—Now there you go, Florida said. That’s a start.
So V told Florida what she knew. About how her father thought he was much better with money than he really was, how he invested like a gambler, always sure his luck was about to turn. Except it never did. How they went from a rich round of parties at the grand houses of Natchez to being stricken from everybody’s invitation list due to WB’s owing money to half the wealthy men in Natchez after talking them into various failing schemes and partnerships and outright loans. How they would have gone under except for distant family buying their best paintings and a pair of really fine carriage horses and other valuable objects those aunts and uncles had their eyes on for some time. Except afterward, those relatives started acting like they owned her family because they finally got what they wanted at a bargain price.
—Gone under, Florida said. That’s a drowning metaphor, and death by water is said to be a bad way to go.
—The only wisdom my father has ever passed along to me was, Borrow all you can when interest rates are low and use other people’s money to invest, V said.
She went on talking, telling Florida that the main part of WB’s mess that struck home at fifteen and sixteen was that invitations to the better dances and parties dwindled to nothing, all those social occasions where advantageous matches between young people were negotiated. Very quickly—without anyone having to say a word—she understood that she had become not the least bit advantageous. She had nothing but herself as dowry. And that fundamental offering was not really in demand. Too tall, too dark, too slim, too educated, too opinionated. Also prone to moods. And yet, until now, her family had traveled only within the highest levels of Natchez society, so no handsome, honest planter with a thousand acres but no pretensions—poorly educated but smart and teachable—would have dared approach her, even if willing to overlook all her liabilities.
—Information to think on, Florida said. Old Joe’s always figuring his next move. Twiddling his fingers over a fan of cards, which one to pull from his hand and throw down. Maybe a knave of hearts.
THE FOURTH MORNING OF THE VISIT, V and Florida sat in rockers on the lower front gallery talking favorite novels. The younger girls sat under a tree in the yard playing a game of cards that sometimes involved throwing them all in the air.
Florida said, I have to be so careful with novels. Important to pace myself with them. I love words more than anything or anybody, but my mind is a feather in the wind. So I mostly read poems. A novel drains me entirely. More than one a month and I start getting dark under the eyes. After Nick of the Woods, I didn’t sleep for a week.
Florida had been V’s refuge from the challenges of conversing with equally dour Old Joseph and young Eliza. Sometimes, rarely, when an old man—gray and bald and paunchy and blotchy—marries a much younger woman, he becomes younger too, like having her at his side equals a draft of black Gypsy potion or crystal water from Ponce de León’s magic fountain. That’s what old men want desperately to believe. With Joseph and Eliza, it went the opposite way, as it generally does—Joseph kept being old and Eliza became old. Though she was barely V’s elder—and thus her age still ended in teen for the next couple of months—Eliza acted like an awful granny who had turned grim rather than feisty with age. V’s opinion was, give me an old wrinkled woman with a blistering tongue any day to a young beaten dog hump-shouldered by the fireside hoping for death to grant release. To Eliza’s credit, though, she could still rally to give V the bright, jealous side-eye when she looked particularly pretty at the dinner table.
So V said to Florida, Why would a girl Eliza’s age marry her grandfather?
Florida laughed and said, To be fair, we don’t know for certain that Old Joe’s her grandfather.
V blushed, but one of the benefits of being brownish is that often nobody notices.
V said, I apologize. That’s not what I meant. It was an expression. You hear all kinds of rumors around Natchez, some of them about my own family. Hardly any with a particle of truth.
Florida patted her arm and said, Easy down, girl. We’re past that now. I don’t know about you, but there’s probably plenty of truth in what they say about us.
V said, One way or the other, I guess we’re both outlaws. Fled to the wilderness, or driven to it.
Florida said, Let’s kiss on that, like blood brothers.
Florida leaned and pecked V on the cheek. And then when V leaned to peck her back, Florida turned her face and kissed V on the mouth.
And then V was certain Florida saw the blush.
Florida laughed and said, Oh, you’re gonna take a lot of breaking in. But while you cool off, I’ll go back to your question about Eliza and Joe. The answer’s easy. Some women feel like, if they’ve got to marry they want to marry the biggest, strongest, richest bear in the woods. Even if that bear’s old and grumpy and shaggy and stinks, he’s your big bear. He’s won a lot of battles to be where he is, and he’s not going down easy. Eliza’s that kind of woman. And I’m not criticizing. I haven’t figured out which kind of woman I am. Maybe that kind.
V sat quiet within her seventeen-year-old self, thinking about the handsome woodcutter.
—THE MAN WHO DROVE ME from the river, Benjamin Montgomery. I see him all over the place. One minute he’s here in the house coming in and out of the library and the office, then he’s on horseback studying the fields, then around the barns checking inventory of hay and
