Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Getting There
Blanche noticed him the moment he stepped into the railroad car. His short beard glowed silver against his dark, dark face—the kind of face that would look good in an ad for high-end cognac or $2,000 watches. He stood erect in his blue, gold-trimmed uniform. The fingers of his left hand curled around his lapel. He could easily have been the captain of a luxury liner if not for the ticket puncher in his right hand. He looked around the car before moving forward. Blanche watched him work for a few moments.
The adults stopped fiddling with their bags and children and gave him their full attention. As he took their tickets, he cautioned them not to move about the train without one of the seat checks he tucked in the slot on the overhead luggage rack. He patted each of the children on the head like the Pope giving a blessing. He moved with a dancer's grace to the bump and shift of the train.
An involuntary hum vibrated the back of Blanche's throat. She reached in her bag for her ticket, then raised her head to find him looking right dead in her face. His eyes were the color of burnt sugar. He held her gaze while he moved toward her, his slow smile widening. Since she wasn't the age, the color, or the size generally considered beautiful in America, when a man smiled flirtatiously in her direction Blanche usually looked around her, sure that there was a younger, thinner, lighter-complected woman nearby for whom the smile was meant. But this smile was definitely directed at her blue-black, size-sixteen, going-gray self. Itwarmed her insides. She thanked the Ancestors that there were still men around who liked a woman with some meat on her.
"Good morning, ma'am." He took in everything about her that could be seen before he reached for the ticket she held out to him. Blanche didn't see what he did with it. She was too busy admiring his large, muscular frame and trying to identify that spicy, warm scent wafting from him. She liked a man who went to the trouble to smell good. This man smelled lickable. When she looked up at him, a smile warmed her eyes but barely lifted her mouth, just in case he was only trying to make a sister his age feel welcome on the train.
He leaned over her seat and spoke softly: "I see you're going all the way to North Carolina, ma'am." His voice had a hint of gravel in it.
Blanche turned that hum in her throat into an "Umm-hum." She was tempted to add that she was looking forward to going "all the way" but decided against it. If anything was really happening here, let him run it for a while.
"It'll be a pleasure working the Silver Star knowing you're on my run, ma'am." He tipped his cap and moved on. He hadn't tipped his cap to anyone else.
Well! She fanned herself, still grinning. When she'd cooled down a peg, she raised her head above the seat in front of her and looked around. She'd been so busy giving all of her attention to the conductor she hadn't checked out the other passengers in the car. From her seat, all she could see was the elderly white couple directly across from her—all pink and white and matching khaki pants and plaid shirts—the bulk of the man in the seat in front of the couple, and the tops of heads in seats farther along. Under normal circumstances, speculating about who the people around her might be would have been one of the head-games she played to keep herself occupied on this long train ride. But circumstances could turn out to be better than normal. She might have another game to play, a much more interesting one.
She settled into her seat, even though she was as keyed up as a cat eyeing a frisky mouse. She was lucky to have a double seat all to herself. She unzipped her small plastic carryall bag and dug around her reused cookie tin of ham sandwiches and plastic container of fried chicken. She took out her book, and her thermos of tea. Her old green slippers were wrapped in plastic in the very bottom of her oversized black handbag. She'd planned to put them on once the train got under way but now changed her mind, She didn't even pretend to have any reason for this other than wanting to look her cutest for the conductor. Good thing she'd decided to wear her black skirt and a decent blouse.
They were leaving Providence, Rhode Island, when he came through the car again. She was reading What a Woman's Gotta Do, by Evelyn Coleman. She loved the kick-ass opening and was eager to get deeper into the book, but she wasn't able to give it her full attention right now. She looked up the second the door clanged shut behind him and didn't have time to look down before his eyes met hers. He smiled. So did she.
He stopped beside her seat. "Good book?"
Blanche breathed in some more spicy and warm. "I just started it, but I hear it's real good."
"Your lucky husband a reader, too?"
Blanche didn't hesitate. "Don't have one."
"I'm a widower myself." He grinned like he knew that was good news. He pointed to the golden plaque on his chest. "Thelvin, Thelvin Lewis."
She'd noticed his name tag but had purposely avoided looking at it. She wanted to hear it from him first. Maybe because she so often felt the need to defend her own name, she'd come to believe something could be learned about people from how they said their names—with pride or indifference, as though presenting a gift or calling down a curse. Thelvin Lewis said his name as though he knew it was special.
"Blanche White." She held out her hand; his was warm and blanket-soft.
"North Carolina your home, Miss Blanche? I swear I hear pine trees rustling, the way you say your name."
And to think she'd been dreading this long ride. Blanche crossed her legs.
"I live right over in Durham myself," Thelvin said after she told him she was going home to Farleigh, where she'd been born. "You planning to be down home for a while?"
