The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel by Lisa Wingate Read Free Book Online Page B

ago, before the Yankees toppled the statues and the rose trellises and butchered the Goswood hogs, then threw what was left of the carcasses in the reflecting ponds. The garden was too far gone after that. Hard times don’t leave money for fine things anyhow. Gate’s been shut ever since the war, the footpaths left for the wisteria and brambles and climbing roses to eat up. Poison ivy drapes the old trees, and hanging moss strings down thick as silk fringes on a ladies’ fan.
    Who’d be under that bridge, except maybe boys gigging frogs or men hunting possum or squirrel for the supper pot? But it’s white-sounding voices. Girls’ voices, whispering.
    I make my way through the brush and sidle closer till I can hear for sure. Missy Lavinia is clear as a smith’s hammer on metal and just about as pleasurable: “…haven’t kept your end of the bargain, so pray tell why should I?”
    What in saint’s name would Missy come here for? Who’s she talking to? I settle real quiet near the bridge rail, point my ear.
    “Our goal is selfsame.” The words are Frenchy-like, hard to make out at first. They run up and down quick as a bird whistle. “Perhaps our fate is in common, as well, if we are unsuccessful in our quest.”
    “You will not assume we hold any similarities,” Missy snaps. I can picture them fat cheeks of hers puffing like the hog bladders the butcher men blow up with air and tie off for the children to play with. “You are no daughter of this house. You are the whelp of my father’s…my father’s… concubine. Nothing more.”
    “And yet, it is you who have arranged that I come here. Who have provided for me an entry to Goswood Grove House.”
    They been…Missy did…
    What in the name a ’ mercy? Missy was the one helped Juneau Jane get in?
    I tell Tati this news, and she’ll say I’m storying.
    That’s why Missy Lavinia didn’t raise a fuss last night. Might even be why Seddie didn’t come out of her room, in all the ruckus. Maybe Missy Lavinia had a hand in that, too.
    “And, for all my effort in assuring your passage here, Juneau Jane, I have gained nothing. You do not know where his papers are hidden any more than I do. Or perhaps you were lying when you said you could find them…or perhaps the fact is that my father lied to you. ” Missy’s low giggle follows on, them words savored like sugar crust in her mouth.
    “He would not.” The girl’s voice rises high, takes on the sound of a child’s, then trembles and thickens when she says, “He would not fail to provide for me. Always it was his promise that he—”
    “You are nothing to this family!” Missy shrieks, sending a blackbird to flight overhead. I start looking round for where I’ll go if somebody comes to see what’s the trouble. “You are nothing, and if Father is gone, you are as penniless as you deserve to be. You and that wretched yellow woman who bore you. I almost feel sorry for you, Juneau Jane. A mother who fears you’ve grown prettier than she and a father who has tired of the burden you represent. Such a sad state of affairs.”
    “You will not speak of him in this manner! He does not lie. Perhaps he has only moved the papers to prevent your mother from throwing them to the flames. She would then claim all the holdings derived of Papa’s family. With no inheritance left directly to you, you would be forced to forever do your mother’s bidding. Is that not what you fear? Why you have brought me here?”
    “I didn’t want to bring you here.” Missy’s soft and amiable again, like she’s coaxing a little piglet from the corner, so’s to string it up and cut its throat. “If you’d only been willing to tell me where Father hid the papers, rather than insisting on being personally involved in looking for them…”
    “ Ffff! As if you could be trusted! You would steal the portion that is to be mine as quickly as your mother would steal what is to be yours.”
    “The portion that is to be yours ?