Are we done? “Did you understand what I just told you? Presley is coming there to kill your father.”
“I hope he comes here.”
“You what?”
A police car tears around the corner of Main and Canal, lights flashing, heading in the direction of the pecan- shelling plant. In fifteen minutes every cop and deputy in this town will be combing the downtown streets.
“You’re playing in things you don’t understand, Penn. I tried to tell you the other day. You were a fool to involve yourself in any of this.”
“I understand more than you think. I know now why you did the things you did in the past. The choices you made.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t want to discuss it on the phone. It has to be face to face.”
“We don’t have anything to say to each other.”
“I’m begging you, Livy. Meet me one last time. For the sake of whatever it is that’s bound us together all these years. If you will, I think it will change both our lives. Maybe forever.”
This time she hesitates. “It’s not about the trial?”
“I don’t give a damn what happens at the trial. Name a place. Anywhere, I don’t care. I’ll even come to Tuscany.”
“No. Jewish Hill.”
“Jewish Hill?” Yet another landmark from our past. “In the cemetery?”
“That’s about as private as you can get.”
“Isn’t it locked at night?”
“Park at the foot of the hill. By the wall. It’s not like we’ve never done it before.”
“Do you still have the gun you had in the motel?”
“Yes.”
“Bring it. And drive fast leaving the house.”
“What time?”
“I’m five minutes from the cemetery. Leave now.”
“All right.”
Livy’s borrowed Fiat is parked at the foot of Jewish Hill when I arrive, next to the low stone wall of the city cemetery. She got here first because I took a wide circle through town to avoid the police. I park behind the Fiat and shove Ike’s pistol into my waistband, then get out and walk up to the Spyder.
Livy is not in the car.
To my left, across Cemetery Road, stands the dark silhouette of Weymouth Hall, an antebellum mansion that marks the two-hundred-foot drop to the river, its widow’s walk silhouetted against the stars. To my right is the low wall and the nearly vertical slope of Jewish Hill. One mile south along the bluff, the police are taping off the pecan plant as a crime scene.
I climb the wall and push through the shrubbery, then dig my hands into the face of the hill and begin climbing. As I near the top, a ghostly figure appears at the edge, looking down at me.
It’s Livy. Her hair is flying behind her, caught in the wind blowing up the bluff from the river. She’s wearing a white blouse, a fitted jacket, and slacks tapered to the ankles. She bends and catches my hands, then pulls me up to the flat plateau of gravestones, statuary, and mausoleums.
“Did you call the police?” I ask.
She brushes a strand of hair from her eyes. “Daddy called some off-duty cops. They got there before I left.”
“How did he react when you told him Presley might be coming to kill him?”
“What do you want, Penn?”
“It scared him to death, didn’t it? Livy, your father gave the cops what they needed to send Presley to Parchman when we were kids.”
“Really?” A hard smile tightens her mouth. “Good.”
“What I don’t understand is why my call didn’t scare you.”
She walks past me to the edge of the hill. The lights of Vidalia, Louisiana, a mile away, outline her like another marble angel among the stones. “Why are we here, Penn? What’s the big mystery?”
“You are.”
She turns back to me. “I’m the mystery?”
“You’re the mystery of my life. But I understand you now.”
Something flickers in her eyes. I can’t tell if she’s intrigued or afraid. “Do you? Enlighten me, then.”
“I know who Jenny’s father is.”
Even in the dark I can tell she has gone rigid. She turns away from me, then back, her chin held high. “How do you know? Did he tell you?”
“Tell me? God, no. He hates me. Why would he tell me?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you know this. It’s so pathetic.”
“I know it’s bad, Livy. I realize I can’t ever understand what it was-what it is-to be in your position.”
“How could you possibly know unless he told you? No one knows. He doesn’t even know. Not as far as I-”
“Your father doesn’t know about Jenny?”
She blinks. “My father? Of course he knows. But he doesn’t know, you know… who the father is.”
My mind reels, trying to parse the semantics. “Livy, who is Jenny’s father?”
“You just said you knew.”
“Pretend I don’t.”
Suspicion now. “If you don’t know, I’m not telling you.”
“Livy-”
“Who do you think it is?”
I take a step toward her, but she moves back, nearer the edge of the hill. As though she knows what I am about to say. As though she could fly from the edge of the hill if I dare speak the truth. “I think Jenny’s father is your father.”
She stares at me like she hasn’t heard correctly. Then she closes her eyes and lowers her head into her hands.
“You don’t have to say anything,” I say softly. “You-”
“Shut up, Penn. Please just shut up. You might say something even more asinine than you already have.”
“What?”
She takes her hands away from her face. She is not crying. She is staring at me with what looks like morbid curiosity. “Did you actually think my father raped me?”
Her voice is strong, but that could be the strength of denial, not truth. “I still think so. What I can’t figure out is how he forced you when you were eighteen.”
A bitter laugh. “That’s easy. He didn’t. Christ. First you accuse my father of murder. Now incest? Could you possibly be more sick?” She holds her palms out to me. “Have I done something to deserve this?”
“I’ll tell you what you did to deserve this. You told me you wanted a future together and then disappeared. You let your father try to destroy mine without lifting a finger to stop him, and went on with your life as though none of it ever happened.”
“My God, Penn. We were just kids! Haven’t you grown up yet? After twenty years?”
“Have you? You’ve been chasing me around like the lost love of your life, trying to relive our past, pulling me into bed every chance you got. Was all that heat manufactured to distract me from going after your father?”
At last she gives me an unguarded look. “No.”
“If my incest idea is so off the mark, why did you treat that poor girl like you did? You gave Jenny up for adoption, which is understandable. But she had a pretty shitty life, and when she showed up at your door looking for a little information, maybe an explanation, you treated her like dirt. And your father did worse.”
“How dare you judge me. You don’t know anything about it.”
“You’re right. Why is that?”
