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that had traveled to the Caribbean with the enslaved thousands—a man who, in another time and place, would have been a financial genius.
    â€œStop right here,” Shad said as he turned on the bedside lamp. “What you planning to do with this money you going to make? I know you, and you always have a purpose for everything.”
    Beth closed her eyes. “We can always use little extra, not true? Like how Joella going to high school—”
    â€œI can manage that now, so what else?”
    â€œWhat you mean?”
    â€œDon’t act so innocent. You want to buy a car? Another house? Talk to me.”
    She took her time, followed by the crick-crack of her rollers as she turned to look at him. “You said we going to marry, right? But you say the—the wedding have to wait until we have the money. I was just thinking I could find little work, you know, cleaning house to pay for the wedding, and we wouldn’t have to wait.”
    Shad sat up, propping his elbows on his knees. “Everything going along nice-nice, and we about to build the new hotel. I going to have to work harder, supervising the hotel going up and running the bar. Everything already going to be in confusion, and you want to cause more confusion by traveling to Port Antonio, twenty miles each way, every day—just for a wedding? It going to mean that you coming home late, that dinner going to be cooked late, that nobody here when I come home for my lunch—”
    â€œShad,” Beth said, sitting up beside him, “I tired of being your woman. All these years we together, seventeen, going on eighteen years now, and I just your common-law wife. We have four children—not one, not two, not even three— four children.” She held up her fingers one by one.
    â€œWhen you lost the conductor work and you start to rob people purses, it was me who tell you to stop the foolishness, and when they catch you and put you in the Pen for the year, it was me traveling to Kingston every week and taking food for you, with my belly getting bigger with Joella. And after you get out, is me make you come to Largo to live with your grandmother, and when she was sick, is me taking care of her and the baby while you building the hotel. Then you start the bartending at the hotel, and is me start planting garden so we could have little extra money and eat fresh food.” Shad slid down to rest on the headboard, allowing her to get the memorized list off her chest, the way a woman had to.
    â€œI have Rickia just before your granny dead,” she continued, “and I sew the dress for Granny to bury in with the baby nursing at my breast. You lose the work when the hotel mash up in the hurricane, and we live off the garden and your fishing, barely making it. Then the bar build back and you bringing in steady money, and I have Ashanti and Joshua.” She exhaled hard and short, a train letting out steam. “I done now with the baby making, you hear me, and is my time now, my time to bring in steady money—like you.”
    Shad stroked her arm. “We have enough money, even added on a second bedroom for the children last year. I don’t know what you talking about, Beth. We making it, we making it.”
    â€œBut you need little help, and the wedding—you told me last year to set a date, and I set it for July this year. Then you tell me to hold off because we don’t have the money for no wedding.”
    â€œLike how you was sewing wedding dress and soaking fruit and talking about invitations, you sound like some English princess. You make me afraid of the whole thing. That kind of wedding cost plenty money.”
    â€œI just saying we should have a good-good wedding—after all this time. We need to set a example. We need to show the children that we respectable and married.”
    â€œYou mean we not respectable now? We don’t need no wedding to show that.”
    â€œTalk the truth,