Honeybee follows her gaze to the car. Her eyes widen. “Is that . . .”
“If you don’t want him here, I understand, and we can go back to my house until I find a place to—”
“That won’t be necessary, will it, Honeybee?” Her father walks over and puts an arm on his wife’s shoulders. “She went to find a friend.”
Honeybee meets Melody’s gaze with a nod and a tremulous smile. “I’d say it looks like she found one.”
“Oh, Mother . . . I know how you feel about dogs.”
“I’m not sure you know how I feel about a lot of things, Melody.”
“I’m sorry. I—”
“Hush. I’m sorry, too.”
Melody lets Otis out of the car. He gives a little yap, pauses to lick her hand, and then bounds into the muddy yard and looks back at her. His eyes are still mournful but his tail is wagging.
Honeybee, eyes shiny, tilts her face to the heavens. “Well, would you look at that.”
Melody follows her gaze. High overhead, a patch of blue smears the murky sky, the same shade as the beautiful dress her daughter had worn the last time she’d held her.
Harlem
“Haint blue,” Bettina Crenshaw murmurs, when Calvin lays the baby on their bed and she gets a good look at the dress.
“What’s that?” He looks up, still stroking the little forehead with a gentle, work-calloused forefinger.
“Nothing, I . . . I . . .”
“It’s okay. I was speechless, too, when I found her. Just sit down and let your heart settle, Bettina. Just say a prayer of thanksgiving that the good Lord has finally answered our prayers.”
If it weren’t for the dress, she’d almost believe it. It’s Sunday, and Mother’s Day, and the world has been especially treacherous lately. And her Auntie Marceline would never, ever, put Bettina and Calvin’s lives in danger.
But now that she sees the dress, and the sweetgrass basket he’d set on the floor just inside the door, there’s no denying the truth.
This child didn’t come from heaven. She came from low country, down south. She’s Cyril’s daughter.
Cyril is dead. Murdered, just like Ernie Fields, and the Reverend King, and countless Black men and women all over this violence-torn country.
“There but for the grace of God . . .” the famous writer James Baldwin had begun yesterday’s eulogy for Ernie.
Every Black resident in Harlem—in the country—is a target in these turbulent times. And a Black couple harboring a child whose mother is buckruh and married to a Klansman . . .
“We need to take her to the police,” Bettina tells Calvin. “Or, I don’t know, turn her in to an orphanage, or—”
“Listen to yourself, woman!”
“We can’t keep her!”
“No, don’t listen to yourself! Listen to me! You know what will happen to her if we turn her over to the system! How can we do that to her?”
What’s going to happen to us if we don’t?
She needs to tell him—about Cyril, and Auntie Marceline . . .
She was going to mention Friday’s encounter anyway, but with five jobs between them, and the funeral yesterday, she hasn’t had a chance.
She opens her mouth, but before she can say a word, the baby lets out a warbling cry.
“Hungry,” Calvin says.
Bettina, too, recognizes the sound. They’d had a son, lost him, a decade ago.
And now you’ve found a daughter, her auntie croons in her ear, as if it’s that simple.
If Bettina and Calvin go to the police, they’ll track down Marceline. Arrest her. The child will be returned to the mother, and the mother’s husband will . . .
“Go down the street,” Bettina tells her husband, “and buy a can of formula. I still have bottles put away from . . . Just hurry!”
He jumps into action, grabbing his coat and hat and hurrying out the door without another word.
Bettina looks down at the baby. Wide blue eyes stare up into hers. Then she scrunches her face, kicks her little legs, fists balled, and lets out another cry.
“Hush, now . . .”
“Her name is Amelia.”
Bettina shakes her head. Her aunt’s reckless actions have endangered Bettina and Calvin, and the child, and Marceline herself.
A grieving mother’s actions aren’t rooted in logic, but in a primal place that only another bereft woman can possibly comprehend.
