“Varies.” Darlene patted my hand once. “Stay close to me until you get your bearings.”
I noticed she didn't answer the question.
Inside, the house smelled like beeswax, something slow-cooked and old wood, and the crowd was not what I expected. Not congregation. Not the deacons and their wives and Sister Ruth holding court near the fireplace — though they were there too, at the edges, familiar faces I reached for like handholds. The rest were different. Men in suits that hadn't come off any rack I'd ever walked past. Women in jewelry that had stopped being accessories two or three generations ago and become simply part of what the family looked like. They were people who had never once in their lives had to think about whether they belongedsomewhere because the belonging was determined whethertheythought it worth a dime.
I took a glass of wine from a passing tray and understood, slowly, that this was not a fundraiser in any sense I'd previously meant the word.
Something was being funded, alright. But it wasn’t a Godly affair, I could tell you that much.
Judah was across the room when I arrived, deep in conversation with two men I didn't recognize — older, both of them. He didn't look up when I came in.
But he knew. I couldn't have said how I was certain of that. I just was.
The room had a texture to it I couldn't name at first. I moved through it with my wine glass and smiled at the people Darlene introduced me to and noticed things I wasn't sure I was meant to notice. The way certain conversations paused when I passed and resumed after. The way the men from out of town looked at me — not the way men usually looked, not admiration exactly, something more assessing than that. Clinical almost. Like I was being considered for something that hadn't been explained to me yet.
I told myself I was imagining it. Thatsurelynot.
Surely.
That I was just getting used to this town and itwasn’tscary. Just eerie. All things had secrets — it didn’t mean this one came with actual skeletons in the closet.
I was very good at telling myself things as we all may have noticed.
As I drifted around the room, the burgundy silk wrapping around my legs while I walked, I noticed women. Or… rathergirlsthat I hadn’t seen before. Young — younger than seemed right for a room like this, younger than the event seemed to callfor. They moved carefully, not trying to draw too much attention and yet at the same time drawingallofthe attention because of howyoungthey were. Their eyes didn't meet anyone else's for long. I noticed one near the window in a pale dress that fit badly, like it had been chosen by someone who didn't know her. Still expensive, of course. But meant for someone… smaller. She was holding a glass she hadn't drunk from and looking at a fixed point on the wall.
I knew that look. I'd worn it.
I moved toward Darlene and found her absorbed in something with Sister Ruth and decided to not interrupt. Found a chair instead, near the back veranda doors where the night air came through and the sound of the party was slightly muffled, and sat with my wine. I watched the room and thought about the girl in the pale dress.
That was when a man sat down beside me.
He hadn't been there a moment ago. He was simply present, the way very wealthy men sometimes were — as though the room rearranged itself to produce them wherever they wanted to be. Seventies, perhaps. White-haired, immaculate, with a face that had been handsome once and now was something more durable than handsome. He smelled like expensive cologne and underneath it something stale that the cologne was working hard to cover.
“You must be new,” he said. His accent wasn't Louisiana. Something flatter, further north.
“A few weeks,” I said.
“Judah's acquisition.” A small smile. “He has excellent taste.”
Something about the wordacquisitionsat wrong. Made me want to punch him in the throat. But I wasnice,and agreeable. I kept reminding myself that. In case I forgot it.
“I work for the church,” I said, trying to sound boring. “Food bank coordination, mostly.”
“Of course you do.” He said, somehow charmed by the very prospect of my words. His eyes moved over me and suddenly I felt very uncomfortable. “That dress is extraordinary.”
“Thank you,” I managed, my fingers growing tighter around the flute glass.
He reached into his jacket pocket. What he produced was small — a charm, I thought at first, the size of a coat button, gold-colored, shaped like a cherry, stem and all — a thing you might find in a Christmas cracker if the Christmas cracker cost five hundred dollars. He held it out between two fingers.
“A small token,” he said. “We have a tradition here. The women wear them. It's nothing — a silly old custom.”
I looked at it. Looked at him.
Mercy, remember, you are a God-fearing woman. But God wasn’t always passive. Anyone who’d read Old Testament knew that. And right now, God was repeating a verse in my head:
“Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O Lord.”
So do with that what you will.
