Page 47 of Meet Me on Greenwood

"Ready to see your room?"

As soon as I entered, I said, "This is too much. Truly I don’t need all of this." It was almost an exact mirror of Rita’s quarters, only the walls were painted deep green and white. The bed was made of iron instead of wood, and there was no vanity—only a large claw-foot tub.

Rita sat on the bed. "Are you kidding? My mother lives to entertain guests."

"I just don’t understand why you would go to all this trouble. For Dr. Whitaker? Is he a family friend?"

She wrinkled her nose. "No, we mainly keep to ourselves. I don’t know him that well. I think he is only an acquaintance of my father."

"Then why?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I don’t know. It is what we do for one another around here. We look after our own. I just assumed that is how it is everywhere."

"I don’t think so."

"How much of your past do you remember?" she asked.

I sucked in a breath, trying to think of an acceptable answer. "Not much, I’m afraid. My name, that is about it."

"It’s kind of neat when you think about it." She must have realized what she said because she looked slightly embarrassed. "I mean not neat, but—an opportunity for a new start. I’d kill for that."

"I suppose."

"Well, I’ll give you some time to settle in," she said. "We have dinner promptly at 5:00 and it is Wednesday, so we will be at church into the evening."

"Church?""Yes," she sighed. "We are not allowed to miss a single service. I apologize in advance."

The church was not how I remembered it.

As a child, I’d been to Mount Zion Baptist more times than I could count but that church and the one I’d just walked into were separated by a century of living. The pulpit was simpler, unadorned, and the Bibles in the pews were worn soft at the spines as if they were actually being read, not set out like decorations. The stained-glass windows rose several feet on either side, throwing colored light across the congregation in long rectangles of amber and blue.

Rita pointed out John Wesley and his wife Lulu Williams who sat in the front row with their family. "They are the wealthiest patrons of the church. They own the movie theater and confectionary but don’t be fooled, Lulu is the brains of their brains behind all of that." She proceeded to point out James Acme, who held one of the most lucrative construction businesses. I blinked.

"I know him. That’s Edmund, he works for Dr. Whitaker."

Edmund waved his hand at us. I started to wave back but Rita grabbed my hand and we turned to sit on the other end of the room.

"What was that about?" I asked.

"He is new money," she said as if that explained it all.

"I don’t understand."

She blinked as if something donned on her. "He recently made it big and is trying to climb the social ladder. There is an order to these things that cannot be rushed."

"Well certainly I don’t have any funds and you are talking to me."

She pursed her lips. "It is not like that."

"It sounds like it," I said trying to keep my tone measured.

"You are not trying to marry into Club Eight." When I gave her a questioning look, she clarified. "The eight wealthiest families in Greenwood," she whispered.

"And you are one of them?" I asked.

"Of course. So are the Williams’, the Stratford’s, the Jackson’s, the Gurley’s and so on. You have to understand alliances between our families are sometimes arranged from birth."

"So are you matched?" I asked.