Chapter Thirty-One

thirty-one

JEMMA AND MAGDALENE TALKED UNTIL the sun came up, both exhausted but too wound up to sleep.

"I'll have to go back to the house and talk to them," Jemma said.

"You think they'll believe you?"

"They probably already know. Or at least Honorine does. I'm sure of that."

Magdalene had cursed quietly when Jemma told her about the visions. "He let those people die and then just…left them there. He put a floor over their bodies." The soft light shimmered against her tears.

Jemma barely heard her, lost as she was in her own troubled thoughts.

After all of Honorine's talk about her ancestors being free people of color, it appeared that at least one of them lived his life as a white man. Jemma assumed Corentin's wife—the one who had been jealous of an enslaved woman named Suzette, the same one he had made an example of by whipping—was also white, or at least appeared to be. He stood by and let several people, human beings whom he refused to acknowledge as human beings, burn to death, so terrified was he that one of them would reveal his secret. He viewed that horrible loss not as a loss of lives but as the destruction of his property.

Jemma thought of her mother sleeping in that small space next to that burial room all those years. Had she heard the screams? Had the spirits whispered to her endlessly, begging her to free them, as she tried to rest? Jemma held her head in her hands, gripping her hair, wishing she could stop hearing those screams.

"Whatever else happens to that family, I don't care, but I have to go back and do what Adam asked me to do. I have to set those people free."

Magdalene stopped rocking in place and stared at her. "How you gonna do that? You think they're gonna just let you in?"

"Once I tell them what happened and why they've been cursed all these years, they have to. They don't want any more deaths in that family." Jemma tried not to let her friend's troubled expression raise any doubt in her mind.

Soon, the stream of anxiety finally slipped off their shoulders, leaving a great fatigue behind, and they both fell into an exhausted sleep. They awoke in the early afternoon, and after Jemma warmed up a rabbit stew for lunch, Magdalene told her to sit at the table. As Jemma sat, her friend stood behind her and combed her hair, surprisingly gently. The older woman made careful parts with a wooden comb she said she'd had since before Jemma was born, and she rubbed a finger dabbed with sweet oil along the exposed scalp before braiding each section.

"I ain't combed nobody's hair since my baby girl died. She was so good about sitting still and not making a fuss. Besides just holding her body in my arms and rocking her to sleep, that's what I miss the most. The feel of that soft, thick hair underneath my fingers, the smell of it, the weight of her against my knees. She'd fall asleep most times when I did her hair, just drift off with her thumb in her mouth like a little angel."

"What about your husband? What happened to him?"

A soft laugh escaped Magdalene's lips. "Wasn't no husband, least not a legal one. But me and him, we had something deeper and stronger than a piece of paper. We didn't stand in front of no judge and witnesses, but we were husband and wife. When our baby died, it was like his soul left his body. There was no more light shining out his eyes. When he touched me, it was like being touched by a husk. He was alive, but dead at the same time." Jemma felt Magdalene stop braiding for a moment and shiver. "After a while, I couldn't stand it no more, being touched by a man who had no life inside him, sleeping in the same bed with him. I left. Just got up one morning while he was still sleeping and walked out the door. I ain't stop until I got to these woods and found this old cabin. I cleaned it out, fixed it up and moved in. It was years before I met your family, although they was always out on that back lawn and having parties and coming and going back then. But I kept to myself for a while, just trying to find some peace. And I told myself I did, but that was a lie. I told myself I accepted her dying, but I never did. And when I delivered you and your mama told me to take you before your family killed you, I thought I'd be all right, until she told me to get you far away from here. It was like losing my baby girl all over again."

"You ever wonder what happened to your husband?"

"All the time. But I can't look back at what was."

After braiding Jemma's hair, Magdalene handed her the dress she'd left the Duchons' in; it was freshly washed and line-dried.

"When we go there, you gotta look neat and clean."

"We?"

"You think I'm gonna let you go in that lion's den by yourself?"

Jemma's nerves all but tingled as she and Magdalene walked across the back lawn, stopping at the carriage house, where Jemma swiped a sledgehammer and a shovel. At first, she'd thought about circling around to the front door and ringing the bell, but then she decided to enter by the kitchen. Employing the element of surprise seemed a much better way to start things off. As soon as they passed the small alcove, Jemma stopped in her tracks.

A woman stood at the kitchen counter, her back to them. Her hair was pulled into a low chignon. She wore a black maid's uniform, the white of her apron ties trailing down her backside.

"Mama?" Jemma whispered, ready to run over as soon as Inès turned around.

But when the maid turned, Jemma realized how wrong she'd been. It wasn't her mother at all. It was a woman around Fosette's age and about Jemma's color. Heat flushed across her face. How quickly the Duchons had replaced her mother.

"Who are you?" Jemma and the maid both asked at the same time.

When neither Jemma nor Magdalene answered, the other woman introduced herself as Yvonne, her head cocked and a hand on her hip, clearly waiting for them to repay the courtesy of an introduction.

"I'm Emmaline and this is Magdalene. We have business with the family."

They moved toward the dining room, but the maid blocked their path, her eyes on the tools cradled in Jemma's arms. "Now, wait just a minute. I don't know who you are to come barging in here through the back door like you own the place—"

"Grandmère!" Jemma screamed. "Simone!"

"Girl, what's the matter with you?"

"You might want to run some errands, Yvonne," Magdalene said. "It's about to get ugly."

