Since January’s visit to the house, no one dared say the b-word. Madelyn suggested a late breakfast one Sunday, and another weekend Willow poured several rounds of mimosas, but brunch had become a dirty word after Victoria’s performance. Augusta had waited for Nickie to come to her with questions about the family secret they’d all heard Victoria refer to as she and Willow bickered in the hallway that day. But she hadn’t. As the girl now sat next to her on the couch, nothing good on television, she contemplated what message she’d communicate should Nickie bring up the topic. Pat her on the thigh (you’ll find out soon enough), elbow the girl in the ribs (you misunderstood), lean in and glower (too dangerous for you to know), pinch Nickie’s ear (mind your business)? None of these responses would be right.
It was Augusta’s favorite part of the day, late dusk. Often, she lit candles as the sun set, the jumpy flames providing all the light she needed to daydream, to narrate poems to herself, to shimmy her shoulders to tunes from the Dew Drop Inn. Voices of the singers onstage big and smooth and filled with life, reminders of a good time she’d forced herself to forget. Sometimes, she even pretended to be up in Bela Nova’s shop, a place that had turned beloved only once the woman left town and it had become Augusta’s, though it had never quite felt entirely hers.
Even now, with Bela Nova gone for decades, Augusta still smelled her tobacco breath, felt the woman’s cold touch on her shoulder. It was an irrational fear, one she’d tried but failed to will away. Many stories about Bela Nova’s whereabouts had been passed around after she’d left New Orleans. One account even claimed the woman had died and was buried someplace along the Gulf. But Augusta had never seen proof, any document that would let her rest better knowing she wouldn’t run into Bela Nova ever again.
She and Dudley Lee got themselves married two weeks after they’d asked Bela Nova for a blessing and after Bela Nova believed she’d broken Augusta’s love spell. To be safe, in the meantime, the old woman had kept the two of them apart, though Dudley Lee had grown brave, coming by the shop the afternoon Genevieve and Bela Nova had traveled to Bogalusa to pick up the wedding dress. Bela Nova’s sister had insisted on making it for the lovely Genevieve and her rich parents.
They’d devised the plan while alone in the workshop. They could get hitched and move in with Dudley Lee’s cater-cousin, Charles, who lived over in Hollygrove. They wouldn’t let Bela Nova get in their way. So they would marry the day before his wedding to Genevieve, which Bela Nova still assumed would go off without a hitch. She would expect Dudley Lee to be out that night with the boys, enjoying his final evening as a bachelor. But really, he’d be off, newly married to Augusta.
The day in question, Dudley Lee was so late to the church—a box of bricks off Canal Street—that Augusta came near to taking her bouquet of wild irises and her thin ring of gold and walking the mile and a half to her parents’ home, and giving up, content with marrying the man they’d believed fit for her to wed. But he showed, just as her worried breaths were becoming frantic enough for the few others in the room to notice. He rubbed Augusta’s hand when he said, “I do,” then did his best to stifle a burp. Not so right with his social graces, but a good man—except, perhaps, in the eyes of Genevieve. Augusta had offered up a petition, asking St. Jude to provide his spurned fiancée with a new love, and they got wind just weeks later that she’d wed the eldest son of Pastor Warren Thomas Joseph of Union Bethel AME.
Neither one of them thought of the consequences, of what might happen when Dudley Lee didn’t make it to his own wedding, if he didn’t call Genevieve and tell her he’d changed his mind. Just for kicks, Charles had gone to the wedding, dressed in his best slacks and a starched white shirt, and reported the news. Genevieve’s father was angry, said he had a shotgun and would use it to take off Dudley Lee’s head if he ever saw him. “He was mad!” Charles told them, amused. “But they some classy people. Still let everyone eat and have a glass of champagne.”
His eyes widened, the browns in them vivid. “What about...what about my mama?”
Charles’s thick arms bent at the elbows and wrists to form a W. “Don’t know. I saw her when I got to the church. Sitting in the front row, alone. Weren’t too many people on that side of the aisle. And I don’t think she knew any of the folks sitting behind her. If she did, maybe she fighting with them because she didn’t turn around to speak. Shoot, that’s why I didn’t even go on over to say hello. That look on her face. Seemed unhappy about something, even before the organ started playing.”
“She didn’t go to the reception?”
“I didn’t see her there. Figured she would be, with the food and drink and all. But maybe she embarrassed.”
Augusta knew exactly where she’d been. Was certain she’d headed straight to her shop, the key to her trunk warm by the time she arrived, ready to flip through the pages of her book to see where she’d gone wrong. To figure out the best way to bring Dudley Lee back home, to get Genevieve and her family back, and to be rid of Augusta for good.
Augusta burned only one candle that evening, a green one that smelled like bergamot. Leaned against opposite armrests of the couch, she and Nickie had their legs entangled and covered with a blanket. Nickie was playing a card game on her tablet, leaving Augusta to watch the program Nickie had chosen where scantily clad single people lived on an island and tried to find a spouse. It was a strange notion to Augusta, but who was she to tell folks about relationships? Although she hoped Nickie wasn’t getting any ideas. While she wanted the girl to be happy, Augusta certainly didn’t want to see her great-granddaughter sitting at the pool in full makeup and a string bikini, hoping one of the other chiseled contestants would pick her for a date.
One of her feet falling asleep under Nickie’s weight, Augusta adjusted herself. As she moved her body up, she caught a glimpse of the screen as Nickie typed away with one finger. She made out the face of a young man, brown-skinned with thick eyebrows. While she couldn’t read the words on the screen, Nickie’s beaming smile said it all.
Augusta reached over and pinched her arm. There wasn’t a lot of meat on the girl. She shrieked.
“Nana, that hurt.” Nickie rubbed the spot and glared at her.
She matched the girl’s hard stare with one of her own. Another moment and Nickie seemed to realize what Augusta had glimpsed. She pressed around on the tablet screen in quick sequence until it went black, then handed it over. It hadn’t been Augusta’s intention to physically hurt the girl. She just wanted to get a message across, without using her voice app or typing it out: Nickie, please be careful. Victoria wasn’t playing around. If she learned what Nickie was doing, she’d make her life a thousand times more miserable than Nickie probably thought it already was. But it was more than that. Right after Jimmie had died, Augusta had berated herself, ashamed of her inaction, filled with regret that she hadn’t tried to stop the relationship between him and Victoria. Back then she’d had her reasons. Now she knew better. So why, she asked herself, did she keep hope that, somehow, Nickie would be able to love without loss?