Even Calvin, if Bettina shares the truth, might not find forgiveness in his heart, or the courage to risk their own lives after what had happened to his friend Ernie.
The baby cries—not just hungry, but needing her mother.
Bettina’s hands tremble as she reaches for her.
You spend years trying to forget how it feels to cradle a newborn, arms gently swaying to soothe pitiful cries; how you press your face into downy hair, breathing in all that sweetness and promise; how nothing matters but this.
You try to forget, and your heart remembers in an instant.
Tears pool in Bettina’s eyes. “Hello there, Amelia. Hello. It’s going to be all right. I’m going to take care of you. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”
The baby quiets, settling into her embrace, and Bettina offers a finger for her to grasp. Something glints on the tiny hand.
“Well, looky there. You have yourself a fine ring,” she says, seeing the little gold sapphire-studded band etched with a haint-blue initial. “Your daddy’s name starts with a C, did you know that? One day, you will. His name . . .” She takes a deep breath. “His name is Calvin.”
Part IX
2017
Chapter Twenty-One
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Amelia follows Jessie and the woman who’d introduced herself as Gitana out into a crisp, sunny morning.
Yesterday, the area was crawling with police officers. Today, Amelia would give anything to see one.
Marshboro’s main drag is quiet and lined with parked cars. The church parking lot next door is jammed. She can hear music coming from the large events hall out back, and someone speaking at a microphone.
Even if Amelia screams for help, there’s a good chance no one will hear her. And even if they do, by the time help arrives, it might be too late.
Gitana opens the passenger’s side door of a small car parked in the driveway for Jessie. “You sit in the front. Amelia in the back.”
Amelia’s heart pounds. If they get into this car, there’s no telling what might happen.
She’s tall, strong, and armed.
Yet this woman would be a formidable opponent, and very well might have a gun.
Jessie hops into the front seat. “Come on, Mimi! Aren’t you dying to get there?”
She feels those violet eyes probing into her as she hesitates.
She smiles brightly at the woman as she climbs into the backseat, trying to keep her voice from warbling as she says, “Definitely! I can’t wait!”
Gitana closes the door after her, and it seems to reverberate like the slam of a dungeon’s iron gate.
“Jessie!” Amelia whispers urgently. “She’s not who she says. Trust me. Just don’t let on!”
Then Gitana is opening the driver’s door and climbing behind the wheel.
Amelia can’t tell whether her friend heard the warning as the woman lights a cigarette, backs out, and heads east out of town toward the coast.
At the muffled thump from the car trunk, Barnes’s hand goes to his holster, and he sees Kurtis’s jaw go slack.
“Uncle Stockton . . .”
Barnes draws his weapon. “Hands in the air.”
Kurtis gasps. “What—”
“Hands in the air! Now!”
He raises his arms. “I’m sorry! I—”
“What the hell is going on here?”
“I’m in trouble! It’s bad!”
“What—who—is in the trunk of this car?”
Kurtis opens his mouth. His voice makes a strange, hoarse sound.
&n
bsp; A sob. Like a terrified child.
Which he is not. He’s a grown man, and he’s involved in a double homicide, and it shouldn’t matter who his family is, or that Barnes loves him like a son.
Do the right thing, Stockton. Right now.
“Tell me!”
Tears in his eyes, Kurtis opens his mouth again. This time, he speaks. “A woman.”
Gypsy smokes as she drives, staring straight ahead, seeing not a sunny rural Georgia byway but a rainy New York City Street.
Mother’s Day 1968.
That was the day everything had changed for her. The day she’d realized the truth about her father, and about herself. The day she’d started out to become a hero, and instead became a murderer.
Killing Carol-Ann Ellis was by far the most empowering thing she’d ever done. In an exhilarating split second, she eliminated her worst adversary and reclaimed control over her future.
Before she’d raced home, she stripped off her new raincoat like a snake shedding its skin and threw it in a trash can in front of the building Carol-Ann had exited only minutes before. The gold watch was still in the pocket. It no longer mattered.
