“But he couldn’t heal my sister,” Mallory said. It wasn’t a question.
Tabitha stiffened, her grip on Mallory’s hand tightening. “He is a healer of the spirit.”
Nice recovery, Mallory thought. “Can I take a look?”
“Later, if Father is willing.” She led Mallory away from the South wing, to the spiral staircase leading back to the first floor. She started down the steps, but Mallory held back, their hands breaking away.
“Is something wrong?” Tabitha asked. “You asked for a tour, Aunt Mallory.”
“I want to see where Liz lived. It seems like she would have lived up here with everyone else.”
“Yes.” Tabitha’s perpetual smile looked baked into her face. “It is now a guest suite. But there are . . . keepsakes. I believe you have a right to see them.”
They returned to the North wing, and to the guest suite across the hallway from the bedroom that had been set aside for Mallory. The layout and furnishings closely matched Mallory’s guest room; a closet door stood opposite the bed. Tabitha opened the closet and, from a top shelf, removed a jewelry box made of cedar. It looked like an antique.
“We should give this to you.” Tabitha offered the small chest to Mallory, tears shimmering in her eyes. “I think Mother would have wanted you to have it.”
Silent, feeling as if something in her chest might collapse if she weren’t careful, Mallory accepted the box. Although the finish bore a few scratches, the lid and panels featured a carved, rose petal pattern that framed an inset, faded color drawing of a rambling pastoral estate. The box weighed about as much as a hefty hardcover book. The contents shifted as she carried it to the desktop and carefully set it down.
“I’d like to look at this now,” Mallory said, her voice quivering. “Can you give me a couple of minutes, please?”
“Of course, Aunt Mallory. I’ll be right outside.” Bowing, Tabitha slipped outside the room.
Mallory raised the lid, the hinges whispering. A wraith of dust floated to her nostrils, and she held back a sneeze. Inside, a narrow divider split the interior into two sections.
Her heart thudded. The box contained only a few items, but she recognized most of them.
Such as: a sterling silver pendant crafted in the form of a swan, attached to a silver chain. Their mother had given this piece of jewelry to Liz for her twelfth birthday, which Mallory distinctly remembered because she had envied her sister and begged Mom to buy one for her, too. Maybe, Mom had said with a secret gleam in her eye. We’ll see when your birthday comes.
But Mom had been killed before Mallory’s next birthday arrived.
Her tears had begun to flow in earnest, a moist sob bubbling at the back of her throat that she struggled to hold in. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she sucked in a tremulous breath, kept looking.
She found a pair of diamond stud earrings set in gold. She remembered: they had belonged to their mother. The diamonds were about a quarter of a carat, probably a gift from a free-spending boyfriend because her mother hadn’t the means for such luxuries. Still, her mom had worn these on special occasions, and they were a precious memento of her.
There were other items: a woman’s gold wristwatch, a piece Mallory didn’t recall, and that Liz had perhaps brought from whatever foster home she lived in after they were separated; a pearl bracelet that Mallory also didn’t remember seeing before; a gold-plated signet ring that had belonged to their mother.
Mallory hadn’t taken any of their mother’s jewelry, hadn’t known enough about such matters to even think of it. But, Liz, always wise beyond her years, clearly had the foresight to bring a few treasured pieces along on her travels.
The most significant discovery of all lay at the bottom of the box, folded in half like an old dollar bill. Hands trembling, Mallory spread it open.
It was a faded family photograph. In it, the three of them sat on a wooden bench at Callaway Gardens, Liz on her Mom’s left, Mallory on her mother’s right, the sisters’ hair done in fuzzy Afro puffs. Mom had her arms around them, her young, pretty girls. All of them grinned for the camera.
She remembered the day they had taken this picture. She’d been nine years old. Mom had taken them there to celebrate Mallory’s birthday because Callaway Gardens hosted a butterfly habitat, and Mallory had always been nuts for the beautiful, multi-hued insects.
Gazing at the photo, at that perfectly preserved moment in time, Mallory couldn’t hold back any longer. A sob burst out of her, breaking the dam of the rest of her tears. She lowered her head, and wept.
