“Ada and I… we…” She swallowed again. “We had an argument. I wanted to apologize.”
“By coming to something she told you not to attend?”
She searched for an answer and spoke after a moment. “To apologize.”
I swallowed a groan. Hailey’s argument was weak, even she had to know it.
“And this all-so-important apology couldn’t wait until morning. It was”—he paused for effect, pulling himself to the edge of his chair—“that urgent.”
Hailey thought about it. There was no correct answer.
She whispered, “I thought it was.”
The old man shot from his seat, throwing his hands in the air in exasperation. He implored the crowd. “Do you hear her? She says she thought some trivial argument was so important she had to come out in a place she didn’t know, sneaking around people she only just met, to clear her troubled conscience.”
Hailey’s face crumpled.
“Your privilege knows no bounds.” He pointed his short staff at her. It was topped with feather and horsehair, one of the ceremonial artifacts we used during ceremonies. “Shewanted to apologize.Shecouldn’t wait. So,shedecided to reject the wishes of her host and seek her out to force an apology on Ada, forget this silly little traditional thing we had going on. Isn’t that so, girl?”
“No.” Hailey shook her head fiercely. “It wasn’t like that at all. I just… I just…” Her words failed and she let out a sob. “Please.” Hailey stepped backward into one of the men who stood guard behind her. They surrounded her like she was some kind of real threat. Like she’d run or something.
“Then explain,” James said. “Silence is evidence of your guilt.”
“Or of her fear, Elder James,” I spoke up. “She’s in a place where she doesn’t know anyone.” Hailey was dead wrong, but I’d had enough of his bullying. The crowd around me talked among themselves, surprised I had addressed him in that manner.
Elder James was about to address me when Hailey spoke again.
“I heard the drumming. It was beautiful and I only wanted to see what it was. I only wanted to apologize to Ada for being a—a jerk earlier. I am sorry I didn’t listen to her. I am sorry for disrespecting you and not following your rules. I’ll go home. I won’t say anything about Ada bit—”
She stopped, her hand flying to her neck as she realized she’d said too much.
Dread rose in me. Hailey had cut herself off too late, confirming she’d seen something she shouldn’t when no one really knew she had. She could have been lost and running aimlessly in the denseforest, trying to find me, for all they knew. But now Elder James—and Nana Ama—knew for sure that Hailey knew too much. Even Elder James, usually so smug, was speechless.
The mood was shifting from questioning to decisive action—permanent action. The last time there’d been an outsider who’d seen too much was decades ago. That person never left, their bones claimed by the island and lore among the young of what happened when an enemy came in.
Finally, my grandmother spoke, ending Elder James’s inquisition and display of the little bit of power he wielded as head ceremonial priest and her second-in-command.
“What did you expect to see here, Hailey?” Nana Ama asked, her voice rich, smooth, and velvety with all of her knowledge and experience from a hundred and sixty years’ worth of living.
Nana Ama wasn’t sitting in her wicker chair as usual. Tonight, she sat on Nyame’s golden stool, preparing to pass judgment on his behalf. Unlike my golden flecks of failure, her eyes were a deeper iridescent golden hue which I knew was from when she stepped out—feeding somewhere along the coast of the mainland—before I was discovered and thoughtlessly interrupted her and made her rush back early. I looked away to hide my guilt because she took so little, and so rarely, and I had messed all of that up. I hadn’t Lighted, because of interruption or fear once again, and I stood before her a failure. I took a spot near the front of the crowd. I didn’t go to her because tonight my place was in front of my grandmother, not beside her.
If Sekou knew I was there, he didn’t show it, his face tight with anger, his hands fisted at his side. His jaw tightened and released,then repeated. There was judgment against me and Hailey coming from all angles, even my best friend.
I had fucked up royally.
Sekou wouldn’t look at me. He was like a closed book. All I wanted to do was go to him and tell him sorry. If I had only listened to him back in Charleston, if I had heeded his warnings, we wouldn’t be here. I didn’t need him to say, “I told you so.” The words radiated from his pores and from the way he held his fist so tight I thought it would break. How would he ever be my confidant like Elder James was to Nana, if I never took what he said into account? Had Naira said as much the night before she left?
Curiosity and fear rippled through the group as we all waited to see what she would do with this trespasser, and with me.
Nana Ama considered the crowd behind us, as if weighing her options on whether to handle this privately. But that had never been our way. Decisions were made in a group with nothing to hide.
“Ma’am?” Hailey could barely look at Nana Ama.
“Those things happening on Mainland,” Nana Ama said. “Your family owns the Endowment, yes? The people who have been trying to get access to Golden Isle? Is that why you’re here, snooping around?”
Hailey stuck to her script. “I’m not. I don’t know anything about that, ma’am.”
I prayed my grandmother would buy it. If pushed, I didn’t know how far my grandmother would go to protect our secret. “I invited her, remember?” It was the same conversation I had with Sekou at Hailey’s bungalow. I shot him a dirty look, knowing he’d told Nana his concerns. “Nana Ama, she didn’t see anything.”
