Darker: The Inquirer

by M. S. Parker

  “Feeling better?” Detective Russell asked.

  “A little.” I hated how scared my voice sounded. “Is my mom coming here?”

  “It’s okay.” Detective Shade sat down across from me. “She said we can talk to you.”

  I was still a kid, but I watched enough cop shows to know that I should have a parent or lawyer with me, but my mom wouldn’t come, and I didn’t trust any lawyers. I already told them everything, but I guess I’d have to say it again.

  “The night after…he adopted my sister and me, he came into my room…”

  I didn’t make it any further because the door opened, and someone else came in. Someone I knew. My chest went tight, and I couldn’t breathe.

  “Ambrose Check. I’m Delia’s attorney.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Detective Russell asked.

  “I’m her lawyer.”

  I wanted to say that he wasn’t. I didn’t want anything to do with Uncle Ambrose. He hadn’t hurt me, but he wouldn’t help me either.

  “You’re his brother.”

  The world shifted.

  “What do you mean my mom’s not coming? Where is she? Where are you taking me?”

  My hands were shaking, and no one would talk to me. I was all alone, and I didn’t know what was happening. I couldn’t breathe, and my heart was about to come out of my chest. I’d never been this scared before, not even when he was hurting me. Then, I knew it would eventually stop.

  But now, I didn’t know anything.

  The world shifted back, and I found myself gripping the arms of the chair, my pulse racing from all the adrenaline that had been dumped into my system. As far as flashbacks went, that one had been pretty mild, but that didn’t mean it’d been fun. I could work through it alone, though, which was good. I didn’t need another long interruption while I got help to deal with my shit.

  Less than ten minutes later, I was ready to put down on paper what I now knew: the law firm Min Wu represented was connected to the law firm employed by the family she’d hired me to investigate on behalf of her clients. Whether she’d known that or not, I couldn’t tell, but since Check & Sons had been the Traylor family’s lawyers for a couple generations, Ambrose had to have known when he’d sent Min Wu to me.

  Seeing Ambrose’s hand in this made me wonder if he’d been pulling strings other places too. I’d never really understood him, which meant I couldn’t figure out his motives, but no matter why he’d put this case in my path, I’d find the truth.

  This wasn’t for him. It was for the Douglasses and the Huxleys and all the other families like them who’d gone so long without justice.

  I knew all too well what it was like to be in that position, and if there was anything I could do to help, I would do it. No matter what happened with Bradyn and me, I’d see this through to the end.

  Twenty-One

  Bradyn

  I’d always considered myself a patient person, but my patience was coming to an end.

  The kids had actually stayed pretty good for me after the whole ice cream situation, especially after I’d allowed Betsy to paint my finger and toenails a brilliant florescent pink. She informed me in a devious tone that Pawpaw had told her she wasn’t allowed to paint her brothers’ anymore because men didn’t wear nail polish, which gave me an additional reason to let her do it. Being able to play with my niece, get her to behave, and annoy my father was the ultimate trifecta.

  Of course, I insisted we take pictures of a job well done and send them to everyone in the family. The wicked smile she’d given me when she asked if Pawpaw was going to get one just confirmed that she would be the Lester to look out for. If my father had thought I was rebellious and headstrong, he was going to be in for a big surprise in a few years when Betsy started coming into her own.

  The three of us played a couple board games and watched a movie – one with a princess, of course – finishing up not long before Warren and my mom arrived. I got the update on Clancy, who probably would just be getting out of the hospital around Halloween, and then made a little small talk as I gauged how long I had to stay before it wouldn’t be rude for me to leave. I hadn’t minded watching the kids – Betsy’s near-tantrum aside – but now that my help was no longer needed, the files in my car were calling my name.

  Without Ashley here, I doubted anyone would notice what I’d taken, but I didn’t want to risk Les bringing them up while Mom and I were in the same room. I had no idea if she knew Ashley had those boxes or what was in them, but I had no desire to find out at the moment.

  Of course, that meant Mom invited me to stay for dinner. Since it was just her, Warren, and the kids, I really didn’t have any good excuse to decline. At least, not an excuse I could give her without lying. Plus, she had texted me about Clancy even though she’d known Dad and Ashley would both be pissed about it. And Warren wasn’t really a bad guy, just a weak one.

  If I could ease some of the tension by staying for a meal, it was a small sacrifice to make. Besides the fact that it’d ruin this tentative truce I had going on with Mom at the moment, I would’ve had to be a real dick to act like what I was doing was more important than my nephew.

  All of this meant that it was nearly seven-thirty before I was able to get away, and that was after at least a half-hour of practically biting my tongue to stop myself from telling them that I had work to do.

  Once I was home, I kicked off my shoes, got a beer from my fridge, and sat down at my table to start going through what I’d taken from the house. I’d pretty much emptied the entire box, then split the contents of the other two boxes so they were all full about the same amount. If Ashley knew what had been in the boxes, my ruse would only last until she actually looked at what was there, but I doubted her attention would be anywhere near those boxes while Clancy was in the hospital.

