“What is this project?” Annie Gwen asked me. I quickly described the mountain school for troubled and homeless children. As I spoke, her eyes gleamed with sincere interest. “I’ll speak to Eli about it. He handles the bookkeeping on my charity work. It’s too much money for me to keep up with. He talks to my accountant for me.”
“Annie Gwen, you don’t have to give money to Stand Tall,” I said hurriedly.
“Oh, I’d want a seat on the board if I gave a lot of money.” With that cagey indication that she was nobody’s fool, she nodded to Swan and Matilda. “Thank you kindly. My son will be speakin’ to you about it.” She patted my hand. “Thank you. I’ll walk myself downstairs.”
She left the room, small and modest, about ten feet tall.
Swan rose up in her bed and stared at Matilda. Matilda said quietly, “She’s the widow of Anthony’s son.” Matilda turned her back to us, moving like a slow, tired bird, and pulled the bedcovers over her shoulder.
Swan and I traded a look. Hers was dark. Mine celebrated a small, unexpected victory.
Frog’s ashes arrived in a plain cardboard package by regular mail. I took the box from Gloria at the door of Marble Hall, carried it into the library, placed it on a parquet table between a marble chessboard and a small marble bust of Esta, then sat down in a chair across from it as if greeting a surprise guest. After my lungs settled back into place, I began to talk to Frog.
Life is all about control, Froggie, and I lost that. I’m not sure I’ll ever be in control of my life again—and I don’t want to be responsible for anyone else’s.
Karen was at the hospital. The house was quiet, holding its breath, empty without Swan. Finally I went upstairs, dressed in a pale gray business suit, then came back down with my purse on one shoulder and car keys in my hands. “I’m going to the Asheville airport,” I told Gloria. “Call the hospital, please, and tell Karen I’m taking a flight to Washington, D.C. I’ll be back tonight.”
“You’re leaving that . . . that box with that man’s burned body in it . . . here?”
“He won’t hurt you.”
“He killed two people. Why does he deserve a welcome place in this house?”
I stopped and looked at her until she backed up. “Why does anyone deserve forgiveness in this house?” I said.
“What kind of talk is that? What do you mean?”
I walked out.
The offices of the Phoenix Group overlooked the busy boulevards of Washington from a small brownstone building off Pennsylvania Avenue. Within minutes I could be at the White House, the Washington Monument, Lincoln Center. My nearby apartment, in a well-kept brick complex with small balconies and a lawn, occupied one of the shady intown neighborhoods surrounded by small restaurants and good shops, with a subway station only a block away. D.C. had become as much of a home to me as any city ever would.
When I got out of the cab in front of the office building I looked around me dully, as if the familiar sights had faded, or I had faded instead. “Ms. Union, so glad you’re back,” a guard said at the lobby desk. I walked through the darkly paneled lobby, took an elevator to the fourth floor, and stepped into a simple reception area with comfortable chairs and deep carpet. I laid my finger to my lips as our receptionist, a pretty young college student, gasped and grinned. “Irene’s expecting me.” I didn’t want to talk to the other five lawyers who made up the group. I had a very simple, painful mission.
The girl buzzed her. Irene met me at her office door. She was a short round black woman with grizzled gray hair pulled back in a neat style. She wore tailored gray pantsuits and always a colorful scarf at her throat, held by a gold bar. Everything about her spoke of solid wisdom. “I don’t like the expression on your face,” she said as she ushered me in. “I was hoping for a rested look, but you look as if you’ve been at war.”
“I have something to tell you.” I sat down across from her desk cluttered with files and a computer, and she frowned as she lowered herself in a leather executive chair. She had been one of the first minority women appointed as a federal judge, and within a year of her retirement from the justice system she’d organized the Phoenix Group. As a young woman in Alabama she’d marched with Dr. King. In legal circles, her intelligence and fairness had made her a legend. What I had come to say was the hardest thing I’d ever imagined in my work for her. “I’m resigning from the foundation.”
