Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry (25 page)

“That no God I could imagine would punish her dad for mistakes she made.”

“Good job.” He gave me a quick grin, and his next words rumbled low in his chest, the way he sounded when he was being serious and playful at the same time. “So, while you're being straightforward, want to tell me what that whole office and closet scene was about? Because I didn't believe anything you all said about it. Not even for a second.”

I took in a breath. Let it out. People always talked about moms having radar for lies and eyes in the back of their heads and stuff. Well, those people never met my dad. In our family, he was the one who seemed to know everything.

A dozen reasons to avoid the truth blinked through my brain, but I didn't pay much attention to them. After hiding in a closet and almost peeing on myself and getting busted and
being trapped in our old house for days and days except for camp, and having such a heavy conversation with Indri, I was tired of ghosts and secrets and pretending.

“A key,” I said. “We needed to find a key that I lost.”

Dad gazed at me, waiting, and I took another deep, deep breath. Then I spilled it all, about Grandma's writing about how she would tell me about the feud but then getting too confused to finish, about the key that was too big for a diary and too small for a door, and the lockbox Grandma took back from Dr. Harper, how she made it disappear, and how I lost the key at the library and thought Dr. Harper might have taken it for himself, and Grandma whispering Avadelle's name earlier, and how it felt to read
Night on Fire
.

“I mean, the book was good,” I said, having to work not to think about the story and the images. “Really good. I guess I see why she won awards, even if I kind of hate admitting that. But I know it's not all true, especially the part about what happened to Avadelle and Grandma the night of the Meredith riot.”

Dad looked totally stunned about everything I had just told him, but he stayed completely Dad-like, his face stern. “
Night on Fire
, it's fiction, baby girl. Well, those bits about Mama's history, those are spot-on. And maybe some about the friendship itself and how it grew. But all that research you and your friends have done, when it comes down to it, we still don't know anything at all about what was in Mama's heart and mind—or her life—the night of the riot. We don't
know what upset her, and what divided Avadelle and Mama so deeply.” He shook his head, then chuckled. “A key for a box you don't even have. All that at Ventress—for that key? I never would have figured that out, not in a hundred million years.”

“I'm sorry about not telling you.” I pulled the key out of my pocket and held it up, letting our entryway light play off the gold edges.

Dad studied it, but he didn't try to take it away from me. He didn't even ask to hold it. “Sooner or later, I want to read what Mama wrote. All of it. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “And yes,
Night on Fire
's fiction, but there's truth in it, and fiction, but I think there are lies, too. Lies, or something else Avadelle wants to keep to herself.”

Dad started to argue with me, but I put the key back in my pocket, then raised one finger. “First, we know Grandma and Avadelle didn't get clean away like the two characters in the book. Grandma got hurt—and that ghost story about screams in the steam tunnels around the Lyceum, it's probably related to that night.” I raised a second finger. “Their friendship ended when
Night on Fire
came out.” Third finger. “The way Avadelle acted at Square Books—there's definitely something she doesn't want anyone to know. Something Grandma's ready to tell. Something she
needs
to tell. She keeps trying to say it, so hard. I think—I think she might need Avadelle.”

Dad leaned his head back against the rock wall and closed his eyes. He seemed to be thinking. “I just can't see any good coming out of this, Dani.”

I didn't want to hear that. I didn't want to lay everything out for him and have him say it didn't matter. It did. My Grandma's tears and misery counted. Her pain, that was important. The fact she wanted me to find out what happened, that meant a ton to me too. Anger flashed all over me, but I knew I wasn't mad at Dad. Not really.

Weird. I had no idea what or who I was actually mad at.

My fingers curled against the wooden step beneath me, and I pushed myself to my feet. I crossed the wood and tile floor and sat down by Dad, my leg resting against his. Everything inside me kept jumbling up until my own feelings didn't make any sense at all.

