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I sure wasn’t.
    â€œShe doesn’t have a hold on you anymore,” Lucy added gently.
    â€œYou could still come back to my place,” Piers suggested. I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was still frustrated he hadn’t been able to change my mind about staying with Lucy’s family.
    â€œWhy don’t you stay for tonight and see how you feel?” Lucy offered. “If you decide to go back to Piers’s place in the morning, you can. No hard feelings. But you’re here now and they’re already expecting you. If you leave, we’re going to need an excuse for why you changed your mind. We don’t need anyone trying to call your mom.”
    I glanced over at Piers. He still didn’t look happy, probably because he knew that Lucy was right.
    â€œOkay,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll stay for tonight.” But I wasn’t going back to Piers’s place. I’d figure something else out, if it came to that.
    When we got inside, both of Lucy’s parents were there to greet me. Dr. and Mrs. Aimes look exactly like parents should—late forties with bodies that have started to go soft, clothes that have long since gone square, and lines etching themselves into their faces. You can tell they’re good people, though, because their lines are a map of all the smiling they’ve done through the years. A lot of people’s lines map out a different kind of story.
    I wondered for a moment about the lines my face might show someday. Then I thought about the lines my momma’s face had never shown, and I felt that much worse.
    â€œI’ll show you to the guest room,” Lucy said, rescuing me from their fussing.
    By the time I’d finished settling my stuff, Lucy, her dad, Piers, and T.J. had gathered in the front parlor to look at some old crate that Byron, the preservation manager at the plantation, had brought over to show Dr. Aimes.
    Byron was in his mid-forties, and he had that kind of nondescript, doughy look to him that some men start to get at that age when they sit too long and eat too much. Lucy had hated working for him earlier that summer. Her dad had promised that working at Le Ciel would mean an opportunity for her to take pictures for a new book the university was putting together, but Byron never let her do anything but fetch coffee or hold his equipment. I hadn’t had much experience with him myself, but every time I’d seen him around the property, he always seemed to be sweating.
    As I walked in, Byron was wiping his brow with a rumpled blue handkerchief. “Thought you’d want to see it, so I brought it right over,” he was saying to Dr. Aimes.
    â€œYou say you found this in the attic?” Lucy’s dad asked, peering at the crate through the thick lenses of his glasses. “I thought we cleaned that out back in June?”
    Byron tucked the handkerchief into his back pocket. “We did. But when the electrical crew went in to redo some of the wiring, they ran into this tucked away in the back of one of the eaves.”
    Piers motioned for me to come over to the table. I stood near him, and he wrapped an arm around my waist as we watched Byron and Dr. Aimes carefully pry open the lid. We all leaned forward a little to see what the crate contained, but at first I couldn’t make out anything but some old fabric gone black with age and mold.
    It took them a little longer to make sense of the box’s contents. That whole big crate, and all that was inside was a couple of old books wrapped in yards and yards of the moldering old material.
    â€œThat’s it?” T.J. asked, clearly unimpressed.
    â€œAmazing, isn’t it?” Dr. Aimes answered, completely missing his youngest child’s disappointment.
    T.J. shook his head, like he couldn’t believe he’d waited around for nothing, and then took off into another room.
    When they opened the first of the books, Lucy let out a