“You heard about it over there?”

“This is nineteen fifty-six, didn’t you know? We’re no longer relying on smoke signals. Well, don’t worry, when I get back I’ll help you find some nice white boy to marry, just like Diana Jordan.”

“I hope you’re not serious.”

“Of course I am! How else is there to brazen it out? Has Leon torn into you yet?”

“Not yet.”

Leon did indeed summon me. Even when I was most angry with him I never contested his right to power. No one did. That’s why he continued to hold such power. I dressed carefully for the part. No black penitent for me. I was not sorry I had loved Terrence Dexter. I wore a coral-colored bouffant dress, just to prove I still had panache in addition to the cologne. I did my hair and makeup carefully, even though when I finished and looked in the mirror I knew it was only a performance, pretending to bravery I did not have, pretending not to collapse under the weight of Leon’s disapproval. His rage would be easier to endure than his disrespect.

Clarence opened the door at Summit Drive, and coral-colored dress notwithstanding, I shriveled under his harsh gaze, his stoic bearing. Wordlessly he closed the door behind me, but he lost his senatorial self-possession, and his breath came in glacial gusts of anger. “I served this house, your family, for thirty-some years! I seen everything that goes on in this house! I kept its secrets, Mr. Greene’s secrets and Mrs. Greene’s secrets—oh yes, she had them! Who do you think introduced her to August Branch? She came to me, told me what she wanted to do, and I helped her do it. She put me in peril, my job in real peril. She knew it too. But I did it for her. I been everything the Greenes needed for thirty years, and I did it with my eyes open and my mouth shut.”

I was jaw-drop stunned to hear that he had been the link between Julia, August Branch, and the NAACP, and I would have said so, but his escalating fury gave me no chance to speak.

“When I saw my nephew take up with you, I knew that everything I’ve done for this family, for the Greenes, that all my loyalty was going to be thrown right back in my face. I knew that you would break my family apart. ‘Terrence,’ I said, ‘don’t do this.’ I told him more than once, we all did. We begged him to listen to us. Roxanne Granville is a Hollywood brat, nothing but trouble! She will ruin you, and you will pay a heavy price, heavier than you can ever know.”