SIX

I have lived in Ogilvie long enough to know that nobody will have the nerve to bring up the subject of Miss Louisa, who was Miss Zula’s mother, and so I suppose it’s up to me. I don’t hold much with modern psychology and prying into personal matters, but in this case I do believe you must know the mother to understand the children, all three of whom I watched grow up. There’s an old saying, spare the rod, spoil the child, and Miss Louisa lived by it. Her rod was made of hard words, which any caring person can tell you may leave a scar worse than any slap.

Your Name: Sister Ellen Mary. I am Father Bruce’s housekeeper, and you may find me at the rectory at Our Lady of Divine Mercy. Though if you’d like to talk to me, you had best be quick about it. I am ninety years old and wait daily for the Good Lord to tap me on the shoulder.

By the end of their first full week in Ogilvie, Angie had established a routine: up long before Rivera and Tony ever stirred, she went down to the screened porch that overlooked the garden and the river, where she waited on an ancient black-and-white-striped couch until the coffee was ready. Then she took her cup with her to the riverfront and sat in the cool of the morning, planning her day, making lists in her head, and contemplating running away.

It had been a surprisingly productive week for the simple reason that she was spending most of her day and her night, too, working.

“This is good stuff.” Rivera was looking at Angie’s binder when she said this, the one she carried with her everywhere on a shoot. There were three full pages of notes from her talk with Sister Ellen Mary at the rectory, all about Miss Zula’s family history and her mother. Rivera made a notation of her own. “I didn’t think you’d been out of the house long enough to do an interview, Mangiamele.” She looked up with a grin. “If you get this much done without distractions, we have to find a way to put John Grant back in the hospital, once he gets out.”

“He’s not in the hospital,” Angie said, “and you know it.”

“Well, then he’s in hiding,” Rivera said. “So the small-town rumor mill is going full tilt. The latest is that he got blood poisoning and they had to take his leg off. Hey,” she said, holding up a hand, palm out. “I’m just the messenger.”

“And where did you hear this?” Angie asked. “At the quilt shop?”

“Fat Quarters is the source of all knowledge,” Rivera agreed. “I do hear interesting things from the men on the Liars’ Bench outside the barbershop, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Pearl’s shop is better.”

Rivera had been cultivating a number of leads in the community, primary among them the middle three Rose girls. Pearl, it turned out, owned the quilting shop. A whole army of women came to Fat Quarters whenever they could spare an hour to work on whatever project they had going, and Pearl Rose was the queen of all that.

“So what’s the buzz?”

“While I was there, Pearl told them all about what happened to John, and then when she turned her back, everybody tried to figure out what she really meant but was too embarrassed to say directly.”

“Maybe you should be hanging out at the Hound Dog. Tony was down there yesterday and heard that John lost a testicle.”

Rivera said, “They’ve got better-looking women at Fat Quarters. Which you’d know if you’d take a break. Come into town with me today, we’ll stop by the Piggly Wiggly. Miss Maddie does a lot of her shopping there, you know. There’s a world of wisdom in watching her pick out peaches.”

“I’ll put it on the list,” said Angie. And, a little wistfully: “I wish some of Miss Maddie would rub off on you. You shouldn’t be spreading rumors. Bad juju.”

“You are such a fake,” Rivera said, laughing. “You’d go crazy wondering if you didn’t have us to bring you the news. He’s fine, you know. Eunice says so.”

“So are you best friends now with all the Rose girls?”

“According to Eunice,” Rivera repeated, pointedly ignoring Angie’s tone, “John only needed three stitches, no infection. It was way too close for comfort, but no lasting damage.”

“Good for John,” Angie said.

Rivera said, “Good for Caroline Rose.” And laughed again at the small, tight smile that was all the answer Angie could summon.

 

Angie thought a lot about Caroline Rose, for reasons she didn’t want to examine too closely. Caroline was tall, elegant, silver blond, immaculately groomed and dressed. She had turned out to be not only John’s fiancée and colleague but Miss Zula’s unofficial assistant in all things. There was no avoiding her, and, worse luck, no way to dislike her, either.

Early in the morning of another day that promised to be scorching hot, Angie sat by the river and contemplated the vagaries of fate that had brought her to this place at this particular point in time, when John was about to get married. Angie crossed her arms over her upraised knees and rested her forehead on the cool skin of her forearms and thought about the fix she was in. The truth was, she would have paid pretty much any price to get back her peace of mind and a few hours of sound sleep. It was becoming increasingly obvious that she’d have to take the first step, find John, and lay down some ground rules, get things said and out of the way.

