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Back When the Reckoning Comes Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. They are coming.
  5. I.
  6. II.
  7. III.
  8. Once, they stole away.
  9. IV.
  10. V.
  11. VI.
  12. VII.
  13. VIII.
  14. IX.
  15. X.
  16. XI.
  17. XII.
  18. Those who stayed behind found their own ways to resist.
  19. XIII.
  20. XIV.
  21. They remembered the feeling of their beloveds sold,
  22. XV.
  23. XVI.
  24. XVII.
  25. XVIII.
  26. XIX.
  27. XX.
  28. It took the babies drowning for the rest to say, Enough.
  29. XXI.
  30. XXII.
  31. XXIII.
  32. Tools meant for work became seen as weapons.
  33. XXIV.
  34. XXV.
  35. XXVI.
  36. XXVII.
  37. XXVIII.
  38. When they were caught, punishment was swift and severe in its execution.
  39. XXIX.
  40. Soon it would be morning, and those left behind would prepare for another day.
  41. Acknowledgments
  42. About the Author
  43. Also by LaTanya McQueen
  44. About the Publisher

“None of the people there are part of this.”

“You’re wrong, they are. That’s what I’ve learned.” Jesse pointed at the mess. “We’re all tangled up in this history. They think they’re absolved from the past, but it’s their past too. All our lives have been shaped by it, but they’re the ones who’ve ignored how, even though the past has made them who they are. They need to face what’s been done and we need to let them. And you know if the situation was reversed they’d leave us to die. You know it. You just don’t want to see it.”

“We’re no better if we do nothing. We can’t sit and do nothing. I won’t.”

“You’ve always done nothing when it needed to matter. Why can’t you do it now?”

“That’s not true,” she started in protest, but stopped because he was right. Flustered from the shame of remembering, she thought of all the times she could have defended Jesse to her mother but didn’t when they were kids. She’d never spoken up as her mother judged, not just Jesse but all the other black kids who didn’t fit into her way of being. How much over the years had she let her mother’s judgments affect how she too saw the world? How she saw herself?

Earlier today, at lunch, Jesse had said he wished she’d never come, but she understood now why he’d said it. In many ways she was just as complicit as all those who remained at the Woodsman house. Jesse was finally calling her out on this truth.

Okay, she thought, let’s let it all burn. We can go, leave Kipsen for good. We can start over and never look back. She’d done that before and could do it again. Come with me, she could say to Jesse, and they could go far, far away, but Mira knew there was nowhere they could go where this past wouldn’t haunt them. Jesse, for all his talk, would regret it if they didn’t return to the Woodsman house. If he was right about the ghosts and chose to do nothing, he’d have to carry the weight of any deaths on his conscience, and she wouldn’t let him do that.

“Jesse, we can’t be like them. We have to go back.”

Mira stood up and headed for the door, assuming Jesse would follow, but when she turned around he was still on the couch. Reluctantly, Jesse got up.

“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” he asked. Mira didn’t answer and he sighed, picking up his keys. “This is a mistake, but all right. Come on. I’ll take you back.”

XIX.