Gabrielle said, “Do you know what today is?”

“A black day,” Bessie said. “No blacker day has ever been.”

“He’s out there somewhere—who knows where? He should be here, with me.”

What was she thinking of that old billy goat for at a time like this? “I know, honey, I know. Ain’t right.”

“You don’t understand,” Gabrielle said, sitting upright. “Today, this is the second anniversary of my wedding.”

Bessie King looked away. So not even this one, she thought. “Honey, we all got troubles,” she said, and went back to the kitchen to have her privacy.

Chapter Nineteen

All the ones who left, they never came back. I know—because I waited for them.

Elizabeth “Bessie” King, 1918

C H A P T E R   N I N E T E E N

Thursday, November 10

ONCE AGAIN, Gray Ellen Jenks found herself in strange territory with a man she did not trust. She wrapped her shawl around her to keep off the drizzle as the driver steered the open buggy through the arched wrought-iron gate of Oakdale Cemetery.

The driver was John Norwood, the only man in town who’d given her a chance. To her left sat Ivanhoe Grant, the man who had forced her to take a chance. Squeezed in the middle, she felt caught between two radically different visions of the future.

Going home had seemed pointless—Sam would be out chasing the action. Norwood had dismissed all the jittery children almost “s soon as the school day had begun, then had rushed off to attend some kind of meeting downtown. Nobody seemed to know what was going on, but everybody knew it was bad.

Later, Norwood had found her outside city hall, where she had gravitated hoping to find Sam. Never had she seen Norwood so angry and frightened.

“Can you get us a carriage?” he’d asked, hooding his face under the lowered brim of his hat. His tone had lost all confidence, all professional composure. He was just a black man asking a white woman to protect him. It made him ashamed.

She had not hesitated. She retrieved the buggy Cousin Hugh had made available to them. Norwood directed her down streets she had never traveled before, stopping only once to let a gray-coated shadow leap up onto the seat beside her—Ivanhoe Grant.

“What are we doing in the cemetery?” she asked now. She was already spooked enough without lurking around graveyards. She thought she caught a glimpse of a human shape, moving, out of the corner of her eye.

“I must minister to my flock,” Grant said without smiling.

“What, here?”