Stephen modestly waved her off. He looked at Cora. “You usually go home on Sundays,” he said. “When Priscilla and I drive you home, you can get in touch with Ruby and ask her to come out next week sometime. We’ll say we’re giving you a party or something. Tell her we want her to come.”
“Wait,” Lucy put up a hand. “I have to go back to Los Angeles next week. I’m not going to be out here for that long.”
“Oh,” Stephen said, re-thinking his strategy. “Well, then… Cora, call her tonight and tell her we’re coming out tomorrow to pick her up and bring her back over here for a special dinner tomorrow night. The same celebratory excuse. Can you do that?”
Cora nodded, but it was clear she was uncertain about the whole thing. “Yessir,” she said. “I’ll call her tonight.”
“Good,” Stephen said, turning his attention back to Lucy and Beau. “Tomorrow night, then?”
Lucy was already feeling the pinpricks of anticipation. “That would be perfect,” she said. “Can I bring my parents?”
Stephen nodded, clearing his throat as he suddenly looked embarrassed again. “Like I said, I’ve gone out of my way not to meet your daddy and….”
Lucy cut him off, grinning. “He won’t care about that,” she said, standing up from the chair. “He’ll just be glad that things are mending between the Latlings and the Hembrees. Well, between the Latlings and the Bondurants, anyway. He’ll be fine with it. And he’ll be grateful for your help.”
Stephen smiled, still somewhat embarrassed. “I’d like to meet him.”
As Lucy collected her purse, signaling to Beau that their business was finished, Priscilla came over to the table with the kettle and tea bags.
“Where are you going?” she wanted to know. “Don’t you want some tea?”
Lucy didn’t want any and neither did Beau, but to be polite, they sat back down and spent another hour shooting a variety of subjects around the table, sipping on the strong black tea that Priscilla had produced. They remained polite and cordial, because this kind of easy conversation with the Latlings had been hard-won, but the moment that hour was up, Lucy insisted that they really did need to leave.
With plans to meet Ruby Ransom for dinner the following night, Lucy left the Latling house feeling more fulfilled, more excited, than she’d felt in a very long time. Sure, there was still more to come and quite a bit could go wrong, but she had faith that, somehow, everything would work out as it should. At least, that was her prayer. But before tomorrow night occurred, she had one more thing to do.
She had to tell her father everything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
~ A Time for Truth ~
“I’m so glad your daddy finally let you have visitors,” Dell said. “I’ve been asking for you, every time I come over.”
Sitting in Victory’s bedroom on a cloudy spring day, Victory sat on a chair over by the window while Dell rifled through the top drawer of her chifforobe, looking for anything that struck her fancy. There were ribbons and jewelry in that drawer. Dell would pull out ribbons and look at herself in the mirror as she wrapped them around her red head, imaging how they would look on her.
Legs tucked up underneath her, Victory watched her cousin primp. “Daddy says I can go back to school when it starts again in the fall,” she said. “Has much changed? How is Eulalie?”
“Fine,” Dell said, disinterested. Then, she suddenly turned away from the mirror, her pale face alive with glee. “She has a boyfriend now. He goes to the boy’s school in Tillatoba – you know the one. Anyway, they’ve been meeting in secret, or so Eulalie says. She’s telling everyone she’s going to marry the boy.”
“Who is it?”
Dell burst out giggling. “Peter Pickle!” she said. “You remember that family, don’t you? Pauline, Penelope, Pamela, Peggy, and Pete! Their daddy has a dairy farm over near Oxberry. The girls don’t even go to school; they just work on the farm. Pete goes to the boy’s school and he met Eulalie at church. Can you imagine? Eulalie Pickle!”
She was rambling, giggling, and Victory smiled weakly. “I wish she’d come to visit me,” Victory said. “I’ve missed her. I want to hear about Pete.”
Dell’s smile faded. “I asked her to come with me but… but she won’t,” she said, turning back to the drawer filled with treasures. “Victory… there’s something you should know. I don’t believe any of it, of course, but the girls have been saying things about you on account you’ve been gone so long. That’s why they won’t come see you. Their parents won’t let them.”
Victory looked at her cousin. “What sorts of things are they saying?”
Dell sighed, pulling out a red ribbon with less enthusiasm. “About you,” she said softly. “Uncle Laveau has kept you locked away for so long and no one has seen you. People say you’ve either gone crazy or you got in trouble somehow.”
Victory didn’t like the sound of that. “Trouble how?” she asked. “Tell me.”
Dell wouldn’t look at her. “Trouble,” she muttered. “Some of the girls said your daddy don’t want to let you out, if you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t know what you mean.”
Dell sighed sharply. “Because he wants you close to him. Do you understand me?”
“No.”
Dell looked at her. “That your mama can’t have no more babies so your daddy has done things… to you… he doesn’t want people to know about.”
Victory understood, then. Her jaw fell open. “Who has been saying such things, Dell?” she demanded, coming out of the chair. “Who has repeated that filth?”
