What you leave behind, p.1
What You Leave Behind, page 1
Dedication
This one is for my guys,
Anthony, Mitchell, and Ashton,
for always making me feel safe, protected, and loved
Epigraph
A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children, but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.
—Proverbs 13:22
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Part I: Dayclean Interstitial
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Interstitial
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Interstitial
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Interstitial
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Interstitial
Chapter 30
Interstitial
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Interstitial
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Interstitial
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Interstitial
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Interstitial
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Part II: Nightfall Chapter 47
Interstitial
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Interstitial
Chapter 58
Interstitial
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise
Also by Wanda M. Morris
Copyright
About the Publisher
Part I
Dayclean
Interstitial
The island was ours and we roamed everywhere except for one place.
Dunbar Creek.
Some folks believed it was haunted, filled with mystical unseen spirits. Other folks called Dunbar Creek “the end of the world.”
It very well could have been too after what happened there. Way back in 1808, the government passed a law that declared that there were to be no more ships transporting our African people to this country to turn them into slaves. But evil men with no hearts or souls continued to work in clandestine ways, even after the slave trade had been outlawed for years. Those mongrels on two legs anchored their boats on quiet creeks and rivers along the Georgia coast. Small ships that left lands and broke family bonds it would take their cargo generations to knit back together.
One blue-black night just before dawn peeked over the horizon, a small schooner called the York slinked along Dunbar Creek to unload a cargo of West Africans known as the Igbo people of Nigeria. The old folks told us how the Igbo rose up and took over that ship. They were dirty, tired, but still strong enough to drive their captors overboard. But other vile men waited for those brave souls when the boat hit the shore. Men ready and waiting to get them to plantations across the south. After they were taken off the ship, they were shackled once more. Chained together, with freedom slipping from their grasp, the Igbo ancestors knew what lay ahead and decided in that moment what their future would be.
They chose freedom.
Together, they walked into the water, shoulder to shoulder, their chains still intact. The farther they walked, the closer they came to freedom. When the final ripple of water erased the last trace of them, they were free.
Some folks say the Igbo people drowned themselves deliberately by walking into Dunbar Creek. But not me. I think those brave souls walked into the water and flew home.
Imagine it. A person could be so disgusted with the thought of living in bondage that death seemed a better option.
Like the Igbo people, perhaps there is a better option for me, and one day, I’ll fly home too.
Chapter 1
Dead people don’t talk to the living.
It should have been like any other drive out to the island to hear her voice. Simply get in the car and ride and ride until the tears blurred my vision, making it impossible for me to see and forcing me to pull over to the side of the road. On really bad days, I’d drive for over an hour, sometimes winding up in a different city or town. Street signs and landmarks shifting in the periphery as I went chasing after someone I couldn’t see or touch. Once, I drove all the way to Savannah from Daddy’s house in Brunswick. But I never once went to the cemetery where she was buried because, to me, she wasn’t in some dark hole in the ground. She was with me. I needed to believe that or else I would die too.
Depending on the day, sometimes I’d go to a park to sit and listen to the brief voicemails she’d left on my phone. I only had a few because it was rare that I didn’t pick up a call from her. Even if I was in a meeting, I picked up her calls.
Now, I relied on the soft fragments of brain tissue that conjured up memories and the deep well of despair in my heart to connect me to the woman I cherished more than anyone else in the world.
Elizabeth Wood.
Libby to her family and friends.
Ma to me.
Her death had landed like a boxer’s blow inside my chest, sweeping away my breath and bringing me to my knees. A year later and I was still having a hard time navigating the indescribable grief because the person who usually helped me through any heartache I ever had was now the source of it.
Shortly after she died, I’d swear I could still hear her voice. The cadence of it as she talked about some church gossip or giggled at some joke Daddy had told her. It was silly, I know. Maybe it was some sort of grieving mechanism to get me through. When you’re a grown woman and you lose a parent, people expect you to power through the grief. You have a job, responsibilities. You’re an adult. You’re supposed to know that death is a part of life. And if you looked at me, on the outside, I was all that. But on the inside, I was a broken mess.
And if losing Ma wasn’t enough, that imaginary boxer hit me with a one-two combo. Six months after Ma’s death, Lance came home one night, quietly ate dinner with me, and then proceeded to tell me he was filing for divorce. He told me I wasn’t the same since Ma’s death. Who is after you lose someone you love? The truth of the matter is that Lance was exactly the same. Things I had stupidly tolerated before as a small ripple in our marriage—flirtatious interactions with restaurant waitstaff, women we encountered in a store who were unusually comfortable with him—became a tsunami. The sudden appearance of receipts for jewelry I didn’t own and dinners at restaurants I’d never been to became ground zero for the ugly destruction of a marriage that had been a fragile structure from the start. Much of what happened between us, I still hadn’t told anyone, including Daddy.
