watched you heal from wounds that probably would have killed or maimed for life any other. person. And Solomon told me once that I would never have met her if it hadn’t been for you. I owe you for that. But I don’t give a whisker about you or. your kind when it comes to my daughter. If you or one like you is responsible, I want her back. And I’ll do anything to get her back. And Carolina will not suffer one day because of it. I will not have it.” He paused and wiped his mouth and mustache. “I hope you don’t take too much offense at my manners, especially before we’ve even met, but I wanted to say what needed to be said.”
“I understand,” I said without hesitation. “And I agree. One of us is responsible and I am leaving for New Orleans tomorrow morning to take care of that.”
“Then I’m going with you.”
“You can’t.”
“I can and will.”
“You can’t, you don’t—”
“Sit down!” Carolina interrupted. “Both of you, please, sit down.”
We did as we were told and after he sat, Nicholas started to say something, but she put her hand over his mouth and he stayed silent. I watched her compose herself. She was remarkable. Practically her whole world had fallen apart, she was as physically drained as I’d ever seen her, and yet she seemed as if she had seen it coming and knew what to do.
She took a deep breath and said, “Nicholas, this is Zianno. Zianno, this is Nicholas.” We exchanged glances and a nod. I could tell he was a good man because he listened to her wholeheartedly and with faith. He had let her inside him to that place where deep and unquestioned trust is required. A place of no proof and no doubts. A place that is only held in place with love.
She gave us both a hard look. “Neither one of you is going anywhere.” She went on. “At least not in the morning.”
“Carolina, I—”
“Hush!” She cut me off. “You are not ready to travel, no matter what you say, and two days will not make a difference if and when Star is found, and she will be. I have more to say to you about that, but not now. I wired Owen Bramley four days ago about Solomon, saying nothing about Star and only mentioning that you were here. He wired back that he’d be here in five days with ‘extra cargo,’ whatever that means. I want you to stay until then. I am going to hold a gathering for Solomon, not a service, more of a ‘remembering.’ I owe it to him. We all do.”
“All right,” I said, “I’ll stay, but only until I’ve paid my respects to Solomon, then I’m gone.”
“And I with him,” Nicholas said.
Carolina turned and looked at him, almost breathing him in, she was so close. She reached up with her hand and traced his features with her fingers, then whispered to him, “You cannot help, not with this, my love.”
He took her hand away and held it carefully in his. “Christ, Carolina, what am I supposed to do? She’s my only daughter.”
Carolina glanced at me for the briefest moment, turned back and said, “Stay with me, Nicholas. Please.”
“But why?”
“Because I’m pregnant.”
There was a full ten seconds of stunned silence. Nicholas was trying to make sense of so many mixed feelings, he couldn’t begin to form a coherent thought or sentence. For some reason, I could only think of one thing to say, something I’d never said. I said, “Great Yahweh!”
“Yes,” she said and rose up out of her seat. She picked up the coffeepot and felt the sides for warmth. She looked to the counter for cups and went to get them. Nicholas and I watched. “Yes,” she said again. She came back with three cups, two hooked in one finger, and set them down. She reached into the pocket of her blouse, taking out a handkerchief and wiping her nose, which was as red as her eyes. She sat down again and gave her hand back to Nicholas. He still had not found a response. She looked over at me and said, “Another thing, Z. You cannot afford the luxury of what I see in your eyes if you intend to bring Star back whole and healthy.”
I waited a moment, almost afraid to ask, knowing she would get it right, but also knowing there was no stopping it. Not now.
“What do you see?” I finally asked.
“You must let it go, Z, for Star’s sake.”
“What? Tell me.”
“Hate. Hate and vengeance is what I see.”
I watched her and watching her was like staring into moving water. You surrender, and in surrendering, are revealed. “I’ll find Star,” I said. “That much I promise.”
She moved again, this time to the other end of the kitchen and a drawer in the sideboard. She withdrew something wrapped in a scarf and brought it back, laying it gently on the table. “You will need this, not just for your own peace of mind, but when you find Star, she will recognize this, no matter what she’s been through. The scarf is hers too.”
I unwrapped the scarf. It was silk and hand-painted with pictures of Chinamen caught in a storm at sea. Inside was Mama’s baseball glove.
Suddenly Nicholas found his voice. He almost shouted, “Carolina, how long have you known you were pregnant?”
I looked up and she was still looking at me. “Is this what Nicholas found earlier?” I asked. “When he was talking about someone vanishing?”
“Yes,” she said.
I turned slightly and looked at Nicholas. What I’d asked had made him curious. “How did you know that?” he asked.
“It’s not important, not now anyway, but tell me, was it Li you were talking about? Was it Li who vanished?”
He sat down in the chair next to Carolina and dragged it closer to her, putting his arm around her shoulders. They leaned their heads together.
“Yes,” he said. “It was Li, but I’m not surprised. He never said hello; why should he say good-bye?”
She started to pour the coffee and I stopped her. “No more coffee,” I said. “It’s your turn to heal.”
Rain fell all the next morning and most of the day. It was a September rain and the air was chilled by it. Carolina and Nicholas slept in. I wandered the grounds and the neighborhood, staying close by in case Owen Bramley arrived, but he never did. It felt good to walk in the rain. I stepped into the kitchen of the big house to dry off and ran into Ciela, who was going shopping for Solomon’s “remembering.” I asked her where the other girls and staff were and she said Carolina had closed the “house” and let everyone go, but Ciela said she would not leave while the child was still missing; she owed Carolina that much.
Listening to her, I walked to the far end of the kitchen and noticed an alcove with a door just beyond it. I asked her where the door led and she told me it was the inside entrance to Li’s room. I opened the door and walked into the tiny, empty space in which he had lived. I wondered about the odd man who had spent his life devoted to Solomon for a reason I never did understand. I wondered where he was and knew somehow that he was probably not on his way back to China. I looked out at the rain through the one narrow window and across to the “Honeycircle.” I thought I would have a violent jolt of memory, but I didn’t. I only thought of what I must do. I had to get to Unai and Usoa. Why had they told me the Fleur-du-Mal was in New Orleans when he was in St. Louis, most likely all along? I had to find some truths. I had to talk to Eder and find out if she might know what Baju had meant when he told me “this is not about theft.” I knew what my heart felt about Opari, but I had to clear it in my head. And I had to find Star. If I was going to kill the Fleur-du-Mal, I had to find Star first. Sailor, Geaxi, even Opari, would have to wait. I leaned my head against the window and watched the raindrops run down the glass. One drop ran into the next, then the next, and the next.
I stayed in Solomon’s room that night and, for the first time in years, slept with Mama’s glove as a pillow.
There was a reason deeper than mere recognition of Solomon’s passing in Carolina’s gathering, her “remembering.” She knew instinctively the emptiness that others felt could and should be filled, if only temporarily,
