Read The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel for Free Online

what’ll happen if things get left up to Old Missus, and I hope we ain’t soon to find out that’s how it is. Tati wouldn’t have hurried me into the boys’ work clothes and sent me scurrying up here if there was any other way to discover what sort of ill wind has brought that girl in the hood cape sneaking up to Goswood Grove by the dark of midnight.
    She might’ve meant for that cape to hide who she was, but Tati recognized it right off. Tati’s old fingers had worked late by the light of the bottle lamp, sewing up two capes just alike for last year’s Christmas—one to fit that high-yella woman Old Mister keeps in style down in New Orleans, and one for the fawn-pale daughter they made together, Juneau Jane. Old Mister likes to dress them the same, mother and daughter, and he knows Tati’s trustable to always keep her sewing work hid from Old Missus. All us know better than to even mention the names of that woman or that child round here. Be safer calling the name of the devil.
    Juneau Jane coming to Goswood Grove ain’t a good sign. Old Mister hadn’t been seen at this plantation since day after Christmas, when the word come that Mister’s fine gentleman son had got hisself into another difficulty, this time in Texas. Been only two years since Mister sent the boy west to dodge a murder trial in Louisiana. The time spent on the Gossett lands in East Texas ain’t improved Young Mister Lyle’s behaviors, I guess.
    Doubt anyplace could.
    Four months ago that Old Mister left, and no word of him since. Either that little tawny-pale daughter of his knows what become of him or she’s here to find out.
    Child’s a fool, coming to Goswood this way. The Ku Kluxers and White Camellias catch her on the road, they might not guess what she is just by looking, but no decent woman or girl goes about alone after dark. Too many carpetbaggers, road agents, and bushwhackers round in these years since the war. Too many young rowdies mad about the times, and the government, and the war, and the Louisiana constitution giving black folks the vote.
    The kind of men that prowl these roads at night ain’t likely to care that the girl’s just fourteen.
    Juneau Jane’s got courage, or else she’s desperate. Reason enough for me to sneak past the brick pillars that hold the Grand House’s first floor eight foot off the ground, and shinny through the coal trap into the basement. Years past, the boys used it to come snitch food, but I’m the only one of Tati’s strays still skinny enough to get in this way.
    I don’t want one thing to do with this mess, or with Juneau Jane, but if she knows information, I got to find out. If Old Mister is gone from this world and this left-hand child of his is here seeking after his death papers, I’m bound to get my fingers on our cropper contract at the same time. Make myself into a thief, which I never been. Don’t have a choice about it, though. With no husband to stand in her way, Old Missus will burn them papers quick as she gets the news. Nothing the rich folk like better than to rid theirselves of a cropper right when the land contract’s coming due.
    I take a few steps, light and careful, one at a time. At corn shuckings and circle plays, I got the dancing feet of a butterfly. Graceful, for a gangly thing, Tati says. I hope that holds out. Old Missus has Seddie sleeping in a little space off the china room, and that old woman’s got light ears, busy mouth. Seddie loves to tell tales to the Missus, cook up trouble, cast curses on folks, get somebody a swat with that riding bat Old Missus carries round. Seddie’ll slip a little poison on anybody that crosses her—put it in the water dipper or top of a corn pone cake—make them sick enough to die or wish they would. The woman’s a witch for sure. Even sees things when she’s sleeping, I think.
    She won’t know me in this field hat, shirt, and britches. Not unless she gets a close look, and I’ll make definite sure that don’t