Dark River Road (66 page)

“You do?”

“Yes. You’ve decided it’s time at last to learn some secrets. I knew you’d come. I just didn’t know when. Or if you’d wait too late.” Her head tilted to one side and she stared at him with intense attention like a bright-eyed bird. “Your poor face. People are afraid of you. You don’t give up easy. Not like my Chris. He tries
 . . .
but he knows too much. That can be a curse. It’s not always wise to know things about others. Things that can destroy them. Because then those same secrets can destroy you, too. Are you sure you want to know?”

He stared at her. Hell no, he wasn’t sure, but he knew he was slowly self-destructing by not knowing. It was a toss-up which way it’d go. Doing something was better than doing nothing. He’d learned that lesson from Mama. She’d done nothing and ended up dead because of it.

“Yeah. I want to know.”

Laura smiled, one of those slow, spooky smiles that made his muscles go tight and his belly clench. Her voice was soft, silky, a bare whisper of sound. “He’ll know you came to see me. He’ll ask me questions. He’ll be so angry. And so afraid. I like it when he is. It seems only fair.”

This was crazy.
She
was crazy. He must be crazy too, or he’d never have come here. She talked in circles, like some mad old dame from one of the Gothic novels he’d had to study in high school and college. It was even more disturbing that she didn’t look crazy. She looked like a pale version of Chris, her blonde hair caught back on her neck, her skin almost translucent so that he could see blue veins in her hands and arms and face, the white satin gown and robe she wore only strengthening the impression of a ghost.

“I met Colin in California,” she said suddenly, “and fell in love with him before my first semester at Berkeley ended. He seemed so
 . . .
tragic. Lonely. Aloof and distant and flawed. Maybe like draws like, do you suppose? Ah well. We married before he told his father about us. I didn’t know then about Bert Quinton. Not until we moved to Cane Creek right after graduation. By then, I had Chris on the way. A Quinton heir. That made things better. Not good, just
 . . .
better. Colin worked so hard, long hours doing whatever his father told him, jumping each time that whip cracked
 . . .
it was so boring with nothing to do but deal with some of those feather-headed delta mamas.”

She paused, drank some of her coke, and Chantry could almost see the dark liquid wash down her throat as she swallowed. He kept quiet, let her tell things in her own way, whatever she wanted to tell. Getting impatient wouldn’t help.

She talked of the early days in Cane Creek, her loneliness, how even after Chris arrived she had nothing in common with the closed circle of Cane Creek matriarchs, not even her sister-in-law, Cinda’s mother. Nights were the worst, when Colin was away on some errand for his father, and she took to wandering the darkened house late at night. That’s how she heard secrets, by being in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Cara was there the first night we got there, talking to her father. I heard her complaining about Colin when she thought we’d gone upstairs. Then she started in about Ted. She said something had to be done. If it got out
 . . .
if it got out about the baby, they’d never be able to hold up their heads in Cane Creek again.”

Ted
. Chantry remembered that conversation with Chris when he’d gone out to Six Oaks to demand he do right by Tansy. The portrait on the wall
 . . .
Tansy’s real father. The son and brother no one ever mentioned anymore, that he hadn’t even known existed until that night. The forgotten relative.

“Ted is Tansy’s father,” he said, and Laura smiled.

“Yes. Colin’s brother.” Laura laughed suddenly, sounding a little shrill. Chantry stared at her. “But Ted—Ted always knew where he stood. Never had any illusions about it. If he was still here, he’d be close to fifty now, I suppose.”

“So where is Ted?” Chantry couldn’t keep from asking, and Laura got a crafty little look in her eyes.

“Don’t know. No one knows. Some say he left after an argument with his father.”

“And what do you say?” he asked when she paused.

“I say he went for a swim and never came back. That he’s still swimming.”

That made no sense. He stared at her, a little frustrated, wondering how this related to him and his mother or if it was just family history that too many people knew and no one cared that much about anymore.

“So what happened that night Chris went to the hideout and you were arrested?” she said suddenly, switching subjects so rapidly that he had to think a minute, “I’ve often wondered if it started then or later.”

“The hideout—you mean the Hideaway?”

“Yes. That’s it. That place on the backwash. It’s closed now. Fallen in on itself. Ruined, like so many other things. Chris went there to see her, didn’t he?”

She knew about Tansy. It wasn’t his secret to discuss, so he didn’t say anything, just sat there for a minute not knowing what to say. She seemed to understand, because she nodded.

“Yes. I like that about you. You can be trusted. That’s rare. So many people can’t be, you know. Even those who love you. They may want to be loyal, want to do what’s right, but then it gets hard and they do what’s easy instead.” She leaned forward, fixed him with an intent gaze. “I know the truth.”

“About my mother?”