“The copy of
Night on Fire
I read, it was Grandma's,” I said, fishing for anything I might have forgotten that would help Dad understand how much we needed to figure this out. “She donated it to the library, I guess. Her name was in it, anyway, and an inscription. It said, ‘Ruth Beans was here.' ”

Dad turned his head in my direction and opened on eye. “Seriously? That's what she inscribed?”

I leaned in to him. He smelled like garden sweat and spearmint, too, a little. And pineapple, and lemon, from all the different types of mints I knew he had been trimming. “I thought it was strange, like what a little kid might write.”

“Nah.” Dad opened his other eye and gave me a sad smile. “It's a soldier thing. In wartime, Kilroy—remember him? Bald sketch with just the top of his head and a nose? That little guy got to be a thing in World War II, when your grandmother
was a kid. Now, when soldiers are deployed or campaigning, it's tradition to graffiti him up somewhere.
Kilroy was here
.” He shrugged. “Guess it's a way to say,
Remember me, I was real, I fought here
. . . .” He stopped for a second, then added, “You know how she liked William Faulkner. Well, Faulkner said, ‘What matters is at the end of life, when you're about to pass into oblivion, that you've at least scratched “Kilroy was here,” on the last wall of the universe.' ”

Suddenly, Grandma's inscription made all kinds of sense.
Ruth Beans was here
. Her mark on the universe.

“I wasn't even old enough to enlist in World War Two,” Dad said. “But Mama, she was fighting her very own war, I guess, even that far back, and every year after.” He glanced up the stairs. “But this one she's fighting now, she's losing it. Soon, I think.”

He closed his eyes again, and rubbed his head. “Sorry. Headache again. I think my allergies are getting worse.”

“Want me to get you some aspirin?”

“Thanks, I'll get some when I get up.” Still with his eyes closed, looking way more tired than I wanted him to be, Dad asked, “What exactly are you wanting to do about this key, baby girl? Spell it out for me.”

Hope fluttered up in my chest, and the shiver in my throat made it hard to talk. “I want to go look for the steam tunnel entrance where you think Grandma fell, in case she put the box in the tunnel. I also want to search between the Lyceum and Ventress.” I swallowed, working not to talk too much too
fast and make him quit listening. “I mean, if she gave me the key, the box has to be somewhere, right?”

For a few seconds, Dad didn't speak. His eyes came open, and he seemed to stare in the general direction of Grandma's room. Finally, he said, “I don't even know where that steam tunnel entrance is—or if it's even still there, after they relandscaped the Circle. And what if you find it—or find that lockbox? What if that box holds some deep dark terrible truth about the riot or about
Night on Fire
that blows Avadelle's novel all to hell and back? Will we be turning that over to the press so they swarm us and the Richardsons and tear Avadelle and her people all apart?”

“Well . . . um.” I hadn't thought that far ahead. Just about finding the secret. “No. I guess I'll bring it to you, and we'll figure out what should happen, and what Grandma needs.”

Dad made eye contact with me then. He shifted one of his arms, and put it gently around my shoulders, pulling me to him. I leaned in and rested against his chest, not caring about the dried dirt that flaked off on my face and fingers.

“Mama's peaceful enough now, baby girl. She barely talks at all, and whatever agitation she had, it's not much now. I think for everybody's sake, this big hunt for answers needs to stop. Avadelle might have had the right of it, that digging up bones doesn't do anything but make angry ghosts.”

I wanted to argue, but what could I say? At that moment, when he was so tired and hugging me, and Mom was
struggling to work late, and Grandma was sleeping, and the house was so quiet, I almost agreed with him. Almost.

“How about we make a little deal?” Dad gave me an extra squeeze. “You let this go so I can be sure you won't do any more craziness like going places you don't tell us and hiding in Dr. Harper's closet, and I'll talk to your mom. We'll see about easing up on the grounding, step by step. See how it goes?”

I sighed but didn't agree.

“Come on,” Dad urged. “You can get yourself busy with camp projects and reading, and helping me take care of Mama. That's enough activity for anybody, baby girl.”

“It is,” I agreed.

