“Possibly.” She released a sigh of exhaustion, perspiration beading her brow. Although I was saddled with two other pieces of luggage, I took her bag from her, and she thanked me with a grateful smile.
We checked in and squared away our luggage. Our room was standard issue: lumpy king-size bed, faded brown carpet, rattling A/C, generic landscape prints on the walls, a window that offered an uninspiring view of the interstate. Asha made a beeline to the shower, and I went out alone to grab dinner.
That soft buzzing sound followed me, as if some old television on the fritz were just beyond my range of vision. I decided I needed to sleep, clear my head. Six hours of continuous engine noise had settled like sediment into my brain.
When I got back to the hotel with two fried chicken dinners, Asha had changed into an oversize tank top and was dozing in bed. She came awake to eat a piece of chicken and a biscuit, and promptly burrowed back underneath the sheets.
All the driving and energy-sapping heat had worn me down, too. I showered, threw on a pair of boxers, and joined her under the covers. Although it was early evening, with the Levolor blinds shut and the A/C pumping out cold air, the room was so comfortable I thought I might well sleep through tomorrow morning.
As I lay there, Asha turned toward me. She placed her palm against my chest, feeling my heartbeat. Her face was a dusky oval in the shadows.
“I’m glad we’re making this trip together, Danny,” she said, voice hushed.
“So am I.” I placed my hand over hers, knitted her fingers in mine. “The journey to the family roots. Could be a movie.”
“I want to know about your family, too. I want to see what they’re like, see the kind of people you’ve come from. I’m sure they’re fascinating.”
“You can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been,” I said.
“So true.”
We were quiet for several heartbeats. I listened to the rattle of the air conditioner, the distant rumble of trucks hauling past on the highway, and farther away yet somehow close, the whispery buzzing.
“After this trip,” she said, “are you finally going to be ready for us to go to the next level?”
My hand tightened over hers. “You think that’s why I’ve been waiting?”
“You just said that you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been. Right?”
Warm blood flushed my cheeks. She knew me so well that it was scary.
But in the timeless, bumbling male manner, I said, “I wasn’t talking about us getting married, Asha. I was talking in, you know, general terms about life, that’s all.”
“General terms,” she said.
“That’s all.”
“So, in general terms, can you tell me if you’ll be ready?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
She rolled away from me, muttering under her breath. I’d been giving her that I don’t know response for several months now, and she was obviously beginning to lose her patience.
I touched her shoulder. Her skin was warm and smooth. I pressed myself against her firm hips, and felt lust stirring.
What man on earth wouldn’t have wanted to go to bed next to a woman like her for the rest of his life? I wanted to marry her. I really did. But—and this was difficult for me to explain even to myself—I felt hampered by my inadequate knowledge of my family. My maternal grandmother, Grandma Ruth, was eighty-three years old and as mentally sharp as a razor, and she had shared much with me about growing up in Mississippi, had recounted the family lineage of which she was aware . . . but I still had a nagging sense that something was missing. Some crucial piece of knowledge. Maybe a family secret. I didn’t know. Logically, it didn’t make much sense. But I had a gut instinct that would not go away, and it had driven me to make this trip.
When I had satisfied my thirst for that hidden insight I knew was out there, then I would marry Asha. I’d privately made that vow to myself as I was planning the trip, but I didn’t dare tell her. I mean, what if I never tumbled to the big secret? What if it proved to be all in my head? I couldn’t expect her to wait on me forever. A woman like her, with her beauty, brains, and career prospects, would not have to wait on any one man for very long.
If I wanted to keep her, I had to be right about this. Although I suppose I could have married her anyway, family secret discovered or not, something deep inside me would not allow that to happen, as if I would be crossing some inviolable moral fence. Like withholding from your would-be fiancée that you had a criminal record or had been recently diagnosed with a brain tumor. I didn’t think that the mystery awaiting me was anything so world-ending . . . but what if it was?
Beside me, Asha surely felt my growing rigidness against her hips, but she didn’t respond. I kissed the back of her neck. She bristled.
