Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [79]
Around about there, Luce drifted back to sleep.
DOWN AT FLAGLER, Lola lived in a shady cinder-block cottage three streets from the beach. Dead live-oak leaves spilling over the gutters and a rusty red Olds Rocket 88 with all the good driven out of it parked in the sand yard.
Stubblefield went to the door and knocked. Luce and Dolores and Frank stayed in the Hawk.
Lola answered, wearing a floral-print beach wrap hanging open over a shimmering teal bathing suit. Barefoot, and her toenails painted pink. Freckled cleavage tanned to a line and then an inch of pale cream visible below that. Her hair wet and tumbling to her shoulders. A cigarette between her lips.
Stubblefield thought he must have come to the wrong place. This was not the grandmother he had imagined. He said who he was, and who he had with him. Her daughter Luce and the children of her murdered daughter, Lily.
—I do remember their names, Lola said, talking around the cigarette and very dry in her tone. How did you find me?
—Made a call.
—Not like I was hiding out or anything.
—She needs your help, Stubblefield said.
Lola said, Huh?
IN THE CAR, Luce studied the woman. Her mother. The word called up nothing but dim memories of shouting. Rough hugs. A face shoved close, breathing Wild Turkey and planting sloppy kisses on her forehead, leaving candy-apple-red smears.
And something failed to sum. Her mother must be, what? Old, at the very least. Luce did some fast head arithmetic, and the surprise total was not far past forty. And, even so, Lola looked years younger, for she had been damn handsome to begin with and had undergone production of only the two accidental girls spaced close together in her final teenage years. Plus, she had successfully skipped most of the wear and tear of raising them. So she had low miles on her, and what she had were apparently road miles. Adding the youthful effect of breasts and tousled hair and beach clothing, she could probably pass for Luce’s older sister in any light more flattering than the glare of midday sun. Though, actually, this was midday.
Luce got out of the car and leaned the seatback forward. The children climbed from the back and began exploring their new world. Lapsing into their water-witch manner, following invisible lines of force across the yard, quartering the space, doubling back, feeling for something with senses other than the usual five. They finally settled ten feet apart and seemed not to be looking at anything in particular, but still alert.
Not much in the way of greeting between mother and daughter. A hug was too much, a handshake out of the question. Lola tipped her head back and blew smoke out the corner of her mouth, and Luce got straight to business.
—Lily’s husband, Bud. He hurt the children. And then he killed her. He’s come to town, making threats. And Lit won’t do anything about it because he’s buying dope from him.
Lola said, Golly, I wonder why I ever left?
STUBBLEFIELD’S SWADDLED cut hand throbbed. He looked at all four of them, the way some bloodline thing connected the wings of their noses, their eye slants. Nevertheless, Lola and the children didn’t care to own each other. They wouldn’t look her way, like she was some ghost wavering before them in a dimension they took a pass on sensing.
—I wasn’t made for a grandmother, Lola said.
—Or a mother, Luce said.
—News flash, Luce. Neither were you. We’re a lot the same. Lily was the one different.
—You don’t know anything about me, Luce said. I’m not the same as you. And if I ever was, I’ve changed.
—People don’t change, Lola said. Maybe you’re still young enough to pretend that’s not true. People are who they are, and everybody around them has to take it or go somewhere else.
—I didn’t go anywhere. None of us did.
—But I did. I couldn’t take any of you one day more.
Stubblefield had been standing off to the side saying nothing, but now