“I been walking home from Neddler’s.”
“What were you doing at that awful place? What’s wrong?”
He clenched my hands in his. His shoulders hunched under a denim jacket. His breath puffed ragged and white in the frosty air. “I don’t know how to tell you . . . how to say what happened, about your . . . I just hate to say any of it—”
“Clara!” My voice broke. “Something’s happened because of her, hasn’t it?” He looked shocked but nodded. I poured out my conversation with her by the swimming pool at Marble Hall. He pulled me out of the light and we huddled on a marble bench in the deep shadows of a golden-leaved oak. He told me what Clara had said about his family at Neddler’s Place.
The tale filled my brain like an overblown balloon. Eli’s grandfather had lived here in Burnt Stand when he was a young man? He’d worked for my great-grandmother Esta? And built the very Stone Cottage and the Stone Flower Garden that Eli and I loved so much? And he’d . . . he’d had sex with Matilda? He’d made a baby with her? Katherine had been their daughter? Karen was his granddaughter? I thought my skull would explode. I pressed my palms to my temples and held my head.
Eli hung his head. “You know what people’ll say about my family, when this gets around.”
“No, I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“That we’re related to Matilda. We’ve got black kin.”
“But you’re not black.”
“Doesn’t matter. Pa says there are men in his crew who’ll never look at him the same way. They’ll say his pa was a . . . that Grandpa Wade liked black women.”
“But your father didn’t do anything wrong. None of you did. Only your grandpa. And Matilda, I guess, but I just can’t imagine—”
“Hey!” Karen called softly. “What’s going on?” Eli and I jumped. She scurried across the backyard, her breath puffing. She hugged a yellow-and-white afghan around her nightgown, and in the moonlight she looked like a pretty butterfly with a golden face. If it’s all true, I thought in amazement, then she’s Eli’s cousin.
Eli stood. “Aw, we’re just up to nonsense. I just had to see Darl.”
“Eli Wade, you’re a crazy fool boyfriend, and you’re gonna get us all in trouble.” She bounded up to him and playfully punched him on one shoulder. He stared down at her for a moment, then held out one hand. “Shake on it,” he said.
“What?”
“Trouble. So we’re all in trouble together, I guess.”
“All right.” She slid her hand into his and pumped it vigorously. I stood up and put my hand atop hers and his. “Me, too,” I said. “All for one and one for all.”
I met Eli’s somber, honorable eyes. We couldn’t tell Karen what we’d heard, not yet. It might be a lie. It might blow over. That night we couldn’t yet fathom all the consequences Clara’s mean-spirited declaration might have on Matilda and Karen and Eli’s family, or mine.
So we held hands and hoped nothing else mattered.
Eli lay in bed, pretending to sleep in the pale light of morning, when he heard his father come home. He sat up rigidly. Across the room, Bell turned once, frowning and mewling in her sleep, then was quiet. Eli listened with his heart in his throat as Mama’s footsteps rushed down the cottage hall’s marble floor. “Jasper? Where have you been? I was scared to death.”
“I was just drivin’ and thinkin’. I’m sorry. I sat up on Cheetawk Point just lookin’ at the stars for a long time.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Creighton Neddler told me Clara’s always caused trouble, and yeah, that my daddy was a lady’s man. I don’t know. I can’t think anymore. I’ve got to get an hour or two of sleep ’fore I go to work. I won’t lose my job. I promise you. I promise you.”
“Stop worryin’ and rest. I love you so,” Mama crooned. “Get these sweaty clothes off and get in bed.”
Eli felt as if his nerves were on fire. After they shut their bedroom door he clenched his hands to his head. Thoughts whirled and jumped. Where had Pa been? What had become of Clara Hardigree? And why hadn’t Pa told Mama about seein’ her again?
Clara seemed to have disappeared. I felt as if I’d been wrapped in a cloak of needles. Somehow no word of her bald-faced visit to Neddler’s had gotten to Swan yet; and the gossip about the Wades and Matilda was still circling among the stonecutters, whispering itself to their wives, their children, their friends. Certainly no one wanted to be accused of handing it to the next inner ring of the Burnt Stand solar system. Swan was our sun, and the closer one carried news to the sun, the more likely that one would get roasted alive.
