“Naw, it’s some folks still out there,” Clyde said of the old slave settlement. “They keep to themselves, never seen one myself. The old-timers used to say they was all runaways, scared to come into town. But my understanding of history, of Jefferson, ain’t no way a white man was just gon’ let his niggers walk off to Shangri-la and not come hunting ’em. It’s so many tall tales in this town. You can’t put stock in half of it. I don’t even know if that place is real and not a story some of us made up long ago, a fantasy of slipping free of white folks.”

Darren nodded sagely at the Southern logic. He thanked Clyde for talking with him. The driver looked twice over his shoulder before giving Darren a piece of advice. “Be careful,” he said in a near whisper. “Rosemary don’t play.”

Darren would have asked the man what he meant, but his phone rang.

It was his wife calling.

They hadn’t even spoken since he’d left Houston this morning.

“Hey,” she said once she knew he was alone in his hotel room, her voice husky the way it got after eight p.m. She’d be in one of his old sweatshirts by now. He could picture her collarbone peeking out where the fabric slid off her shoulder, and he felt a pinch of longing. It was there for her too. “I was thinking,” she said. “Maybe this time I could come see you.”

“I’m working, Lisa.”

“I know. It’s just the hearing in the Madison Holdings deal got pushed another week, and I could take a day or two, drive up there, give you a hug.”

“You want to drive four hours to give me a hug?”

“Well, maybe more than a hug.” There was a pause on her end of the line, and then she whispered, almost as if she were ashamed of it, “I miss you.”

Darren flipped on the overhead light in the suite’s front room. It seemed smaller than when he’d left it, everything swallowed in an oxblood velvet. It was hanging from the windows, it was woven into the wallpaper, and it was in the upholstery of the chesterfield sofa where Darren sat down to peel off his boots.

“I miss you too. But I’m just here for a few days.”

“It’s just, you heard Dr. Long, we’re in a good place right now, and the last time we were apart, the distance, it got between us, it changed things—”