If she only knew what to say. If only he didn’t have better things to be thinking about just now than a neurotic, obsessive ex-girlfriend. An arrow to the crotch, for one, and his upcoming wedding, for another.

“Angie?”

The odd thing was, she must have finally drifted off to sleep sitting in the sun, because she was dreaming about Caroline Rose, who seemed to be floating across the lawn toward her.

Angie righted herself so quickly that a sharp, sudden pain shot up her back.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Caroline said, looking as uncertain and embarrassed as Angie felt. “And I realize that it’s very early to be calling, but I do have a good reason. May I?”

“Sure.” Angie moved to the far end of the bench, wondering just how much of an ass she was about to make of herself and what she would say if Caroline Rose raised those topics Angie least wanted to talk about. She looked toward the house and sent a silent plea to Rivera. Come rescue me.

“Miss Zula and Miss Maddie sent me,” said Caroline. “To see if you’d like to come by for breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Angie echoed. A spark of professional interest overrode her discomfort. All week they had been waiting for this first invitation to the little house on Magnolia Street, and here it was.

“It’s a tradition, once a month,” Caroline was explaining. “The goddaughters’ breakfast. Miss Zula is my godmother and Miss Maddie is my sister Harriet’s godmother. Once in a while they invite someone else to join us.” Her hands fluttered up out of her lap and then fell again. “All women, of course.”

“Of course,” Angie echoed. All women meant no John Grant, which was a good thing just now. She said, “Look, tell me honestly. Will Miss Zula be insulted if I send my regrets?”

Caroline looked distinctly surprised at such a suggestion. “It’s very hard to insult Miss Zula if you’re being honest,” she said. “Miss Maddie is another matter, of course. She does love to cook for folks.”

“Then I’d be happy to,” Angie said, resigned. “I’ll just get my shoes.”

Caroline’s gaze jumped toward the house and back again. “The invitation was for both of you. Would Rivera be interested, do you think?”

“If I can get her out of bed,” Angie said. “Let me—”

“There’s John,” said Caroline.

Angie went very still. “John?”

“John,” echoed Caroline. She pointed with her chin. “Just there.”

Full of dread, Angie turned toward the river and took it in: the graceful bend of the willows, the sun on the water, and the sweep of oars as the single scull came into view. John Grant, tousle-headed, as though he had gone directly from bed to the river, his skin flushed with sun and exercise. The perfect shoulders and arms clenching and relaxing in an easy rhythm and then his face coming up, turned toward them. In the distance a train whistle blew, long and plaintive.

Hysterical laughter, Angie told herself firmly, would be a mistake.

 

Later, John would try to reconstruct for himself how things could go so wrong in the space of a few seconds. A week’s worth of planning, all gone in that single sweep of the oars that had brought him around the bend in the river. His first time on the water since the regrettable incident at Junie Rose’s birthday party. He had been feeling good, and settled, and glad of the morning until he looked up and saw them there: Angie Mangiamele and Caroline Rose standing side by side. It was a sight to put a better man than John Grant off his stroke, but at least the river was running fast. Just as quickly as they had come into view they were gone.

Angie Mangiamele in shorts and a faded, shapeless Nirvana T-shirt that was ten years old at least. He knew this because it had been faded and old when he first saw it, hanging on the bedpost in the tiny bedroom of her apartment near NYU. He still remembered how it smelled.

It had seemed so straightforward, in the last few days of self-imposed house arrest. He had written it out for himself, the things he would say. Just as soon as he fully recovered he would knock on Angie’s office door, and initiate the conversation they obviously had to have. They were both adults, after all, and reasonable people. A few ground rules and they would be able to interact in public without problems.

On another list he made an outline of the things he would tell Caroline, who was the most reasonable and rational of human beings. Just a few facts, put in perspective, and that would be the end of the matter.

Except, of course, he had never imagined that Angie would still own that T-shirt, or what the sight of it might do to him, the memories it could drag up. Such as what Angie smelled like, in the early morning. Angie in the morning. He had not put that on his list, and that, he realized, was a serious flaw in his reasoning.

