Chapter 1
Southeastern Georgia, 1865
In the daytime, they kept low to the ground, watching, not speaking much. It seemed safer to travel that way. So, by night, they were walking black ghosts.
Five of them left the ravaged Clarkson place together. The pitiful livestock had long ago been slaughtered for food. The big house was ransacked, nothing of use left behind. Some of the newly freed slaves stayed among the ruins. Others, destined never to see the day of their freedom, had dropped dead of exhaustion and hunger. As for Master Clarkson and his remaining kin, they’d vanished long ago, riding off in the middle of the night.
This band of five had been on the road for three days now. In their flight, the five of them—Preacher Jack, Monroe, Henry and his son Abner, and Ruben—had raided abandoned homes, looking for any food or tools they could lay hands on. They were now living, for the most part, on the berries they picked.
They’d heard all kinds of rumors: Seek out the Union soldiers, they’ll help you, give you something to eat. Keep away from the Union troops, they’re mean, tired of fighting, resentful. Some of them never even seen nobody look like us before—might shoot you thinking you some kind of animal. And woe be unto you if you come across any deserting Rebs, wounded and half crazy. They’d just as soon kill you as look at you.
Monroe was hungry. He was so hungry, nothing else mattered. So when Brother Jack told him to wait a little while longer before he lit the fire, for the first time ever Monroe disobeyed the older man. Earlier in the day, he had found and skinned a possum, and Monroe meant to have some of it now.
They tore at the charred flesh, sucked at its bones. Hungry as they were, Jack had made them say grace before eating. As a respected elder, the preacher who knew how to read some, the only one of them who had ever been more than ten miles away from his birthplace, he was looked to for guidance, and the other men were trusting in him to lead them on to freedom.
The important thing was to keep moving toward that freedom. Even though they didn’t yet know where that was or how long it would take to get there, they figured they’d recognize it when they saw it. Like Jack had said a hundred times, God wanted them to go into the wilderness. And God would help them find a way out. They were the children of the Israelites.
The preacher was a big man, over six feet, and in his youth, long before Monroe was born, he had brought top dollar at auction. Clarkson, like his father-in-law before him, had worked Jack like the horse of a man that he was. Jack had been broken like a horse too. Branded, lashed, and near-hobbled for trying to run away. But for a long time now, more mule than stallion. He had seen eight of his children sold off. Monroe was his sister’s grandchild.
Jack was old now, and a long way from virile. He still had a voice like thunder, though. And when he talked to the others about God and sin, good and evil, it was not hard to understand why so many believed the word of the Lord was booming out of his throat.
Henry took a careful swig from the water jar and passed it to young Abner. But the boy was asleep. Thirteen-year-old Abner had come out of Henry’s wife, by way of Master Clarkson’s son. That made no difference to Henry. Abner was all he had left; his natural son had been sold long ago, and his and Ruth’s little daughter had died of
fever before she was six years old.
The fire was out now. Henry shook Abner awake, and the band of men took to the trees.
Chapter 2
Midtown Manhattan, 2000
The March air was wonderful, bracing. Yet it had a milder hint of the coming change of season. Sarah felt good in her coat. She turned into Bergdorf’s and headed for the escalator.
Halfway up, she felt a blow of terror strong enough to buckle her knees. Between the teeth of the moving stairs, something animal was showing its filthy mouth. Whatever it was, it was releasing a dank and suffocating odor.
Against her will, she reached toward the thing, just for an instant, but a horrible sound from somewhere deep inside it made her pull back.
She flew off the escalator and onto solid ground, struggling to keep herself from screaming.
“Are you ill, miss?”
The voice that came out of nowhere belonged to the young white man who caught her as she stumbled backward. That word, ill, hardly conveyed the panicky thumping in her chest. Ill. When a reeking, wet monster had just come after her…in Bergdorf’s?
Sarah pointed toward the escalator. The young man followed the movement of her hand with his eyes. “What? There’s nothing there.”
He was right. No monsters anywhere in sight.
“Should I get a doctor?” the stranger asked.
She looked at him, dizzy, confused. But the pounding in her heart and ears had ceased. She inhaled deeply. The foul odor was gone now. Nothing but the flowery scent that wafted up from the main floor.
“I’m all right, thank you.”
