Amma was standing on the front porch—a sure sign of trouble. “Did you see her?” I should’ve expected this.
“She wasn’t in school today.” Technically that was true.
“Maybe that’s for the best. Trouble follows that girl around like Macon Ravenwood’s dog. I don’t want it followin’ you into this house.”
“I’m going to take a shower. Will dinner be ready soon? Link and I have a project to do tonight.” I called from the stairs, trying to sound normal.
“Project? What kinda project?”
“History.”
“Where are you goin’ and when are you fixin’ to get back?”
I let the bathroom door slam before I answered that one. I had a plan, but I needed a story, and it had to be good.
Ten minutes later, sitting at the kitchen table, I had it. It wasn’t airtight, but it was the best I could do without a little time. Now I just had to pull it off. I wasn’t the best liar, and Amma was no fool. “Link is picking me up after dinner and we’re gonna be at the library until it closes. I think it’s sometime around nine or ten.” I glopped Carolina Gold onto my pulled pork. Carolina Gold, a sticky mess of mustard barbeque sauce, was the one thing Gatlin County was famous for that had nothing to do with the Civil War.
“The library?”
Lying to Amma always made me nervous, so I tried not to do it that often. And tonight I was really feeling it, mostly in my stomach. The last thing I wanted to do was eat three plates of pulled pork, but I had no choice. She knew exactly how much I could put away. Two plates, and I would rouse suspicion.
One plate, and she would send me to my room with a thermometer and ginger ale. I nodded and set to work clearing my second plate.
“You haven’t set foot in the library since…”
“I know.” Since my mom died.
The library was home away from home to my mom, and my family. We had spent every Sunday afternoon there since I was a little boy, wandering around the stacks, pulling out every book with a picture of a pirate ship, a knight, a soldier, or an astronaut. My mom used to say, “This is my church, Ethan. This is how we keep the Sabbath holy in our family.”
The Gatlin County head librarian, Marian Ashcroft, was my mom’s oldest friend, the second smartest historian in Gatlin next to my mom, and until last year, her research partner. They had been grad students together at Duke, and when Marian finished her PhD in African-American studies, she followed my mom down to Gatlin to finish their first book together. They were halfway through their fifth book before the accident.
I hadn’t set foot in the library since then, and I still wasn’t ready. But I also knew there was no way Amma would stop me from going there. She wouldn’t even call to check up on me. Marian Ashcroft was family. And Amma, who had loved my mom as much as Marian did, respected nothing more than family.
“Well, you mind your manners and don’t raise your voice. You know what your mamma used to say.
Any book is a Good Book, and wherever they keep the Good Book safe is also the House a the Lord.”
Like I said, my mom would have never made it in the DAR.
Link honked. He was giving me a ride on his way to band practice. I fled the kitchen, feeling so guilty I had to fight the impulse to fling myself into Amma’s arms and confess everything, like I was six years old again and had eaten all the dry Jell-O mix out of the pantry. Maybe Amma was right. Maybe I had picked a hole in the sky and the universe was all about to fall in on me.
As I stepped up to the door of Ravenwood, my hand tightened around the glossy blue folder, my excuse for showing up at Lena’s house uninvited. I was dropping by to give her the English assignment she’d missed today—that’s what I planned to say, anyway. It had sounded convincing, in my head, when I was standing on my own porch. But now that I was on the porch at Ravenwood, I wasn’t so sure.
I wasn’t usually the kind of guy who would do something like this, but it was obvious there was no way Lena was ever going to invite me over on her own. And I had a feeling her uncle could help us, that he might know something.
Or maybe it was the other thing. I wanted to see her. It had been a long, dull day at Jackson without Hurricane Lena, and I was starting to wonder how I ever got through eight periods without all the trouble she caused me. Without all the trouble she made me want to cause myself.
I could see light flooding from the vine-covered windows. I heard the sounds of music in the background, old Savannah songs, from that Georgian songwriter my mom had loved. “In the cool cool cool of the evening…”