that slave quarters again. You’d have never lived there in the first place if it had been up to me. It was Luke who refused to move in here. I offered him a whole damn wing. I guess now you know why. Anyway, you take a few days and start trying to get your mind around this. It could take a long while to really deal with it.”
I can’t believe this is my grandfather talking. His philosophy was always unequivocal:
“I have to go now, Grandpapa.”
I turn and walk quickly to the French doors that lead out onto the lawn. His footsteps follow me, then stop. In a moment I’m standing in bright sunlight on an endless plain of freshly mown grass.
And there the tears come. Great racking sobs that make my ribs hurt. I fall to my knees and bend over the grass the way I would if I were puking drunk. But I’m not drunk. I am desolate. What I want most is out of my skin. I want to take a knife, slash myself from my pubic bone to my neck, and crawl out of this disgusting body.
“Catherine?” calls a frantic female voice. “What’s the matter? Did you hurt yourself?”
It’s my mother. She’s kneeling in the flower beds near the front entrance of Malmaison. The mere sight of her throws me into panic. When she gets to her feet, I stand and race for the far corner of the house.
Rounding the corner of Malmaison, I sprint along the back wall of our slave quarters. My bedroom window flashes at my left shoulder, and I shudder at the sight of it. There’s my car. My connection to New Orleans. My escape. Mom’s cries fade as I slide behind the wheel and slam the door. The revving motor is the first thing that slows the spinning panic in my chest.
Throwing the Audi into gear, I roar out of the parking lot, spraying gravel against the wall of the slave quarters. Never have I wanted to leave a place so badly as I do Malmaison at this moment. Of course there is only one way to truly leave this place behind.
Die.
Chapter 26
DeSalle Island rises out of the Mississippi River like the back of a sleeping dog. The long, low line of trees stretches four miles north to south, three miles east to west. It’s so big, you wouldn’t know it was an island without crossing it.
The setting of my childhood summers, the island is as much a part of me as Natchez and New Orleans, yet it stands utterly apart from them. Apart from everything, really. Nominally part of Louisiana, it is in truth subject to no authority other than that of my family. It was created when the Mississippi River, having wound back upon itself like a writhing snake, finally cut off its own tortuous bend with a great rush of floodwater that shortened its course by more than five miles. Left in the wake of that cataclysm was a great island covered with timber, rich topsoil, wild game, and the shacks of a dozen black families that worked for my ancestors for 150 years-first as slaves, then as sharecroppers, and finally as wage earners. Floods eventually smothered the topsoil with sand and killed the oaks and pines, but the blacks worked on, raising cattle instead of cotton, managing a deer camp, and doing whatever else kept food in their children’s bellies. The only whites who come here are members of my family, or business associates of my grandfather’s invited here to hunt.
I’m parked where the narrowest part of the old river channel flows through a treacherous plain of mud. Here a dirt causeway stretches across the old channel to the island. Every spring it’s washed away by overflow from the river, but every summer it’s rebuilt, the cost being split between my grandfather and an oil company that operates several wells on the island. The river is high for this time of year, and the backwater laps against the edges of the causeway with maybe an inch to spare.
I’ve been parked at the end of the causeway for twenty minutes, trying to decide whether it’s safe to cross. A line of thunderclouds has been blowing up from the south for the past hour. If they cut loose with enough rain, the causeway could disappear under the rising water. It’s happened before.
I drove the seventy miles here in a state of near hypnosis, my only goal to reach this place where my father spent so much time, to somehow solve the tragic mysteries of his life and mine. I was conscious enough to call Sean twice, but he didn’t answer. That means he’s with his wife. If he were in a task force meeting or even at a fresh murder scene, he would have at least text-messaged me back. So…the father of my baby is almost certainly trying to save his marriage.
After failing to reach Sean, I felt an irresistible compulsion to speak to Nathan Malik. I called his cell phone, but it kicked me over to his voice mail. I wanted to leave a message, but I didn’t. If the psychiatrist is still in jail, his cell phone is probably sitting on the desk of some FBI agent. It might even be in John Kaiser’s pocket. Whoever has it has probably already put the Bureau’s technical machinery in motion, trying to trace the number of the person who called their main suspect.
When I couldn’t reach Malik, I started paging through my digital phone book. That’s one thing you do when you’re depressed. One thing I do, anyway. Go through my phone book calling friend after friend, praying for a sympathetic voice. I call people I haven’t seen in months, and even years. But today…I didn’t do that. As the rolling hills of southwest Mississippi swept me into the boot of Louisiana, I called directory assistance and got the number of Michael Wells’s medical office. It took some convincing, but his receptionist finally put me through. I told Michael I’d really like to talk to him, if he had some time.
“I’m up to my ass in alligators right now,” he said, laughing. “Sick two-year-olds, actually, but it amounts to the same thing. I’d love to see you later, though. Would you let me buy you dinner? We actually have a Thai restaurant in Natchez now.”
I was silent for a moment-or maybe longer-because Michael said, “Cat? Is something wrong?”
“Umm…yeah. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. But we can do it some other time.”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Do you believe in repressed memories?”
“Related to what? That usually has to do with child abuse.”
“Yeah. Like that.”
He was silent for a bit. “Is this a hypothetical question?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer. “Sort of.”
“Forget about dinner. Come to my office right now. I’m on Jeff Davis Boulevard. You remember where that is?”
“Sure, but it’s okay. Forget I called. I’m not even in town right now.”
“Where are you? New Orleans?”
“No. Look…if I get back in time, I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Cat-”
I hung up and put my ringer on silent. Why was I trying to involve a pediatrician who knew nothing about me and my problems? Because we’d known each other in school? Because he had a sympathetic face? Because he treated children, and right at that moment I felt about four years old?
Across the old river channel, a green johnboat is plying the shore in the shadow of some cypress trees. Squinting, I can make out the silhouette of a shirtless black teenager. He paddles a few feet, bends down, works at something, then straightens up and paddles on. When he hauls a fat, gray fish into the air, I realize what he’s doing. Checking a trotline. The static line has dozens of hooks hanging from it, one every few feet, baited with something stinky to attract the cat-fish that abound in this old channel. It’s been ten years since I visited the island, but life doesn’t seem to have changed much.
As the boy works his way along the line, I pick up my cell phone and speed-dial Dr. Hannah Goldman. Hannah is my court of last resort. I don’t call her often, but when I do, she answers immediately or gets back to me within an hour. You don’t find commitment like that in too many therapists.
“Cat?” she says, apparently looking at a caller ID screen.
“Mm-hm,” I say in a tiny voice.
“Where are you? We have a bad connection.” Her statement is punctuated by a burst of static.
“Out of town. It doesn’t matter.”
