Persuasion

by Martina Boone

  Pru looked around with an expression that reminded Barrie of Mark talking about his drag-queen glory days, and then she stopped beside the nearest stall and traced the empty name plate. “Some of my happiest moments were spent in here,” she said. “Here and on the back of a horse.”

  Her shoulders had hollowed, but she stiffened when Barrie went to hug her, as if she didn’t want to be touched. Crossing briskly to the door on the right, she threw it open to reveal what had clearly been a tack room. Neatly buckled bridles coated in thick layers of dust hung beside a few cloth-covered saddles that still sat on racks mounted to the wall. Beneath each saddle, a tack trunk held the name of a long-dead horse engraved in large script letters: Cordelia, Yorick, Claudius, Orlando, Hermione . . .

  Barrie smiled at that. “Hermione?” she asked.

  “From The Winter’s Tale,” Pru said. “Watsons have been naming their horses after Shakespeare’s characters since before the American Revolution, so my choices were limited. But she was a wonderful mare. I wish I’d had her longer.”

  Barrie braced herself for an answer she wouldn’t want to hear, but she couldn’t help asking. “What happened to her?”

  “My father.” Pru backed out of the room. “He sold all the horses after Lula left.” Standing in the aisle again, she hugged her arms around her waist and stood staring longingly at the rows of empty stalls. “I shouldn’t have let him do that. I should have stood up to him, stopped him. You know, I watch you and the way you quietly go do whatever you think needs doing . . . It’s frustrating to think that sneaking out with Seven on a few dates was the biggest act of rebellion in my entire life, and I stopped even that when Lula left. Maybe if I hadn’t . . .” She shook her head once, slowly, and then looked hard at Barrie. “On the other hand, maybe I need to be a little bit more like my father.”

  There was no way in which Pru wanting to be more like Emmett could ever bode well. “What do you mean?” Barrie asked.

  “Isn’t there something you want to tell me?” Pru crossed her arms, and her expression was closer to stern and implacable than Barrie had ever envisioned it could appear.

  “Seven told you about Cassie’s hearing,” Barrie said, closing her eyes. She didn’t even bother to pretend it was a question. Of course Seven was going to call Pru the second Barrie’s back was turned.

  “The question is, why didn’t you tell me? I’ve been waiting for you to bring it up, to explain. Or better yet, you could have tried talking to Seven about it before you went and said something to the judge. Or spoken to me. Honestly, we’re not trying to smother you. I don’t want you to feel like that, but it is our job to keep you safe. I’m not your mother, and Lord knows I don’t have any experience mothering anyone, but I thought we were friends. I hoped you knew that you could come and talk to me if you were trying to work something out for yourself.”

  The sunlight slanting in through the open doorway suddenly felt too bright, too revealing. Something small and cold hardened in Barrie’s chest, as if the lump in her throat had sunk down to her heart when she swallowed, because Pru’s voice had trembled when she’d said she wasn’t Barrie’s mother. And it occurred to Barrie that Emmett’s refusal to let Pru see anyone after Lula had run away had cost Pru not only the chance of a future with Seven, it had taken away any children that Pru and Seven might have had together.

  Her first instinct was to tell Pru everything. Tell her about what Seven had done to Eight, and about Obadiah and the lodestones, and the chance that maybe Obadiah could remove the Beaufort gift and set both Eight and Seven free. But Obadiah’s instructions had been very clear. Even the thought of mentioning Obadiah made Barrie’s mouth feel oddly dry.

  “Did you know that Seven gets the migraines, too?” she asked softly instead. “So does Cassie. That’s why I did it.”

  “I’m sure you meant well—that’s not the point.” Pru went to the door across the aisle and pushed it open into a room that held nothing but dust, a few dried wisps of hay, and a stack of empty burlap feed sacks. “But one way or another, you’re letting your cousin rope you in again, and that’s going to land you right back in trouble. I can already see it coming.”

  Barrie shook her head emphatically. “I promise that I’m not falling for any more of Cassie’s sob stories, but this is a question of fairness. It’s not fair for her to suffer from migraines every day she’s in jail. That would be a bigger punishment than a judge or jury knew they were giving her.”

