“How can you be sure she was murdered? I heard she drowned.”
“You think it was just an accident?”
“Isn’t it possible?” she posited.
Junior listened, then chimed in. “Yarey, you can help Boise. I hired him to figure this out. If he’s asking, it’s to find out what happened, even if it was an accident. How’d she get out to the water and drown? I’d like to know, and so would Harold.”
She snorted softly. “Funny you don’t mention your father or aunt.”
Junior looked at me, his bloodshot eyes drooping under the weight of the THC. “Guess I’m not sure they really care. They’re interested in moving on. Taking care of themselves.”
“My dad wants me to learn the distillery business so I can take over someday and build this empire he imagines. Always on about the means of production, whatever that is. I read Cliffnotes on Marx. Still don’t get it. But, he’s probably right, I should just stick with what our family knows. I’ve learned a lot and understand the process all right. I’ve worked there since I was eighteen.”
“You can work at a distillery at eighteen?”
“Sure, you just can’t drink any of it. Least not out in the open.”
“Sounds like you would do it because it’s the smart thing, but what do you want?”
She opened her mouth and released a gentle note, like a finch flitting out of a golden cage.
“I could make a record. Move to a city. Get started.” She hung her head a little. “But, that’s not smart. It’s a pipe dream. The odds are astronomical.”
“Astronomical. Like the stars,” Junior said wistfully as he blew smoke into the night. “Me, sometimes I think I’d like to be part of the darkness between the stars. You know, just disappear from all of it.”
The smoke dissipated while I looked into the darkness between the stars and considered whether I’d ever had a fantasy career that lit me up the way Yarey was lit by her dream of being a singer. My path had been much more practical and survivalist. If my parents had given more practical guidance—really any guidance, perhaps I’d feel differently. My father yelled at me mostly in a drunken rage and my mother maintained an iron demeanor of passive resistance to all of life’s minor tortures. We existed in a permanent state of crisis until he died and she flitted off to be free of his anger, yet ruled by it.
Freedom was my dream, and now I was living it. I’d left my mother behind by coming back here. She hated the islands and had sworn never to return. When I came back, she cursed me under her breath, like a woman curses her child’s killer as she watches him hanged on the gallows.
“It is astronomical. Dreams are like that. High risk, high reward investments,” I said.
I wanted to continue and tell her something you’d hear at a commencement address about setting the world on fire with your passion. That nothing could stop a will that’s true. Like an arrow. But none of that came to me and if it did, I didn’t really believe it anymore.
“Your father has big plans for that money and for your family.”
“He’s been like this the last few years. He got it in his head to strike out and create one of the dynasties like the Vanderbilts or Rockefellers. You know that story about shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves in three generations?”
“No,” I said.
“It’s some kind of saying about families who inherit wealth lose it all because the kids are spoiled. Dad was obsessed with that idea. He wanted to build it and for me to grow it. He loves to say, ‘that’s what it takes, Yarelle.’”
“How was his relationship with Francine?”
“He was devoted to her, but mostly to suck knowledge from her. The Bacons amassed wealth. Not Rockefeller wealth, but they did well. Dad didn’t like how they did it with slavery. He respected what she was trying to do to repair damages.”
“You mean the reparations.”
“Yes, those. But there was something else.”
Junior leaned up on his elbow and offered her the joint. She tugged and puffed, then handed it back.
“What was that?” he asked.
“He didn’t trust kindness. I don’t know how else to say it. He thinks people are untrustworthy and kindness is a disguise to get something or use you.”
“That’s a dark position,” Junior said. “I don’t think my grandma was like that.”
“I don’t know about that, but she was trying anyway. She didn’t have to do anything,” I said. I looked back at Yarey. “Right?”
“I want to sing, that’s what I know. I also know that your grandfather wasn’t such a great guy. He was all about holding on to that wealth for the family. Your grandmother was giving it away and rich people don’t stay rich giving it away. It went against everything your grandfather believed.”
Anna reappeared from inside and took a drag from Junior’s joint.
As she handed it back, Junior said, “My grandmother was her own person. That’s what it means. But that doesn’t mean she was right.”
“Maybe she died for being so ... ” I couldn’t think of how to say it. “ ... I don’t know ... herself?”
A pearl-colored Mercedes pulled up in front of us. The passenger door shoved open and there was Gilroy.
“Get in!” He barked at Yarey.
She, like Junior, had a frozen look as she walked over zombie-like and got into the car. Her father glared at me a moment. Before the door slammed shut, all I saw was the reflection of Mojo’s surfboard sign in the dark tint.
“Does this happen often?” I asked Anna.
“Yeah, it happens. Shit happens. These men.” She jumped up, threw the remainder of the joint into an ornamental hedge and declared, “Let’s get back to it.” She took my hand and dragged me back inside where we danced and drank.
Mojo’s closed at eleven. We went to Junior’s house and snuck into the backyard. It was so quiet you could hear