“Why?”
“The short version is that I’m not capable of seeing myself as an advocate for truth, justice, and the American Way, anymore.”
“You didn’t fail Frog Marvin. I won’t accept your resignation. You’ll have to be more specific.”
“I have duties at home.”
She bowed her head to her fingertips and looked at me sternly, her dark eyes hooded by graying brows. “Something very destructive is happening to you. I’d like to understand.”
“I may have to take over my grandmother’s business in North Carolina.”
“It’s not just that. Tell me.”
“Everything’s changed. My personal life is chaotic.”
She hesitated, then said quietly, “I know about your relationship with Eli Wade.”
Silence. I stared at her. The slow ticking of an antique clock on the office’s dark bookcases echoed loudly in my brain. I felt disoriented. “I can only assume William told you.”
“I know everything.”
“I don’t condone the situation William put me in, but I’d hate to see this damage his status with the foundation. Let me try to explain my relationship with Eli Wade—”
“You don’t have to.” She stood. “Come with me.”
I followed her from the office and down a back hall to a small conference room. She opened the room’s door and gestured for me to enter. I stepped inside and halted, my heart in my throat. Eli rose from a chair at the board table. The overhead lights gleamed on his hair. He wore tan trousers with a pin-striped shirt and leather suspenders. I was dimly aware of Irene closing the door behind me, leaving us alone. “I obviously have no clue what’s happening here,” I finally said.
“That’s my fault. Have a seat and let me tell you, please.”
I sat down slowly in a chair at my end of the table, then spread my hands on the cool, dark wood. Eli leaned atop a chair, levering one forearm along the high back. He looked more comfortable in a boardroom than I’d ever imagined. “I thought I’d never come back from the islands,” he said. “But my mother and Bell didn’t really like livin’ down there. Bell had met Alton Canetree by then, and they’d fallen in love. He was a good ol’ boy real estate developer from Tennessee, and he was already askin’ her to marry him and come home to live.” He paused, then blew out a long breath. “William and me were partners, like I already told you, running an offshore sports bettin’ operation that had already made us a fortune. I got into gamblin’ when I was a teenager, Darl. I was good at it. It’s all mathematics—odds and calculated risks, statistics. We were dirt-poor after we left Burnt Stand, and I was willin’ to make money any way I could. Word got around about my talent, and by the time I was eighteen I was lyin’ about my age, workin’ casinos and hangin’ out with bookies. It just went from there. I’m not sayin’ I was right to do it. I’m just tellin’ you how it was.”
“How did you get involved with this?” I gestured numbly, indicating Phoenix.
“William was tired of being a man without a country, too. He was born in Jamaica, but he has a lot of relatives in the States.” Eli paused. “Including Irene. Who’s his grandmother.”
My hand still hung in the air. I lowered it slowly. “All right.”
“I slipped back into the country. Trying to decide what to do. Stay and get a lawyer—confess, pay up, take my chances on going to prison for a year or two? Or bring Mama and Bell back then hit the road? See the world. I’d already d
one a lot of travelin’, playin’ high-stakes poker here and there, checking out things that interested me, like computer systems and gadgets. So maybe I’d just make that my life, I said to myself. I came back to the States to decide.” He walked down the side of the table, resting a broad hand on each conference chair as he passed it, halting when he was halfway to me. “One thing I knew I had to do. I had to see you, again.”
I exhaled slowly. “Why?”
“It’d been nearly twenty years, then. Not a day had gone by when I didn’t think about you. I figured you wanted nothing to do with me or my family or the memories. If you thought my father killed Clara, why would you ever want to see me again? But I had to see you, just once. I tracked you down in Atlanta. Found out you were a lawyer—a damned fine lawyer, judging by your credentials. I had to know why were you interested in defending poor folk and lowlifes. I’d always pictured you doing something good, but not that.
