Midnight Crossroad

“Uh-huh.”

“So that was silly. Madonna is married to Teacher. Olivia, well, she and Lemuel . . .” She did look over at Fiji then, and Fiji nodded.

“And you, well, you and Bobo are like best friends, right?”

“Yeah. We’re buddies.” Fiji was proud of how evenly her words came out.

“It bothered me that she couldn’t help but flirt with every guy she saw. But she was nuts about Bobo.”

“I believe that, too,” Fiji said. “But she had some other reasons for going after him like she did.”

Creek looked surprised. “I’m sure she did. Living in Midnight isn’t every girl’s dream. I mean, I understand that she was put into position to meet him and . . . and seduce him. But I know the love came later. She was basically a good person.”

Fiji said, “She was a right-wing nut.”

Creek said, “You think she couldn’t love Bobo because of her politics?”

“I don’t know how much you heard when the sheriff was telling us that she had a whole backstory she hadn’t told Bobo? Creek, the only possible reason she could have for not telling Bobo the truth about her background when she decided she loved him is that she still planned on doing whatever it was they set her up in Midnight to do. And to me that’s just nasty.”

“I can’t believe that. I know she loved him.” Creek’s jaw was set in a firm line.

“Okay, I’ll concede the love. But if it had been true love, honest love, she would have told him her whole story.”

“If you think she was so devious, how come you’re going to the funeral?” Creek was on the verge of being angry.

Fair question, Fiji thought. How to answer it?

“I’m a proxy for Bobo,” she said. “The family doesn’t want him there.”

This, too, was news to Creek. “Why not?” she asked, clearly indignant.

“They know he didn’t have any part in her death, but they’re still resentful,” Fiji said. “I’m going so if he wants to know anything about it, I can tell him. He didn’t ask me to do this,” she added, in the spirit of absolute honesty.

“I understand,” Creek said. She’d calmed down. “I think that’s pretty nice of you.”

They rode a few minutes in silence. Then Creek said, “What do you think about Manfred?”

Fiji was tempted to say, Why do you ask? But that would just be mean. “I don’t know him very well, but so far, so good. He seems to fit into Midnight, and he seems like an interesting guy. What do you think?”

“I think what he does is kind of weird,” Creek said, as if she wanted to be persuaded otherwise. “I can’t decide if he really believes he’s a psychic or if he’s a con man. I don’t know which would be worse.”

“I’m surprised that’s a problem for you, since you’re so fond of Lemuel.”

Creek was clearly taken aback. Fiji wondered what the girl had expected her to say.

“Well, Uncle Lemuel . . .” Creek began, and then faltered. “I do know what Uncle Lem is, but he’s never been anything but wonderful to me.”

“Then Manfred might be no different.” Fiji struggled to keep her tone neutral.

“I guess my dad is so cynical it’s rubbed off,” Creek said, her voice stiff and resentful.

“Just think about it,” Fiji said, sorry that they were not happier with each other, and wondering what else she could have said. Creek might be too young to take a direct conversation. Or maybe she herself was being a jerk. She felt that was all too possible. She said, “And there . . . that would be the turn to the left we have to make?”

Creek consulted the directions they’d printed off Fiji’s computer. “That should be the turn, and then in three point four miles we make a right on Alamo Street. Then our destination will be on the right in half a mile. Solomon True Baptist.”

Even the name of the church made Fiji feel gloomy when she eyed it on a large sign a few minutes later. The words were printed in Gothic lettering on a white background, and from the spotlight, it was illuminated when night fell. The overcast day depressed her even more.

Though they’d arrived thirty minutes early, there were already vehicles in the parking lot. They dawdled in the car for a few minutes, checking their phones and chatting very cautiously. But cars and trucks and vans began to fill the spaces on the graveled parking area, and Fiji and Creek sighed simultaneously and got out of the car to walk to the door. Solomon True Baptist was a low building made with yellow brick, sporting unnecessary white columns that were supposed to look as though they held up the porch roof. To make absolutely sure the building was identifiable, a short spire squatted on the roof. Some church member with time and talent had created beautiful flower beds around the building, though they were faded with the onset of fall.

Fiji stopped at a pew close to the rear of the church, and she and Creek moved in after taking a program from one of the ushers. The pianist was playing a selection of somber hymns. Listening to the dark tones of the music, Fiji was terrifyingly, abruptly shocked—all over again—by the fact that a human being, a person she’d known, was gone forever. She hadn’t liked Aubrey, and nothing she’d discovered about the woman after her death had changed that opinion, but purposeful eradication of another human being . . . that went against everything she’d been taught by Great-Aunt Mildred.

Great-Aunt Mildred had not believed in striking the first blow. She had believed in self-defense. Fiji found it impossible to believe that Aubrey had had a chance to save her own life.

Fiji glanced sideways at her young companion. Creek looked serious but not sad. Fiji thought, She’s been to a few funerals before.

As the doleful music continued, for want of anything better to do, Fiji examined the cover of the program. Centered on it was a photo of Aubrey, with a sort of halo effect around it, as if she’d been snapped against a sunset. In a font resembling script, the obituary read:

Our sister Aubrey Hamilton Lowry, beloved daughter of Destin and Lucyfay Hamilton, sister of Macon, widow of Chad Lowry, will be sadly missed by those who knew her. For many years Aubrey attended church here, and she graduated from Buffalo Plain High School. She was a waitress in Oklahoma while she was married to Chad, and upon his death she returned to Texas. After working in Davy, she met her death by human hands, for reasons not yet clear to us.

Praise be to God! All will be known on the Day of Judgment. For it is not for us to judge God’s actions. “They went to bury her, but they found nothing more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands.” (2 Kings 9:35)