A heavy white frost covered the ground, the nearest thing to snow that Faye had ever seen. It softened the hard edges of human encroachment on the lovely river valley, adorning the shabby houses of the Sujosa like a light blanket of diamonds. She reflected that time had begun to cover the scars of Kiki’s crimes in much the same way. The people who suffered at her hands could never be completely whole again, but time had already begun to soften their pain.
Brent was underwriting Ronya’s new business, doing the work that the Rural Assistance Project should have done. She had apologized to him for questioning his motives for helping the Sujosa, and he’d had the good grace to accept.
With Brent’s financial backing, Ronya and her workers were creating signed reproductions of famous Hispano-Moresque pieces, and demand was brisk. Leo’s lawyer was encouraging, saying that his sentence would be shorter than it might have been, since he had come forward with evidence related to Carmen’s and Jimmie’s murders. Ronya would be waiting for him when he came home, and they were both determined to make a new beginning.
Amanda-Lynne was dealing with her loss by lavishing her abundant mothering skills on Irene, whose own mother had never had any love to give. Irene’s pain had managed to rouse DeWayne from his twenty-years’ sleep, and Irene now had a father, too. Plans were afoot for her to go to college to study computer science the following fall, with all her expenses paid out of Kiki’s secret accounts. Rather than battle each other in court, Amanda-Lynne and DeWayne had had a lawyer draw up an agreement by which they shared the tract of land leased to the cell phone company. The income would make neither of them wealthy, but it had already softened the edges of their poverty. And Faye saw a real likelihood that the marriage between DeWayne and Amanda-Lynne that Miss Dovey had blessed all those years ago might someday take place.
Faye’s personal life had been on hold in favor of intoxicating professional possibilities. She had closed the door on a relationship with Brent when she accused him of being ashamed of his Sujosa heritage, and Adam had closed the door on her when he realized that he couldn’t live with her shades-of-gray perception of justice.
She’d had little time to dwell on her romantic failures, though, because her professional victories had been so sweet. Clue by clue, she had put together a history of the Sujosa. The eclipse platter, Miss Dovey’s song, the buried remnants of the Lester homestead—all these things were giving life to the past. Under the gentle hand of Dr. Bingham, who was taking over as the new head of the project, her spring and summer would be split between the study of the old homestead and of an evocative rectangle of mortared stones—the foundation of a gristmill from the mid-1700s—that she and her crew had uncovered on a tract of Miss Dovey’s property. (“I did tell you that my maiden name was Miller, didn’t I, child?” had been the old woman’s response when Faye told her what they’d unearthed.)
One day soon, there would be a published paper documenting what she’d learned among the Sujosa, and Carmen Martinez would be listed as co-author.
She stuck her head in the door at Hanahan’s, asking Jenny if she’d seen Joe. It was odd that he wasn’t around when there were suitcases to be toted.
“I saw him telling Laurel good-bye,” Jenny said. She glanced around the store, then added in a low voice, “I don’t think it went well.”
Faye said nothing, not wanting to betray Joe by gossiping over his pain. She needed to find him, but where would he go? On instinct, she headed toward the burned-out ruins where Carmen had died.
Joe was there, sitting in the corner of a roofless room on a floor burned to the color of charcoal. He was weeping.
“Faye, all I did was invite Laurel to come spend Christmas with us at Joyeuse. She started talking about how it hurt her to watch me walk slow so she could keep up with me on her crutches. She said she’d be a useless burden on a wild island like Joyeuse, that she didn’t think she could even haul herself off a dock and into a boat.”
Faye pictured a tall dock and a heaving boat and a rough sea. She thought of the main living area of Joyeuse’s big house, only reachable by stairs. She remembered the sheer vitality of Joe striding through the muck and the sand of Joyeuse Island, just happy to be alive in such a beautiful place. Sweet little Laurel could never be a burden, but life on Joyeuse would be a minute-to-minute struggle for her.
“I told her I’d help her, that I could tote her when the going was too hard, but she said no. She said I needed a woman who could keep up with me. She said she was letting me go.”
Faye sat down beside Joe and he rested his tear-stained face in her lap. Her palm, splayed across his muscled back, felt his breathing settle and slow until she knew that he was asleep.
Joe had come a long way in the time they’d known each other. Laurel, by helping him with his reading, had finally convinced him that he was in no way stupid, that his path to an education was simply strewn with boulders in the form of severe learning disabilities. He had even spoken of studying for his GED and his driver’s exam.
What had Faye done for him? She had given him a place to live, and she had patronized him. And what had Joe done for her? He’d saved her life, twice, and never asked her for a thing.
His hair had slipped loose from its customary binding and spread itself over her legs. It was lustrous and strong, with the lovely rough texture of raw silk. Faye stroked his hair as she watched him sleep and wondered what she was going to do about Joe.
Author’s Notes
The Sujosa and their valley settlement are completely fictional, but there are many “triracial isolate” ethnic groups like them in the United States. This is hardly surprising, considering that the collision of the world’s diverse peoples in the Americas happened so recently, in historical terms. For Relics, I researched quite a number of real groups like the Melungeons of Appalachia, the Redbones of Louisiana, and the Cajans of Alabama, who are not related to the Cajuns of Louisiana.
Establishing a history for any of these people is difficult. Time is quick to obscure anyone’s ancestry. How many of us know the names of all of our great-great grandparents? By creating the Sujosa out of whole cloth, I avoided this problem. They have the history I want them to have.
I am a writer who loves my research, and I found that establishing a realistic background for the Sujosa was particularly illuminating. In my reading, I discovered a collection of common Melungeon surnames and quickly noticed two familiar names on the list—White and Roberson. My great-great-great-grandmother, Susan Mariah White Beasley, was born to William White and Sarah Roberson. (Many of these names will be familiar to those of you who read Artifacts.) The Whites and Robersons on my family tree lived in North Carolina, which is home to many Melungeons. Even more interesting is the fact that family lore says that Susan Mariah White was Native American, probably Cherokee. Many people claimed to be “Indian” or “Black Irish,” rather than admitting to Melungeon ancestry. I will probably never know any more than this about my great-great-grandmother, but the questions make me feel closer to her and to my imaginary friends, the Sujosa.
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