“So it wasn’t really a secret,” said Macey slowly, “but it became a secret, from not talking about it.” She imagined the secret gathering around the burning barn, spreading down Shell Road, sifting into houses, and crossing generations. “You’d think Mr. Sibley would want the kids on his team. Finding out who did it and stuff.”

“It wasn’t like that in the fifties. He would not have thought of the kids as his team. He would have stayed the teacher, the grown-up, because anything else was weakness.” Bonnie’s voice dropped to a whisper, as if still on the edge of the secret, still skirting around the truth. “Besides, Macey, he may have known who did it. It’s possible that a lot of people knew who did it. Remember, if the fire department was there, and if the police were there, and if the neighbors were there, and nobody did anything … then Mr. Sibley would know that nobody was going to do anything, either.”

Mrs. Johnson had not actually accepted the 1959 arson as Macey’s local history project. Come talk to me, she’d said, we’ll think of a better one; but Macey had not followed up.

In an entire stack of library books, Macey found nobody who wrote about 1959, but the nineteen sixties were so full of racial struggle Macey could hardly keep track of all the cities with protests and schools with riots and groups with capital letters—NAACP, SNCC, SCLC.

June 12, 1963.

Mississippi.

Medgar Evers was a high-profile black leader who had a wife and three little kids. He was so hated by the white authorities that he actually had his kids practice hiding in the big porcelain bathtub in case the house was attacked. But he himself didn’t hide. He was shot in his own driveway. One fingerprint was found on the gun that killed him: Byron De La Beckwith’s, a member of the white Citizens’ Council. He was never convicted.

Macey closed the book. The name Byron De La Beckwith was familiar. An ugly name, designed to be remembered.

Of course all the computer terminals in the media center were busy, so she walked up and down to find somebody she could bully into letting her use theirs for a moment. Luckily Grace was working on her own project two aisles over and grumpily agreed to let Macey run an Internet search. Macey shoved herself onto half of Grace’s chair and Grace muttered that their friendship was being jeopardized.

The name Byron De La Beckwith was all over the place.

In 1994 Byron De La Beckwith had finally been brought to trial. After thirty-one years, the killer of Medgar Evers went to prison.

Macey printed out a couple of pages. “Grace?”