“Let’s table this talk until we get home,” I said. “Okay, sweetheart ?”
She rolled over to face me, her shadowed gaze probing mine. “Do you love me?”
“Of course, I love you. I love you more than anything.”
I lifted her hand to my lips, kissed it. She traced a finger along the curve of my jaw.
“Because I love you, too,” she said. “I want us to build a life together.”
“That’s what I want, too. It’ll happen in time.”
“I’ll be thirty next month, Danny,” she said.
“I know.”
“I want to enjoy being married for two or three years, do some traveling together, and then have a baby or two. Our babies.”
“I know. That’s what I want, too, exactly.”
“But the older I get, the harder it will be for me to conceive, the greater the likelihood that I’ll experience issues. I’m not being an alarmist—it’s a medical fact.”
“We love each other, we’re living together. We’re practically married already. Marriage is just a piece—”
She pulled her hand away. “Don’t even fix your mouth to say that, ’cause you know I can’t stand that nonsense. Marriage is not just a piece of paper. It’s a binding commitment we make before God and our families and friends.”
I yawned and laid my head against the pillow. This was one argument I couldn’t have, because I knew she was right, and debating the issue wore me out.
“We’ll talk about this after the trip,” I said.
“We sure will,” she said, a note of finality in her tone.
Chapter Three
In my dream, the air was buzzing.
The night was black, deep as the ocean. I walked through a forest full of pine trees so tall the crowns seemed to poke against the starry firmament. I was alone, but I was aware of eyes on me. The creatures of the night, watching expectantly.
The buzzing came from somewhere ahead. It was not loud, but it was distinct, utterly real. The warm, damp air thrummed in concert with the sound, and the hairs at the nape of my neck rose on end, and tingled.
I threaded through a grove of oak trees, and entered a clearing. A shotgun house stood ahead. It had a red door the color of fresh blood, white wood siding, and dark shutters, and looked as if it had been constructed decades ago. Orange light flickered in the front window, like candle flames, and shadows danced on the surrounding stubbly grass.
The buzzing originated from inside the house. I was compelled to go in.
I climbed the short flight of wooden porch steps. The door was ajar. I pushed it open, and stepped forward.
And found there was no floor.
With a yelp, I plummeted forward into a pitch-black abyss . . .
I came awake with a strangled shout, the sensation of falling grabbing my stomach. I clutched fistfuls of the bed sheets in my sweaty hands.
Asha braced her arm across my chest as if to keep me from dropping away. “Shhh, baby. It’s okay. Only a dream.”
I sucked in air, my chest heaving. “Jesus . . . that was so damned real.”
“Only a dream, Danny. It’s over.”
I swal
lowed, glanced at the clock on the nightstand. The numerals flashed 2:17 AM. We’d been asleep for at least seven hours.
The buzzing was still in my ears, softer than in the dream, but audible, as it had been before I’d fallen asleep.
I was certain that I’d never seen the shotgun shack before, in real life . . . yet there was something disconcertingly familiar about it. As if the image of it had been buried deep in my head, years ago, and it had finally tumbled into my conscious mind like a faded quarter from an old jacket.
Murmuring words of reassurance, Asha slid one of her legs across mine. She ran gentle fingers down my abdomen, and then lower, found me half-erect, and worked me to firm readiness with the casual skill that only a longtime lover possessed.
I reached for her, suddenly needing her more than I’d ever needed her before, my desire so urgent it was like a gnawing in my stomach. She straddled me, guided my length inside her, and enveloped me like a warm mitten. A gasp of pleasure escaped my lips. I ran my hands up the smooth, flat plane of her stomach and caressed her firm breasts, and above me, she slowly began to rock, drawing me deeper inside with each sinuous gyration, softly calling my name.
It was as if she’d felt me slipping away to somewhere dangerous, and wanted to bring me back home to her, to ground me in our world.
I gave myself over to her.
Chapter Four
When I was twelve, I was struck by a car.