 

Rivera had fallen in love with the house on Magnolia Street where the Bragg sisters lived at first drive-by, and was so eager to see the inside of it that she got out of bed without complaint. In Caroline’s car she asked one question after another about the street and the houses on the street, small and neat, a working neighborhood with swing sets in the yards and vegetable gardens. Caroline, animated, answered her questions and volunteered a spontaneous genealogy, naming Miss Zula’s neighbors, many of whom were Bragg cousins. Marilee Bragg, who had come to visit them their first weekend in Ogilvie, waved to them from a front porch littered with toys.

“It’s like Hoboken,” Rivera said. “Angie’s got more than fifty blood relatives on one block.”

“Doesn’t look anything like this,” Angie said.

The man pruning roses in the garden across the street raised a hand and touched his brow in greeting as they got out of the car.

“Wait, let me guess,” Rivera said. “Second cousin three times removed.”

“No, that’s Mr. Jackson. He runs the power plant at the university, but he’s protective of Miss Zula and Miss Maddie. Everyone in the neighborhood is. And there’s Thomasina Chance, do you see there, the woman in the vegetable garden? She owns the restaurant across from campus.” The next few minutes were taken up with a discussion of local restaurants, but Angie didn’t catch much of it; she was too busy sketching a rough map of the neighborhood and writing down names.

The Braggs’ house was set back in a small garden in the full flush of summer, heavy with blossom, alive with bees. There were sunflowers and beans on trellises and young tomato plants tied to stakes with lengths of old nylon stocking. Louie slept in a patch of sunshine, opening one eye to appraise the young women and then snuffling himself back to sleep.

At least Rivera’s mind was on business. She stood at the gate with one hand pressed to her mouth and the other to her heart, a pose that meant she was seeing camera angles. This was about work, after all. Angie repeated that to herself as they went up on the little porch. There was a brass plaque on the wall that read MAGNOLIA HOUSE 1880. Below that, a small typewritten card had been tacked into place.

By order of her physician, Miss Bragg may no longer entertain unannounced visitors seeking autographs. Do not ring the bell. Dr. Calvin Bragg.

In neat, slightly wavering handwriting the word please had been inserted before the last, rather abrupt directive.

“Oh, this is going to be good,” Rivera said.

 

Miss Maddie set an old-fashioned breakfast table, one covered with a flowered tablecloth and crowded with heavy, thick plates and platters. Delighted, Rivera helped herself to flapjacks and eggs and bacon and ham and drizzled syrup over the whole.

“I do like to see a girl with an appetite,” said Miss Maddie. “Won’t you have one of these muffins Caroline made for us? She’s the best cook in Ogilvie, is our Caroline.”

“You are the sweetest thing,” Caroline said, blushing. “But far too kind.”

Angie found herself next to Miss Zula, who seemed content to watch and listen as Rivera and Miss Maddie and Caroline carried on a disjointed but energetic conversation about ham.

With her silver-blond hair and long pale neck, Caroline worked like crystal wine goblet among jelly-jar glasses, but she was clearly at home here and very much at ease. She moved around the kitchen as if she had spent many hours there—to refill the coffeepot, to fetch Miss Maddie her handkerchief—and kept up with her part of the conversation.

She was saying, “Mama’s planning on going up to the lake tomorrow.”

“Are you planning on going up, Caroline? Or are you too busy with wedding plans?” Miss Maddie was small and plump, with perfectly rounded cheeks, but she had a rich voice and a way of speaking that would be welcome in any National Public Radio broadcast booth, not in spite of, but precisely for, her accent.

There was a small silence while Caroline wiped her mouth with her napkin, which was odd, because as far as Angie could tell from her plate, she hadn’t eaten anything at all.

“Maybe for a little while,” she said. “If Mama needs me.”

Rivera, who considered the only real sacrifice she was making this summer her regular trips down the Jersey shore, wanted to know more about the lake, how far it was, who went there. Miss Maddie and Caroline let themselves be drawn into that discussion while Angie turned back to Miss Zula.

“How long have you known Miss Junie?” Angie asked.

The small, round face stilled in a way that meant nothing, yet, to Angie, but it did make her curious.

“Junie Maddox and I matriculated at Ogilvie together and graduated on the same day. We taught high school English, both of us, starting in the fall of 1952. Not at the same school, not in those days, but we often worked on our lesson plans together. And then she married Bob Lee Rose and gave up teaching.”