“I went downtown to watch you work. I sat in the back of a courtroom, waitin’.” He paused. “And then, you walked in. There you were. There you were. You had this little black lady for a client. She’d shot her ex-boyfriend. Just winged him, as I recall, but still. He’d been beatin’ her for years. Threatened her children, and wouldn’t leave her be. She looked like hell warmed over—just nobody and nothin’, poor, ugly, scared. But you got up and gave the jury this speech that made me want to cheer. How the dignity of a person in bad circumstances deserves compassion. How judgment can only be served with common sense and mercy. You had that jury lookin’ at you as if you were a minister preaching your best sermon. And that lady—your client—she looked up at you with pure awe on her face.” He paused, chewing his lower lip. “And you won. You won that case for her. And I sat there falling in love with you all over again, and knowing I had to make everything right—I had to live up to your standards.”
I bowed my head. His words hurt in ways he couldn’t know. He had nothing to be ashamed of. The guilt was all mine. “You were misled,” I said.
“I went to Irene. Sort of turned myself in, since she was a judge. I told her to do what she wanted with me. I’d keep William out of it. Get things fixed for him, take the blame for our gambling business. She’d been after William to get out of the gambling business for a long time. She asked me why I’d risked everything to come back to the States—why it was worth it. I told her about you. She just sat there, listening. And then she said, I’m not going to let you go to jail. Get William back here and we’ll straighten this out. And then I want you to introduce me to this incredible young woman. This Darl Union.
“I said that wasn’t possible. I didn’t want to mess up your life.” He paused, and disgust crossed his face. “All right, I didn’t want to look in your eyes and see what I was afraid I’d see when you met me.”
“Eli, I would never have looked at you that way—”
“I wanted to help you. I wanted you to do the good work you were doin’. I wanted to be part of that. I thought of an idea, and I pitched it to Irene. She was about to retire as a judge. Would she be interested in using my money to run some kind of free legal aid service?” He hesitated, studying me as if he couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t walk out when he finished. “She said she’d do it. We got it set up. She got in touch with you and offered you a job.” He raised both hands, palm up, presenting himself to me very quietly. “That’s how I came back to the straight and narrow. And why you and me are sittin’ here, today.”
“Phoenix is entirely funded with your money?”
He nodded. “Yeah.” He paused. “I have a lot of money.”
I was silent. I found myself studying a detail in the wood grain of the conference table, seeking some small focus. He watched me wearily. “I didn’t set this up to spy on you or run your life. I’m apologizing to you. I’m askin’ for your forgiveness.”
My forgiveness. My throat closed. Tell him. Tell him everything. Take him home and show him Clara’s bones in the garden.
And lose him forever. I wanted more time.
“Come with me,” I said.
Tell him. Tell him about Clara. Trust him to forgive you. We stood in my apartment in the afternoon. I pulled a drape over the balcony window, walked into the bedroom, opened the curtains, where an old oak tree screened the view. Eli walked in after me. We looked from the bed to each other. “There’s so much you don’t know about me,” I began.
“Shussh.” He pulled my suit jacket open a little, unbuttoned the top of my blouse then put his spread hand on the warm skin above my bra, one finger resting in the crook of my throat, the heel of his hand riding gently on the swell of my breasts. “I’m a simple man,” he said, though I knew he wasn’t. “Let’s go to bed right now, and later we’ll talk.”
No, we won’t. “Eli—”
He cupped his hand over my mouth. “You’re the one person who always understood me. It’s just like when we were kids. Only better, now. Don’t think. Don’t talk. And I won’t either, right now.” I gave in helplessly. He picked me up high against his body with his arms wound below my hips. He kissed the tops of my breasts, and I bent my head over his. He carried me to my own bed, and we pretended nothing else mattered.
When we lay naked in each other’s arms, satiated and quiet, he said, “Are you still going to quit the Phoenix Group?”
