“Get some sleep, Wattie. You’re exhausted,” I said.
She chuckled. “Baby, I’m more than that. I’m nigh on drunk. For the third time in almost ninety years, Jesus forgive me. You go to bed, too, and don’t fret, hear me? Things feel hard now, but it will pass. Everything passes, and something new comes along to fill the space.” As she spoke, her tone shifted. She wasn’t talking about me anymore. “You can’t go around holding the worst thing you ever did in your hand, staring at it. You gotta cook supper, put gas in the car. You gotta plant more zinnias.”
She turned away and went on up to bed.
I sat in a slump at the table for a moment. It felt like 3:00 a.m., but my watch said it wasn’t even time yet for the nightly news. The whole house was quiet and still. We had all shifted to little-old-lady hours. Early supper, early bed, up with the sunrise to spend time with Birchie at her best. She needed the house quiet after eight.
I got up and went back to my sofa in the sewing room, feeling shipwrecked as I changed into my pajamas and brushed my teeth. I lay down, but I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know how long I lay there before the chime of a text landing in my phone roused me.
The noise reminded me that about a thousand years ago, back when I was telling myself that the bones were some kind of Civil War archaeology, I had called Jake and let him have it with both barrels. He was a known jackass, certainly, but on the other hand he hadn’t murdered anyone. Not anyone I knew about.
I roused myself and reached for the phone.
It wasn’t Jake, though. It was Batman. Still up?
I was in no shape for stalking the father of my secret baby.
I’m dealing with a family thing, I texted, which was true, but the stark words read harsh. I added, Looking forward to Wednesday as a softener. He sent me back a thumbs-up emoji.
I didn’t put the phone away, though.
Lavender had living-father problems, and I had sworn to fix them. That was a lifetime ago, but it still mattered. I was hoping against hope that Jake had done something that resembled the right thing. At the very least, he could have sent his daughter a cute frog emoji waving a sign that said hello. He could have texted, I do love you, or maybe, Sorry you won shit-all in Dad Lotto.
I shook my head. Parenthood shouldn’t work this way. Fathers shouldn’t get to decide if they wanted to father or not, thirteen years in. Fathers who weren’t dead should do their damn job. Assuming they even know they have a kid, I thought, but I shoved that away for later. This was about Lavender right now.
It actually felt lovely to think about Lavender’s problems, to meddle hard in the forbidden lands of Rachel’s troubles instead of thinking about terms like “no statute of limitations” and “premeditated.” Now, thanks to Blanton’s, I could add Wattie and “accessory after the fact” to my concerns.
There was no way to reconcile my long-loved Birchie with a person who could do what Violence did. See a bad man? Take him out. Remove him while he sat sipping his port and reading his newspaper. All I could do was twirl my new black mustache and protect her anyway. Jake, with his money problems and his cowardice, was altogether easier, because I was squarely in the right. I could try to fix that and not think about—
Wait. Was this what it felt like to be Rachel?
Maybe so. I was pregnant with a secret mixed-race baby, carrying on an investigative flirtation with my in-the-dark baby daddy, and I honestly had the least fucked-up life of any adult in the house. At this thought I started giggling. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. This was what it felt like to be Rachel. This right here, perched in the catbird seat of least fucked up. It was not a thing I’d ever understood before. God, but it was a good seat. No wonder she didn’t ever want to share it.
When I finally got myself in hand, I texted Jake another message:
Call your daughter. I will go full Bloodaxe on you if you don’t. Do not doubt me, Jake. I’m capable of anything at this point.
It sounded true, because it was. Blood in my history, murder in my genes, Violence in my heart. Wattie had shared the how, but no one on earth except for Birchie knew the why.
I wondered how long we both had before the Lewy bodies took that answer, too.
14
I hadn’t realized I’d been sleeping, but I had, and very hard. There was drool on the pillow. A sound had woken me. Something like a click.
The sewing room shared a wall with the kitchen. Was it morning and someone was making breakfast? It was so dark. I peered at the clock, disoriented. It was 2:04.
Then I heard footsteps pittering down the wooden stairs that led down to the backyard garden.
I sat up. Holy shit, the click had been the door. The back door shutting.
All at once I was fully awake. In my mind’s eye, I could see Birchie trying to navigate those long, steep stairs with her tottery balance, imaginary rabbits winding in and out between her ankles. Less than a second later, I was kicking at the tangled quilts, trying to get up and over to the window.
Had the Lewy bodies sent her on some midnight errand? Wattie had told me that she slept restless. On very bad nights, when she was under stress, she would get up and try to go berry picking or to the state fair or, once, to her long-dead husband’s funeral. Wattie was a light sleeper, and her room was right next door, so she’d always caught Birchie and gentled her back to bed. But Wattie was resting tonight in the warm and loving arms of Blanton’s bourbon.
I ran to the window and peered out into the night. If it was my grandmother, I was about to show Birchville some nerdy-ass pajamas for about the thousandth time this visit, hopefully before she fell and snapped her neck.
It wasn’t Birchie, though. It was Lavender.
I could see her blond hair gleaming in the bright summer moonlight. She was already down the stairs and hurrying through the back garden, wearing a lemon-colored summer dress that shone bright as her hair.
Worst ninja ever, I thought.
She had a green bottle in one hand that I hoped was Sprite, and she was carrying something puffy in a plastic grocery bag. I squinted. Was that a pillow? A big white blanket, folded into a square? Either way, not things you want to see a thirteen-year-old toting off into a dark night full of boys.