  My sister had a lot of negative character qualities, but the one thing I’d always admired about her was how much she loved her children. Even if she spoiled Betsy or tried to control the direction Les’s life went, it was because she wanted what she thought was best for them.

  I had a bad feeling that would bite me in the ass in the near future because I had no doubt Ashley would see my film as being a danger to the well-being of her children.

  “She’ll have nothing to worry about if I don’t find anything,” I reminded myself out loud.

  I had my suspicions about my family, but no real evidence of any specific skeletons in the closet. Once I started digging in here, though, that could change. And I couldn’t brush it off as something I stumbled on. If I took this step, I would be actively searching for lies…or worse.

  Maybe it was stupid, but I needed that moment. I needed to know that I could, when my film was done, point to a specific time and place where I’d made a conscious decision to put my own family’s reputation on the line. To put my money where my mouth was, so to speak.

  The first thing I looked at more closely was the post about the sale of a man named Joshua. The fact that it’d been in with my family’s things in the first place was suspicious. The Traylors always claimed that they’d only had free, paid servants and workers, even before the war. They said they’d kept up appearances for fear of reprisal, but that they’d never actually owned a single slave who hadn’t been immediately freed after purchase. What I found on this page might very well prove that to be a lie.

  The way the page was laid out made me think that it’d been something written by Joshua’s owner and given to a newspaper to have the ad run. Whoever its intended recipient had been, they must’ve had amazing eyesight because I doubted it would’ve been much clearer back then.

  Still, I managed to puzzle out a little information.

  As of 1853, Joshua had been a house slave, approximately twenty-eight years of age, and was described as ‘good-mannered and light-skinned.’ The paper also said that he was missing a finger from his left hand but was in otherwise good health.

  It was impossible for me to tell if thi
s ad had been placed by my family to sell Joshua, or if it’d been something my family had received after purchasing the man, perhaps with the intent to free him.

  1853. Ten years after the wedding picture Les had showed me. Joshua would’ve been close in age to Obadiah, which meant, if my family had been the ones selling him, there was a good chance that he could be one of the slaves in the background of the wedding picture. I hadn’t brought the picture with me, since there was a good chance Les might mention the picture to his parents or grandparents. The last thing I needed was for any of them to know I’d been doing anything more than humoring Les’s interest in family history. My father would most likely suspect anyway, but anything I could do to deflect attention as long as possible was a good thing.

  Fortunately, I’d had the sense to take a picture of it with my phone, just in case it ended up being important.

  After putting the photo on my laptop, I pulled it up on the screen. This time, instead of focusing on the bride and groom, I looked for darker faces around them. They stood at the fringes, their clothes marking them as the better-dressed house slaves. Since there wasn’t a picture of Joshua on the paper, I didn’t really have much to go on, but there was always a chance I could spot a man with a missing finger.

  When I didn’t see anyone resembling that description, I got myself some coffee and then went through the picture again, this time studying every male. The paper had mentioned Joshua being light-skinned. In this type of photo, it wasn’t always easy to tell the different skin tones, especially when there were plenty of white men who tanned dark.

  Then I saw it. A hand on the shoulder of a dark-haired girl who looked like she was in her late teens. A hand with three fingers and a thumb. I focused in on the face, confirming a skin tone light enough to tell me that he’d most likely had a white father or grandfather. It was probably why I hadn’t picked him out the first time through. Back then, he would’ve been told that he could ‘pass.’

  That was when it hit me. Finding Joshua in this picture in 1843 meant that when he was being sold in 1853, the odds were high that it’d been Obadiah Calvert who’d sold him.

  “Fuck.” I leaned back in my chair, almost dazed.

  This shouldn’t have been surprising. I’d suspected the lie for a long time, even as a teenager. I wasn’t naïve. Many public schools in the South softened the reality of slavery, and there were plenty of people who tried to brush it off like it hadn’t been a big deal. Anyone whose family lived in the South before the Civil War and who’d had the money, acknowledged that their ancestors had indeed owned slaves.

  The most those families would claim in public now would be that their ancestors at least hadn’t been cruel. In private, they might make comments about the ‘necessity’ of slavery. But I’d never heard another family go so far as to say that they’d paid every single one of the people who worked for them.

  I’d never been able to understand why someone hadn’t already called my parents out on it. Now, I had a pretty good idea why no one said anything. If my father was willing to disinherit me for something as simple as supporting a different political candidate, I could only imagine the lengths he would go to protect his ‘family legacy.’ I refused to believe it was because no one cared enough. There were too many good people in this world to think that way.

  I gave myself a mental shake. It wasn’t my job to judge who did or didn’t do whatever they did or didn’t do over the years. It was my job to find the truth and present it. Nothing more or less.

  I leaned forward again, this time looking at the picture as a whole. I was confident that the man in that picture and the man being advertised as for sale was the same man, but I couldn’t just put those two things on camera and come up with a whole new history for my family. That meant more research.

  The woman in front of Joshua was too young to be his wife. Maybe. This was the 1800s, so age differences were looked at differently. Still, my gut said they were related, not married. They didn’t resemble each other, though. Joshua’s features were sharp. High cheekbones and an angular face.