It was a matter of honor, now. When the time came and I showed him the garden, he’d be free of me in every way. “Yes,” I said quietly.
“You don’t want to be associated with my name.”
“That’s not it.”
“I don’t believe you. Nothing else makes sense.”
“After what we just shared, you think I feel that way?”
“I don’t know what to think, Darl. Why don’t you tell me the truth?” My silence came with a slow withdrawing, as we both sat up. “Then I’m going,” he said without any joy.
I nodded. “I understand.” We said nothing else to each other. He dressed and left as I wrapped myself in a sheet. I felt naked and ugly.
I could not force a confession out of my mouth.
Karen and I lingered over the breakfast table in the sunroom. She wore a nightshirt and robe of red silk. I’d unpacked a pale red robe that once belonged to my mother. I’d told her about my trip to Washington, D.C., and what I’d learned about Eli and the Phoenix Group. We’d talked all night, and now looked like tired red roses after a long rain. “After I learned about our family,” Karen said quietly, “I couldn’t wait to get out of this town. I wanted to go where no one knew me.” She hesitated. “But the lonelier I felt, the angrier I got. I didn’t want to miss anyone or any place that had been part of the lie. Not Grandmother. Not you. Not the house. But I did.” She bowed her head. “Now it all seems like a waste of energy. The past never left us. Just like with you and Eli.”
“No. You had to go away in order to come back and make peace with it.”
“Is that what you’re trying to do?”
“I’m not sure what I’m trying to do, at the moment.”
“What do you think Eli will find out there?” She nodded toward the woods behind the pool and gardens. “You know, I’m afraid he’ll just find something that proves his father did it.”
I looked at my hands, clenching a pale mug filled with black coffee. “His father was innocent. I have no doubt.”
“Then who in the world could have done it? Who’d have had any motive to kill Clara?”
“A lot of people. She was evil.”
“Evil? That sounds medieval. Biblical. Not like a lawyer. Surely you can’t possibly mean—”
“Evil.” I raised my eyes to hers. “Maybe everything here is built on the wrong values. And she was just the tip of the Hardigree iceberg.”
Karen shook her head at such talk. “Swan and Grandmother don’t deserve to have this time of their lives polluted with
ugly memories. They’ve done nothing wrong. I don’t want to accuse Eli and his family of provoking their illness, but it’s obvious the stress doesn’t help.”
I gave her a steady gaze. “Does he owe them more consideration than he owes his own family? His own father’s reputation? He’s a good man. He’s not trying to hurt anyone.”
“You’ve already decided you love him again,” she announced quietly, squinting at me in the morning sunshine. “I can see that. I can hear it in every word you say about him.” She folded her hands around a glass of milk as if it were the purity of passion.
After a moment, I nodded. “I know it sounds reckless and impossible, but it’s true.”
“No, it sounds like you. The old you. The openhearted girl I grew up with.”
“Have I changed that much?”
“Oh, Darl, you changed completely after Clara disappeared and Eli’s father was killed. You barely seemed to notice me anymore. You withdrew in your own world. I was miserable.” She paused. “I was different too. I admit it. I felt totally ashamed to be part of the history here. I felt totally alone in the world. I decided not to need anyone. You. My grandmother. No one. But the thing is—God! I love this place. This house, this town. Isn’t that sick?”
“No. I understand. My family built this town. Your family built this town. And Eli’s. Hardigrees and Wades.” The coffee burned like acid in my throat. I rose and went to one of the French doors, opened it and took a deep breath. “Why don’t we get dressed and stop by the new restaurant on the square on the way to the hospital? They have bagels and cream cheese on the breakfast menu. Can you imagine, in Burnt Stand? We’re practically cosmopolitan . . . ” My voice trailed off as a low rumbling sound reached my ears. I frowned and walked out onto the pool patio. There. Again. Heavy equipment, deep in the back woods. Bulldozers, scraping the land.