Dell backed up against the chifforobe as Victory grabbed her by the wrist and squeezed. “Ouch!” she yelped. “It wasn’t me! I never said those things!”
Victory was infuriated. “Yes, you did,” she hissed. “You just said them to me. And I know you, Dell Alexander – you have a mouth that spills over like a waterfall. You can’t ever keep anything to yourself. You said something, didn’t you? About the last time you were here – you said something about me!”
Dell was terrified. “No, I didn’t! I swear!”
Victory didn’t believe her. She knew her cousin well enough to know that if any rumors got started, they would have come from her because Dell liked to make things up if she didn’t know the truth. Letting go of Dell’s wrist, she smacked her right across the face.
“Get out,” she screamed. “Get out and don’t you ever come back! You tell those girls that you lied to them about me, you hear? I’m going to tell my daddy what you told them!”
Dell was in tears, her hand over the left side of her face where Victory had slapped her. “Don’t tell him!” she begged even as she backed out of the room. “Please don’t, Victory! It’s not true! I didn’t say nothing!”
Victory shoved her towards the door, throwing it open. “Get out,” she said through clenched teeth. “Don’t you come back here until you’ve taken back all of the lies you told about me. I knew you were a gossipmonger, but you’ve never turned that against me. Now, you have, and I hate you for it. You’d better tell everyone you lied about me or I swear my daddy will show up at your house and punish you!”
Dell sobbed. “No, Victory, please!”
“Then you make it right!”
With that, Victory slammed the door in Dell’s face, listening to her cousin sob as she headed down the hall, running from the house.
But Victory felt no remorse. She knew what her cousin was capable of and it sickened her. The better the rumor, the more satisfaction Dell got out of it. But now, there were rumors about Victory spreading through her friends, horrible rumors that Dell had encouraged. All of those girls that Victory thought were her friends were really not her friends at all; now, they were people who were whispering about her, sickening rumors about Laveau and his only daughter. Lies, all of it.
As if her life wasn’t lonely enough already.
Victory sat down on her bed and wept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Present
“Are you really going home next week?”
Beau asked the question as they crossed the major boulevard from the Latling house, heading in the direction of Glory. It was just the two of them in the car, reflecting on a very eventful meeting with the Latlings. Head against the headrest, weary from what the day had brought her, Lucy watched the scenery go by.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m scheduled to fly back on Monday.”
“Oh,” Beau said as they slowed as they approached a red light. “That’s too bad.”
“Why?”
“Just when we were learning to play well together.”
Lucy grinned, looking over at him. “I’m sure you have more than enough playmates.”
He shook his head, not looking at her. “No time,” he said. “With three small children and a job like this, who has the time?”
“You have time to hang out with me.”
He wriggled his eyebrows, an ironic gesture. “That was hard-fought time I had to carve out,” he said. “Plus, this isn’t really play. It’s work. I kind of like being Stabler to your Benson.”
Lucy laughed, feeling as if the conversation was going to take some kind of emotional turn. “Well,” she said, watching the cars pass as the light turned green and they took off again. “I’m sure you’ll find someone else to hang out with, someone who actually lives around here.”
“I thought you said you were going to buy Glory and fix it up?”
“I might.”
“When?”
She looked at him, then. “Sheriff, are you coming on to me?” she asked. “Because I’m sensing this is more than just a casual conversation.”
He shook his head but she could tell he was fighting off a grin. “Just making conversation, ma’am.”
“Liar.”
“You can’t prove that.”
She chuckled, looking away from him, not at all displeased with the thought of having him to hang around with all of the time. But, right now, she wasn’t sure she could emotionally handle anything more than the casual flirting that was going on even though that big hole that Kevin had left in her was healing remarkably well over the past couple of days. In fact, she hadn’t even thought about him since the search for Ruby started and that was major progress in her book.
Maybe life really did get better, after all.
“Since you told me about your wife leaving you with three babies to raise, it’s probably fair that you know a little something about my background, too,” she said. “My husband left me a little more than six months ago. We’d been married since college but after two miscarriages in the past three years, he decided he just didn’t want to be married to me anymore. He wanted a family that I can’t seem to give him, so he bailed. I’m still picking up the pieces from that.”
Beau grunted softly. “Wow,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry to hear that. Seems you and I both got hooked up with people who couldn’t weather out any storm. I’m sorry for you.”
Lucy was studying the big, old houses they were passing, houses that told her they were getting close to Glory. “Don’t be,” she said. “I appreciate it, but don’t be. I’d rather find out now that he couldn’t handle a crisis than have him walk out on me with three little kids to raise. I suppose everything happens for a reason. I’ve just been trying to figure out what the reason might be.”
Beau took the turn onto Glory’s street. “When you find out, let me know,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure that one out myself.”
She turned to look at him. “You want to hear something weird?” she asked. “At the risk of sounding philosophical, maybe that reason was to come to Mississippi without my husband for Mamaw’s funeral and go on the hunt of a lifetime. I honestly couldn’t have done this if Kevin was around. He was so impatient. He’d be demanding we fly back to Los Angeles yesterday. My family didn’t matter a whole lot to him.”
