After a few minutes, Hampton sensed that they’d left the city. The sky darkened above him. The night grew silent. Sophia now drove without stopping, took curves without slowing. The truck creaked and rocked. Hampton closed his eyes, tried to steady himself, struggled to keep the dizziness from turning to nausea.
Sophia slowed the truck and pulled it to the side of the road. Where were they? In the country? A neighborhood street? Another town?
The passenger’s-side door creaked open. He heard Ella’s voice. “Excuse me,” she said. “Excuse me.”
“What you need?” a man’s voice asked from the side of the road. Hampton made himself as flat as possible. He closed his eyes, waited.
“Do you know where Katherine McAdam lives?”
“Well, sure,” the man said. “In the McAdam house.”
“Can you tell me how to get there?” Ella asked.
“What are you girls doing out this late?” he asked.
“We need to see the McAdams,” Ella said.
“Well,” the man said. He spoke slowly, as if considering each word, as if considering whether he should be giving directions this late at night to two women alone in a truck. “You just keep going up Main Street here. And once you pass the big Baptist church you just take a right on that next road there. The McAdams live at the end of it. You can’t see the house from the road, but it’s back there.”
“Thank you,” Ella said.
She closed her door and they rumbled off up the road. The engine groaned when they reached the hill.
There were no lights on inside the house, but there was starlight and moonlight enough for Hampton to see that the house was large. He and Sophia stood in the yard and watched as Ella walked up the steps to the wide, covered porch and stood before the door. She knocked, waited, knocked again. A light came on in a window on the second floor. Another light came on in what Hampton assumed was the hallway beside a bedroom. The added light made it even clearer that the house belonged to someone incredibly wealthy. It was the nicest home Hampton had ever seen in person.
A porch light came on, bathing Ella in yellow. Hampton heard someone fumble with the door on the other side. He was tempted to step away from the light, return to the truck, and let Ella and Sophia take care of things without him becoming a distraction to the white people he was certain must live here. But before Hampton could turn away the door opened and revealed a middle-aged white man with a thin mustache. He wore a robe and a pair of spectacles, his eyes and his hair proof of the deep sleep from which he’d just awoken.
The man stared at Ella as he tightened the sash around his robe.
“Can I help you?” he asked. He looked past Ella to where Sophia and Hampton stood side by side in the dark yard, almost out of reach of the light coming from the house. Hampton was prepared for the man to ask them all to leave, to threaten to call the police, to go inside and return with a rifle or some kind of weapon. Instead he stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door nearly shut behind him as if shielding Ella’s eyes from any valuables inside the house.
“Yes, sir,” Ella said. She bowed her head slightly. Her voice had taken on a tone of nervousness and uncertainty that Hampton had not heard before. “Good evening, sir. I’m sorry to bother you so late. Is Kate at home?”
“Kate?” the man said. He looked at Ella as if the name confused him. “What’s this about?”
“Well, sir, and again, I’m sorry to bother you like this, but I was hoping to speak with Kate.”
“Richard,” a woman’s voice called from inside the house. The man pushed the door open and looked up as if he were looking toward the second floor. Hampton took a step forward, lowered himself a little, and followed the man’s eyes. He saw a woman standing by the railing at the top of a wooden staircase. Her brown hair was pulled back in a bun, and she wore what looked to be a blue silk robe. “Let her in,” the woman said.
“What is this, Katherine?” the man asked. “What’s this about?”
“Let her in, Richard,” the woman named Katherine said.
Richard stood as if uncertain of what to do, but then he opened the door just wide enough so that Ella could pass by him without the two of them touching. Ella raised her hand and gestured over her shoulder to where Sophia and Hampton stood.
“I’ve got friends with me,” she said.
“Show them in, Richard,” the woman at the top of the stairs said. “All of them.”
Richard opened the door a little wider. Ella turned and offered a weak smile. She went inside. Richard did not look at Sophia or Hampton, but he stood there with the door ajar. Sophia moved toward the house, walked up the porch steps. Hampton followed her. When they entered, they found Ella had already ascended the stairs toward the woman. Hampton assumed that the woman at the top of the stairs must be Kate, but he could not imagine how Ella could know and trust someone so wealthy, someone who lived so well. The hardwood floors gleamed under the foyer’s lights. A darkened hallway sat on one side of the staircase, leading to what Hampton assumed was the kitchen at the back of the house. To Hampton’s left was a large dining room. He’d glimpsed a grand chandelier hanging over a long dining table as he’d passed through the front door. Oil portraits and old photographs, what looked to be daguerreotypes, hung on the walls. On his right, just inside the door, was a sitting room.
Ella and Kate stood whispering at the top of the stairs. The man named Richard pulled his robe tight around him again, refusing—perhaps unable—to make eye contact with Sophia and Hampton.
“Richard,” Kate said. He looked up to where she stood on the floor above them. Ella was beside her. “Please offer our guests a seat, and then wake Claire and have her put on some coffee. There’s cake in the cupboard. Please cut it.” She turned away. Ella followed her. Hampton heard a door close.
Richard stared at the spot where the two women had been standing, then he lifted his hand and gestured toward the sitting room. Hampton followed Sophia inside. The room was dark, but he could see a long leather sofa and two sitting chairs. Richard turned on the light, and Sophia took a seat on the sofa. Hampton sat down beside her.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Richard said. He nodded, kept his eyes on the floor.
“Thank you,” Sophia said.
Richard nodded again and left the room. Hampton listened as he walked up the stairs. The house was quiet. Then he heard Richard knock gently on a door and say, “Claire.”
Hampton looked around the room. The two sitting chairs were on his right. Across the room, a low cabinet had been pulled away from the wall; one of its doors was open, revealing a stack of records. Hampton looked around the room, but he did not see a phonograph.
He’d almost forgotten that Sophia was sitting beside him, until he felt the warmth of her hand on top of his own. Her touch startled him. He looked at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what? There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“For asking you to come,” she said. “For convincing Weisbord to send you. It’s my fault.”
“No,” he said. “If Beal were a better organizer—”