That afternoon I worked at the quarry offices filing invoices, and Eli finished totaling a long ledger of monthly accounts for Mr. Alberts. Swan barely spoke to anyone and looked infinitely combustible. I saw blue fire in her eyes and a straight-backed dignity that said Clara was in deep trouble just for disobeying Swan’s edict about roaming the countryside. My skin itched when I thought of Swan learning what Clara had said at Neddler’s.
Eli looked hollow-eyed. He kept finding excuses to go to the picture window over the quarry pit. Down there, his father guided a massive saw blade into a wall of coarse stone. Water flew and sizzled off the blade’s cooling system; Jasper Wade did not look up and did not speak to anyone. He simply cut the stone with a quiet ferocity that chilled me.
The weather had turned cold. No one would catch Clara sunning naked by the pool that day. It was almost five, and I was sick at my stomach, wondering what had become of her, and what would happen, next. We heard a shout outside. Eli and I rushed to the picture window along with Mr. Albert, a thin, balding man who could not fit the stereotype of a bean-counting manager more than he did.
What we saw made my heart stop.
Preacher Al, he of the roadside signs condemning sin and Hardigrees, stood on a narrow wooden footbridge that had been built across one end of the quarry’s square chasm. He was ancient, grizzled and bearded, a wild-eyed Old Testament preacher whose frayed jeans and black sports coat might as well have been holy raiment. He held up a piece of cardboard at least four feet square. He’d painted it white, with the words in blood-red:
JEZEBEL’S OTHER DAUGHTER
HAS RETURNED TO SPEAK THE TRUTH
“He’s talking about Clara,” I whispered to Eli.
Several men raced up a metal staircase to the narrow walkways at the top of the quarry, easily fifty feet above its stone floor. Jasper Wade led the way. Eli clenched his hands on the windowsill. The catwalk had rails, but they were only hip high, and Preacher Al’s balance was bad—combined with rheumatism and high blood pressure that made him dizzy even when he wasn’t seeing biblical apparitions. He swayed, holding the sign overhead with both hands. “You brought your whore sister and the son of the sinner here to test this town’s godly spirit again,” he yelled toward us.
“He’s talking about my pa,” Eli said in soft horror. “The son of the sinner.”
Preacher Al obviously thought Swan was in the office watching him, but she’d left minutes earlier to look at a new grinder in the carving factory. “Flout not the sanctity of the Word,” Preacher Al bellowed towards us. “The sin of the father is ripe in the son! The sister and the mother of shame begat more shame! Swan Hardigree! Come out of your den of iniquity, woman, and swear off your family’s ways!”
I groaned. I leaned onto the windowsill and watched Jasper Wade and several other men pause at the entrance to the catwalk. It was too narrow for a posse to cross. Eli’s father gestured to Preacher Al to walk toward him. When that didn’t have any effect, Jasper took a step onto the catwalk.
“Stay back, Demon Wade,” Preacher Al screamed at him. “Your father was a pawn of Hardigree lust and he slept with the dark races!”
Jasper halted, scowling. Eli shivered visibly. At that moment, my grandmother appeared at one e
nd of the adjacent bridge. “Oh, dear God,” Mr. Albert said beside us. “Miss Swan is onto him now.”
She looked lethal. She went down the high, narrow catwalk with the cool stride of a woman on a Sunday stroll. The men saw her coming and pressed themselves to one side as she eased past them. She put a hand on Jasper’s arm and shook her head. He frowned but stepped back.
She quickly strode onto the catwalk that held Preacher Al. She looked straight at him and didn’t hesitate. She didn’t say a word. He began backing away along the catwalk, waving his sign and yelling garbled biblical phrases at her. She kept walking towards him. Suddenly, his face convulsed in fear and he climbed over the rail, clinging to the outside of it with one hand, flapping his cardboard sign with the other, and still yelling at her. “I knew the truth then and I know now,” he bellowed.