The whole thing had to be a carryover from some nightmare. Surely that explained it. She’d had a nightmare about some sort of reptilian monster, repressed it until now, and suddenly the creature from the dream scenario had come slithering into her waking mind. She took another deep breath, and another. There, that was better. Everything was all right now. In fact, she almost felt giddy.
The first thing to catch her eye was a deep purple jacket with a cinched-in waist. Pretty, in its way, attention-grabbing. But certainly not at all her style. Yet she couldn’t stop looking at it. And the more she looked, the easier it was to imagine herself wearing it. Sarah saw the red-haired saleswoman head in her direction.
The new suit would have to be altered. But her two new sheer blouses were wrapped in tissue inside the lilac shopping bag swinging from her wrist.
Her next stop was the cosmetics counter at Bendel’s. The affectless saleswoman applied mascara to Sarah’s eyes while enumerating the merits of the different shades of blush. When she suddenly paused and looked quizzically into her face, Sarah knew exactly why. The woman had just realized Sarah was black. It was the ivory cast to her skin that so often threw white people. Other black people seldom made the mistake. The saleswoman resumed the makeover. Sarah thanked her and then proceeded to buy a full complement of Chanel cosmetics and bath items.
Her final stop was Saks, where she spent eight hundred dollars on a marked-down pair of Jimmy Choos and then picked up a rust-colored silk bra, matching bikini panties, and an assortment of Swiss lace camisoles.
Out on the street again, she doubled back toward the apartment, stopping to do more window-shopping, striding confidently along the avenue.
Sarah had never been much of a drinker. But, standing outside the spacious bar attached to the new hotel on Fifty-Sixth, she was suddenly aware of a strong desire for alcohol. She pushed in through the heavy glass door, took a quick survey of the room, and headed for a booth. The waiter, a gray-haired black man with stick-straight posture, soon appeared at her elbow. He stood there cocking his head in anticipation. Sarah just then realized she had no idea what to order. The waiter never moved.
“I suppose I’ll have something in a martini glass,” she said tentatively.
“But not the martini itself. Is that it?”
“Yes. I think so.” Oh for heaven’s sake, she chastised herself, you’re talking nonsense.
“A Negroni? Cosmopolitan?”
“I don’t— Yes.”
It was after four o’clock by now. The bar was virtually deserted. Sarah luxuriated in the booth, taking off her coat to reveal her favorite sweater, powder blue cashmere with a silk ribbon at the neckline. She took out her compact to tidy her hair and freshen her lipstick, and as she was replacing it in her bag, she noticed the well-dressed black man two tables away. He was thumbing through a sheaf of papers in his open attaché case. At her glance, he looked up and smiled at her. She returned the smile, and instead of looking away, her standard response to the attentions of a stranger, she held his eyes with her own. Not sixty seconds later, he was standing over her, asking permission to join her at her table. Going against her every instinct, she consented.
The well-built stranger in gray Hugo Boss introduced himself as Crawford, a native New Yorker who was now living in Atlanta.
Unbidden, the waiter brought them a plate with an assortment of hors d’oeuvres to accompany their third round. He nodded slyly at them as he walked off.
“Thanks, brother,” Crawford called to the man, then he turned back to Sarah. “I guess there’s some perks to being black, after all,” he said.
Sarah laughed out loud, and then realized how strange her own voice sounded, oddly robust. She let herself laugh again, enjoying the unfamiliar ring of it. “Now, tell me, what is it you do in Atlanta?”
“I’m V.P. at a restaurant supply company. We sell all kinds of special kitchen equipment. You like to cook? I can get you a deal on a fantastic Viking, or even one of the French ones.”
“I’ve never been much good in the kitchen. But I have been very bad there.” She laughed at her own lame joke, but clearly he didn’t get it. “Let’s get back to you. You said you were raised in New York.”
“Yeah. Born in the projects in Bed-Stuy.”
“Why did you go to the South?”
“That’s where the jobs were fifteen years ago. I guess I always figured I’d come back up here to live after a while. But the years kept going by. I’ve done pretty well for myself down there.”
“You actually like it there? You don’t find it dull? After living in New York, I mean.”
“What you think, I live on a farm or something? Let me tell you something, lady. Atlanta is a banging place. You come on down sometime and I’ll show you I don’t lie.”