She wasn’t going to the police about Oran. Not after what she’d done.
They never even knew Carol-Ann Ellis had been murdered.
“Another pedestrian got mowed down,” Oran commented the next morning, after reading the paper. “You be careful out there, Gypsy.”
“Don’t worry, I will. You be careful, too.”
But he wasn’t. Weeks later, the authorities caught up to him. But no one ever knew what the Butcher’s daughter had done.
They won’t know about this, either.
Her passengers have been silent since they left. Now the woman in the front seat asks, “How far is it?”
“What?”
“Amelia Island. How long until we get there?”
“Not long.” Gypsy forces a casual tone and smiling glance, unnerved every time she looks at Jessamine.
It isn’t just the faint resemblance to Oran, or even the strong one to Margaret Costello.
She looks like me.
Gypsy’s grief over Perry’s death has been a stark reminder that she’s as alone in this world now as she was in 1968 when her father was taken away in handcuffs and she was placed in foster care.
She’d done so much reading about Professor Silas Moss, and Amelia’s genealogy work, tormented by the knowledge that Jessie’s DNA exists in every cell of Gypsy’s body. All she could think about was exterminating her. She was unprepared to experience such an odd familiarity about her.
Familiarity.
She lights another cigarette and pockets the lighter as she makes the turnoff to the coastal road, considering the word.
Familiarity . . . family.
If only it didn’t have to be this way.
Family.
What if Oran had been right all along? What if there really were a chosen few? What if Jessie is meant to join Gypsy in paradise? Maybe Oran is even waiting for them there. And Perry . . .
“Where are we?” the other woman, Amelia, asks from the backseat as Gypsy navigates the quiet streets of the coastal development.
“We’re on our way to take a boat out to see your mother.”
“A boat?”
“Yes, a boat! She lives on Amelia Island, remember? How do you think we’re going to get there? Swim?”
She pulls to a stop beside the private pier where the Reel Gent waits, bobbing gently in the water.
“Let’s go.” She gets out of the car, puts out the cigarette in the sandy soil with her heel, and is about to close the door when she realizes that neither woman has moved.
She sees the look they exchange. Not just awareness, and fear, but fierce determination.
Rage surges to refill the vulnerable, hollow place in Gypsy’s heart. She takes out her pistol and aims at Jessie’s head.
“You have three seconds to get out,” she says calmly, “before I pull the trigger. Both of you. Three . . . two . . .”
Jessie and Amelia get out of the car.
Kurtis doesn’t resist as Barnes gets him out of the car, and a pat-down reveals only keys and a cell phone in his pockets. Barnes takes both.
“Down on the ground! Facedown!”
“Uncle Stockton, please . . .”
“Lie down on your stomach! Hands behind your back!”
Barnes cuffs him on the wet ground beside the open driver’s side door. Weapon in hand, he scans the deserted parking lot, aware it might be a trap. He could open that trunk to an ambush—Wayland and Colt, guns blazing.
“Uncle St—”
“You put that letter in my apartment last night. You stole my damned key from your father, and you came into my home, and you—”
“I know!” His voice is a sob. “Please, let me just tell you . . .”
“Talk.”
“I have something in the car to show you—”
“Stay where you are!”
“Can I just sit up? I told you I’m in trouble. There’s a woman . . .”
“In the trunk.”
“No, not her. It’s—she’s been . . . she—” Again the sob. “I didn’t know what to do. I just didn’t realize that she—and now it’s too late. She’s going to kill your friend Amelia, and her sister.”
“Amelia doesn’t have a sister.”
“No, her friend is Gypsy’s sister.”
“Gypsy Colt.”
“Yeah, and she thinks I’m going to kill you and Charisse, and this morning when I told her that I can’t, she said that if I don’t she’ll go after my family and—”
“Where is she? Right now, where is she?”