23
It was half-past four o’clock in the afternoon when Ben stopped by the offices of The Ratliff Clarion again, seeking to connect with Cecil Roberts. The doors were already locked, and when he cupped his hands around his eyes and peered through the dust-filmed glass, he didn’t see anyone inside. He concluded they must have either closed early on Fridays, or Thelma May wanted to avoid another unwelcome drop-in by the likes of him and Mallory.
He drove to the barber shop instead, which he’d decided when they first arrived in town might be one of their best resources. Women had the rep for spreading gossip, but brothers at barber shops swapped stories as much if not more.
The shop was on the town’s main strip, sandwiched between a tax attorney’s office and a pawn shop. Slim’s Cuts, stated the graffiti-style sign affixed to the classic white, red, and blue pole out front.
Pausing at the door, Ben ran his finger across his closely shaved scalp. He didn’t require a full-fledged cut but could always insist on a basic line-up.
Entering put Ben in a narrow but deep space lit with banks of fluorescent light. The shop had gray walls, checkered tile floors. In the front area to his left stood a row of empty padded chairs. On his right, he saw four barber stations featuring big leather swivel chairs, and only one of them was occupied.
A wide, fifty-something man wearing a barber’s black smock sat tilted back in the chair. He had a head as round as a basketball, an enormous bulging stomach, and a face that reminded Ben of a French bulldog.
At first, Ben thought the guy was asleep because he didn’t stir at Ben’s entrance. He was actually focused on the flat-screen TV hanging on the opposite wall.
Ben noticed a Jet Magazine “Beauty of the Week” photo pinned to the wall behind the big man, like he had seen at the motel.
Ben cleared his throat. “Hey, brother. How you doin’ today?”
The barber grunted, blinked at Ben as if waking from a nap. The name embroidered on his breast pocket in gold cursive font read, “Slim.” He was the proprietor of this establishment.
“What you need, man?” Slim scratched his pendulous stomach.
“Can you line me up?” Ben traced a fingertip around his scalp.
“Lisa!” Slim bellowed. “Get up here, girl! You gots a customer!”
Ben heard the clicking footsteps before he saw the woman; a young woman emerged in the corridor. She looked to be in her early twenties. About five-seven and slender, with almond-shaped eyes, a smooth brown complexion, and long, straightened auburn hair that flowed to her shoulders. She wore a cropped, V-neck red tank top that displayed plenty of cleavage; black leggings that complemented her long legs, and black Croc wedge sandals.
She was gorgeous. Ben didn’t know what he was expecting, but this caught him off guard.
Slim grinned at him.
“Have a seat at station number one, brother. My girl, Lisa, is at your service. She’s my trainee.”
Slim guffawed heartily, as if he’d just cracked the funniest joke ever.
Ben eased into the chair. Silent, Lisa strutted toward him. Her expression was blank, her eyes indifferent. She lifted a black barber’s apron off a hook and slipped it over her head, knotted it around her narrow waist.
“Hi there,” Ben said. “Can you line me up, please?”
She nodded, didn’t speak. A cloud of perfume enveloped him as she edged closer and adjusted the height of his chair w
ith a foot lever. Despite the apron, her cleavage was only inches away from his face; she was so generously endowed it was almost impossible not to stare. Ben swallowed, looked down at his iPhone in his lap.
He thought he’d seen a faint, inch-long scar on the young lady’s otherwise flawless throat. Did it come from an injury? Or a surgery?
She switched on the clippers and went to work on the back of his head, one hand resting lightly on his shoulder, her blood-red nails perfectly manicured.
“So, Lisa,” Ben said. “How long have you been cutting hair?”
“I got her six months ago,” Slim said, as if he were discussing a recently acquired new Cadillac. He snickered. “She is a very fine trainee, don’t you agree?”
“She seems skilled,” Ben said.
But Ben thought: what is going on here? This situation reminded him of the quiet woman at the motel, Leah; and it was eerily reminiscent of the mute young woman he’d seen at Sanctuary.
Silent, Lisa traced the clippers along his neckline.
“You just passin’ through?” Slim asked.
