'She didn't seem to hear that part, did she?'
'I'll go over there now. I'll tell her again!'
'Well, I'd appreciate that very much,' he said acidly.
Cree stood on the sidewalk, looking at the phone, stunned. 'I – I thought we would make an effective team, Paul. I thought we'd worked out ways our approaches could complement each other.'
There were muffled voices on the other end of the line. 'I've got a patient. I've got other patients, okay? I have to go now.'
'Paul.'
She wasn't sure whether he'd hung up, but after a pause he answered.
'Yeah.'
'Is this what you want?' She hoped it sounded ambiguous, but she meant, with you and me.
Another pause. 'Not really.'
'Me neither. I'm going over there now. I'll call you as soon as I can.'
'Okay.' Just one word. She wasn't sure if she'd heard a slight softening of his tone or not.
Cree's tension eased slightly when Lila opened the door at the Warrens' tidy neoplantation home. Her panicked flight through Beauforte House had left her battered, with bruises purpling on her face and several bandages on her arms.
'Are you going to yell at me, too?' she asked as she led Cree back into the house. 'So many people to try to please.'
'You don't have to please anybody. But you do have to take care of yourself. How are you feeling?'
'Sore. Aching. A hundred years old.'
She looked it. She looked like a gray balloon someone had let most of the air out of.
Lila led Cree to the dining room, where she swept her hand toward a chaos of loose photos, albums, cards, yearbooks, and clippings spread out across the big dining table. 'I was looking at some things. You'd said you'd want to see our photo albums and such, so I started getting them out. There's a lot. There're still a couple of file cabinets over at the house, but when Momma moved over to Lakeside, she gave most of it to me damn sure wasn't going to give it to Ron, with his lifestyle. This is just the recent stuff. If you want the whole Beauforte history tour, I have a whole closetful.'
'Do you enjoy it?' It sounded stupid the moment it came out of Cree's mouth.
Lila looked at her with a failed attempt at a smile. ' 'Enjoy' isn't quite the word. Not at the moment.'
'You want to show me some of it?'
They sat side by side at the table. The room was cool, half darkened, its windows dimmed by curtains. At one end, an antique-replica colonial hutch displayed decorative plates propped up in little brackets, and Audubon prints hung on three walls wallpapered in a muted fleur-de-lis pattern. Eight matching tall-backed dining chairs surrounded the table, which was lit by a small chandelier. Again, Cree was struck by the anonymity of the decor – with the exception of Lila's tiny watercolors, this could be a room in an upscale hotel suite. There were no mirrors, and the observation reminded Cree of the question she'd been meaning to ask.
'Lila, did you break the mirrors at the house?'
Lila's hands shuddered as she arranged loose photos and albums.
'Yes.' A tiny voice.
'Can you tell me why?'
'It was… mainly it was when I was… running. When I was fighting him.'
Having seen Lila careening through the house in blind panic, Cree could easily understand how things would get broken. Still, she was sure there was more to understand here. 'Did they… frighten you?'
'Yes.'
'Was there something in them, or – '
'There was me, Cree! There was me!' She spat the syllable with disgust, looking at Cree with eyes beseeching understanding. She held both hands open, palms up in front of her chest, as if the explanation were self-evident: Because I am this.
Cree took the hands and brought them together in her own. Lila looked away, but Cree cradled them until, after a moment, the tension ebbed from them. When Lila's breathing had steadied, Cree gently freed the hands and began scanning photos.
'That's your mother,' Cree said. She pulled over a black-and-white photo of Charmian, posed in a Jackie Kennedy-era dress and pillbox hat. Though she looked much younger, the imperious and slightly predatory look was the same. 'She was pretty! She's still a beautiful woman.'
'I've always thought so. Momma and I aren't what anyone would call close, we never have been, but I've always been very proud of her.' Lila put the photo aside and pulled a scrapbook over. 'She was very prominent in society, very active with all the civic organizations and clubs. She had the style for that. I know I sure never did – it was about all I could manage to be a housewife and a mom.'
Lila flipped the plastic-sealed pages. There were a few photos of Charmian in domestic circumstances: in the kitchen at Beauforte House with baby Ron, in the garden with baby Lila. But most showed her at one social function or another – meetings, speeches, balls. One, clipped from a newspaper, showed her on a tennis court, dressed in whites, winging what looked like a savage backhand.
Cree drew over another photo. 'And this one – your father?'
'Yes.'
Richard Beauforte had a staid, boardroom look to him. In several photos, he stood at Charmian's side in a tuxedo, with a sober smile and dark eyes beneath heavy browrs. One photo showed him in front of a small boat, dressed in a checked shirt, khakis, a billed cap. He was handing a couple of fishing rods to a slightly younger man who grinned rakishly at the camera. Behind him, a scrawny, towheaded, T-shirted Ron showed an eager gap- toothed smile.
'This is Ron, but who's this?' Cree asked. 'He's handsome! He looks like Brad Pitt.'
'It is Brad. My uncle Bradford, Momma's brother. He and Daddy were good buddies. We all loved him so. Uncle Brad. For Ron and me, he was more like, I don't know, our older brother or something.'
'He's the one who – ' Cree started to ask, then thought better of it.
'Yes. Who died in the fishing accident.' Lila faded suddenly, then quickly flipped several pages. This was clearly not a good moment for recalling family tragedies. She turned a page, waited a few seconds without saying anything, then turned again and again. Snapshots of people and places past, little windows into bygone worlds. Richard and Brad in front of a new Thunderbird car. A black groundskeeper high in the branches of a fulsome magnolia, Ron and Lila grinning from the ladder beneath him. Various nameless faces whose resemblance revealed them to be Beauforte or Lambert uncles and aunts.
Another page showed a tall black woman bent over Lila and doing something to her hair while Lila grimaced. 'Josephine,' Lila explained.
'I told you about her, didn't I? Our nanny.'
The second photo on the spread showed Lila and Josephine standing together. Lila looked to be about twelve and was wearing a graduation gown and an excited, rather blitzed smile. Josephine was a slim, sinewy woman with a faint friz of gray in her hair, wearing a black dress with white polka dots and prim white collar. She looked at the young Lila with an expression of pride, possessiveness, and something else – concern, or maybe protectiveness.
Lila put her hand to Josephine's face. 'Sometimes,' she said quietly, 'when this has been really bad? And all I want to do is go run to somebody, like I'm a baby again? It's her I want to run to.' Lila's eyes went wide at the admission. 'Don't ever tell Momma I said that! Please!'
Cree would have liked to ask about Josephine, but Lila had begun flipping pages again. Then Cree spotted a face she wanted more time with, and she put her hand on Lila's arm to stop her.
'That's you.'
'Yes.' Reluctantly, Lila let the page fall open. 'I was somethin', back then, wasn't I? Uncle Brad always called me a real firecracker, and I guess I was.'
One photo was a grade-school-era portrait of a clear-eyed, pretty girl looking straight at the camera with an expression of confident amusement. Another showed her on stage with a cello between her knees, sawing away intently.
