Rising Tides. Emilie Richards

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СКАЧАТЬ than New Orleans. It was bourbon and branch water on a summer night, a voice that could round the edges of the sharpest conflict. She thought of her hitchhiker and understood why she had initially found him appealing.

      “No, I didn’t,” she agreed. “You were pompous and high-handed. Did you think well of yourself?”

      “There’s more here than you know.”

      “More than not liking the Reynoldses and Phillip be cause of the color of their skin?”

      “I’ve always had colored friends. I’ve eaten with colored people, slept under the same roof, kissed their babies and their grandmothers.”

      She lifted her camera and wished she could record his voice on film, the sincerity, the arrogance. He paused for her, but didn’t smile, as if having his photograph taken were natural.

      “You won’t go down in history as a friend to the civil-rights movement,” she said when she had finished.

      “That’s right. I won’t go down in history as a man who supported what he didn’t believe in.”

      She gave him credit for honesty. His values had al ways been conservative. He believed in states’ rights. He represented thousands of people who believed just as he did, and he was a better, fairer representative than many of his colleagues.

      But was he a racist? In his anger at being trapped by the wishes of a dead woman, he had acted like one last night. But Dawn believed her father lacked the passion for true racism. He was sloppy-sentimental about the Negro servants who had tended him as a child. Even now, he paid for a nursing home for one of them, al though the family debt to her had ended long ago. And he felt obligations to his Negro constituents. He wanted their schools to be good ones, their businesses to thrive. And now that integration was sweeping the state, despite his belief that separate but equal was fair enough, he was encouraging citizens to abide by the law.

      The moment seemed too important to spoil. And for what purpose? How could Dawn change a mind made up by years of experiences and propaganda she would never understand?

      “What do you mean, there’s more than I know?” she said.

      He stooped to retrieve a piece of driftwood. She snapped another photograph of him with his arm extended, reaching for something outside the camera’s range. If the photograph turned out well, she would save it, not give it to him to use in his campaign.

      He rubbed his thumbs along the driftwood’s surface as they continued walking. “I’ve never told you this, but I met Nicky Valentine years ago, during the war. Phillip was a little boy then, and she was singing at a club in Casablanca. She’d gone there to escape the occupation of Paris.”

      “Casablanca? Did Sam play it again?”

      “Don’t be cute, darling.” He tossed the driftwood into the waves.

      Dawn refused to follow it with her eyes. “What were you doing there?”

      “I was on the Augusta when the Allies took the coast of Morocco, and in the city later, after the French troops surrendered.”

      “I didn’t know that.”

      “I’ve never been one to trade war stories. There wasn’t a lot about killing and waiting to be killed that was pleasant to remember.”

      She was impressed with his candor. This reluctance to discuss particulars was something she hadn’t known about her father, something that didn’t fit with his political image of decorated war hero and patriot. “And you met Nicky?”

      “I did. So did half the American men in the city.”

      She stopped. “What are you trying to say?”

      “Nicky was a woman alone with a child. She was light-skinned enough to come back to this country and try to be any race she chose. She was looking for a man with a soft heart and a savior complex….” He said no more.

      Dawn shook her head. “Preposterous. Nicky had a son with dark skin. You’re saying she intended to abandon him?”

      “There were schools in Europe where she could have left him. No one would have been the wiser.”

      She continued walking. “I guess whether you were right or wrong about her intentions doesn’t matter now.”

      “It mattered then. She went after someone close to me, someone weak enough to be tempted. I told her I saw through her scheme. And I told her I wouldn’t stand for it.”

      She could imagine that scene. It left her feeling distinctly uneasy. “Who was it?”

      “I can’t say. I suppose I’m still protecting his reputation. But he left the country after I confronted Nicky, and I’m the one she held responsible. I’m the one she vowed to get even with.”

      “Don’t tell me you think this has something to do with Grandmère’s will?”

      “Nicky Valentine’s a woman capable of extracting revenge. Maybe years later she got to your grandmother and told her lies or made demands. I don’t know. I haven’t put it together yet.”

      They had turned back toward the cottage before she spoke again. “Why did you tell me this?”

      “So you won’t be shocked if any of it comes out.”

      She didn’t believe him. What had he really hoped for? That her respect for Nicky would diminish? She realized she’d better set him straight. “I’m surprised you knew Nicky during the war. But no matter what happened then, I don’t believe she’s after some kind of perverted revenge. And how could you believe it, what—twenty years later? Nicky must have had men falling in love with her every day. She’s still one of the most stunning women I’ve ever seen.”

      “She’s a stunning colored woman.”

      “And you’re blinded by your prejudices.”

      “No more than you’re blinded by idealism.” He put his arm around her shoulders.

      She had expected rejection. This attempt to draw her closer touched her. “Whatever the history, can’t you forget your feelings for a little while? Be the Ferris Gerritsen who gets himself elected to every office he runs for. Pump a few hands, smile a few smiles.”

      “There’s no one here who would vote for me, darling. Not even my own little girl.”

      “That all depends on who’s running against you.”

      He squeezed her shoulder before he released her. “I don’t know what your grandmother thought she was doing, but I’m going to insist that Spencer read the en tire will this morning.”

      “Have you talked to him?”

      “He’s made himself unavailable to me.”

      “I think there are going to be more surprises ahead.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. But why would Grandmère call us together СКАЧАТЬ