With trembling fingers, I pick up a black-and-white photograph. A man hanging by a noose. His feet splayed, and a bloated face much darker than the rest of his body. A burning cross next to him. Like the one that was staked in front of my house. Men in white sheets stand beneath the dead man. They are surrounded by women and children. All white. Those without hoods are beaming like it’s the Fourth of July.

Dean enters the den with a wide smile. I don’t return it. His smile shrivels.

“What’s wrong?” Dean rushes to me.

“I don’t know why I looked. I…I…Did you know about this?” My hand shakes as I hold out the photo.

Dean takes it from me and gasps. I feel sick inside all over again as I watch the horror cross Dean’s face. He drops it as though he’s been burned, then sifts through the box.

Dean picks the photo up again and looks closer, then points to a girl near what must be the Grand Wizard’s feet. Another slightly older girl locking arms with her. He flips the photo over.

In my shock, I didn’t even notice a list of names with a date, November 17, 1979.

“I think…I think this is my mom.”

I shut my eyes. Sickened.

“And if that’s my mom as a little girl, that means this is my grandfather.” His voice cracks when he points the Klan leader out.

“I can’t…Tracy. This can’t be real. Why was she there?” Dean looks through more of the boxes, and I can see he’s putting the pieces together.

“You don’t even know if it’s—”

“It’s her.” Dean bends over and grabs another box. This time he pulls out a white cloak. “And this is my grandfather’s?”

Dean’s mom comes downstairs, calling for him. I cover the cry escaping my lips. Dean runs out of the study to cut her off. I can tell he knows that now is not the time for me to see his mother.

I’ve never been so close to something like this before. In this town I call home, a man was lynched, and people are living here who were complicit. Involved. Dean’s parents knew it. I think back on the way Dean’s dad stood by the burning cross on our lawn and glanced over at Mrs. Evans. He’d known all along who had been in the Klan.

The white cloak haunts me with its bloody history. The fear it shaped, and the lies they told to incite terror toward Black people. My stomach’s nauseous; shivers run down my spine.

The door opens.

Dean. Alone. Thank God.

“Put it away.” Dean shoves the cloak back into a box with a heavy weight of shame.

“Has this stuff always been here?”