If only that feeling could last.
While the crowd dispersed, our group clumped together near the grave. As we spoke in hushed tones, I saw Serenity hovering at the periphery, her gaze on me. When the chance presented itself, I slipped through the black-clad bodies, took her hand, and led her under a tree about twenty yards away.
“It’s good to see you,” I told her. “Away from everyone else.”
She smiled at that and squeezed my hand. “I’ve missed you. That was an intense few days.”
I nodded but said nothing. What could I possibly say that would convey my true feelings in that moment? I very much wanted to kiss her, but how would Tee react to that? Or Annie? Or my mother? I knew that if I looked back toward the grave, I would see Mom peering at us from between the mourners.
“How are your burns?” I asked as we pulled apart.
Tee waved her hand to dismiss my concern. “Coupla more scars to show in bars, that’s all. How’s Lincoln doing?”
“I think he’s going to be okay. I’m going to see him tonight. We’re flying back after the funeral.”
She absorbed this news with a forced smile. “Good. Maybe you guys can find a little common ground now.”
“Maybe.”
A gust of wind kicked up, sending a blast of Texas grit flying against us. We turned our backs to it and huddled shoulder to shoulder.
“Penn,” Tee said softly, looking past me to my mother, “something’s been bothering me. I’ve tried to forget it, but I can’t get it out of my head.”
“My head’s full of things like that.”
She hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Remember that last night we were together? The night your mother walked in on us in bed?”
“Of course.”
“You spoke to Quentin on the phone that night. And he basically ordered you not to pursue the report that the sheriff’s deputies were tampering with the hair-and-fiber evidence.”
I tried to keep my face impassive as I looked back at Serenity, and perhaps I succeeded, because she went on without noticing my discomfort.
“The thing is, that made absolutely no sense. The cops already had a match on your father’s hair, so why tell you not to pursue the tampering? Who could Quentin possibly have been trying to protect?”
My breathing slowed to almost nothing. Serenity’s dark eyes probed mine, not with intrusiveness, but with genuine puzzlement. “Am I crazy?” she asked. “Have you ever figured that out?”
Without quite meaning to, I raised my hands to her upper arms and took hold of her, my eyes never leaving hers.
“You’re not crazy. But I can’t go any further than that. Okay?”
She looked back at me, still lost, but then her eyes widened and she swallowed hard. Just when I thought she was going to ask another question, she laid her face against my chest and hugged me tight.
“I miss this,” she said in a fierce whisper.
“I do, too. More than you know.”
“If you’re ever passing through Atlanta—”
“I know. I will.”
But as we broke apart and went our separate ways, we both knew that I wouldn’t. For if I passed through Atlanta, Annie would almost certainly be with me. Even if she wasn’t, she would still be waiting at home. And that worry didn’t begin to address the realities of Serenity’s personal life, which were undoubtedly complicated. As I rejoined my group, my mind and heart remained with Tee, walking alone through the tombstones, back to her rental car for the long drive back to the airport. I felt the tidal pull of sexual gravity from her receding body, and keen regret that I hadn’t lowered my face to hers for a kiss. I saw relief in my mother’s face as I laid my hand on Annie’s shoulder, but for my part, I felt none.
We got back to Natchez a lot faster than we’d expected to. John Masters offered us a ride in his plane, which was a first for Annie. The nearest commercial airport to Natchez is ninety miles away, so having the Masters Media jet drop us only ten miles from our house was a real treat. As soon as I got Annie settled at home, I climbed into my Audi and headed through the night toward St. Catherine’s Hospital.
When I asked the duty nurse if Lincoln Turner was still in the same room, she frowned and told me he’d checked out against the advice of his physician, about four hours earlier. I stood there blinking, trying to divine what impulse would have compelled Lincoln to do that.
“He left you a note, Mayor,” the nurse said, and then she retrieved a sealed envelope from a drawer.
My name was scrawled across the front. I ripped the end off the envelope, pulled out the folded paper, and read the brief letter with a dazed feeling.
I’m going back to Chicago. I need to think. I’m sorry for all the trouble. I’m glad we did what we did, and that the right people got killed, for the most part. Don’t try to find me. You don’t owe me anything. Maybe we’ll cross paths again someday. L
I stared at the note for a long time, a missive from a man without a living mother or a father he will accept. I studied the words so long that I was stunned when the elevator dinged behind me. When the door opened, an older doctor I recognized smiled and said hello. I nodded and walked past him, then took the stairs down to the silent lobby and into the parking lot.
The night air is cool, the parking lot mostly empty. Instead of going to my car, I walk out toward the Highway 61 bypass. Not far from the tar-stinking frontage road stands the same little flower bed and the light pole where I waited for my father when I was a boy of eight. The night he left me alone for hours while he made love with Viola on the colored side of town. The flower bed is now filled with pea gravel and ornamental rocks, as though this were New Mexico, but the relentless weeds of Mississippi are already sprouting through this fa?ade. I stand under the humming streetlight and watch the cars go by, just as I did almost forty years ago, fighting the tears of a little boy abandoned. Now, though, I realize that I endured only a few hours of the sadness and anxiety that ran through Lincoln’s life like an undertow, always pulling him away from the light, into darkness.