  “How is it fair for her to get away with what she did?”

  “She’s not getting away with it. She still has to make amends in the pretrial intervention program.” Casting a smile at Pru, Barrie tried to coax her to see the humor in the situation. “Honestly, can you picture Cassie in an orange jumpsuit, picking up trash on the side of the road? For her, that will be a worse punishment than just about anything else they could give her.”

  “You’d be safer with her in jail.” Pru refused to be distracted. Without waiting for Barrie to answer, she closed the door on the empty room and walked out of the stable building with her back as stiff as an exclamation point. Barrie shut the double doors outside and retrieved the toolbox before running to catch up.

  On the front steps of the house, Pru stopped and turned abruptly. “I’ve been trying my hardest not to be upset with you ever since Seven called and told me what you did. I’ve tried, and I’m failing. What upsets me most is that being mad makes me a lesser person than I hoped I was. Logically, I understand that having Cassie out of jail doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll have an opportunity to hurt you again. But I know how that family winds people around their fingers.” With a sigh, she rubbed her hands together, coming about as close to wringing her hands as anyone Barrie had ever seen. “I admire you for trying to be fair, but at least promise me you won’t have anything to do with her. Can you do that much?”

  Barrie wanted so much to promise. Her head felt too heavy on her neck as she shook it. “I’m sorry, but I think I need to go to Wyatt’s funeral, Aunt Pru.”

  Pru stared blankly, and then looked up at the sky, as if Barrie had exhausted her patience. “What in heaven’s name for?”

  “I need . . .” Barrie let her voice trail off. Various possible answers swirled around like kaleidoscope images while Barrie searched for a way to answer without actually uttering a lie. What did she need?

  She needed to convince Cassie to let Obadiah do whatever he wanted to do at Colesworth Place, but the more she thought about that, the more she realized she still didn’t know exactly what that would be. She needed time to talk to Cassie, which Cassie wasn’t likely to give her on the phone. She also needed to convince Cassie to listen, which wasn’t Cassie’s strength at the best of times.

  “Before Cassie locked us in the tunnel,” Barrie said, “she told me that no matter what I did in my life, people would always forgive me because I’m a Watson, like they would always blame her because she’s a Colesworth. She was right. People were still nice to me in town today.” The image of Ryder Colesworth knocking into their table surfaced, but she pushed it firmly away. “I’m not saying I can forgive Cassie, but we can’t keep fueling the feud without expecting the fire to burn us all to pieces.”

  “You can’t be the only one trying to make peace, either,” Pru said. “People like Cassie take advantage of that.”

  “Wyatt and Emmett are both dead,” Barrie said, and her lips felt stiff on the word. “They were the ones who hung on to the feud. Don’t you see? Going to the funeral would be a gesture for Cassie and Sydney. A chance to show the whole town that we can forgive and we don’t have to go on the way the Watsons and the Colesworths have for the past three hundred years.”

  “I could ground you.” Pru snatched the toolbox away from Barrie.

  “You could. But I hope you won’t.”

  “You’re not playing fair. How am I supposed to argue against kindness?”

  “Hopefully, you’re not supposed to,” Barrie said.

  A
faint smile squeezed the corners of Pru’s eyes for a moment before it died. “Cassie and her mother aren’t likely to want you at the funeral.”

  “I know, but at least I’ll have made a gesture.”

  Pru walked through the foyer and stopped at the closet beneath the stairs. She set the toolbox back inside, then closed the door hard enough for the sound to echo off the ceiling before she turned back to Barrie.

  “All right,” she said. “On one condition. If you’re going to insist on going, I’ll take you myself. Unless you want to see more of that smothering in action, I also suggest we don’t mention the funeral to either one of the Beauforts until well after it is over.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  At the entrance to Colesworth Place, Pru swerved to avoid a pothole the size of a swimming pool. The black Mercedes groaned and quivered in its old age, and Pru’s hands tightened on the wheel.

  “Not to speak ill of the dead,” she said, “but you’d think with all the drug money Wyatt Colesworth spent fixing up the plantation outbuildings, he could have spent a little to fix the road.”