“And now?”
“I’m realizing just how much it means to me.”
He gave her a half-grin, slowing down as he pulled up to the curb in front of Glory. He put the car in park and looked at her.
“This little hunt we’ve been on has opened my eyes a little, too,” he said. “Talk about something weird… two days ago, I was sitting right in this spot with my dad in the car and we were talking about the history between the Meades and the Hembrees. My dad is really sensitive to things from the past and I was giving him a bad time about it. So… thank you for asking me to help you on this hunt for your Mamaw. It’s helped me see a lot of things, not just from my perspective, but from other people’s.”
“How?”
He cocked his head thoughtfully. “Mostly, it’s been through that letter,” he said. “We all go around thinking our life is so hard, thinking that we’ve got it worse than anyone else, but long ago there was a young woman who got pregnant by her black lover during the worst possible time in history for that to happen, yet she came through it. She never lost that sense of faith for herself, for the future. She wouldn’t have asked you to find her baby if she had lost it because she believed somehow, someway, that child survived. She had that faith. But it’s more than that – she had a love that very few people experience. To love someone so deeply, and for so long, that you hold them close to your heart your entire life? I really envy her.”
Lucy liked the way he’d put things into perspective. “Me, too,” she said. “In a time when there was such a great racial divide, neither one of them saw that about each other.”
“That’s pretty amazing.”
The conversation tapered off and Lucy picked up her purse and her briefcase. She was about to open the door but he stopped her.
“Are you doing anything for dinner tonight?”
She paused, her hand on the door. “No.”
“Want to go get something to eat?”
“Are you asking me out on a date?”
He fought off a grin. “Maybe,” he said. “I can bring my Lovie as a chaperone if it would make you feel better.”
She burst into laughter and opened the door. “Only if I get to bring Aunt Dell.”
“Hell, we’d never get any talking done. They’d overwhelm us both.”
“Then maybe we should leave the old girls at home, eh?”
“Agreed.” He watched her as she climbed out. “Are you going to tell your parents now about our adventures over the past couple of days?”
She stopped, leaning against the back of the door. “Yes,” she said. “I have to. I don’t know if my dad is emotionally ready to handle it, but I can’t keep it from him any longer. Especially if we’re going to meet Ruby tomorrow, he has to know.”
Beau nodded, thinking on the task she had ahead of her. “Do you want me to go with you for moral support?”
She shook her head. “I think I can handle this on my own.”
“If you need help, you just call. I’ll be right over.”
“I don’t have your number.”
He reached into his wallet and pulled out a business card. Taking a pen that was in the console, he turned the card over and wrote on the back of it. He passed the card over to her.
“That’s my cell,” he said. “Call me anytime.”
With a grin, she reached into her purse and pulled out her fancy law business card, extending it to him. “I left a card for you at the station, but here’s another one. My cell is at the bottom.”
He looked at it the sleek card before tucking it into his shirt pocket where he kept his reading glasses. “When do you want me to pick you up for dinner?”
She glanced at her watch. “Give me at least an hour,” she said. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”
He nodded. “Until then.”
Lucy shut the car door and stood back, giving him a wave as he drove off. She watched his car until he turned a corner and disappeared from view. Then, she turned to look at the big, run-down house in front of her.
Glory.
Thoughts of Be
au faded as she pondered what was coming next. Everything she was about to tell her dad happened within the old walls in front of her. Now, Glory was about to experience another life-changing event as Lucy told her father that he had a sister he never knew about.
Summoning her courage, she began the trek towards the house, towards the moment that would change her father’s family dynamics forever.
* * *
“Hey,” Bill said from the central hallway as Lucy came in through the front door. “Did everything work out okay?”
Lucy gave him a blank look as she shut the door. “Okay?”
“With Clyde.”
She instantly remembered the lie she’d told him earlier. “Oh, right,” she said. “Yes, everything is fine. Clyde won’t go to prison for long, but he’ll face some kind of incarceration. Maybe it’ll be enough to scare him straight.”
“Either that or he’ll come back a hardened criminal.”
“There’s always that possibility.”
Bill disappeared back into the kitchen as Lucy went into the dining room and set her purse and briefcase on the table. It was odd how she was looking at the house with new eyes now; she could look in the parlor and imagine Laveau and his henchmen sitting in there, or here in the dining room where a troubled family took their meals.
But it wasn’t just Laveau and his family; it was the generations of Hembrees that had come before him, men and women who literally built this state. Laveau’s father, Sat Hembree (short for Saturnius) had even run for governor back in the day. Beyond that, she didn’t know much about her Hembree ancestors but she wanted to found out now, more than ever.
But before she could do that, she had something she had to do.
Digging into her purse, she pulled out Mamaw’s journal. She eyed it a moment, running her fingers over it, her heart beginning to pound with what she was about to do. She really had no idea how her father was going to react but she couldn’t worry about that. Taking deep breath, she headed into the kitchen.
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