And that, Angie realized, was the smallest part of the story, and all Miss Zula was willing to tell just now. Along her spine she got a flutter of nerves, the sign that she had stumbled, unexpectedly, onto something important. She was just about to say that straight out when the door opened and Harriet came in.

“Well, now. Finally,” said Miss Zula. “Harriet Rose Darling, you are late again.”

“I lost track,” Harriet said, leaning over to kiss the old woman on the cheek.

“We’ll see to it they put as much on your gravestone,” said Miss Zula as she patted Harriet’s cheek. “‘Here lies Harriet. She had no idea it was so late.’”

“What was it, dear?” asked Miss Maddie, holding up her cheek in turn. “Those fractious boys of yours?”

“No,” said Harriet as she fell into a chair. “It was Tab.”

“How is dear Tab?” Maddie asked.

Harriet seemed to be considering an answer while she helped herself to eggs. Then she said in the languid way of a woman who has been praying for the same thing every day for many years without satisfaction, “Why, it would be best if Tab would just die.”

“Harriet,” said Caroline.

“What?” Harriet said. “It’s true. I mean it with all my heart.”

Rivera, unable to contain herself any longer, let out a burst of laughter.

Angie had eaten more than she meant to but found that she was oddly comfortable, given the events of the early morning and the fact that Caroline Rose was sitting across from her at the table. The conversation flowed along from the wayward ways of boys and men, to the new dress Junie Rose was having made for Caroline’s wedding, to the benefit auction at the church, to the cost of printing posters, which brought Rivera to the subject of the English department photocopier, and Patty-Cake Walker, who had given Tied to the Tracks a monthly allowance of twenty-five copies.

“Bring that to Rob’s attention,” said Caroline. “He’ll deal with Patty-Cake.”

“Patty-Cake and her copy machine,” said Miss Zula, her mouth pressing hard. “As proud as a dog with two tails.”

“More like a witch with a familiar,” said Harriet.

Miss Maddie said, “I swear, I’ve heard more stories. It’s just unnatural, a woman carrying on about a machine like that. I suppose if her Wayne hadn’t walked in front of that bus she’d have more important things to keep her busy.”

“She did hover over Wayne, but then he gave her reason enough,” Harriet agreed. “That reminds me. Patty-Cake has been after her nephew Win Walker to ask you out.”

Miss Maddie said, “That young man with the tattoo on his bald spot?”

“No,” said Miss Zula. “You’re thinking of Walker Winfield, who’s a deacon at Church of Christ. Win Walker goes to First Baptist.”

“Win Walker and Walker Winfield?” asked Angie.

“Double first cousins,” said Harriet. “Jean Winfield married Jackson Walker and they named their first son Winfield Walker. Then Jackson’s sister—Sue Ann Walker?—married Jean’s brother Joe Bob and they named their firstborn Walker Winfield. Except they don’t resemble each other, not one bit. Win got all the looks but all Walker got was religion. And a bald spot, which he went and got tattooed one time when he was struggling with the angel, I suppose.”

Rivera pressed a fist to her mouth and then smiled anyway. “What exactly does Walker have tattooed on his bald spot?”

Miss Maddie turned to her sister. “What was it now? Praise Jesus? Wait, no, I remember. Jesus Saves.”

Rivera said, “Maybe Win has got some good tattoos, you’ll have to let us know, Angie.”

Angie resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at Rivera and reached instead for another piece of toast.

“Where does Patty-Cake fit into all this?” she asked.

Miss Maddie got a thoughtful look on her face. “If I recall, her Wayne was half brother to Jackson on their daddy’s side.” Then she let out a small, very musical laugh. “You’ll have to stay in Ogilvie a lot longer than a school year if you’ve got a mind to learn all the family connections.”

“It was just Patty-Cake I was wondering about,” said Angie. “As she’s taking such an interest in my love life.”

Harriet said, “Rivera, I’d guess Patty-Cake has already got some young man picked out for you, too.”

Miss Maddie’s bird-bright eyes flashed behind her glasses. “Now, won’t that be nice, don’t you think? With the Independence Day Jubilee coming up and all.” She turned her face toward Rivera. “We celebrate the Fourth of July in a big way here in Ogilvie.”

“What Miss Maddie in’t telling you,” said Harriet, “is that she’s been head of the Jubilee committee since just about ever. Why, there wouldn’t be a Jubilee without her.”

