“Handsome?”

I force a laugh I don’t feel. “Yes.”

“Good for you. Every man’s going to wear you down eventually, so you might as well pick one who’s pretty to look at.”

Ann gives me a conspiratorial wink, but I can’t summon another laugh. There’s a glitter in her eyes that makes me wonder if she’s in a manic phase.

“Ann’s headed back to the coast soon,” says my mother. “But we’re going to have brunch at the Castle first. Why don’t you put on some decent clothes and join us?”

That’s the last thing I want to do now. But looking for some of my father’s sculptures won’t qualify as a sufficient excuse in my mother’s book. “I’d really like to. But I have some things to do.”

Mom looks put out. “For example?”

I search for an excuse-any excuse-to skip lunch. “Dr. Wells asked me to come swimming over at his house.”

Ann gives me another wink. “Sounds a lot better than lunch with us. You go on, Cat. We’ll catch up with each other soon.”

In the most casual voice I can muster, I say, “Mom, who in town has some of Dad’s work on display?”

“Well, they still have that piece at the library. And there’s the one at the Vietnam Veterans Building over at Duncan Park-the helicopter. Other than those and what’s in the barn, everything’s in private homes. Most of them are far from Natchez.”

I give Ann another hug, then glance at Pearlie-who has watched this exchange like a silent sentinel-and set off through the trees toward Michael Wells’s house.

My plan is to turn around as soon as Ann and my mother drive away, but they stand by the Acura talking to Pearlie as if they have all day. With little choice but to play out my charade, I walk deeper into the trees.

Something moves among the trunks to my right, and it startles me. Then I recognize Mose, the yardman. He’s setting mole traps in the scraggly grass beneath the trees about thirty yards away. Looking at him bent over the ground, I recall Grandpapa’s description of the prowler who ran away from the slave quarters on the night Daddy died. He was black. Could that have been Mose? He’s lived on the property for decades. He always drank quite a bit, and it strikes me now that he might have had some dealings with my father over drugs.

I veer toward the old man and walk for several yards, but something makes me stop short of him. Mose had an open window into my life from infancy to age sixteen. Is it possible that he lusted after me? To the point that he came into my room and tried to molest me? Could he have done something before that night, even? On the grounds of Malmaison, maybe? Under the tin roof of the barn? Could that something have been so traumatic that I blocked it out? Before talking to Nathan Malik, I wouldn’t have considered this. But now, thinking of the nightmares that have troubled me for years-faceless black figures breaking into my house-I wonder. The idea that a random prowler would walk all the way from the highway to Malmaison during a rainstorm has always bothered me. But if that “prowler” were Mose, he wouldn’t have had to walk more than a hundred yards. Could he be the faceless black man in my dreams? The demon fighting my father in the dark?

I’ll have to ask Pearlie that.

Mose hasn’t seen me yet. Behind Malmaison, Ann and my mother are still talking by the car. I might be able to reach Michael’s house without Mose seeing me, but Michael is bound to be at work. I could still use his pool, though. I think of the flat rock in his flower bed. Five or six minutes on the bottom of that pool might be just the thing to calm me down. I’m thinking of sprinting the rest of the way when the sound of a motor carries through the trees. Ann’s Acura is backing up. I hear her shift gears, and then the car rolls slowly down the curving driveway toward the gate.

“Miss Catherine?” croaks a voice parched by thousands of hand-rolled cigarettes.

I whip my head around. Mose is standing erect, staring at me from behind his pile of mole traps.

“That you, Miss Catherine? My eyes ain’t so good no more.”

“It’s me, Mose,” I call, already walking back toward Malmaison. “Don’t work too hard in this heat.”

“Heat don’t bother me none.” He laughs. “I’ll take it over the cold any day.”

I give him a broad wave, then turn and race back toward the house.

The Vietnam Veterans Building is closer to Malmaison than the public library, so I go there first. Situated in the city’s main public park, the small, one-story building began its life as the pro shop of the public golf course. The Vietnam vets took it over when the golf course was expanded to eighteen holes and a new pro shop built in another part of the park. They used it for support group meetings, for parties, and for a place to hang out besides home.

The dilapidated building sits on a long slope below the oak-shaded public playground that Natchez kids have used for sixty years. Overlooking the playground is Auburn, an antebellum mansion that serves as headquarters for one of the local garden clubs. Across the lane from Auburn stands an old steam locomotive, a sort of living museum for children. In the distance I see the public swimming pool, the only decent pool where black children can swim en masse in the city. It’s been closed for the past four years, due to lack of money for repairs. Down the long slope from the vets’ building, red and green tennis courts bake in the sun, surrounded by the grassy, fenced triangles of Little League ball fields.

I expected to find my father’s sculpture inside the veterans’ building-where I last saw it-but as I pull into the parking lot, I see the shining rotor blades that crown the piece jutting over the roof. Have they mounted it on some kind of pedestal? I get out and walk around the corner.

A house-size structure stands on the lawn, built of wooden poles hung with parachutes and camouflage netting. Inside the netting is a grass hut, and in front of the hut an army tent forms the centerpiece of a simulated military campsite. A steel beam rises out of the center of this scene, and mounted atop it is my father’s sculpture: a brushed-steel Huey helicopter with a wounded soldier suspended from its belly by a winch cable. It’s one of the most realistic pieces my father ever did. Most of his work-especially the later stuff-was far more abstract, like the tall tree standing between the twin staircases at the public library. But the ascending helicopter pleased everyone. What it’s doing in the middle of this thrown-together display puzzles me, though.

“Can I help you, miss?”

A heavyset man with a grizzled beard is walking toward me. He wears army fatigue pants, a black MIA T-shirt, and Harley-Davidson motorcycle boots. A gold earring decorates his left earlobe, and a braided, silver ponytail hangs over his right shoulder. He looks to be in his late fifties.

“I hope so. My dad sculpted that helicopter up there. I came by to see it.”

A smile lights up the man’s face. “You’re Luke Ferry’s kid?”

It feels good to be recognized as something besides William Kirkland’s granddaughter. “That’s right. Did you know him?”

“Sure. Not real well, of course, but he came to a few meetings here. Kept to himself quite a bit. But he did this helicopter for us. I tell you, for anybody who served in Nam, the Huey medevac is a thing of beauty. Like a guardian angel coming to pull you out of hell.”

I nod, unsure what I’ve really come for. “I thought you kept it inside the building.”

“We do, most of the year. But on July Fourth, the priest from St. Mary’s does the blessing of the fleet out at Lake St. John. There’s a boat parade out there, and contests for best float. We do one every year for the MIAs. To keep up awareness, you know? We’ve put your daddy’s chopper on there four years running.”