“We have no time for needless errands,” said Blackwood. “I understand that food is a necessity, but—”

“Needless errands?” said Odessa. “Earl Solomon is a dying man. He asked to see you. Don’t you want to say goodbye?”

“Goodbye?” said Blackwood. “What is goodbye?”

“You’ve known him forty-five years.”

“And?” said Blackwood.

Odessa felt a rage welling up inside her. “He’s dying. Okay, so you say you’ve lived for centuries. What are you, like a vampire who’s forgotten what it’s like to be mortal?”

Blackwood sat back in his seat, looking at her, interlacing his fingers on his lap. “What do you imagine my and Agent Solomon’s relationship is?”

“Forty-five years!” she said again.

“You’re very angry,” he said.

“Of course I am! You’re very cold!”

Blackwood cocked his head a few degrees, seeing her from a slightly different angle. “This isn’t about me at all, Agent Hardwicke. You want this. You want to see us together. This is about your own curiosity.”

She fumbled her words a bit, because there was some uncomfortable truth in his. “This is about saying goodbye.”

Blackwood smiled. He said, “Take her where she wants to go, Mr. Lusk.” And then he tipped his head back and closed his eyes.

Chapter

1962. The Mississippi Delta.

The sun was low over the cotton fields when Solomon rolled up outside the field path leading to the sharecropper’s house occupied by the Jamuses. Blackwood walked alongside him toward the low structure, a pair of crows lifting off from the laundry line off the rear corner of the house with a panicky CAW-CAW. The heat of the day hadn’t abated yet, Solomon billowing his damp shirt under his jacket.

“How old?” asked Blackwood.

“Six,” said Solomon.

Solomon’s shoe squeaked upon the board before the front entrance. He knocked on the door, Blackwood standing behind and to his left.

A young girl answered, wearing the same blue cotton dress he had seen her in before. “Hello again, miss,” he said. “Agent Solomon, do you remember me?”

“I thought you were Pastor Theodore,” she said.

“May I come in again?”

She looked behind her, uncertainly. There was no one there.

“Do you want to get your mother?” he asked.

The little girl shook her head. She stepped back from the door. Solomon entered, standing on the dirt floor.

“Maybe an older brother?” he said. Solomon wanted to be acknowledged by someone of age before moving farther into the house to see the sick boy, Vernon.

She went away down the hall, along where the wooden flooring started.

Solomon waited, smelling buttermilk. A radio or a turntable somewhere in the house played marching music. Flies flew at a nearby window, buzztap-buzztap-buzztap, again and again.

Solomon checked Blackwood. He was looking up at the unfinished ceiling. Solomon looked up himself but didn’t see anything remarkable. The British man must have been simply clearing his thoughts.