Ordinarily, Sarah would have been mortified to think she had insulted the man. But now she merely laughed. “I just may do that,” she said.
Crawford was curious about her work too.
“What do you think I do for a living? It’ll be more fun for you to guess.”
“College teacher,” he said.
“Why that?”
“I don’t know. ’Cause you speak so nice. Educated.”
“What do I teach?”
“Let’s see—English?”
“Right. Good for you.” She felt a strong tickle then, in her left ear. Like a reminder that it wasn’t nice to tell a lie. She ignored it.
He grinned and started to ask another question. But he stopped short when Sarah placed her hand on his thigh and began to slide it upward. She saw the shock in his face: English teachers in little blue sweaters didn’t act the way she was acting.
“Are you by any chance staying here at the hotel, Crawford?”
“I sure am. Got a beautiful room.”
He signed the bar bill in short order and gathered up his things along with her shopping bags.
As the elevator traveled up, that featherlight feeling returned, but now it was mingled with the effects of the alcohol. Sarah was woozy and took extra care to walk upright on her heels. I feel good, she thought. This doesn’t seem at all tawdry. It doesn’t feel at all like me, but it does seem right. Now, how could that be?
They got off the elevator on the eighteenth floor. He fumbled, juggling the packages at the same time as he worked the electronic card that opened the door to his suite.
“No wedding ring,” Sarah noted. “You’re not married, Crawford?”
“Divorced,” he said.
He settled all the packages on a table nearby.
“This is a nice room indeed,” Sarah said, tossing her coat on an armchair.
“Want a drink? The bar is full. Got some good bourbon in there. Or I could call down for you another one of those red things.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Crawford had just removed his suit jacket when she came at him. Her mouth on his was like a succubus. She gave him no chance to breathe. In another moment she was reaching for the buttons on his trousers.
“You in a hell of a hurry, baby,” he said. “I was just about to— Hey! Hey! Girl! Lord have mercy— Ah…Oh. Oh shit, girl!”
Crawford had a good, manly chest. Sarah lay across the bed, watching him as he toweled off after his shower.
He was popping cashews from the room’s gift basket into his mouth while he dried himself. “You kind of a strange sister, Sarah. You know that?”
“Am I?”
“Yes, ma’am, you are. I sure never met any sister like you down in Atlanta.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Huh. I don’t know yet. But I got a second wind now. Let’s find out,” he said.
“That sounds delicious,” she said. “You come over here and find out.”
Crawford let the towel fall onto the carpet and stepped toward her. And Sarah rose up to meet him.
I must have dozed off, she thought. She sat up in the tousled bed. The late-afternoon sun was flooding the room. “I could swear I heard someone screaming,” she said. “I must have had a bad dream. I didn’t make you scream, did I, Crawford?” she asked playfully.
There was no answer.
She looked around the room, called his name twice. Silence. She didn’t recall the room being so cold. Then she noticed the smashed window and the blood-tipped shards of glass on the carpet. She started toward the window, tiptoeing to avoid the glass.
Stop.
Who said that?
It was the voice in her head. Shouting.
Don’t look. Don’t look down there.
She tore away from the window. Dressed and pushed into her shoes in seconds. Snatched up her shopping bags and ran. The door closed soundlessly behind her.
Joseph, the second-shift doorman, tipped his cap toward her, and Sarah smiled back at him. It wasn’t until she was riding up in the elevator that she noticed all the shopping bags she was clutching. Where on earth had they come from?
She came into the apartment, flipped the double lock, and then hurriedly emptied all the bags onto the sofa. A blizzard of tissue and ribbon. Shoes, camisoles, silk, crepe, lace. She could only stare at the booty.
Yes, she’d been experiencing some memory lapses lately. But this? Hundreds and hundreds of dollars’ worth of new things she had no memory of buying. Earlier in the day she’d been contemplating a shopping trip, contemplating it, but she had no memory of accomplishing it.
I didn’t actually go shopping, did I?
And where else have I been all day? God, what’s the matter with me?
Don’t be stupid, Sarah told herself. You know what it’s about. These blackouts started right after Mom died. That’s when all this blurry kind of forgetfulness started—though forgetting is hardly the right word anymore. You were knocked for a loop by her passing, ...
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