Alex Cross's Trial

stars-and-bars hanging in the second-floor window above the portico. The same faded red-and-white-striped barber’s pole stood outside the shop with the sign that said “Hair Cuts, Shaves, & Tooth Extractions”—although no one had gone to Ezra Newcomb for a bad tooth since the first real dentist moved to town when I was eleven.

    One difference I noticed immediately was that many of the doorways—at the depot, at the little vaudeville theater, at the Slide Inn—now bore signs marking certain entrances as “White” or “Colored.” When I was a boy, everyone knew which places were for whites and which for Negroes.

    At last the porter approached with my trunk and valises, accompanied by a gangly colored teenager. The porter asked, “Will we be taking these to your father’s house, Mr. Corbett?”

    I frowned. “How’d you know my name?”

    “Well, suh, the stationmaster tol’ me to hurry up and go help Judge Corbett’s boy with his trunk, so I purt’ much figured it out from there.”

    I gave the old man a dime and offered another dime to the boy if he would carry my luggage on to my destination. He threw that heavy trunk up on his shoulders as if it contained nothing but air and picked up my pair of valises with one large hand.

    “I’ll be staying at Maybelle Wilson’s,” I said. “I’m here on business.”

    We crossed to the First Bank and turned left onto Commerce Street. It was right then that I had the feeling that I had entered into one of Mr. H. G. Wells’s fabled time-transport machines. “My God,” I said under my breath. “How can this be?”

    Chapter 22

    THERE BEFORE ME was my first sweetheart, Elizabeth Begley, instantly recognizable with her blond curls, her delicate face, a sweet young girl in a pretty pink-checked sundress.

    I realized with a start this was neither a dream nor a memory. This really was Elizabeth Begley. And she truly was eleven years old!

    Then I saw the very real and very grown-up Elizabeth Begley step out of Ida Simmons’s notions shop and call out to the little girl standing before me.

    “Emma? You wait right there for me.”

    I called out Elizabeth’s name. She turned, and her face lit up instantly.

    “Why, good Lord! Ben Corbett! The heat must have gone to my eyes. This cannot be you!”

    “It’s Ben, all right. Your eyesight is just fine.”

    As was everything else about her. Elizabeth looked as beautiful as when I used to sneak glances at her all through our school years together. If anything, she’d gotten even prettier as a woman.

    “Well, Ben, what brings you back to our little nothing of a town?” she asked.

    I told myself to close my mouth, which had fallen open in astonishment, partly at the chance meeting, but also at the sight of this lovely woman.

    “Oh, just some work for the government. Interviewing candidates for the federal bench, potential judges. And I suppose I needed a breath of good old Mississippi fresh air.”

    “Honey, everybody in town is just gonna be beside themselves with excitement to see you,” Elizabeth said and beamed. “The famous Ben Corbett, the one we all thought had gone off forever to be a Yankee lawyer, has finally come for a visit! I know your father must be thrilled.”

    “I hope he will be,” I said. “It’s a surprise. The job I’m on came up suddenly.”

    I doubted that many people in town—especially my father—would be all that happy to see me. But that wasn’t the kind of information to share with Elizabeth. Instead I remarked that Emma was as pretty as Elizabeth had been as a girl, which happened to be true, and made both of them smile.

    “I see you’ve still got honey on your tongue, Ben,” she said, with a hint of a blush. And then a wink, to show her sense of humor was intact.

    “I’m just speaking the truth,” I said, smiling. It really was good to see her.

    “Ben, I would love to stand here and visit with you and get more compliments, but Emma is going to be late for her dance class,” she said. “I do want to talk to you. Where is Mrs. Corbett? Did you abandon her at the station?”

    “She stayed home,” I said. “The children are involved in their lessons.”

    “I see,” Elizabeth said, with an inflection that suggested she didn’t quite comprehend that version of events. “It’s been too long, Ben,” she went on. “I hope we’ll see each other again?”

    “Of course we will. Eudora is a small town.”

    “And that’s why we love it.”

    She took her daughter’s hand and headed off toward the shade of the oak trees