“I’m a freelance photographer, work mostly with newspapers.” It was a truthful answer, in a roundabout manner. “I stopped by the local paper here looking for work, but their office was closed.”
“That right?” Slim folded his thick arms behind his large head. “Ain’t much going on here anyway. They prob’ly like to take Fridays off early.”
“Mr. Cecil Roberts owns the paper,” Ben said. “Does he live in town?”
“Cecil?” Slim snickered and scratched his belly. “Man, Friday nights, that old fool ain’t at the crib. Cecil gonna be at The Big House.”
“The Big House?” Ben asked. He hadn’t seen any signs along the main road advertising such a place.
Lisa stepped in front of him. Gently, she placed her fingers on the bottom edge of his chin to angle his head upward. Feeling like a pervert but not sure why, Ben averted his gaze from her chest.
Slim grinned, winked at the young woman. “Man, you can look. She ain’t gonna bite.”
“Excuse me?” Ben asked, heat rushing to his cheeks.
“Eye candy for the customers,” Slim said. He spoke about the woman as if weren’t there next to them. “Like that restaurant, Hooters, got all them fine-ass women prancing around in tight shorts and tank tops showing off their titties. Eye candy for the fellas. I say, why not at a barber shop, too? Am I right?”
As Ben stared at him, unsure how to respond, Slim heaved his considerable bulk forward in the chair, reached out, and massaged Lisa’s butt like a man petting a dog behind the ears. Lisa showed no measurable response; she kept on edging Ben’s hair.
“Now, you can’t do this.” Chuckling, Slim concluded his fondling with a light swat of her derriere. She flinched, purely out of reflex, and kept trimming Ben’s hairline. “You can look, but ain’t no touching for the customers. I call it the strip club policy.” He laughed at his joke.
Witnessing this violation sickened Ben. What was Lisa’s relationship to this guy? Was he the equivalent of her pimp, keeping a tight rein on her every move and controlling her income? Was she his slave?
He was convinced that whatever was going on here was linked to Sanctuary. It might even be connected to Mallory’s sister, Liz. All of it was so unusual, so disturbing, it had to be related.
But he was ready to get out of there. He felt terrible for this woman and wanted no part in her degradation.
“Where can I find The Big House?” Ben asked.
24
Slim gave Ben directions to The Big House and advised him the place didn’t open until later in the evening. With time to burn, Ben drove to Valdosta, twenty minutes away, to pick up extra clothes and other supplies from the local Walmart. The city of Valdosta was a far cry from Atlanta but compared to Ratliff it was like traveling back to the future. Reluctantly, he completed his shopping and drove back to the old town, shuffled into his motel room to sack out for a while.
Lying on the bumpy king-size bed in the shadowed room, he found it difficult to relax. He worried about Mallory, the fear that they were in over their heads chewing like a squirrel at his nerves. He had no way to get in touch with her, and without her cell phone, she might have had no way to contact him, either, if she needed help.
Why did I agree to this? he asked himself for the hundredth time. Standing by while Mallory flung herself into a cult’s compound ranked as one of the most reckless things he’d ever done in his life. She couldn’t accept that her sister was gone, and as her partner he should have protected her from making such a terrible decision.
Despite his anxiety, he finally slid into a hazy slumber. He experienced a hyper-realistic dream of returning to Sanctuary, opening the mansion’s front door, and seeing Mallory standing in the doorway dressed in white like a Bride. She stared at him with eyes as lifeless as old coins and didn’t speak, and when he touched her hand to pull her out of there she jerked away and slammed the door in his face.
He woke with a shudder, cold sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Only a dream,” he said to the empty room.
He showered, threw on fresh clothes, and left the motel. It was seven o’clock in the evening, and the day was still unbearably hot. Without skyscrapers to blunt the summer sun’s rays, the little town sizzled like fatback on a skillet.
Slim had warned him that he wouldn’t find The Big House online or through Google Maps. Ben had scribbled notes on a beverage napkin but remembered snatches of what the barber had said: Go down on Ratliff Road till you hit Porter, make a right, go down for ‘bout a mile. You gonna see a used car lot—make a right at that next Stop sign, Quarter Road. Go on ‘bout another mile and off to the right you gonna see a rusty Ford truck sittin’ in a ditch. Turn onto that old gravel road next to it and there you go, The Big House gonna be up ahead.
