I nodded, knowing I was asking too much.

“Maybe, why changes for every person. Some go to God, some to drink, some to eating crawfish on a pier. Maybe there be a whole bunch of whys. You got to find your own.”

“Yes, that’s what I always heard,” I said.

“Just don’ kid yo’self, girl. Lookin’s a bitch.” He flashed me a big grin. “Some folks take the short route and follow somebody else’s why. Religion got to be big that way. So did hatred, I think. Most them boys probably didn’t even know why they lynched Abraham, ’cept someone else had a reason for it.” He paused. “It be getting cold and late, sugar, my old bones need’s be gettin’ off this dock. Your bones get old if you keep sittin’ here.”

He stood up, sweeping a few dropped crawfish shells into the Mississippi. He carefully put the silver flask into his pocket and folded up the paper bag.

“Thank you for the crawfish and talking to me,” I said as I stood up.

“Talk’s cheap, chil’. The day I stop talkin’ be the day I die. Now you be on your way. The next couple of days when you finally able to smile, you think of me and my crawdad pointers. I know you got sadness today and tomorrow. But someday you start to remember it all together and the bad times won’t seem so big and the good times grow to their right size.”

I nodded slowly. He was right, I suspected, but I wondered if time was different to an ninety-year-old man than to a woman almost thirty.

We walked back to where the pier touched ground, he turned to me and said, “Now you be good, chil’. There’s a world out there, full of sadness and joy. Take what you want, don’t just let it hand things to you.” He extended his hand. I took it and we shook hands.

“Thank you,” I said. “I don’t know when, and it may take some time, but I’ll pass your kindness on.”

“You a good kid,” he said, echoing Ben’s words.

I nodded and smiled at him. Maybe I wasn’t too bad a kid. He turned and walked away, slowly, not with the infirmity of age, but with an understanding of the uselessness of haste. I stood watching him until he was almost out of sight. Then I turned abruptly and walked in the direction I had to go. I didn’t want to see the horizon with him not in it.

It was late in the day and I had a long walk. I found two dimes in one pocket. Not enough to even make a phone call. I found the keys to my apartment in the jacket pocket where I had put them for safekeeping. My apartment, at least, was closer than Ranson’s. I supposed that I would call her and let her chew me out and get it over with, but the thought didn’t make me happy.

The gray clouds kept their promise and a light drizzle started at around the halfway point in my walk. I turned up my jacket collar and hunched my shoulders against it. I hoped the old man was inside, safe and warm, sipping his bourbon and telling his favorite granddaughter joyous stories.

I wanted that. To know that life had done what it could to me, but that, no matter what, there were always possibilities. Even the gray of this day no longer seemed so bleakly relentless, but rather a fitting tribute to a man who had died. I would take it as that.

Would I trade the time I had had with my father to avoid the tragedy of his death? What if he had never been?

No, if that was the deal, the ten years with a kind, gentle man who loved me, to be ended with the horror of that night, I would take it again. By denying the night, I denied all the days before. Don’t ever let them take the joy away from you, the old man said. I had. I had let them take both pain and joy. If I had been able to cry at my father’s death, all the tears that needed to be cried, not just the few that Aunt Greta thought appropriate for public display, then maybe the next day, the next year, I could have laughed. I could have held on to the joy.

Maybe if I stopped running from the memory of his loving me, I could stop running from the possibility of others loving me.

Chapter 21

It was dark and the drizzle was veering toward rain when I got to my apartment. After letting myself in the bottom door, I shook myself like a dog, trying to get some of the wet out of my hair and off my shoulders. I decided to make myself some coffee and change clothes before I called Ranson.

I walked up the stairs, slowly, tired from the walk and the day. I had passed the second floor landing before I noticed a shadow above me on the stairs. Shit, I thought. They must have seen me, certainly heard me. Reality intrudes, as it usually does. But I must say, fate has an exquisite sense of timing.

I hung motionless on the landing, trying to decide whether I wanted to get shot in the back running down the stairs or in front charging up them. “There are ten cops behind me and I’ve got a shotgun,” I said in a loud, and I hoped, threatening, voice.

“No, there aren’t,” the shadow said. “I just phoned Joanne ten minutes ago and she said she had no idea where you were.”

I think I would have preferred Milo and his minions. The last person I wanted to see was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. I came around the landing and looked up at her.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” Cordelia said. She was sitting on the stairs waiting for me. “You look wet.”

“I am wet,” I said, as I slowly climbed the stairs to where she was sitting. “Why are you here?” I asked, looking at her.

“I don’t really know. I had to see you,” she answered.

“I have a lot of regrets about that night, but my biggest one is that I didn’t pull the trigger sooner,” I said bluntly, angry at her for being here and ambushing my raw feelings. I did wish I had pulled the trigger sooner. I had no regrets or remorse concerning Jefferson Holloway’s death. Even if he was Cordelia’s father. “I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

She turned her head slightly, away from my direct gaze. The light caught her eyes and cheeks. She had the look of someone who had cried, washed her face and made herself as presentable as possible for company, but the traces still showed. It made me regret my harshness.

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “Of course, it’s true. How could it not be?” She turned to look at me. “I wish you had pulled the trigger sooner, too.”

“Why?” I demanded. People aren’t usually glad that you killed their father.

“I won’t bother with the altruistic bullshit,” she said. “There are selfish motives.” She paused and took a breath. “My father murdered his mistress. He had probably intended that all along. She was blackmailing him. So, no matter what, I have to live with that. I’m the daughter of a cheat and a scoundrel and a murderer. But he was worried about losing all the money he got from my grandfather. So he added three more people to his list. The woman was pregnant, wasn’t she?”