Blanche explained how it was that she was free for the summer. She watched herself calmly telling him about the whereabouts of the niece and nephew she'd been raising since her sister's death--Taifa off to Amber Cove Inn in Maine to make beds and wait tables, and Malik to Outward Bound and then to Vermont and the environmental camp where he'd be a peer counselor. "It's supposed to teach them how to survive in the woods and trust each other."
"You must be worried half to death!" Thelvin said, to Blanche's delight.
"Yeah, but I'm determined not to let them know that!"
"So--you taking a little vacation down home, hunh?"
"I'm really going down to help my friend who's a caterer. It's Farleigh's bicentennial, so she's got plenty of business." Blanche didn't add that maybe going into the catering business with Ardell would turn out to be exactly what she wanted to do when the kids were gone from home and she was free to leave Boston permanently. She also didn't mention that she was going home to find out if Farleigh was or could be made safe enough for her to live there again if she should choose to do so.
Thelvin checked his watch. "Uh-oh. I better get moving! I'll be back to see you, Miss Blanche. If that's all right."
Blanche was truly tickled by this little bit of flirtation, whether it led anywhere or not. Flirting was like any other skill: use it or lose it. She sighed and relaxed into the slight motion of the train as the backs of fac- tories, the dime-sized yards of quarter-sized houses, heaps of dead cars, and scraggly greenery rushed by her window. She felt herself loosened from the world outside the train, simply skimming the surface like a water bug on a pond. Her mind raced ahead to where she was going.
She was amused by trying out for a cooking-and-serving job--like the work was something new to her when she'd spent her whole working life cleaning and cooking in other people's houses. She was also halfway be- tween excited and nervous about being her own woman for a while after so many years as the hub of her family. Oughta take a lesson from Taifa and Malik, she thought. As they'd gotten closer to leaving for the summer, both of them had seemed about to burst with the desire to be already gone. Neither of them had expressed a drop of concern about going to stay someplace where they had no family within easy reach. Of course, she'd been the very same when she was their age. It was easier to rush off to who you were becoming than it was to walk back to where you'd left a part of yourself and try to revive it. Life was a forward-moving thing. Try- ing to go back was like swimming upstream with rocks in your pockets. But even though Malik and Taifa were eager for their summer away, they'd made it clear they'd have preferred for her to stay at home, holding their rooms and meals and regular home life at the ready, like a comfort- able robe they could slip into after their adventures in the wider world.
Three years ago, when Ardell came to Boston with her proposition that the two of them go into the catering business in Farleigh, Malik and Taifa had just settled into school and friendships in Boston. They were in their third school system in nearly as many years. Blanche wouldn't consider asking them to move again. So Ardell had started the business on her own.
"Half of it's yours whenever you're ready," Ardell had told her. But Blanche wasn't sure she wanted it. She enjoyed doing day work, setting her own hours, working for whomever she liked and dropping clients when they plucked her nerves or otherwise treated her in ways she didn't appreciate. Working alone suited her, too, with no one else's habits or needs to consider. She enjoyed cooking, though, which is what she'd mostly be doing if she went in with Ardell, and she certainly wouldn't mind making more money, if catering could provide that. But pleasure and money weren't the only considerations. There was also David Palmer.
She'd lived in Farleigh for at least another year after it happened. She'd sworn that she'd get even with him someday, somehow, but for the first few months she'd traveled the streets and worked with her eyes down, fearful that she'd see him. She'd thanked her Ancestors for shielding her from the sight of him. She'd cried with relief when Ardell told her he'd left town, then she'd left herself. Over the years, as time and distance forged scar tissue tough enough to dull the pain of what he'd done to her, thoughts of revenge had faded, too. But there would be little distance be- tween them now. He was already back in Farleigh, and she would be shortly. She would just have to see.
"Can I help you in any way, Miss Blanche?" Thelvin asked when he found her walking the train to stretch her legs. "Thank you, I'm just fine."
"I can see that, Miss Blanche. A blind man can see you don't need no help with being fine."
By the time they reached Baltimore, Blanche knew that Thelvin had three children--two boys in their late twenties, one in California and the other in New York, and an older, married daughter down in Savannah—that he rented an apartment from his mother, who lived in Rocky Mount, and his phone number.
"I got a answering machine," he'd told her, "so you can always leave me a message."
By the time the train reached Fredericksburg, they'd decided to meet for dinner, day after tomorrow, unless Blanche had to work. She was to call him. She wondered at meeting Thelvin—a man with all the early signs of being decent and interested as well as good-looking—while she was purposely heading toward a man who was scum. Had the Ancestors put Thelvin in her path as a reward for doing the right thing by going to Farleigh, or as a consolation prize?
The trees rolling by the train window were fully dressed in early-summer leaves. Blanche felt her whole body yearning toward the warmth of North Carolina, toward the smell of the South—the scent of life and death distilled into a fine wine with a green and floral finish. She would be in Farleigh all summer. Praise the Ancestors.