  “Different things matter to different people,” Barrie said, staring out the window.

  “What on earth possessed him to put in an asphalt driveway in the first place? It was criminally stupid. Not to mention historically inaccurate. Hubris, that’s all it was, you mark my words. Every Colesworth has more than enough of that to go around.”

  “Maybe it had something to do with smuggling drugs. Gravel makes noise and dust. Asphalt is quieter. I’d guess he’d have to have been thinking about those kinds of things.”

  Pru sent her a worried glance. “Are you positive you want to do this?”

  “Of course,” Barrie fibbed. But thanks to Obadiah, she had no choice.

  Just being at Colesworth Place scraped her nerves. Driving through the open gate with its oak canopy of weeping moss, she couldn’t help remembering being there to watch Cassie’s performance of Gone with the Wind, after which Eight had peeled out onto the main road as if the devil were behind him. That had been the first time Wyatt had threatened Barrie.

  Still, the memories weren’t all bad. Driving to the beach afterward with Eight, kissing him, talking quietly as they sat together on the moonlit sand . . .

  How was Barrie going to keep Eight from finding out she’d come to the funeral behind his back? He would be furious when he realized. Then there was Seven’s confession, and Obadiah. Too many secrets.

  She directed Pru toward the parking lot, which was empty except for a sedate beige Toyota with a GOD ANSWERS KNEE-MAIL bumper sticker. After parking alongside the car, Pru sat with her hands tight on the wheel, fixedly staring down the path that led toward the modern house and the outbuildings Wyatt had painstakingly restored.

  “We can’t be the only ones here, can we? Did we get the time wrong?” Barrie opened the door to slide out onto the sweltering asphalt. She rubbed her temple and studied the empty lot.

  “This is what was in the paper. Even if no one came for Wyatt, I’d have thought they’d be here for Marie—that’s Cassie’s mama.” Pru got out of the car and pushed the straps of her big white purse up to the crook of her elbow in a movement that suggested she was girding herself for battle. “Marie’s got three sisters, and all of them are married with children. Then there’s her mama, Jolene Landry, not to mention the folks on the Colesworth side. Maybe they all parked beside the house?”

  From her tone, Pru wasn’t convinced, and when they emerged from behind the line of trees that hid the parking lot from the rest of the property, there were no other cars parked anywhere.

  “Well, that’s a shame,” Pru said. “Might not be such a bad thing you and I came, after all. It’d be a shame for folks to punish Marie for Wyatt’s mistakes. She’s got to be feeling bad enough for marrying him in the first place. Much less staying with him all these years.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t figure out how to get away,” Barrie said. “Or maybe she didn’t want to leave if it would hurt Cassie and Sydney. We can’t know what she was thinking.” Barrie was coming to realize that trying to understand a family when you weren’t right there with them was like looking through a window into a darkened house.

  She and Pru skirted the Colesworth cemetery, which was enclosed by wrought-iron fencing. A pull of loss seeped out of it and made her wince. Cemeteries were full of loss, but they had never felt lost to her before. They’d always been a place people went to find those who had left them behind. Maybe the open grave was what made the difference, like a hole in the earth that symbolized the hole in the world that someone left behind.

  Metal chairs and a white canvas awning stood alongside the hole, and all around, crosses and slabs and marble angels gave testament to long-past sorrows. Soon Wyatt Colesworth would be one of them, nothing but a marker above a coffin pinned into place by thousands of pounds of earth.

  A tide of panic swept over Barrie so fast and so viscerally that it made her stumble and lose her breath.

  Pru reached out to steady her. “You all right?”

  “Just caught my heel.” Barrie took a gulp of air.

  The thought of being buried . . . Too clearly, she remembered wondering if she and Eight would die in the tunnel when Cassie had locked them there. She remembered how the dirt and bricks had taken on weight and presence, closing in until she had felt she couldn’t breathe. They had escaped; it had all ended well. But human memory clung to pain and terror so much harder than it grasped at joy.