Miss Maddie started to protest, but Harriet held up a hand and carried on. “There’s a barbecue and games, and in the evening there’s the picnic basket auction and dance. Of course you have to have a ticket to be a Basket Girl, but I bet Miss Maddie could see to that.”

“I might could,” Miss Maddie said. “Now, Rivera, tell us. You got somebody you want to invite down from the city? A boyfriend you might want to show around Ogilvie?”

Angie slid down a little further in her chair, resigning herself to the idea that this conversation, long overdue, would take place at this particular breakfast table with two elderly women.

Rivera looked up from her orange juice, her expression innocent, friendly, vaguely agreeable, and shrugged.

“A girlfriend, maybe,” she said. “I’m gay.”

“How nice for you,” Miss Maddie said. Harriet hiccupped and put three fingers to her mouth as if to hold it shut. Miss Zula handed her another napkin.

“She means she’s a lesbian,” Caroline said to Miss Maddie. “Harriet, drink something before you choke.”

“I understood her, Caroline,” said Miss Maddie. “I watch HBO. Are you a lesbian, too, Angeline?”

Harriet hiccupped again, but it would take a lot more than a few blushes to upset Rivera, who was enjoying herself without reservation.

“No,” said Angie. “I can’t claim that honor.”

Harriet said, “But I thought lesbians go around in pairs?”

“Nuns go around in pairs,” said Miss Maddie, brightly. “And those polite young Mormon missionaries who dress so neatly.”

“To answer your question,” Rivera said to Harriet, “as far as I know there’s no rule in the lesbian handbook that says we have to go around in pairs. But I’ll check with the governing board, if you like.”

“Close your mouth, Harriet,” said Miss Zula. “You look simpleminded sitting there showing off your bridgework. Rivera is teasing you, and you’re embarrassing Caroline.”

“Well, there’s nothing new about that,” said Harriet, touching her napkin to her mouth. “I’ve made a career out of embarrassing my little sisters. All four of them overachievers, what’s left for me but bad behavior? I might not be sophisticated, but she loves me just the same, don’t you, baby?”

Caroline said, “If you try not to insult anybody else this morning, yes.”

Rivera said, “Tell us more about this nephew Patty-Cake has dug up for Angie. Maybe he’ll have more luck getting her out of the house than Tony and I have been having.”

“You don’t have a young man?” asked Miss Maddie, turning to Angie.

“There’s someone I date now and then, back home.”

“Five years of nothing serious,” added Rivera, and gave Angie a wide-eyed, not quite so innocent look.

“Five years!” Harriet said. “If you don’t want the man, honey, my advice is to throw him back in and get yourself some fresh bait.”

Miss Maddie held her napkin up to her face when she laughed. “You are terrible, Harriet.”

“Tell the truth and shame the devil,” said Harriet.

“I’m very busy with the film company,” said Angie. “I’ve got no complaints.”

“But you’re such a young woman,” said Miss Maddie. “It’s a shame if you don’t enjoy yourself a little while you’re here. Don’t you think, sister?”

Miss Zula produced one of her rare smiles. “Certainly. We’ll have to see what we can do.”

At that moment, struck by the strange turn in the conversation, by Caroline Rose’s expectant but sober look, and most of all by the expression on Miss Zula’s face, a flash of understanding struck Angie: They had come, finally, to the place Miss Zula had meant them to be. She was going to raise the subject of John Grant, and then there would be nothing to do but tell the story. Angie looked around the table at each woman in turn, and then caught Rivera’s eye.

To Harriet she said, “Tell Patty-Cake I’d be happy to make her nephew’s acquaintance. I’m looking forward to it.”

 

You’ve got to give the old woman credit,” Rivera said later. “She’s got style.”

“So did Machiavelli,” said Angie.

They had insisted on walking back simply because Angie didn’t want to sit in the same car with Caroline Rose, not just yet. Not until she had some answers, starting with the most obvious one: who exactly knew about the summer she had spent with John Grant five years ago.

Of course the only person who could tell her that was John himself. She thought of him on the river, and her pace slowed for as long as it took her to banish that image yet again.

They crossed the old wooden footbridge over the river and paused to look down into the water. Angie said, “You don’t think—” She stopped herself.

“No,” said Rivera.

“No what?” Angie said. “I wish you’d stop answering questions before I ask them.”

“No, Miss Zula didn’t get us down here to play matchmaker for John Grant and you.”

“How would she even know about that?” Angie said, exasperated.

