Lousiana Hotshot

see to Ella.”
    While he was gone, she halfway considered bolting, but coming back would be too hard. At the very worst, maybe he’d tell her if she needed a shrink.
    “Would you like some coffee?” he said. “Mine is not very good, but it may pump you up for the ordeal to come.”
    “What ordeal?”
    “You are not looking forward to talking about it, are you?”
    “Listen, let me just dive in while you’re making that coffee.”
    He motioned her to come to the kitchen, and began to move clumsily about it.
    “I made a scene in a restaurant last night. My brother’s probably never going to speak to me again. My boyfriend’s probably given up on me.”
    “If you have come to me, this is not the beginning of your problem.”
    “Everybody’s keeping a secret from me. A big, big deal of a secret.”
    “I see.” He nodded, and held out a cup of coffee. Indeed he looked like a shrink. Maybe it wasn’t going to be too bad.
    Seated at his old kitchen table (which was every bit as disreputable as Miz Clara’s), she poured out the story in little clumps of remembrance— some from childhood, most from the last few days, and some the gray-mist ones of the movie in her head— ending with the scene from the night before, the compulsion that had come over her this morning, even the White Elephant Sale and Lura Blanchard, whom she ratted out for breaking and entering, thinking she and the reverend might have a big old laugh about it. And indeed, they were such pals by that time, that it came, as he might have said, to pass.
    He filled her cup again and looked at her over the top of his glasses. “What are you afraid of, child?”
    She wondered why he hadn’t read as much between the lines as she did. “I think my mother killed him. I think… maybe… there might have been another woman, and it might have even have been…” She had a thought way the hell in the back of her mind. Was it too stupid to say it?
Spit it out, girl. Come out of your shell.
“My aunt Carrie,” she said at last. “That man? You know, that man I remember? It could have been my uncle. That’s the only person it really could be— maybe he killed my daddy because, you know, he caught him with his wife…”
    “Slow down. Slow down now. I can’t tell whether you think your uncle killed him or your mama.”
    “I’m
afraid
it’s my mama. I guess I was just hoping maybe it was the man— because nobody loved me like that that I can remember. My uncle would have been the only one, you see? The man picked me up and hugged me and tried to comfort me… ”
    “Well, your mind can play tricks on you.”
    “I guess it can.” She was deeply disappointed— she wasn’t getting much in the way of wisdom out of Reverend Born-Again.
    “But I want you to rest easy, now. Your mama didn’t kill your daddy.”
    She looked at him curiously, unsure if he was speaking from knowledge or opinion.
    “I remember a lot about the story. No ma’am. Your mama didn’t kill him and your Aunt Carrie didn’t carry on with him. I don’t care what her name is.” He laughed at his own small pun. “That I can promise you. Yes ma’am, I can promise you that. But there
was
another woman— you’re right about that. And that’s what broke your parents’ marriage up. Your daddy left home when you were just a baby.”
    “Oh. I thought they lied about when he left— I guess I took ‘left’ to mean disappeared or dead or something. I didn’t catch on that he moved out.”
    “Oh, yes, I remember it well. He and your mama were separated. Not divorced, though; don’t believe they ever divorced.”
    “Did he move to another city or what?”
    “He didn’t move to another city— that I remember. Wait a minute, why do I think that?” He closed his eyes for a minute and bent over the old table. He could have been praying, for all Talba knew. “Yes. Yes, I do remember. I saw him in church after that, with you and your brother.”
    Talba couldn’t feature that one, considering the way Miz Clara felt about him to this day. The wound would have been much fresher then, more tender and sore. “You mean, he sat with mama and us?”
    “I don’t think so. I can’t seem to recollect seeing your mama with the three of you.”
    “Well, I appreciate what you’re saying, but I’m still not getting why you’re so sure Miz Clara didn’t kill him.”
    “I know what I know, girl.” A touch of the old fierceness had crept into his voice. “I can’t