I’d been riding my Huffy bicycle through our neighborhood one summer afternoon, zooming down one of the steep hills in our subdivision, feet pumping the pedals, cool wind clipping my ears. I was about to pass through an intersection that was pretty much a blind turn for anyone turning onto the road—when a yellow Mustang thundered around the corner in a wild trajectory and crashed into me head-on.
The collision sent me flying high into the air, as if I’d bounced off a trampoline. I came down and smashed against the car’s roof. I tumbled like a crash-test dummy over the trunk, and finally dropped to the pavement.
I didn’t feel any pain—I didn’t feel anything. I lay there, body contorted like a broken action figure, and gazed blankly at the puffy clouds sailing across the cerulean sky.
One of the clouds looked like a giraffe, I thought. Another resembled an elephant. And didn’t that one over there look like a big fish?
I heard doors open and slam, shouts, cursing. Then a young and scared-looking brown face blocked my view of the heavenly menagerie. He had a thumbtack-size mole underneath his right eye.
“Hey, little man,” Mole said, his voice coming to me as if from the end of a long tube. “You aaight? Can you . . . move or anything?”
I slid my tongue across my lips. I tasted blood, my blood, and in spite of my dazed state, I felt a jolt of excitement. For some reason, tasting my own blood always gave me that jittery feeling.
Another face joined Mole, this one darker, with a goatee.
“We better call an ambulance, man,” Goatee said. “Kid’s fucked up. I told you to slow down comin’ ’round that corner!”
“Goddamn.” Mole nervously wiped greasy sweat off his brow. “I don’t need this shit right now, I only been on parole a motherfuckin’ month! We should just bounce.”
“You can’t leave the little man here, what the fuck’s wrong with you?” Goatee looked around, licked his lips. “People startin’ to come over here. Nosy bitches. Shit.”
“I’m okay, ” I said.
Both of the men stared at me as if I’d risen from the dead. I wondered if they had heard me clearly. My throat felt raw, as if it had been scrubbed with sandpaper.
“Did he say somethin’?” Goatee said, looking from me, to Mole.
“I said, I’m okay,” I said, in what I hoped was a louder voice.
“Holy shit,” Mole said, eye wide with awe.
I started to sit up. Pain burned through my limbs, but not enough to keep me down. It really wasn’t all that bad.
Looking dazed and more than a little apprehensive, the men helped me to my feet. I was a little woozy, but kept my balance. My knees were skinned and smeared with blood and grit, one arm was scraped bloody around the elbow, and I felt a knot throbbing at the back of my head.
But I was basically fine.
“You sure you aaight, little man?” Goatee asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m good.”
“You need us to call an ambulance or somethin’?” Mole said.
I shook my head. “I’m going home. My mom’ll take care of me.”
While they gaped at me, I shuffled to my bike. The Huffy was in worse shape than I was: the front tire was warped and missing several spokes, the frame was bent in half, and the seat had been ripped off and had landed in the grass about ten feet away.
Anyone who’d been riding that bike should have been broken up bad, I thought. I guessed I was just lucky.
I picked up the bike and hefted it over my shoulder, wincing a bit at a dull ache in my wrist, and walked home.
Chapter Five
The next morning, my cousin came to our hotel. Her name was LaToya, but she was known in the family as Cousin Tee.
We met up with Cousin Tee in the lobby. I’d last seen her at a family reunion in Atlanta about five years ago. She owned a hair salon in nearby Southaven. I knew she was in her mid-forties and was the mother of two teenage boys, but with her burnished caramel complexion, thick dark hair, and trim figure, she didn’t look a day past thirty.
That was one thing I’d long noticed about my people on my mom’s side: they tended to age extremely well. Whenever my mom and I went to a restaurant together, the waiters, embarrassingly, assumed we were a couple. I was thirty-four, but I could hardly ever order a drink without getting carded; Asha liked to call me “Babyface,” a moniker I’d born for much of my life.
When Cousin Tee saw us, she squealed with joy.
