“My mother’s nineteen twenty-three Fannie Farmer cookbook. A gift. My mother was a great cook, and she swore by Fannie Farmer.” Thelma lit her first cigarette of the day and wound clean paper into the typewriter. “Terrence is a good man, Roxanne, a fine man, brains, looks. Someone taught him manners, all right. He seems like a man of real integrity too. You just don’t find men like that nowadays. Especially not in our business. They’re more like Jonathan and Charlie, all riddled with ego and ambition and insecurity, men who drain the life out of their women, and then they move on to a new woman. I admire Terrence, and if he were white, I’d tell you to marry him.”

“Marry him! I can’t even go to the movies with him.”

“Yes, and that’s why I think you should end this affair. You two are playing with fire.”

“We’re not playing. We’re in love.”

“There’s more at stake here than you getting your heart broken, dear.”

“I suppose you’re going to remind me about Diana Jordan and how her career is finished. Do you think that doesn’t cross my mind every day? I think about—”

“Did I say anything about career? No. You’ve proved that you’re willing to take risks with your career. I’m not even talking about you. He is in grave danger. Terrence.” She pointed to the front page of the Challenger, another headline about the grisly death of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi that summer. At his funeral in Chicago, the boy’s mother had insisted on an open coffin. The whole world sickened to see what they had done to her son.

“Terrence wants to go to Mississippi to cover the trial, but Mr. Branch won’t let him, says the trial is a travesty. And it’s too dangerous.”

“And he’s right. Those white men they arrested, they’ll get off. You watch. No one will pay for this boy’s death. You be careful, Roxanne, you and Terrence both. If that can happen to a boy”—Thelma again pointed to the page—“imagine what can happen to a grown man.”

“We live in California, not Mississippi.”

“Yes, and just why are you keeping your relationship a secret from everyone?”

To that question, rhetorical or not, I had no reply.

That night I woke to see Terrence sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. I glanced at the clock: two thirty.

“Terrence, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry, Roxanne, but I can’t stay here. It’s not personal, but I have to go back to Naomi Avenue.”

“Now? It’s the middle of the night.”

“Now.”

“What’s wrong, honey? What’s happened?”