people don’t think singing other people’s songs takes imagination, either.”
Dawn felt the flush of camaraderie. She pointed out the layout of the rooms downstairs, then started up to the second floor. Her mother had disappeared, and Dawn hoped she wouldn’t meet her now. Since she had openly defied her father, she anticipated his appearance with even less enthusiasm.
She led Nicky to the bedroom at the end of the hall way in the addition. It was large and airy, furnished with pine and cypress antiques of straight, simple lines. The bed, a nineteenth-century tester, was draped in hand-crocheted lace.
“This was my grandmother’s room.” Dawn stepped inside. Immediately she was embraced by the entwined fragrances of roses and vetiver, fragrances she would al ways associate with Aurore. “I think you’ll be comfort able here. There’s a private bath.”
“Your grandmother’s room?”
“It’s one of the larger ones in the house, and it was her favorite, because there really is a view of sorts, if you step out here.” She walked to the French doors leading out to a small balcony and threw them open. Immediately fresh air swept into the room, licking at the scents.
“Why are you giving this room to me?”
Dawn faced her. “Why not?”
“You know the answer to that.”
Dawn was afraid she did. She was the daughter of Ferris Lee Gerritsen, noted for his opposition to civil rights, and blood was supposed to tell. “I hope you won’t hold my father’s prejudices against me. We’re not at all the same.”
“You’re not at all what I would have expected.”
“Well, you’re even more.” As a photojournalist, Dawn had learned to quickly assess faces. Nicky was one of those rare women who would be equally beautiful on film or in person. Her dark hair hugged her head in short, soft curls. Her eyes were an impenetrable green, the still surface of a tree-shaded bayou. Her features were broad and strong, sensual, earthy and somehow—and this fascinated Dawn most of all—wise. Nicky was at least as old as Dawn’s own parents, but age seemed only to have intensified her assets.
She realized she was staring. “You were a great favorite of Grandmère’s. I grew up listening to your voice. Seventy-eights at first. Then 45s. Then albums, with your photograph smiling at me from the record rack.”
“Your grandmother was a complete stranger to me.”
“I think you would have liked her.”
Nicky ran her hand over the lace coverlet, but she didn’t answer. Dawn heard footsteps on the stairs and realized that their private moment was about to end. “This situation is extraordinary, Mrs. Reynolds. Please tell me if there’s anything I can do to make it more comfortable for you.”
“It’s not going to be comfortable, no matter what any of us do.”
“You haven’t met Pelichere Landry yet. She was a friend of Grandmère’s, and she takes care of the cottage when no one’s here. I know she’s set out food in the kitchen. When you’ve settled in, please introduce your self, and she’ll show you where everything is.”
Dawn stepped aside as Jake and Phillip entered. Ben was carrying a suitcase, but he stopped in the doorway. Without a word, she moved past him.
“So you decided to come.” Phillip kissed his mother’s forehead, and didn’t have to bend far to do it. She was only half a head shorter than his six-foot-two.
“I don’t know why I did.” Nicky pushed him away before he could answer. She and Phillip had gone round and round about this invitation to Grand Isle since the moment it arrived. She had flatly refused to come, but somehow she had ended up here anyway. “And don’t bother telling me you don’t know why I was invited. You never could lie worth anything. You know a whole lot more about this situation than you’ve let on so far.”
“Have you had supper?” Jake asked Phillip.
“There weren’t a lot of places on the way down where I could have been sure to leave with a full stomach and a full set of teeth.”
Jake laughed, but both men knew the truth behind Phillip’s joke. Black humor, some called it. Both men had theories about that.
“Dawn told me that someone’s set out food for us in the kitchen,” Nicky said.
Jake set down the suitcase he had carried. “Suppose she meant we’ll be eating in the kitchen while the white folks eat in the dining room?”
“No, I don’t suppose that’s what she meant. She was trying to make us welcome.”
“If Dawn’s anything like her father,” Phillip said, “she can charm you right straight to the center of a lie, and you’ll never even know you’ve been there.”
“Would you like me to go down to the kitchen and see if I can get something to bring up?” Jake asked Nicky.
“I’d like that. Phillip?”
Phillip shrugged. “You don’t have to leave us alone, Jake.”
“Think I do.”
Nicky watched her husband leave. His footsteps were no longer audible when she spoke. “I think it’s time you did some explaining.”
Phillip wandered the room, stopping at a bedside table. Wildflowers bloomed in a cut-glass vase, and a handful of novels fanned out along the edges in invitation. “You’re one of the few people who know that Aurore Gerritsen hired me to write her life story. That she dictated it to me chapter and verse.”
“Knowing’s not the same as understanding.”
“Have you wondered just how far she went? How much she told me about her life?”
Nicky didn’t reply.
Phillip faced her. “She left out nothing.”
“How can you know what she left out?” She wandered to the French doors and gazed out over wizened water oaks bending in the wind.
Phillip joined her, putting his hand on her arm. His skin was smooth and brown in contrast to hers. “I can tell you this. I learned that a man I once called Hap, a man I knew in Morocco a long time ago, was really Hugh Gerritsen.”
She stiffened and shook off Phillip’s hand. “Is that why we’re here? Because once upon a time we knew Aurore Gerritsen’s son?”
“I think that’s some part of it.”
He had succeeded in making her look at him. “And what are the other parts?” she said.
“I can’t speak for Aurore. Not yet. But maybe I can speak for you. I think you came for answers to questions you gave up asking yourself a long time ago. Questions you’re going to need to share with Jake very soon. Be cause I don’t think any of us was invited here so that we could hold tight to our secrets.”
Something went still inside her. “You’ve always been the one with questions. That’s why you do what you do for a living. You probe and you probe, like a tongue that can’t keep away from a sore tooth.”
“If you worry a tooth long enough, eventually it gives way.”
“You think that’s what will happen here?”
“I think we can be assured of it.”
She wondered how much Phillip really knew about her relationship with Hugh Gerritsen, exactly how much he had been told and how much he remembered. Phillip had been young during those days so long ago, but his memory had always been extraordinary.
As if he could read her mind, he nodded. “You know to be careful, don’t you?” he asked.
“Careful of what? The truth? The senator?”
“The senator,