  Collecting herself, Barrie forced the thought aside and hurried to catch up with Pru. They reached the path leading to the restored shell of the old brick chapel.

  Set back beneath the oaks a hundred yards from the defiantly broken columns of the old Colesworth mansion, the building was a barren contrast to the overgrown and lovely chapel at Watson’s Landing. If it was due any deference as a place of worship, Cassie refused to acknowledge it. Looking bored and sullen in a bright red shirt and matching slacks that set off her roses-and-cream skin and the long, dark waterfall of her hair, she stood outside the door with her mother; her younger sister, Sydney; an elderly woman; and a thirtysomething African American minister.

  In a somber navy dress, Sydney was a pale and more sedate reflection of her older sibling. She, at least, was listening politely to what the minister said, and that fact didn’t seem to be lost on the elderly woman, who, judging by the family resemblance, was obviously Cassie’s grandmother. The narrow-eyed disapproval she threw at Cassie, however, along with the salt-and-pepper hair scraped back into an austere bun, and the deep creases of grimness from nose to mouth, made Jolene Landry appear about as far from grandmotherly as it was possible to get. She was the one who first noticed Pru and Barrie. Stopping midsentence as Barrie and Pru trod up the path, she elbowed Marie Colesworth in the ribs.

  Marie rushed forward. “Pru Watson! Isn’t it kind of you to come? And Barrie, too. Thank you.” She clasped Pru’s hand in both of hers and offered Barrie a smile that managed to be both sad and happy at once, but then she bit her lip and gave a furtive glance around. “You’ll have to pardon the lack of attendance. I’m sure everyone will be along directly. Unless I managed to tell them all the wrong time or day of the week. I swear, I’ve been about as useful as a wig on a porcupine the past few days.”

  Her own hair was as stiff as a wig, teased and sprayed and held back with an alligator clip, and the expertly applied makeup couldn’t disguise the deep bruises beneath her eyes. She seemed worn down and worn out, and Barrie wondered how on earth you managed to look yourself in the mirror after discovering that the man you’d been sleeping beside for twenty-odd years was a drug dealer and a murderer. Or had she known all along?

  Pru didn’t seem to know what to do, but good manners came to the rescue. “I’m truly sorry for your loss, Marie. I know it’ll be hard on you and the girls without Wyatt here.”

  Barrie hadn’t even thought what she would say about Wyatt’s death. How did she express regret s
he didn’t feel? Abruptly, she felt ashamed for being there under false pretenses. All she’d been thinking about was how to find a way to speak to Cassie about Obadiah. That task had seemed impossible enough. Now here was Cassie’s mother beaming at her, as if everything Barrie had told Pru in the stables was true and not some made-up excuse.

  “I’m sorry, too,” she mumbled.

  As a statement, it was hopelessly incomplete. There were so many ways she could have finished that sentence:

  I’m sorry your husband was a son of a bitch.

  I’m sorry your husband killed my father.

  I’m sorry your husband burned my mother and ruined her life.

  I’m sorry your husband tried to kill me.

  Pressing her tongue into the roof of her mouth, she stared at the small gold cross that hung in the V of Marie Colesworth’s stark black dress.

  After releasing Pru, Cassie’s mother reached down and clutched Barrie’s hands. “The lawyer told me what you did, speaking to the judge for Cassie. I know she doesn’t deserve your generosity after what she did. But I’m grateful. We’re all grateful.” She glanced back at the door, where Cassie had half-turned away, still pretending boredom, while the minister, Sydney, and Jolene Landry made an obvious effort toward polite conversation. “Cassie, honey, come on over here and say ‘thank you.’ ”

  Standing three feet from the wall of the chapel, Cassie still managed to give the impression that she was leaning nonchalantly, observing the scene as if it had nothing to do with her. At first when her mother called her over, she didn’t respond at all, and then she approached very slowly and offered up one of her dazzling Scarlett O’Hara smiles.

  “Imagine seeing you here, Cos,” she said. “You didn’t have anything else to do today?”

  “Cassie!” her mother snapped. “You owe Barrie a debt of gratitude, not to mention an apology. I know you’re sorry for what you did.”