there and watched him.”
“It’s not your job to keep that boy from blowin’ sky high if that’s what he needs to do about all this. Not if it costs you your mind.”
“So you think I should go to the police?”
“I think you made up a theory because it gives you something to
“That’s not true.”
“Maybe.
“Is that why you’re here? ’Cause you just wanted to give me a bunch of advice?”
“No. I’m here because you were right about one thing.”
“Which thing?”
“My column was crap. What that boy did . . . it was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in my life. And I just couldn’t go there. So as a result, my column . . . well, it was crap. Also . . .”
“What?”
In the long silence that ensued, Marissa Hopewell seemed to be summoning her courage. For a crazy instant, Ben thought she was going to ask him out on a date. Finally, she said, “You
“Orleans
• • •
Peyton Broyard was on the front porch, sucking nervously on a Virginia Slim, when Marissa went to leave. “God damn you,” Peyton whispered.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry. I just . . .” She exhaled a long drag through pursed lips, angling the smoke stream in the opposite direction from where Marissa stood just outside the front door; it was an oddly polite gesture, given her angry greeting. “This whole Delongpre thing. It’s awful, but I thought I might have a shot . . . I just listed the house. My sister, she lives in St. Louis. I’m going to move there as soon as it’s sold.”
“You were eavesdropping?”
“Once he has the diploma, I’ll stop. Until then. My house, my surveillance rules. Okay?”
Marissa nodded and showed the woman her palms.
“You got kids?” Peyton asked.
“No.”
“Pity. If you did, you might think twice about having Ben hang out at your office every day?”
“I think your son has some real investigative skill. He just needs to learn how to focus it.” Peyton’s laughter turned her next drag into a series of light coughs.
“A shot at what?” Marissa asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Just now. You said you thought you were going to have a shot at something. With Ben. What did you mean?”
“He’s just like his father with this damn city. The two of them, they see
“It’s a summer internship, Ms. Broyard. I wouldn’t say we’re deciding his fate here.”
Peyton stamped out the cigarette in a tiny ashtray on the porch rail. The street around them was quiet and oak-shadowed, save for the pinpoint spotlights set within the manicured front lawns of the surrounding mansions. To Marissa, beholding the beauty of the Greek Revival facade was like taking a sip of champagne studded with broken glass; the Doric and Ionic columns and the soaring keyhole doors always appeared edged with the blood of field slaves.
“I keep having dreams,” Peyton Broyard said, as she studied their beautiful surroundings with an expression that said she had come to regard them as threatening. “The same dream, really. About it all just getting washed away . . . But maybe that’s just ’cause of what happened to them. The Delongpres, I mean.”
“I didn’t think we knew what happened to the Delongpres.”
“Well, they had to have gone into the bayou, right? I mean . . .” She cut her eyes to the door to make sure no one was listening, then she whispered, “They had to have
“A bayou has almost no currents to speak of. If they had drowned, the bodies probably would have turned up by now.”
“So . . . what? What do you think happened?”
“I think no one knows.”
“That won’t be good enough for him,” Peyton said.
“The only Press Club Award I’ve ever won was for a column about levee protection in St. Bernard Parish. They don’t even like black folks in St. Bernard Parish.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying if your son’s got any real knack for journalism, he’ll have to learn what we all do. You do your best work when you’re not working your own agenda.” Marissa had never put it quite that succinctly before, and now that the words we’re out of her mouth she wasn’t quite sure she believed them. Peyton Broyard didn’t look like she was all that sold on them either.
“I see . . . okay. Well, good luck, Ms. Hopewell.”
“Good evening, Ms. Broyard.”
“Drive safe now.”
As she slid behind the wheel of her Prius, Marissa gave herself some credit for not firing off her mouth at Peyton Broyard over her recurring flood nightmare. As if anything could wash the Garden District away, perched as it was on the highest, safest ground in the city. If a deluge ever did come, it would be the poor black folks in her neighborhood who’d see their whole lives swept away in an instant.
But the woman was right; her nightmare probably had more to do with her own dark imaginings of what fate might have befallen the Delongpres. Although there had been a wire story just that afternoon. Apparently the Atlantic storm season that year was poised to produce some of the strongest hurricanes on record.
III MARSHALL
11
ATLANTA
MAY 2013
The nurse who had saved Marshall Ferriot’s life liked to take long walks in the morning. To the other joggers and bicyclists in Freedom Park, Arthelle Williams probably gave off the unhurried air of a retiree. But if you studied her the way Allen Shire had been hired to do, you could make out her stunned, thousand-yard stare and the white-knuckled grip with which she held her purse on her lap, even though there was no one within striking distance of her favorite bench and the halo of shifting shade offered by the elm branches overhead.