  A familiar angular face.

  I frowned, my eyes moving from the groom to the slave, then back again. Again. Again.

  Shit.

  “They have some of the same facial features.”

  Owners having children with their slaves wasn’t as uncommon as a lot of people wanted to believe. Most people knew the story of Thomas Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemming, though the accuracy of the claim was still being debated, even after DNA testing showed a strong likelihood that someone from the Jefferson male line was in their lineage. Even if it hadn’t been Thomas Jefferson who’d done it, the man who’d fathered Sally’s children could have been one of his male relatives. And it was impossible to know whether or not Sally had consented to sex.

  That was the other reality no one with Southern roots wanted to acknowledge. The majority of owner-slave children came from rape, whether the violent sort or the more…subtle kind where the slave didn’t fight it, but they also didn’t really have a choice either.

  If I was right about the reason for the resemblance between Obadiah and Joshua, I wondered about the how as much as the who. No family tree was ever perfect, and I was sure everyone had at least a few criminals taking up a branch or two along the way. The one thing I’d had to accept when I’d decided on this project was that I would probably find things about my ancestors that would make me sick to my stomach. Rape would definitely be one of those things I didn’t know how to handle.

  Nyx’s face flashed into my mind.

  I couldn’t change anything, not in anyone’s past, but I could try to bring the wrongs to light, to make sure that those who could be held responsible would be, and those who’d survived got whatever closure they could. Maybe that’s what I could do for my next film. Nyx could even help me with the research. It could help her deal with–

  Nope.

  I wasn’t going there.

  I wasn’t going to do that. My first instinct when it came to her was to protect, but I couldn’t decide how or why or what she did to deal with her baggage. Even if we’d been in a real, committed relationship, it wouldn’t have been my place. Advice if she asked, but otherwise, I needed to keep my mouth shut and support her.

  And do my job.

  Back to my research.

  Two hours later, I’d gone through everything in the folder, and my mind was spinning. I’d definitely found what I’d been looking for, and it was worse than I’d imagined. In fact, I was now fairly certain that I’d discovered what Nyx was down here investigating.

  And why my sister had those boxes in her library.

  They knew. At the very least, my dad knew and had given Ashley the boxes to hide, probably giving her more than the one so he’d be able to claim that they were random boxes.

  I wouldn’t put anything past him.

  The real question was, did Ashley know?

  I had a lot of problems with my sister, but I wanted to believe that she would do the right thing. If she knew the truth, though, and hadn’t done anything about it, then she was no better than our father. And if Mom knew, she was guilty too.

  I rubbed my forehead. This was crazy.

  But I couldn’t deny it. I had too much evidence, and the story was too compelling. Even now, it was running through my head like a film, like my film.

  Shortly after the Revolutionary War, Matthew and Ruth Calvert were shown in a local paper as being the owners of a rather large piece of property. The property where my family’s home had sat for generations. That wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was the article just underneath it. An article about the arrest of a slave named Zachariah Adams for assaulting his owner’s son, fifteen-year-old Matthew Francis Calvert. Adams claimed that the teenager was harassing the slave’s daughter, Deborah.

  The next article was from a couple days later, stating that Adams had been hung for the assault.

  Next came a record of slaves born on the Calver
t plantation roughly eight months later. A list that included a child named Rachel, whose mother was listed as Deborah Adams. No father was recorded. Two of the other babies had fathers listed, and I had a sinking suspicion that I knew why Rachel’s father wasn’t.

  I didn’t have a direct link from Rachel to Joshua, but if Rachel was the daughter of Francis Calvert, it would explain why Joshua’s skin was so light and why he shared features with Obadiah Calvert. I remembered now that Matthew Francis Calvert had been my ancestor’s older brother. When Francis died, the next oldest, David, had inherited everything. That I remembered from family dinners.

  Three letters and a journal held the worst of it all. It boiled down to three main points.

  Matthew Calvert had stolen everything from the Adams family. Their home and their freedom.

  Deborah Adams had married a man named Solomon Huxley whose descendants still lived here.

  And I knew those things because my family knew them too.

  My father had always known.

  Twenty-Two

  Nyx

  The thermometer on the porch of my cabin said that it was close to seventy despite the late hour, but the humidity had to put it to almost eighty. After this case, I’d never complain about New York summers again. The city got hot, but this was like walking in soup. I’d pulled my hair up, but strands of it still stuck to the back of my neck.

  Why had I thought it was a good idea to do this?

  My stomach twisted, and the sweat on my palms had little to do with the heat. Running to Bradyn when I needed someone to push the dark away made sense. Sex with him was amazing, and for reasons I didn’t want to analyze, I felt safe with him.

  But this wasn’t me running to him. I’d had that flashback, but I’d worked through it on my own. Sure, I was a little worried that if I tried to sleep, it’d come back, but that wasn’t why I was only a few feet from Bradyn’s front steps. I wasn’t bored, either. Or horny. All my usual reasons for seeking sex weren’t there.