“Down south. She’s got Amelia and her friend in the car. I could see her—”
“See her how?”
“Her phone. There’s a tracking app, Stealth Soldier. We have it on each other’s phones, and on . . . yours.”
Barnes swallows his fury. “Where is she taking them?”
“Out into the ocean. She’s setting them on fire. That’s what she said. That’s what she told me to do to you.”
“I need your damned thumb to open this phone right now.” Clutching Kurtis’s cell phone opened to the home screen, he bends over the cuffed hands. Kurtis flexes his thumb and Barnes presses it to the home button.
It opens to a GPS showing a dark blue dot against a light blue background. Barnes zooms out. The location signal is in the sea, just off the Georgia coast. He takes a screenshot. Then he zooms in until he can see the map coordinates and takes another screenshot.
Barnes calls the desk sergeant. He relays the information rapid fire, summoning backup here and sending the screenshots. He hangs up and tries Amelia’s number. It rings into voice mail.
She’s taking them out into the ocean and setting them on fire.
She’s already out there. It might be too late.
You did what you could, Stockton. But you are here. You are here, right now.
He jabs the button in the car’s door, gun trained on the trunk. He sees it pop up about an inch as the latch is released. Then it flies upward as if someone had kicked it from the inside.
“Freeze!” Barnes shouts, leaping toward it, taking aim.
“Help me!”
It’s a woman’s voice.
And then he sees her.
A young Black woman, disheveled, in pajamas.
He helps her out, steadying her in his strong arms. She blinks into daylight glare, and then her enormous dark eyes focus and fixate on him in recognition.
He’s seen those eyes before. That face.
But she isn’t Delia. She’s her daughter. Charisse.
Before he can find his voice, she finds hers, breathless with wonder.
“It’s you!”
A frigid sea wind lashes Amelia’s face as Gypsy Colt takes the bowrider into open water. She’d ordered her prisoners into the seats in front of the cockpit, their backs to her as she steers with the pi
stol in her hand.
“We’re going to die, Mimi.”
“No, we aren’t. Just stay calm.”
“She has a gun.”
Amelia is almost certain their abductor can’t hear their voices over the roaring engine, but she doesn’t dare tell Jessie that she, too, is armed. A kitchen knife may be no match for a bullet, but the element of surprise is a key self-defense weapon.
“We can’t panic,” she murmurs to Jessie. “Be alert. Be ready.”
“For what? You can’t think we can overpower her when she’s—”
“Trust me. Be ready!”
Jessie falls silent.
Amelia stares at the gray-blue sea and sky, thinking about her birth mother. She’d been about to discover that her long-lost daughter is alive after all these years.
I can’t let her lose me twice in one lifetime. And I can’t die without knowing her. I won’t.
The boat slows. The engine putters.
Then Gypsy is there, in the bow, holding the gun in one hand and a gasoline can in the other.
She sets the can at her feet, puts a cigarette between her lips, and holds the lighter to the tip, looking at them over a flame she allows to flicker far longer than it takes to ignite the tobacco.
A lighter. A can of gasoline. A gun, and she’s using it to gesture at Jessie.
“You first,” she says. “Jump.”
“What?”
“Jump into the water.”
Jessie’s wild gaze meets Amelia’s.
“If you don’t jump, I’ll shoot you. Either way, you’re going into the water.”
Amelia clutches the knife’s handle beneath a fold of her coat and watches Jessie weigh her options, her body shaking violently, her eyes on Amelia, pleading for her to do something.
This isn’t the moment.
“Jump, Jessie,” she hears herself say.
“What?”
“Jump!”
Jessie turns away from her. With an anguished cry, she throws herself over the bow.
This is the moment.
As Gypsy turns her head to watch her fall, Amelia lunges with the knife and sinks the blade into the side of the woman’s neck. She staggers, her hand lifting to the wound, and bright red blood pours over her fingers.
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