“I picked it up and smelled the barrel to see if it had been discharged. It had.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Pearlie did. She called down to check on you, just as I told you. The rest happened much the way I told you the other day. Your mother woke up, and you walked into the bedroom moments later.”

“Where had I been? I meanit happened in my bedroom.”

He takes a moment to consider this. “Outside, I think.”

“Who moved Daddy’s body into the rose garden?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“To protect you, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

Grandpapa shifts on the seat, but his eyes remain on me, deadly earnest and filled with certainty. “You were eight years old, Catherine. Your father had been shot by an intruder in your bedroom. If that story had been printed in the Examiner, there would have been no end to the morbid speculation. What happened to you before Luke arrived? Were you molested in some way? Raped? In this little town, that would have followed you for the rest of your life. I saw no reason to put you through that, and neither did your mother. Luke was dead. It made no difference where the police found his body.”

“Mom knows?”

“Of course.”

“And Pearlie?”

“It was Pearlie who helped me clean Luke’s blood off the bedroom floor and walls before the police arrived. Not that it mattered. They never even checked the slave quarters.”

“Why not?”

He looks at me as though the answer should be self-evident. “They believed what I told them. Luke was lying dead under the dogwood tree in the rose garden. I told them how it happened, and that was that.”

Such a passive police response would be unimaginable in New Orleans, even back in 1981. But in the Natchez of twenty years ago? What local cop was going to question the word of Dr. William Kirkland, especially when his son-in-law had just been murdered?

“Did they do any forensic investigation at all? Did they search the grounds for blood or other evidence?”

“Yes, but as you pointed out, it was raining hard. They didn’t put too much effort into it. It was a sad night, and everybody wanted it over.”

I gaze across the rose garden to the slave quarters that was my home for sixteen years. Then I pan my eyes right, to the dogwood tree where for most of my life I’ve believed my father died. Luke was deadIt made no difference where the police found his body. But of course it does make a difference to me. It makes all the difference in the world.

“But Grandpapawhat if something did happen to me? Did you ever think about that?”

Before he can answer, his Town Car pulls alongside my Audi on the passenger side. Billy Neal gives my grandfather a pointed look.

“What’s his fucking problem?” I snap.

Grandpapa frowns at the expletive, but he motions for Billy to pull away. After about ten seconds, the driver obeys.

“Of course I considered the possibility, dear. I examined you myself, after the police had gone.”

“And?”

“I saw no evidence of assault.”

“You checked me for sexual assault?”

He sighs again, obviously put out by the specifics of my question. “I did a thorough examination. Nothing happened to you. Nothing physical, I mean. The psychological shock was clearly devastating, though. You stopped speaking for a year.”

“What do you think I saw?”

“I don’t know. On the milder side, the prowler might have exposed himself to you. I suppose he might have fondled you or forced you to fondle him. But at the other end of the spectrumyou might have seen your father murdered before your eyes.”

I want to hide my quivering hands-my grandfather despises weakness-but there’s nowhere to put them. Then he closes one of his strong, age-spotted hands around both of mine, stilling my tremors with the force of his grip. “Do you have any memory of that night?”

“Not before I saw his body. I have nightmares, though. I’ve seen Daddy fighting with a faceless manother things. But nothing that makes any sense.”

He squeezes my hands harder. “Those aren’t nightmares, dear. Those are memories. I’ve said some bad things about Luke, I know. And God help me, I’ve lied to you as well. Hopefully for a good reason. But one thing I told you, you can take as holy writ. Your father died fighting to save your life. He probably did save your life. No man could have done more.”

I close my eyes, but the tears come anyway. I’ve always felt a certain amount of shame about my father’s war-related problems. To hear now that he died a heroit’s almost too much. “Who did it, Grandpapa? Who killed him?”

“No one knows.”

“Did the police really look?”

“You’d better believe it. I rode them hard. But they couldn’t come up with anything.”

“I can,” I say quietly. “I can take apart that crime scene with tools that didn’t even exist about back then.”

Grandpapa is watching me with grief in his face. “I’m sure you can, Catherine. But to what end? What if you were to find DNA from an unknown person? There were never even any suspects. Are you going to take blood samples from every black man in the city of Natchez? That could be five thousand people. And the killer could easily be dead now. He could have left town years ago.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t try to find out who murdered my father?”

Grandpapa closes his eyes. Just as I decide he has fallen asleep, he opens them again and turns them on me with startling intensity. “Catherine, you’ve spent your adult life focused on death. Now you’re about to cross the line into full-blown obsession. I want my granddaughter to live. I want you to have a family, children”

I’m shaking my head violently, not because I don’t want those things, but because I simply can’t think about them now. And because I already have a child on the way-

“That’s what Luke would want,” Grandpapa finishes. “Not some belated quest for justice with no chance for success.”

“It’s not just justice I want.”

“What, then?”

“The man who killed my father is the only person in the world who knows what happened to me in that room.”

At last my grandfather is silent.

“ Something happened to me that night. Something bad. And I have to know what it was.”

Grandpapa is saying something else, but I can’t make out specific words. His voice seems to come from across a windy field. Pulling one hand loose, I yank open the door and try to climb out. He tries to hold me by my other hand, but I relax my fingers and the hand slips free. My feet hit the ground, and I start running toward the slave quarters.

Sensing something amiss, Billy Neal jumps out of the Lincoln and blocks my path.

“Get away from me, you shit!” I scream.

He grabs for my arms, but I pivot and reverse away from the buildings. Without looking back, I sprint down the hill toward the bayou, where the barn that served as my father’s studio and sleeping quarters stands in the shadow of a wall of trees. I’ll be safe there. Voices cry out behind me, one of them Pearlie’s, but I run on, wind-milling my arms like a panicked little girl.