She halted calmly and began to speak in a low voice to him. Eli and I couldn’t hear her, but later we learned what she said. Anthony Wade was kind to you. He saved your life one day in these pits. It’s your own fault you let my sister talk you into betraying his secrets. That’s what you have to live with. Or die with. It’s your choice.
Eli’s father and the other men at the intersection of the catwalks behind her called out to Preacher Al. Drop the sign, Preacher! Climb back over! But they were no balm for the hellfire the old man saw in Swan’s eyes. He raised his right arm as if attempting to shield himself with his pathetic sign. A corner of the stiff cardboard caught him in one eye, and he jerked his head. In doing that, he fumbled his grip on the railing. And he fell. His mouth open in silent oration, screaming, he fell fifty feet and landed flat on his back on the quarry’s marble floor.
You didn’t have to look at him twice to decide he was dead.
I leaned against Eli. He gripped my arm. His breath rasped. “She killed him with a look.”
I could only nod.
Swan took me back to the mansion with her, along with Matilda and Karen. We were barricaded behind marble walls. The weight of doom pressed in on me. Karen—who still did not know the Wades were her relatives—cooed her sympathy over the terrible thing I’d witnessed. She held my hand while I slept. Even so, I had terrible dreams about Preacher Al all that night after he died, seeing him land with a sound like a split watermelon on the quarry floor.
The next morning there was still no sign of Clara. I left Karen asleep and wandered downstairs in my nightgown, clutching my stomach. Matilda met me at the foot of the stairs. “Go back up there,” she said. “Your grandmother and I are discussing what Clara told people about your Great-Grandmother and Anthony Wade.” Matilda paused. “And about me. What she said was very serious, and not for your ears, or Karen’s.”
“But I know already.”
“And we’re very sorry about that.”
“Are you going to tell Karen? I don’t think she’ll mind knowing she has white kin.”
Matilda laid a cool, golden-brown hand along my face. Her hazel eyes softened. “What do you think of me, after what you’ve heard? Be honest.”
“I don’t know what to think.” I paused. “But I still love you.”
Swan walked out of a side hallway, her face so cool and perfect, her svelte body clothed in soft gray slacks and a matching cashmere sweater. When she saw me she said. “It’s time we talked.”
I shuddered. “I’d appreciate a little information, ma’am.”
She led me into the living room and we sat down facing each other on brocaded divans with marble feet. She cleared her throat. “Certain types of gossip can harm everything you’ll inherit someday. I want you to remember that we have built something very fine in this community. The town itself, the good people who come here to live because of its unique beauty, the good jobs we provide for two hundred men, the charities we support, the decency of this entire town—all of that is a factor of Hardigree money and determination. We built this town, and we take care of it. We have responsibilities. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re very lucky.”
“No. Luck doesn’t come to everyone. You make good luck for yourself. If your Great-Grandmother Esta hadn’t been willing to take charge of her own fortunes, this town wouldn’t exist. Nothing fine would have grown here. Self-worth isn’t carved in stone, Darl. It’s carved here.” She placed her fingertips over her heart. I put my hand over my own heart, and nodded.
“Now. The terrible things your Great-Aunt Clara said are the truth. At least part of the truth.”
“You mean, Eli’s grandpa really did work for us way back when?”
“That’s right. Almost forty years ago.”
“And he liked . . . Great-Grandmother?”
“Yes, he did.”
“He liked Matilda, too?”
“Yes.”
The miserable truth sank in. “But now everything’s ruined.”
“Yes. When people don’t know the facts, they can only gossip and wonder. But when proof is available, they can be very ugly. Unfortunately, the proof is living in our own Stone Cottage.”
I clawed my hands together. “Please, ma’am, don’t say you’ve got to fire Eli’s daddy and send his family away. Please, don’t.”
“I have no choice. I don’t want people to compare them to Matilda and Karen and cause trouble. Do you want Karen to be treated badly?”
“No, but—”
“Matilda is one of our own. My reputation protects her. But I can’t protect everyone. The Wades have to go.”
