She stands suddenly and goes to a drawer, then takes out a pack of Salem cigarettes and lights one with a kitchen match. Despite the passage of time, Louise still has a slim figure, with taut calves that a lot of women would kill for. I can only imagine what she must have looked like as a young woman.

“Luke had some problems, okay?” She exhales blue smoke. “When he and I first got together, he couldn’t make love.”

“You mean physically?” A strange excitement awakens in my chest. “He was impotent?”

She tilts her head as if unsure how to reply. “He was and he wasn’t.”

“What do you mean, he was and he wasn’t?”

Louise looks at me skeptically. “I don’t see a ring on your finger. You ever lived with a man?”

“A couple. Or they lived with me, rather. You don’t have to pull any punches with me, Louise. I know men.”

She chuckles softly. “You know how when a man wakes up, lots of times he’s hard down there from having to go to the bathroom?”

I nod, my curiosity making me grip the arm of the sofa.

“Well, Luke would be like that in the morning. But if I tried to make love with him, he couldn’t stay that way.”

“I see.”

“I knew something in the war had done that to him. Not his wound. Something in his head. It took more than a year to get him where he could be with me. Where he could trust me. I think that’s what it was, trust. But I’m no doctor. I don’t know. He may have done or seen things over there that made sex something terrible to him.”

Wild thoughts are spinning in my head. If my father was impotent, could he have abused me? Of course he could have, answers a bitter voice. There are lots of sex acts besides intercourse. I’m not even sure intercourse is the main form of child abuse. I should ask Dr. Goldman, or even Michael Wells.

A blast of wind makes the windows shudder, and the rain drives against the roof like hail. I focus on the drone of the air conditioner to block it out. “What did you say about you coming between Jesse and my father?”

Louise pours herself a cup of still-brewing coffee. “Jesse always wanted me. Watched me from the time I was a little girl. Always talking to me, bringing me presents. Following me around on his horse. But I didn’t want him.”

“Why not?”

“I just didn’t feel right about it. I didn’t know what I wanted, but it wasn’t Jesse. Then I started seeing this white boy wandering around the island. He was a man, really-like Jesse-but he seemed more like a boy. Always off by himself, like me. Him and Jesse talked sometimes, but I think all they had in common was the war. Anyway, I’d figure out ways to get ahead of Luke on his walks, so he’d stumble on me, like it was an accident. I liked talking to him. I hadn’t been nowhere but here and to school in West Feliciana Parish. And that was just an old country school for black people. Didn’t learn nothing there. I’d just sit and listen while Luke talked. Which was funny, ’cause people who met him wondered if he could talk at all. But he could when he wanted to. He talked to me all the time.”

“I did the same thing,” I tell her. “I used to go into his studio every night to watch him work. He didn’t talk much to me-because I was so young, probably-but he let me sit with him. I was the only one he’d let in.”

Louise is smiling at me. We are sisters under the skin.

“How old were you when all this happened?” I ask.

Her cheeks darken in embarrassment. “I was fourteen when I started following Luke around. But we was just talking, like I said. We didn’t do nothing till I turned sixteen.”

Sixteen “I can see you were in love with him.”

There’s a faraway look in her eyes. “You want to know if he was in love with me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“He told me he was. I know that probably hurts you. But I’ll tell you this, he wasn’t ever gonna leave you to come to me. He hated that place, that Malmaison. Hated your grandfather, too.”

“And my mother?”

Louise gives me an intense look. “He loved your mama, now. She just didn’t understand him. But when I’d talk to him about leaving-and don’t think I didn’t. Lord, I begged him sometimes-he’d say, I can’t leave my Kitty Cat, Louise. Can’t leave my baby in that house with those people. So I can’t come to you. And he never did.”

This confirmation of my father’s love warms my heart, despite what I heard from my grandfather today. Yet as soon as I feel this emotion, something clenches in my chest. “Did he say anything else about my mother?”

She looks hesitant.

“Please tell me.”

“He said your mama had problems with sex. Even before he went to the war.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Wellshe just couldn’t do much. She did the one position, man on top, and she had to have the lights off to do that. Couldn’t take her clothes off in front of him. Before they got married, he thought it was just shyness. But she never loosened up. Luke said he was patient, and I believe him. I think she’d just been taught that sex was something to be ashamed of. I know some women like that. And then, after he got back from the war, Luke had his own problems.”

“Thank you for being so honest, Louise.”

“I got no reason to lie, except to spare you pain. And you seem like you can handle it.”

You’d be surprised at how much and how little I can handle sometimes. “What did you do after Daddy died?”

She sighs deeply. “I left this damn place, for one thing.”

“Where did you go?”

“St. Francisville. I fixed hair over there for a while.”

“Why did you come back?”

“I got in some trouble over there. Got caught with some weed in my car. I didn’t even like smoking that stuff, but it was better than drinking. Didn’t make me fat. And it took away some of the pain of grieving. Luke taught me that.”

“Were you arrested?”

Bitterness comes into her face. “Oh, yeah. They was gonna put me in jail. But Dr. Kirkland told me that if I’d come back to the island and get clean, he’d vouch for me. And that’s what happened.”

Of course, I think, with a strange feeling of resentment. With a single phone call, the feudal baron restores order to his universe. “When did you come back?”

“Nineteen eighty-three.”

“You haven’t left here since then?”

“Not to stay. This island’s kind of like a prison, I think. People get out of Angola sometimes, and you’d think they’d be happy. But they’re just lost. After all them years behind bars, they don’t know what to do without ’em. So they do some crime to get put back inside again. This island’s kind of like that. Lots of folks leave, but sooner or later, most of ’em come back.”

Like me? Do all roads lead back here?

“You’ve got pretty hair,” Louise says. “Even that reminds me of your daddy.”

“Did Daddy talk to anybody else about the war besides Jesse?”

“I think he talked to Dr. Cage some, over in Natchez. That’s who gave him his medication. Dr. Cage is a good man. I saw him a couple times. He likes to listen to people talk.”

I remember Pearlie mentioning Dr. Cage.

“About the only thing I can think of that might help you is his diary.”

My pulse quickens. “Diary?”

“It wasn’t really a diary. It was a drawing pad. Luke used to carry it around, making sketches. Lots of times he would sit by the river and write in that pad. He talked about maybe writing a book one day. I think some of that writing was about the war.”

My palms are tingling. “Do you have this sketch pad?”

“No. I wish I did.”

“What did it look like?

“It was just a sketch pad, like they used to sell in the dime stores. A thick one. He drew all kinds of pictures in it. He drew me once. I do have that picture.”

She goes to a fiberboard cabinet, kneels, and brings out a photo album. Opening the large book, she brings out a piece of paper and holds it up for me to see. It’s a charcoal sketch of a girl of no more than twenty, with stunning bone structure and shy eyes.