She sat back. “Carrie Callahan. So young when she came here, so pretty and elegant and nice. I thought maybe we could be friends. We would have been, perhaps, but Bert didn’t approve, said we weren’t in the same class.” Her laugh was sudden and loud again. “He was right. Carrie was far above us. You’re so like her. It’s the eyes. I’ve heard it said the eyes are a window to the soul. Sometimes
 . . .
sometimes I look in the mirror and mine are just blank. Like no one lives inside. Like the house is empty. That frightens me. Then I think that I have to save myself, have to tell someone
 . . .
or I’ll go mad.”

Too late
, he thought, looking at her, at the fear twisting her face. Maybe all this was just a fabrication, the sordid facts of an old family warped into something much larger than it was in her mind. The prodigal son was an ancient tale, Ted’s desertion of Cane Creek and his father more sad than mystery. A rift between them because he’d gotten Tansy’s mother Julia pregnant, a liaison with a black woman forbidden in his world. Quinton wouldn’t be the first father to disinherit a son.

It was vaguely disappointing. He’d expected—something momentous. Something to use against Bert Quinton, at the very least. Something about his mother, a clue to why she’d not left Cane Creek. He’d wanted facts. Not unpleasant history.

“Bert’s a wizard,” Laura said suddenly. “Rainey knew. Did you know?”

Okay, now she was getting a little too far out. He shook his head, looked around for an attendant. Maybe it was time for her medication. An end to this. Then Laura reached out and put a hand on his arm, fingers cool and holding with surprising strength to his wrist. Her voice was low, urgent.

“A
grand
wizard.”

It took a moment, then he understood. Flashes came to him, men in white sheets, burning crosses, Rainey’s frequent disappearances
 . . .
Jesus
.

“The Klan?”

She stood up. “Come back tomorrow. I have to decide
 . . .
I’m tired. My head hurts. Will you come back?”

“Yeah. I’ll be back. Are you okay?”

A wan smile briefly flashed. “It’s just that it makes my head ache so to remember things. I know
 . . .
things I shouldn’t. Maybe
 . . .
maybe I should tell you so they’ll go away. Do you think it will make the secrets go away, Chantry?”

“No,” he said after a moment, “they won’t ever go completely away. But maybe sharing will make them bearable.”

She looked at him a moment, then nodded. “I knew I could trust you to understand. No false promises, no false hope. But the truth shall set us free, right? That’s what I’ve heard all my life. We’ll see if it’s true.”

He didn’t tell her that sometimes the truth came with chains that weighed too heavily to set anything or anyone free. Sometimes the truth just made the prison walls higher.

And he held a high office in one of the most notorious organizations to ever bedevil the South, begun after the end of the Civil War when reconstructionists ground Mississippi into the dirt with taxes and stringent laws, when soldiers returned home to find family lands confiscated and their families starving, when Carpetbaggers swarmed to buy land cheap and sell it for top dollar. Maybe at first the Klan really had been intended to wrest back some form of control from lawless, conquering invaders, but it had been quickly distorted into something ugly and evil. Good men abandoned it; the scourge remained behind, men intent upon vengeance instead of justice. Intent upon persecution instead of salvation. No one would ever know for certain what the originators of the Klan had intended, though a lot had been written about possible motives, some even by the men themselves. Whichever, it hardly mattered now. The Ku Klux Klan was synonymous with hate and racial prejudice. Yeah, he could see Rainey as a member, and see Quinton as a leading member. But how did that apply now?

There was so much he didn’t know. There were things Dempsey would know. It wasn’t the right time, but when it was, he’d ask those questions.

Tansy put on a hell of a show. After the warm-up act left the stage, lights dimmed and the stage went completely dark. In the tiny glow of the candle in the middle of their table, Chantry could see Dempsey’s pained expression. Apparently, he hadn’t much enjoyed the warm-up band. Then Tansy came on-stage to pulsing music, high-energy dancers behind her, lights flashing.

Dempsey sat back, blinking at his daughter dressed in a slinky outfit more along the lines of what Madonna might wear than a choir girl. The skirt was made of some shiny, glittery red stuff, cut into thin strips to wave around her legs, while the top was short, wound around her torso like the elastic bandages Chantry wore to bind his ribs. Slivers of bare skin peeked through, her long legs were bare and she wore high heels made of the same kind of stuff Dorothy had worn in the
Wizard of Oz
movie. Tansy’s hair was done up high on her head, with lots of streamers left free to brush against her shoulders and frame her face.

“I thought she was going to sing some gospel,” Dempsey muttered with a glance at him, and Chantry just shrugged.

There was nothing Sunday School about her performance. The first song was apparently one that had hit it big on the charts because it was greeted with enthusiastic applause and loud yells. Chantry didn’t recognize it, but he didn’t pay that much attention to what was popular, just listened to the radio in his car. Immediately after the first song, she tuned it down a bit, went into a slow, sultry tune that was also greeted with recognition from the audience. Lights dimmed, she let her voice go into what Chantry did remember, that throaty, husky power that could soar clean up to the sky, so pure and emotional that the lyrics didn’t matter. He could just ride that voice to heaven.