When he made that final turn onto the gravel lane, he expected to see a grand antebellum home fitting of the moniker, “The Big House,” like a rambling plantation from an old slave narrative. Instead, as he passed through a shady tunnel of drooping live oaks, he saw the road widen into a broad gravel lot already occupied by several vehicles; the lot ended at a Craftsman bungalow with white exterior and green trim, the paint faded from long years of sun exposure. Strings of dull, multi-colored holiday lights decorated the large, covered front porch.
He pulled closer and parked beneath a sugar maple. Music throbbed from the house’s walls. It sounded like the blues.
Juke joint, Ben thought. The closest he’d come to such a place was the House of Blues, a a glossy chain backed by celebrity money and frequented by A-list performers. If The Big House didn’t show up online—he’d checked himself on Google and found no references to the place—he could be reliably certain that whatever happened within those walls was off the grid, too.
Climbing outside his SUV, he noticed plantation shutters covered the house’s exterior windows, the shutters closed, concealing whatever was going on inside. The distinctive aroma of fried foods flavored the humid air. Someone was cooking up a storm in the kitchen.
At the front porch, the weathered floorboards hummed in sync with the music percolating inside. Ben saw an ancient man sitting in a rocking chair near the door, quiet as a mannequin. With his frizzy white beard, he could have been a Black Santa Claus. He wore a straw hat, faded overalls, and spit-shined cowboy boots. He alternated between puffing on a tobacco pipe and sipping pale liquor from a shot glass.
Ben nodded toward him. “Evening, sir.”
Squinting at him as if he needed glasses, the man returned the nod and said something unintelligible, but he had a friendly, gap-toothed smile.
Ben didn’t see any signs or indications whatsoever that he was entering a place of business. He wasn’t sure whether he needed to knock on the exterior storm door, or not. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled open the door and went inside.
The interior was so dim and smoky it took a few seconds for his eyes to adju
st. Strings of twinkling lights snaked like arteries along the ceiling. It looked as if the basic layout of the house was intact. An entry hall, rooms branching to the left and right. Random pieces of mismatched furniture scattered all around. Shadowed figures moved about, balancing plates of food, drinks, and cigarettes. He heard snatches of laughter, chatting, and serving as the background of it all, the hypnotic groove of classic blues.
No one paid him much attention as he ambled through the house. Although he was tall, he radiated a non-threatening demeanor that allowed him to blend in to almost any environment.
At the back of the house, he found a small man who looked like Sammy Davis Junior serving drinks from behind a scarred oak bar. Three rickety bar stools stood at the counter, only one of them occupied.
Ben’s heart lifted. He recognized Cecil Roberts from the shape of the back of his head and the angle of his narrow shoulders. His man was smoking a Newport and getting down to serious drinking: he nursed a shot of pale whiskey and a can of Coors. A pile of picked-clean chicken wings lay on a Styrofoam plate at his elbow.
Ben eased onto the stool next to Cecil. “Evening, Mr. Roberts.”
Cecil turned, his gray eyebrows arched in surprise. “I’ll be damned, look who the cat done drug in. What you doin’ in here, young buck?”
“I wanted to check out how the locals get down on Friday nights.” Ben signaled the bartender and slipped a twenty out of his wallet; he doubted this was the kind of place that accepted credit cards. “I’ll have what my friend here is having, sir.”
The bartender slid over a can of Coors and poured a shot out of a glass bottle bearing no label.
“Don’t hurt yourself now, that’s moonshine, fella.” Cecil raised his shot glass. “Hundred proof. The Big House’s homebrew.”
“I’ll grab an Uber if I can’t drive back to my motel.” Ben grinned. He took a sip of the moonshine and chased it with beer. The potent combination seared his chest like hot lava.
“An Uber, huh?” Cecil laughed. “Good luck with that, my man.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “Why’re you still here, anyway?”
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