Mira balked at Jesse’s conviction. Celine couldn’t have hated her. Mira thought about all the times as children when Celine had stood up for her, had been her friend when others wouldn’t. We could be sisters, Celine used to say, giggling as they sat on Mira’s bed, Celine reaching over to give her a hug, to pull Mira close. Hate? She would have never done that for someone she hated. No, hate was too strong a word.

“I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say hate.”

“Why not?” Jesse responded, raising his eyebrows. “How isn’t it? Think about all the people who died. They were exploited. Punished. We went to the graveyard and you thought one of the graves was of your ancestor. Imagine what was done to her. We don’t even know the full story, but think about what we do know and what was done to them. To ignore that—”

“I asked her about it. Last night. She said she hadn’t owned slaves. She’d had nothing to do with the place’s past and so it wasn’t the same.”

“She may not have had anything to do with the past but what about now? She didn’t care about the hurt her actions could cause. For me it’s the same. It’s like the difference between drowning someone and not caring if someone drowns nearby. In both scenarios the person ends up dead. Celine may not have known all about the Woodsman history but she knew what happened to me, to us, and yet none of it mattered. She didn’t care about what it might mean to us. Look, Mira, I get it. It’s easier with the others, you expect their hate, their disregard for your existence, but Celine? We all were friends. We grew up together. For her to be this way, to have this wedding like this—it’s worse, I think, because it means she never saw who we were to begin with. How could she ever have seen us? You’re trying to tell yourself it’s not the same because it’s hard to reconcile with the truth. I don’t know how to live with it either.”

XVII.

JESSE SAID HE needed to show her something else before he brought her back to the plantation and that he would have to drive her to his house. “One last thing,” he’d convinced her when they’d gotten to the car. Mira wanted to know why he couldn’t just tell her what it was and he said she needed to see to understand.

Jesse lived on the top floor of a house, which had been converted into an apartment. The owner, a retired woman who mostly kept to herself, lived below. His hand grazed her back as he guided her to the entrance.