I’ll die, I’ll turn into stone without Eli here, I thought. I wanted to beg Swan, but I knew better than to give her an even greater reason to send the Wades away. “But if Matilda wants them here—if they’re kin to Karen—”
“I’ve told Matilda I’ll make certain Jasper Wade finds a good job elsewhere. Matilda understands. She has to think of what’s best for Karen’s reputation in town. And honestly, it’s best for the Wades, too. Ugly gossip does no one any good.”
“It shouldn’t matter that they’re kin to the Doves. What difference does that make? Matilda and Karen are just like us!”
“You’ll have to be older before you comprehend the stupidity of mankind.”
“No, I understand right now. You just can’t send Eli away.”
A new current raked the air. She leveled a searing look at me. “I think you’d better know that Eli’s fate is of no concern to you, and even if he stayed I wouldn’t let you keep him.”
“If everybody else in our family gets to love who they want, then I will, too. And I won’t have to pay Eli to love me, the way Great-Grandmother paid Anthony Wade.”
Swan stood, bent over and slapped me so hard I heard my neck pop. She’d never hit me before in my life. It made ice bloom inside me, but strangely enough, I was suddenly stronger. I blinked once then stared up at her without a shred of regret or humility, just daring her to hit me again, but then I saw her eyes glisten with tears.
We heard the sound of a car. Swan left the room at a fast walk, and I hurried after her. Matilda met us in the foyer. “It’s Clara,” she said.
Chapter Seven
Clara pulled up in front of the mansion in her fire-red Trans Am. She climbed out wearing what must be a new outfit, since she’d left with none of her luggage in tow. “Neiman Marcus,” she said, waving a hand at the creamy wool pantsuit she wore. “I’ve been shopping. I drove down to Atlanta. Crossed the state line into Georgia and just kept driving south, making my shopping list as I went. God, Atlanta makes Asheville look like a countrified dump, when it comes to shopping.” She held up her right hand. Morning sunshine glinted off a diamond ring. “How do you like it, Sister? You paid for it. You’re paying for everything.” Clara smiled. “I’ve got the key to your heart, now, don’t I? And the key says ‘Wade’ on it. Hello, Matilda. How does it feel to be the one they gossip about in town? You always wanted A
nthony Wade back, but all you could find was his son. Forty years too late, too.”
Matilda looked down at her and only said, “You’re as sad a soul as you’ve always been.”
Clara laughed and started up the steps to the portico. Swan blocked her way. “You’re never setting foot in this house again.”
“The hell I’m not.” But even Clara wouldn’t dare push Swan aside. Clara grimaced. “Look, I’m going inside and pack my things, and then we’re going to talk about my future income.”
“You’ve very wrong about that.”
Clara looked a little flustered. “All right, so I’ll go through the back door at the kitchen. I have a key to that.” She pivoted and went down the steps, then strode along a marble walkway toward the gardens and the pool. Swan and Matilda walked after her. I followed without hesitation, my nightgown fluttering around me.
“The back door is bolted from the inside,” Matilda said as they reached the pool patio.
Clara swung around. “Why?”
“I bolted it,” Swan explained. “Because I know how your mind works.”
“All I want is more money, Sister. As much as I’d like to see you squirm, I just want more of my share of the family fortune.”
“I’ve taken care of you all your life. You don’t need more.”
“Taken care of me?” Her voice rose. “Taken care of me?” Suddenly, she noticed I stood nearby, listening. I had sidled around the pool and found myself a vantage point near the low marble wall of the back terrace. Clara whirled toward me and came around the pool’s edge at a half run. “Let’s talk, Darling Darl. Don’t stand there trying to look discreet, girl. Be a big mouth like your old Auntie Clara. I’ve got some family history for you.”
I drew back but she snatched me by one arm. Her bitter blue eyes seethed as she looked from me to Swan and back to me. “Your Great-Grandmother Esta owned the biggest whorehouse in town. Swan and I were born in that whorehouse. And so was Matilda. A. A. Hardigree fathered all three of us. Of course, Matilda’s mother was a colored whore. That makes Matilda our half-sister. Isn’t that interesting?”