The High Tide Club

“All right,” she said. She looked tired. “We still have a couple of months to figure things out. I know lots of people here, and maybe somebody will be looking for a maid or a live-in babysitter.”

The first thing I thought of when she said that was Jane Eyre.

I couldn’t tell Josephine I didn’t want to do the kind of work Geechee ladies on the island did, cooking or cleaning or watching other people’s children, because that would make me seem ungrateful for all she’d done for me. I really wanted a real job, like in an office. The nuns taught us what they called vocational skills, and I could type fast as anything.

I didn’t tell her I dreamed of going to college and someday maybe being a teacher like Sister Helen. It sounds bad to say this, but I was all mixed up inside. Nothing that had happened to me since that night at the party seemed real to me. Not any of it. Not even after the baby started kicking so hard I woke up in the middle of the night. Not even when I had to go to the bathroom every hour and my back hurt every time I went up and down all those stairs at her house.

It didn’t start seeming real to me until that very next day. We were in the kitchen, listening to The Romance of Helen Trent, our favorite radio program, and all of a sudden I got this awful cramp in my belly—like a lightning bolt or a live wire. It hurt so bad I doubled over. When I looked down, I saw all this warm water running down my legs.

“Josephine!” I screamed.

77

Felicia buried her head in her arms and wept. Her sobs echoed in the big kitchen.

Varina patted her back and tried to soothe her. “Now, honey, that was a long, long time ago. You don’t need to be crying for me. I cried all the tears a long time ago.”

“How can you say that?” Tears ran down Felicia’s anguished face. “After everything that happened to you?”

“Hush now,” Varina said, handing her a paper towel to wipe her eyes. “You’re getting yourself all worked up about something that’s in the past. You think I do that? Look back at those bad times? No, ma’am. Every morning when I wake up, I think, Thank you, Lord, for giving me one more day in this beautiful place you made for me.”

“You amaze me, Varina,” Brooke said.

Felicia got up and poured four glasses of iced tea. She brought them back to the table and handed a glass to each woman.

When she sat down again, Felicia took a deep breath. “What happened to your baby, Auntie Vee?”

Varina’s face clouded over. “The baby came too early. I was only seven months along. Josephine got the doctor over to the house as soon as she could, but there wasn’t anything he could do. My baby was too little and too weak. Jesus took my baby home. And I never even got to hold him.”

Lizzie and Brooke looked away, each hating the burden of the secret that they shared.

“Oh, Auntie, I’m so sorry,” Felicia said.

“Don’t be. It’s like Josephine said—maybe that was just a blessing. You know, I was just a baby myself when all that happened. And I don’t know what my daddy or brothers would have said if I’d come home with a baby from a white man. Josephine took real good care of me. I was sick with a fever after I lost the baby, but she got me medicine and looked after me just like I was her own little sister. Then, when I was better, she found me a new school to go to. I finished high school, and I went to business school and learned to take dictation, and then she helped me get a good job in a real office.”

“Good old Josephine,” Felicia said bitterly.

“You don’t realize it now, but that was a real hard thing for a little black girl like me,” Varina said proudly. “Back then, not many colored girls in the South worked in offices. I worked at the shipyard in Savannah, and then, after the war, I went down to Jacksonville, where one of my brothers worked, and I got a job at the railroad.”

Brooke’s throat felt dry. She sipped her iced tea and tried to ignore the laser stare Lizzie was giving her. “Varina,” she said finally. “You know Josephine had all these secrets she kept all those years. And that’s why she hired me and brought me over here to Talisa. Those secrets were eating away at her. She knew she didn’t have long to live, so before she died, she wanted to make things right with the people she’d hurt.”

“Josephine always did play things close to the vest,” Varina agreed. “When Felicia told me about your mama being Josephine’s niece, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I never would have known that sweet Millie had a baby with Mr. Gardiner—and then that baby was your mama!”

“How does Marie feel about Josephine keeping that little tidbit to herself all these years?” Felicia asked.

“She was pretty angry,” Brooke said. “But then, Millie kept it a secret too. All these years, my mom had no clue that her pops wasn’t her biological father. She’s slowly getting used to the idea, but it’s going to take some time.”

“Didn’t Josephine tell you that Millie and Ruth and Varina were her best friends? All that High Tide Club stuff, that was just a bunch of crap,” Felicia said.

“Josephine had one more secret she was keeping,” Brooke said, looking at Felicia. “Lizzie found it by accident this week as she was going through Josephine’s papers looking for material for her magazine article, but it didn’t make much sense until yesterday when the sheriff gave me the report on the DNA comparison between Josephine and C. D.”

Lizzie nodded. “After I found that letter from the priest, Father Ryan, telling Josephine about that little boy, Charlie, I started to wonder again why Josephine was so concerned about that particular boy and no other child.”

Felicia’s eyes widened as she realized what was coming. “Oh my God,” she whispered. She grasped her great-aunt’s hand. “Josephine lied, Auntie. She told you your baby was dead, but that was a lie. She gave the baby away! To an orphanage.” She turned to Brooke and Lizzie. “I’m right, aren’t I?” she asked. “C. D. isn’t Josephine’s son. He’s hers!”

“What’s that?” Varina asked, confused. “You’re saying my son is alive? He didn’t die? How can that be?” She shook her head violently. “No! Josephine wouldn’t have done me that way. She wouldn’t hide my child from me for all these years. Let me think he was dead when he wasn’t?”

“I’m so sorry, Varina,” Brooke said. “There’s no explanation for it, but yes, we think that’s exactly what she did. A priest who was the pastor at a black church in Savannah was the go-between. He found a couple, probably in his parish, who took the baby for a few weeks, and then he turned the boy over to a Catholic orphanage, where he stayed until he was six. After that, he went to live at the Good Shepherd Home for Boys.”

“And you think my boy, my grown-up son, is C. D.? Living right here on this island, working for Josephine?” Varina asked. “I don’t understand.”

“That bitch!” Felicia exclaimed. “Playing God with people’s lives. How dare she!”

“My baby is alive,” Varina said, looking from Lizzie to Felicia. “I can’t believe it.” She turned pleading eyes to Brooke. “How can you be sure it’s him after all these years?”

“The only way we can be really positive is if we tried to DNA match you with C. D. There are so many compelling facts it can’t be a coincidence. The DNA report we had done on C. D. showed he had African heritage. C. D. was told he was named after the priest who found him abandoned in his church after Sunday mass. That’s the same priest who wrote Josephine to give her an update on the baby. We talked to a nun in Savannah; she’s nearly a hundred years old, but she remembers the little boy named Charlie who came to live at St. Joseph’s Children’s Home. The nuns gave him the last name of Anthony, for St. Anthony, who is the patron saint of the lost. And the priest who brought him there, he was driving a new Cadillac not long after that. The rumor was that the Cadillac was given to him by that baby’s family as a reward for keeping his mouth shut. When Charlie was six, he was sent to the Good Shepherd Home for Boys. We talked to a man who lived in the same cottage at the boy’s home. He remembers C. D. from that time.”