Jemma had never been so happy to see Honorine, despite the anger etched in every wrinkle of her grandmother's face. Splotches of red bloomed through her cakey makeup, and her lips weren't even visible.

"Yvonne," she said, "go upstairs and find something to do."

Before the maid had taken three steps, Honorine rounded on Jemma, ignoring Magdalene. "What…the…hell are you doing in this house?"

"Your great-grandfather was Corentin, right? Because he wasn't the proud free person of color you made him out to be, you goddamned liar!" Jemma held up the diary page in her fist. "He was passing as white and…No, where's everybody else? They're all going to hear this."

"Who do you think you are to come in here, giving me orders, pute ? All you've done since you darkened our door—"

Jemma let out a howl that lowered into a cackle. "Darkened your door? How fitting! Yeah, I darkened it, me and this"—she held up an arm—"the darkest thing that ever lived here, I bet, except the people our ancestors owned."

Fosette padded into the kitchen, her hair loose around her shoulders; she was dressed in a black shift. Despite its somber color, it was clearly this season's buy. She didn't look surprised to see Jemma, although her gaze moved questioningly over Magdalene.

"What's she doing here?" she drawled to Honorine.

"I have no idea, but I'm about to call the police and have her removed."

"Yes, please call the police. I want them to come. Because when they get here and I tell them what's buried under the floor of the old kitchen, they're going to be real interested in finding out what happened here."

"What are you talking about?"

Instead of containing its usual imperious tone, her grandmother's voice betrayed a hint of strain. Jemma ignored it. And she wasn't about to be rushed into anything. Moving past Honorine and Fosette, she went out through the dining room and into the foyer until she came to the foot of the stairs. "Simone! Russell! I'm home and I want to talk to you!"

Behind her, she heard Honorine and Fosette muttering in French, with the younger woman saying something that sounded like "absolument folle . "

"No," Magdalene said. "She ain't crazy, but y'all sure are."

Honorine scoffed. "The town witch. How fitting that you'd be here with Jemma."

Just then, Simone came sweeping downstairs, a magazine in one hand, and Russell strolled over from the library. Yvonne stood next to the telephone table in the foyer, on her face a quizzical expression directed at Honorine. Jemma saw her grandmother give a short shake of her head before gesturing everyone else into the dining room. The family took their usual seats, except for Jemma. She stood at one end of the table, with Magdalene sitting next to her. Honorine glared at her granddaughter from the opposite end.

Jemma held the diary entry up.

"From the first day I came here, I smelled smoke all over the house. I think you all did, too, but you just got used to it over the years. The only person who probably never got used to it was my mother, because she slept next to the room that burned down a hundred years ago. I don't think she was able to get used to it because the spirits that haunt this place wouldn't let her. They didn't want her to forget about them. But she got tired of seeing them and hearing them, because she didn't know how to help them. My parents, the people who raised me, made me ignore the ghosts. They taught me to turn away from them. And then I come here and I have to see them and talk to them. I thought I'd see my mother's spirit, because you monsters told me she was dead. And when that didn't happen because she was actually alive, I tried to talk to the spirits to find out what was wrong here, how I could break the curse that hangs over this house and this family."

Jemma slammed both hands flat on the table, making the others jump. She turned to Russell.

"Tell me the truth, old man. Do you smell smoke?"

His green eyes were round and scared. His mouth worked for a few seconds before he stammered, "N-no, I smell nothing."

"What about you, Fosette?" Jemma turned to her cousin. "You mean to tell me that you don't smell burning flesh? Hmm? None of you?"

"What in hell are you talking about?" Simone barked. "Burning flesh? You're mad."

Jemma ignored her and pointed to Honorine, whose pale fingers, gripping the table, were even whiter than usual. "Your great-grandfather was a freeman of color, except no one knew he was, as you all like to say, colored. He passed as a white man and owned slaves, one of whom had the money to buy his freedom. But your great-grandfather refused, and so this man threatened to reveal his secret, which would have ruined him. So he set the fire to kill the man who threatened him, trapping him in the kitchen in the old part of the house. Other slaves were in the kitchen, too, and Corentin let all of them burn to death instead of trying to free them.

"If the rest of you think they're buried in the old slave cemetery on the grounds, you're wrong. He just packed a new floor on top of their bodies and closed off the old kitchen when he built the new one. But you knew, Grandmère, didn't you? You're the only one who read all the books in the library. You tore the page out of the ledger because you didn't want anyone else to know you—we—are all descended from monsters. You made my mother sleep next to that room for almost twenty-eight years, where seven people probably cried out to her every day and every night, begging to get out of that cold, dark place. She didn't curse us to die like you think she did. It was those spirits who cursed us, who kill one of us every seven years. And if we don't free them, one of us is going to die. But it doesn't have to be on my birthday. It could be at any moment, because the curse is now unpredictable. It went wild when my mother broke what bound you to the house."

Jemma felt an immense satisfaction at the fear staining Simone's face, although all of the others wore the same expression.

"How…how are we supposed to free them?" Honorine asked after several moments of silence, her eyes moving over the others at the table as if anyone had an answer. She finally settled her gaze on Jemma. "What can we do?"

"I have some ideas, but before we get to them, if we ever get to them, we're going to do something you people aren't very familiar with, and that's telling the truth. We're going to be real honest here. You know what they say. The truth shall set you free."