After landing on Grant for an instant, his eyes swung back and he pled with her. “He’s right, Kerry. Every last thing he’s been saying, it’d be right. It’s people like you and me, like all us around here, getting replaced, and by what? Not by people like us.”

“Dearg, no.” Kerry could hear the panic edging her voice. It was as if she and the little girl were locked in a dreamlike race toward the man and the terrible thing in his hand. She took another step closer, another. “Dearg, listen to me.”

Zhen’s eyes flitted once to Kerry, but then back, mesmerized by the pistol’s flickering silver.

“Dearg—”

His voice broke. “I didn’t, Kerry. I didn’t mean to.”

Kerry eased another three steps closer. Three more, and she’d almost have the girl. “All that fear,” she whispered to Dearg. “All that hate he wants you to feel.”

Shoulders slumped, Dearg shook his head.