“Oh Lord, Mr. Harry. Where to start from?” Piyari moans. She dips her hand into a pocket of her dress and pulls out a gold-plated chain from which hangs a cross.
“You know, when Madam return back from Canada, she make a trip—she self drive the car—to Raleigh, to buy fish. She come back with a necklace—she say a woman who was like a relative to you give she it. Madam wear that necklace from that day on, and it surprise me, because why a woman in her position would wear plate around her neck? But she wear it, and when Boss ask she what is that around she neck, she say is a good-luck necklace a lady in the market give she as a present. He twist up his face, but he never ask about it again.
“But the morning I want to tell you about, she had removed it. Day before she had went in the sea wearing it, so why, I want to know, that morning she remove it? I ask her. She say how the water was looking real rough and she didn’t want to lose it. She tell me keep it safe for her. Well, when the police declare she drown, I go quiet-quiet and I take the chain from the kitchen drawer where I had put it, and I hide it. Why I do that is a mystery, because it have no value to me. I say is God who make me pick it up and hide it away, until I was to meet you.”
Harry accepts the chain weakly. His desire to speak with Cassie has weakened. He has the fervent will of the newly bereaved, that the ending of the story he is about to hear will have changed in the telling of it, and there would be no inclusion of a drowning. That, in the telling, a mistake indeed will be seen to have been made.
He listens to Piyari as he fingers the chain. He wants to be taken directly to Raleigh. There seems no reason to linger at this house in the stifling country heat any longer. But Piyari, relentless in her need to impart, continues.
“When you doing this kind of work, you see more than you want to see. I leave the job, you know. I leave before Boss fire me. He know I see everything, because it happen right in front my eyes. But he confident that nobody will ever think to inquire of the servant what she might and might not know. Miss Cassie, like she can’t believe what happened. She ask me plenty times what happened. But Mr. Harry, why I will tell she? To spoil the rest of her life? In any case, when you do this kind of work, you are nobody. In a way, nobody see nothing.”
In the simmering heat he trembles.
“I work with them nine years, Mr. Harry. But I not going back. Just because a man is attorney general does not mean he is exempt from manlike behavior, or that he is just. He put food on the table and clothes on their back and give Madam monthly house allowance. But that don’t mean nothing. It have a woman used to phone the house boldface and ask to speak with Boss. If Madam answer the phone, she would hang up, but if I answer, she would ask for him. You can believe that?
“Now, Miss Cassie independent and strong-willed. She tell Madam: separate for a little while. Let Boss feel what it is to come home to a empty house. But is not a good thing for the attorney general wife to pick up herself and leave her husband. Then, sudden so, Madam start talking all kind of nonsense about how life not worth living, how she repeating her own mother life, that this late in life a person should finally be experiencing a little happiness, not more head- and heartache. Is then Boss decide to take Madam to Canada and leave her with Miss Cassie for a little holiday.
“Now, as I say, Madam didn’t spare me details of what went on up there. But you know everything. You was there. I don’t have to tell you. When she returned, Madam had changed. She tell me that up there she reacquaint with a childhood friend—that is you—who had immigrated some years before. She say she get a glimpse of herself, and of the happiness she miss out on. She say it was like this man in Canada—you, eh?—she say you see she. Really see she. Not with your eyes, you understand, but with your heart. You see deep inside of she. I never see Madam so bright, so talkative, own-way, and hopeful before.
“Madam say the night you show up at Miss Cassie apartment, you look handsome for so, and that if she had stopped to talk with you in the kitchen, everybody would of see her blushing. She and Boss would of surely had words that night. You see, the two children used to tease her when you used to bring eggs by the back gate, and at first it was a joke in the house. But then Boss find you was coming too often, and he start getting vexed …”