The High Tide Club

Brooke reached for her phone and scrolled through her camera roll. She found the photo from Good Shepherd of the boys standing in front of their cottage. She enlarged it and handed it to Varina, tapping the photo of the boy the others had nicknamed Buck. “That’s him.”

“Oh, my. Oh, my,” Varina whispered. “He looks like my brother Omar.” She thrust the phone at Felicia. “See? Doesn’t he look like a Shaddix?”

“I’ve never seen a blue-eyed Shaddix before,” Felicia snapped. But she examined the photo closer, reluctantly nodding. “He was light enough to pass, wasn’t he? You know, I’ve seen that old man dozens of times since we started staying over here, but I never saw it until now.”

Varina could not take her eyes off the photo. “When it was my time, the pains were awful. We knew something was wrong. There was so much blood! When the doctor came, he gave me a shot. And when I woke up, there was no baby. Josephine said the baby was born dead, and the doctor took it away with him. She said it was better that way so I wouldn’t be so upset.”

“I hope she rots in hell,” Felicia said. “I’m glad Gabe killed her. Josephine needed killing. I only wish I’d done it myself.” She stalked over to the counter, picked up the cooling cake layers, and dumped them into the trash. “I’ll be damned if I’ll bake a cake and sit in a church and pretend to be sorry that old bitch is gone.” She looked over at Varina. “Come on, Auntie. We need to get you home and give you your meds. I don’t think I can stand to be under Josephine’s roof for one more minute.”

“No, ma’am,” Varina said. Her voice was loud and clear.

“Now, Auntie Vee,” Felicia started.

“You go along home,” Varina said. “You’re upset. I’ll be along in a little while. Lizzie will bring me home, won’t you?”

“Happy to,” Lizzie said, earning her a glare from Felicia, who stomped out of the kitchen, slamming the screen door as she went.

“Fetch me those cake layers out of that trash, will you, honey?” Varina said. She pointed in the direction of the door. “That girl has had a temper her whole life. There wasn’t no reason for her to throw those cakes out. I’ll put some icing on ’em and nobody will know the difference.”

Lizzie reached into the trash and rescued the cake layers, which had split in half. She brushed away some stray potato peels and placed them on a plate.

“Are you all right?” Brooke asked as the old woman returned to chopping pecans. “I know you’ve had an awful shock.”

“I’m going to pray about this,” Varina said, not looking up. “I don’t rightly know what to think.” She blinked back tears, and a moment later, her shoulders shook as she sobbed quietly on Brooke’s shoulder.

Lizzie slipped from the room. A moment later she was back. Varina had regained her composure. Lizzie put two items on the table in front of her. One was a small prayer card with a color rendering of the Virgin Mary, eyes cast heavenward. The other was a string of mother-of-pearl rosary beads.

“These were with one of the letters the nuns sent Josephine, after she’d paid for a new kitchen and hot water heater at St. Joseph’s. I thought you might like to have them.”

Varina picked up the rosary, letting the smooth beads slide between her fingertips. She clutched the silver crucifix dangling from the end. “Thank you.” She looked up. “Could you take me home now?”

“Of course,” Lizzie said.

“I’m going over to visit C. D. in a little bit,” Brooke said. “I have to tell him that his DNA didn’t match Josephine’s. Should I tell him about you?”

Varina wound the string of beads around and around her narrow wrist. “What’s he gonna say when he finds out? How’s he gonna feel about having a mama who’s black and a daddy…” Her voice trailed off.

78

“This really sucks,” Lizzie said as they trudged toward the chauffeur’s cottage.

“Totally. I don’t blame Felicia for being outraged. I feel like burning down the house too. I don’t see how Josephine was able to live with all the pain she caused all those years,” Brooke said.

“I guess, at the end, she thought her money would absolve her of all her sins,” Lizzie said.

As they approached the cottage, they spied C. D. on the porch, sitting on a wooden kitchen chair. His right arm was in a sling, and as they grew closer, they smelled the acrid smoke from his cigarillo.

He was awkwardly pawing through the contents of a rusted red metal tackle box with his left hand. “Hey,” he said. “Excuse me for not standing up.”

“How are you feeling, C. D.?” Brooke asked.

“Still kicking,” he said. “How about you?”

“Better. The headaches from the concussion are gone, and my face seems to be healing.”

“Glad to hear it.” He touched his shoulder. “I did a tour in Vietnam, came home and worked on the docks, and been thrown out of just about every bar on this coast, and this is the first time I’ve ever been shot. Some folks would say I was overdue.” He studied the two women’s serious expressions. “You just come over here to check up on me?”

“I brought you something,” Brooke said, holding out the envelope. “The sheriff found this in Gabe’s car. After the shooting.”

“You mean after you killed the son of a bitch? Best day’s work you ever did.” He took the envelope, glanced at the return address, then handed it back. “Can’t open it with my bum arm. It’s the DNA report from the lab, right? I reckon you already know what it says.”

“I do,” Brooke admitted.

“And?”

“There is no DNA match between you and Josephine. I’m sorry, C. D. She wasn’t your mother.”

He reached for the cigarillo and took a puff, letting the ash drop unnoticed onto his lap. “Well, shit. And that’s 100 percent?”

“They say 99 percent in the report, because it’s scientifically impossible for anything to be 100 percent,” Brooke said.

He looked past them, out at the barn, and then the green lawn that sloped gently down toward the road to the beach, the landscape dotted with huge moss-draped live oaks.

“I guess you and your mama own all this now. Y’all will be wanting me to move along. Right? I mean, I ain’t no good to nobody with my arm like this.”

“You can stay put. We’ve hired a new lawyer—an honest one this time—to handle the estate. You can stay as long as you like.”

“Okay.” His nod was as close as he’d come to saying thanks. He pulled himself up by his good arm, went into the cottage, and came out holding a bottle of beer. “Open that for me, if you would.”

Brooke obliged, and he knocked half the beer back in a single long gulp, setting the bottle on the porch rail and letting out a beery belch.

“Back to being an orphan again. It was nice for a while, you know, letting myself believe I might own a piece of this. I ain’t ever really owned anything before, except a truck or a boat, stuff like that.”

“I’m truly sorry. I know it’s not enough, but my mom wanted you to know she intends to honor all the bequests Josephine made for her employees here on the island.”