“Don’t ask me,” Rivera said. “But she knows. I could see it on her face, and so could you. Maybe she was watching you at the birthday party when John took that arrow. Your face gave a lot away.”

Angie pushed away from the bridge rail. “I’m going into town,” she said. “I’ve got to get this cleared up before there’s real trouble.”

“Sure,” said Rivera. “Don’t you want to know where he lives?”

Angie closed her eyes, counted to three, and then she nodded. She stayed that way while Rivera gave her directions, and didn’t move until she was finished.

“You sure this is a good idea?” Rivera asked.

Angie felt herself flushing. “You got a better one? Never mind, don’t answer that.”

She was off the bridge and walking fast when Rivera called after her.

“Tell him hello from me!”

The looks Angie got as she walked through town were mostly friendly or curious; a few people said hello and looked like they would have gladly stopped to talk. Any other time she would have done that, but just now she couldn’t afford to. If she let herself be distracted, if she stopped to think, she’d lose her resolve.

One plate-glass window after another reminded her that she wasn’t wearing makeup, that she had tied her hair back with a rubber band, and that the shirt she was wearing over jeans had a rip in the pocket. She was overdressed for the weather but underdressed if she compared herself to the other women her age who passed her on the street.

She had never been able to manufacture any real interest in fashion, and rarely remembered to look in the mirror. The good clothes she had brought with her to Ogilvie were basic: a dark dress for formal wear; a lighter, dressier one that she had worn to every wedding she had attended for the last three years; a single sundress; a straight black skirt; and a good white silk blouse. She couldn’t remember the last time she had bought anything new. When there was extra money she bought another lens for her Nikon or put something aside toward new equipment.

She had never worried much about this particular failing until John had come along. John, who wore expensive clothes so casually and so well. He had an eye for line and color and he never asked, as other men sometimes had, if his shirt matched his pants. More than that, he had never, not once, said a word to her about her clothes, good or bad; he never seemed disappointed in what she wore, although she herself felt at a disadvantage walking down the street next to him. He was elegant and beautiful and strong, and next to him she often felt like a puppy that needed grooming.

Angie thought of going home to change, or at least finding a store where she could buy a cap or scarf or something to cover her hair, but then she had no money on her, even if any of the shops along this part of Main Street would offer something so mundane.

The merchants of Ogilvie, it was clear, catered to tourists who came for day trips from Savannah and to the wealthy parents of its undergraduates. She passed Thomasina’s, which seemed to be doing a brisk brunch business; an artisan jeweler; a crowded café-bakery; a clothing boutique with a linen sheath in the window that glimmered in the light. It was made for a long, thin woman who had no bust and no hips, and Angie would have looked like a sack of potatoes in it, which was beside the point: she couldn’t afford a dress like that, and she had no place to wear it. It was an elegant dress, for cocktail parties at the dean’s house or an evening in Savannah at the theater. An Audrey Hepburn, a Jackie Kennedy, a Caroline Rose kind of dress.

Next came a shop called Shards, which advertised itself with a scattering of paper-thin china teacups over a tumble of black velvet in its single window. We buy antique china, porcelain, and glassware was written in fine calligraphy on a small card in the window, and under that: Constance Rose Shaw, Proprietor. Appraisals by appointment only. The Rose sisters might have the unruliest sons in all of southeast Georgia, but they were good at other things. Next to Shards was an antique shop, Re-Runs (Eunice Rose Holmes, Proprietor), and beyond that, Fat Quarters (Pearl Rose McCarthy). Connie, Eunice, and Pearl monopolized a full half of the choicest block on Main Street, directly across from campus.

Angie passed a real estate office and an old-fashioned drugstore with large colored-glass vials in the window and then came to Ogilvie Books. A banner spanned the full length of the window: OGILVIE CELEBRATES FIFTY YEARS OF DIVERSITY.

Every book Miss Zula had written was here, in first and more modern editions, many of the jackets sporting silver or gold embossed medallions for one literary prize or another, a galaxy of small stars. Angie wondered if Tony had already been here to shoot stills. The truth was he probably had been, but she should have been with him, making contacts and setting up interviews. Instead she had been hiding in Ivy House. That would have to change.

In the middle of the display of books was a photo of a very young Zula in a cap and gown, accepting a diploma from a portly man. A newspaper article dated 1952, matted and framed, stood beside it on a carved oak easel. The headline was still dark and clear: “Ogilvie College Awards Diploma to Local Negro Woman.”