Dad seemed to think I was taking his deal, because he said. “Good. Now, let's get Mama taken care of, and get you ready for bed before Cella comes home and calls me a slacker.”

“Okay,” I said, already feeling guilty, and wondering if I really should leave everything alone, like Dad thought I would, and sort of promising myself I'd do just that. “Does this mean I get my phone back?”

“I said we'd make a deal, Dani, not call down miracles from heaven.”

Oh well. It was worth a try.

Excerpt from
Night on Fire
(1969), by Avadelle Richardson, page 462

After people die—especially those who weren't soldiers and accidentally stumbled into the battle—everyone questions why we fought. I know I did. So did Leslie. But that didn't stop us.

“Jim Crow isn't just a bunch of laws,” Leslie told the new class full of White kids even younger than her. Despite the riot—maybe even because of it—those kids meant to head into Hell itself, to help with voter registration in Mississippi.

“It's an entire system of oppression designed to keep White people in charge and Black people kneeling on the ground.” She glanced at me, a little nervous, since this was the first time she had taken the
lead. I gave her a smile. She smiled back. Then she talked for near about an hour.

Right about the time the whole group looked flattened, Leslie finished with, “I decline to accept the end of man . . . I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.” The kids perked up at those hopeful words, and they listened that much harder.

The lines were from William Faulkner's Nobel Prize banquet speech. He gave it in Stockholm in 1950. My aunt Jessie could call him a shiftless drifter all she wanted, but to me, William Faulkner was a visionary. He saw the Civil Rights Movement coming decades before it happened, and that always made me wonder how much everyone saw coming.

Then again, most people don't notice that single, heart-stopping moment when rage and fear turn human and dig in for war.

L
ATE-DAY HEAT SHIMMERED OFF THE
cross-walked pavement in front of Ventress Hall, turning the scene into an oil painting in the bright afternoon sun. Indri sat at the base of the Confederate Monument, a splash of pink shirt and faded jeans across the white marble of its chess-piece base. Above her, the confederate soldier stared down University Avenue, hand to his forehead to block the light, his rifle clutched close
to his side. Behind her shoulders, the statue's inscription read
To Our Confederate Dead, 1861–1865, Albert Sidney Johnston Chapter 379 U.D.C
.

Indri seemed to be imitating the soldier, holding her hand to her forehead and squinting across the redbrick walkway and road that separated us from the rounded turret end of Ventress. She had a sketchpad open on her lap, trying to get the curves and angles just right. I sat beside her with a notebook open on my lap. I had drawn a picture too, but mine was of the route between Ventress Hall and the Lyceum. The Circle, the treed area behind Indri and the statue and me, was laid out like an uneven wagon wheel with twelve spokes. My grandmother could have buried the box with her hands just about anywhere in that area—but she would have had to stuff it in the ground pretty quick, since Dr. Harper followed her to the Lyceum soon after she left Ventress.

She could have stuffed the box into something else, or under something too. Or left it lying on the sidewalk, and somebody threw it away, or took it home and tossed it in a garage, or—

I didn't want to think about those possibilities.

My sketch had a few X's and O's in spots, reminding me of one of Mom's body diagrams. The marks were spots I thought might make for good box-hiding between where Dr. Harper last saw Grandma and the Lyceum. I marked little trees with soft dirt and pine shavings all around them, a bench, flowerbeds, and added a question mark because I didn't know if the
old steam tunnel entrance where Dad thought Grandma had gotten injured still existed.

I planned on starting with the trees—but after camp, after Indri left, so I wouldn't drag her into my breaking the deal with Dad that I sort of didn't make, or get her in trouble for poking around the Circle.

“Don't look now,” Indri muttered. “Jerk alert. And he has the Wicked Witch of Oxford with him.” She lowered her head to keep sketching, but I couldn't stop myself from craning my neck until I spotted Mac and Avadelle moving down the sidewalk away from us, heading toward the Grove. Avadelle had on something loud and purple, along with her usual fedora. Mac was just in jeans and a T-shirt, like always.