“Do I have time to dress?”
“It doesn’
t start until eight.”
“Come in.”
She left me in the living room and went into the back of the house. I didn’t take a seat. I stared at nothing, the blood beating in my wrists. I could hear her opening and closing drawers. She came back in the hallway, still in her robe, her hair wet on her shoulders. “What’s the real reason you’re here, Dave?”
“I’ve never been good at self-inventory.”
“Let me give you mine. I went into law enforcement because I got fired from my teaching job.”
“For what?”
“I changed a black girl’s grade.”
“Why did you change her grade?”
“So she wouldn’t be expelled.”
“That sounds terrible,” I said.
She stared at me, her eyes round and unblinking, a flush on her throat. “Are we going to the concert?”
“Anyone who turns down tickets to a Marcia Ball performance has a serious spiritual disorder.”
“I’ll be just a minute,” she said.
• • •
THE CONCERT WAS wonderful. The buffet, the formal dress, the smell of the mixed drinks, the gaiety of small-town people who are overjoyed when a famous artist visits them, the location of the concert in the old Evangeline Theater, where I saw My Darling Clementine with my mother in 1946, seemed proof that the past is always with us, in the best way, if one will only reach out and dip his hand into it.
Afterward, I drove Bailey home in my truck. She seemed to sit closer to me than she usually did, but I couldn’t be sure. The light was burning on the gallery, the shadows of the camellias and hibiscus waving on the grass. I parked on the edge of the light and cut the engine. The magnolia tree on the far end of the gallery was in late bloom, the fragrance overwhelming. Bailey sat very still, looking straight ahead. I could hear the engine’s heat ticking under the hood.
“Dave?” she said.
“Yes?”
“Do you have regrets? Or rather, do you take them on easily?”
“There are several people I regret not killing.”
“You have a sensitive conscience and a tender heart. Those are not always virtues.”
“I’ll try to be as mean-spirited as I can.”
I saw a grin at the side of her mouth. “I’m weak.”
“About what?”
“Need. You’re a widower. You’re vulnerable.”
“Wrong.”
She turned toward me. The tips of her dark brown hair were aglow in the moonlight. Her mouth looked like a flower about to open.
“Oh, Dave,” she said.