“What a difference fifty years make, eh?”

Angie jumped, a hand pressed to her heart, and then stepped back against the window.

“Rob.”

Rob Grant, a younger, darker, and more easygoing version of his brother, had never been one to stand on formalities. He kissed her on the cheek and gave her a hug that smelled of the bakery bag he held in one hand, yeast and dark sugars and cinnamon.

“Angie, I was wondering when I’d run into you. Don’t you look good.”

“So do you. So you ended up back in Ogilvie after all.”

“Where else, for one of Lucy Ogilvie’s boys? And Kai—my wife?—Kai is on the math faculty here.”

“I heard that someplace. You look happy.”

“I gave up on the law and I married well. What’s not to be happy? Hey.” He held up the bakery bag. “I’m on my way home for a late breakfast. Kai wants to meet you, and there’s coffee on. Unless you’ve already had breakfast?”

“I ate with Miss Zula and Maddie.”

Rob raised an eyebrow. “The Rose girls’ monthly goddaughter breakfast? Miss Zula must like you. So are you coming?”

His eyes were brown while John’s were blue, and Angie remembered quite suddenly playing poker with the two of them on a rainy Sunday afternoon. He had been in law school then, and she had liked him tremendously. He was the only good thing to remember about that particular weekend, and she had the idea that he might actually understand, if she were to tell him what she was about to do.

She said, “I am on my way to find John. There are some things I need to talk to him about.”

“In that case”—he took her elbow—“you’ll have to come along. We share the house with him …” His voice trailed away.

Angie gave him her best, clearest, most intense smile. “Until he gets married. It’s okay, Rob.”

“Until we find a place of our own,” Rob said, but he gave her an appraising look that said he might have given up the law, but still understood a great deal about the way people lied to themselves, and others.

 

It was a ten-minute walk, long enough for Rob to give her his personalized, highly suspect history of the neighborhood and for Angie to begin to panic. He was in the middle of an anecdote that involved the adolescent Grant boys, a tire swing, a six-pack of beer, and somebody called Louanne who was now the chief of police, when Angie stopped just where she was.

Rob looked at her expectantly. “Rethinking?”

She nodded.

“You know,” he said slowly, “I live there, too. You’re welcome in my home anytime.”

“You think he won’t want to see me.” If she could have snatched the words out of the air, she would have done that.

“Oh, he wants to see you,” Rob said. “As much as you want to see him.”

She hiccupped a laugh, started to say something that was a lie, and stopped herself.

“I never took you for a coward,” said Rob Grant.

Angie hesitated a moment, and then caught up with him. After a while she said, “Do you mind very much having to move out?”

Rob shrugged. “I thought I would, but it turns out that looking for a house with Kai is an experience not to be missed. And John would never really be happy anyplace else. Something the Rose girls have yet to figure out, as they are still trying to talk him into moving into Old Roses.”

“Old Roses?”

“The family place. You were there for Miss Junie’s birthday. The occasion of the wayward arrow? The Rose girls have got it in their heads that Caroline should stay there for good and keep an eye on Miss Junie.”

“And what does Caroline want?”

Rob stopped short, a thoughtful look on his face. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say one way or the other. It’s mostly her sisters who talk about it.”

Angie thought of Caroline Rose at Miss Zula’s table, and how she had disappeared from the conversation as soon as Harriet had come in.

She said, “Miss Zula asked Caroline to work with me and Rivera. She said Caroline is the best source of information about the town, next to her mother.”

After a while Rob said, “It’s true that Caroline is one of those people who’s good at listening, so she hears a lot.” He gestured with his chin. “Here we are. It’s not Old Roses, but it’s where my mother grew up and we’re all fond of it.”

Set back in a garden was a pale yellow two-story house. The windows were tall and narrow, with white woodwork and shutters, and a deep porch spanned the entire width of the house. The garden was in full bloom with flowers Angie couldn’t name, and more flowers bloomed in pots along the edge of the porch and between chairs piled with cushions. And, inevitably, there was John Grant sitting on the brickwork step, looking directly at her.

He had just come off the river. His skin was still flushed with exercise, water glistening in his short hair, his skin damp. Sweat was shining on his bare shoulders and in the hollow of his throat and on his legs, and Angie understood one thing: she should never, ever, have come.