“I’m so glad y’all made it!” she said, and hugged Asha and me both. She was flamboyantly dressed in a bright yellow blouse, a flower-patterned skirt, open-toe sandals, and at least five pounds of jewelry—gold hoop earrings, a couple of gold necklaces, sparkling rings on every manicured finger, bracelets on each delicate wrist, an anklet, and even a couple rings on her pedicured toes. She’d have no chance of ever passing through an airport metal detector.
Grinning, showcasing a gold-capped front tooth, Cousin Tee looked Asha up and down appreciatively. She winked at me, and spoke in a syrupy accent that was pure Mississippi: “Gotta tell you, Cousin Danny, this one here’s a whole lot prettier than that one I saw you with at the reunion.”
“I’ve moved up in the world,” I said, and Asha blushed.
“When y’all gettin’ married?” she asked. “’Cause I just know you gonna marry this woman. Y’all would have some beautiful babies!”
It was my turn to blush. “You know, I suddenly realized that I’m starving. How about we go for breakfast?”
“All right, guess I wasn’t s’pposed to say that.” Cousin Tee laughed, and even Asha chuckled.
We followed Cousin Tee’s silver Lincoln Navigator to a Huddle House down the street from the hotel. It was another scorching day; at nine o’clock in the morning, the sun was hot enough to raise heat blisters, and the air was thickening into another warm, lung-blocking stew.
The low-volume buzzing was with me, too. I was beginning to visualize it as a beehive buried deep within the core of my brain, and theorized that perhaps it was a symptom of some kind of developing auditory problem. But I was reluctant to mention it to Asha, the internal medicine resident. Maybe it would go away in time.
“Everybody’s so excited about y’all coming,” Cousin Tee said as we settled into a booth. “We gonna have us a big family dinner after church tomorrow. You’ll get to meet everybody.”
“How many people will that be?” Asha asked.
Cousin Tee drummed the table with her colorful acrylic nails, lips drawn thoughtfully. “Hmm, maybe ’bout sixty, seventy folks.”
�
��Wow,” Asha said. “That’s all family in Coldwater?”
“Uh huh.” Cousin Tee grinned. “We got a whole clan down here, girl. I know Cousin Danny told you he had a lot of kinfolk.”
“He did,” she said, glancing at me with a soft smile. “I come from a relatively small family, so this is going to be an experience for me.”
“Oh, you’ll fit right in, don’t worry,” Cousin Tee said, as if our marriage was a foregone conclusion. “Everybody’s gonna love you, honey.”
Asha found my hand under the table, squeezed. No doubt, she loved the idea of what lay ahead that weekend: everyone in my family naturally assuming that we were due to be wed, or were already married. Little wonder that she’d wanted to come along.
Clever girl. I had to smile back at her.
A waitress stopped by, poured coffee for us, and took our orders.
“So, Cousin Tee.” I added cream and sugar to my coffee, stirred it with a spoon. “What’s been going on down at the home place?”
“The home place?” Asha asked, eyebrows arched.
“Where most of our folks live, honey, you’ll see,” Cousin Tee said. She lifted her coffee mug to her lips, a shadow flitting over her eyes. “There’ve been some home invasions over the past month.”
“Home invasions?” I set down my cup. “Are you kidding me?”
“Wish I was,” she said.
I frowned. “But the family lives in a rural area, right? I haven’t been to Coldwater since I was maybe ten years old, but from what I recall, there’s like, nothing at all back there.”
Cousin Tee shrugged. “Our people ain’t been hit yet, but our neighbors have. Last week, they busted into Miss Lula’s place, pistol whipped her, took all her things. She’s still in the hospital up in Southaven in critical condition.”
“My God, that’s awful,” Asha said, clutching her mug. “How old is she?”
“Miss Lula’s gotta be pushing ninety.” Cousin Tee shook her head sadly. “Such a sweet, sweet lady. If she pulls out of this, she probably gonna have to stay in a nursing home. So sad.”
I made my living writing about crime, but Atlanta was the setting of all my books, and as anyone who lived in Atlanta knew, the city had its share of crime problems, like most big cities. I couldn’t wrap my mind around brutal home invasions occurring in some backwater Mississippi town.
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