Perhaps that’s the way life is. You don’t just deal with one bad thing at a time. Life throws a stream of adversities at you with no break in between. Ma used to call it a season. A job loss follows a death in the family. A cancer diagnosis comes right before a car accident. It’s like a nonstop battle with the universe to see if you’re strong enough to fight your way through the layers of misfortune and heartache. But Ma always said, seasons pass.
With no real home of my own and my life in tatters, I left Atlanta and moved back to the house in which I grew up in Brunswick, Georgia. The prodigal daughter returned home with a divorce settlement and a set of emotional baggage heavy enough to kill a decent-sized bear under its weight.
I needed what the old folks used to call a “dayclean.” A new day. A fresh start.
Today, I drove for over thirty minutes before I wound up on the island. I pulled my Audi A6, a remnant from my previous life in Atlanta, up to a small band of trees and leaned into that old familiar feeling of grief and failure. I’d driven so far out on the island I wasn’t even sure where I was. But it was quiet, and I was alone. I could listen for Ma.
This time, instead of sitting in the car, I decided to walk. I cut the engine, took off my heels, and slipped on a pair of black and white Skechers I kept in the back seat of my car. I stepped outside and closed my eyes for a moment. The salt-tinged ocean breeze that kissed my cheek and the sound of rushing water calmed me like a healing salve. The April air was uncomfortably warm for so early in the season. It felt more like June and a threat of summer’s early arrival. The land was empty, and some parts of the ground were soft and muddy, remnants left behind by the recent rains.
The morning fog had lifted and offered a straight view across open land that rolled down onto a sandy shore and out into the teasing blue sparkle of the Atlantic Ocean. When you looked beyond the emptiness of it all, this place was stunn
Back at the turn of the last century, the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Morgans built winter homes here. Their grand estates that still stood as pricey villas for vacation rentals. My parents and their friends used to talk of how the wealthy built their fortunes on the backs of working-class whites and built their winter retreats on the backs of Black laborers right here on the Georgia Golden Islands. Things hadn’t changed much since wealthy people still continued to own vacation homes here in the Golden Isles. The thought that some people owned several homes, and I didn’t even have one, was like the sharpened end of a rod that constantly poked at my psyche.
I stood beneath an oak tree, closed my eyes, and listened. Waiting for Ma’s voice.
A few seconds later, I felt a light tickling at my ankles. I opened my eyes and looked down. A small dog, a brown shaggy terrier of some type, with a bright shot of white fur over one eye, sniffed at my shoes. The dog wasn’t wearing a collar. A stray out here in the middle of nowhere like me. I looked around and that’s when I spotted it. A few hundred yards off in the distance was an old, rusted trailer. I squinted, trying to make out exactly what I was seeing. Did someone live out here?
I looked back at the dog. “Hey! Is that where you live, little guy?”
The dog raised one scruffy ear, bent his head, and stared at me. Then, I heard a loud bang.
A flash of panic bloomed inside my chest. The ringing in my ears lingered as a group of birds noisily flapped off into the sky. The dog took off like a shot.
A firecracker?
A gun?
I snapped to. My only thought: I have to get out of here. I dashed from behind the tree where I was standing, heading for my car. As I did, my foot caught on the gnarled tree roots jutting up from the ground. I spun and tripped, hitting the back of my head against the roots.
And everything faded to black.
Chapter 2
When I blinked my eyes open, the first thing I saw was the irregular pattern of a brown water stain. Somehow, I was leaning back and facing ceiling tiles. I was inside a room, small and dimly lit. Maybe my eyes had suffered from the blow to the back of my head. I smelled bacon and my head was pounding.
Where the hell am I?
I blinked a few more times before I leaned forward. That slight motion sent the room into a revolution and spikes of pain radiated through my head from ear to ear.
I gotta get to my car.
A man’s voice slipped from the darkness beside me, southern drawl, deep-throated, and raspy. “Why’d they send you out here?”
I blinked again and peered around the room. I was sitting beside a table on a hard upholstered bench. Worn, brown linoleum spread from beneath the bottom of my Skechers, which were now covered in mud and moss. In front of me was a kitchenette, the light coming through a small window just bright enough for me to see a frying pan and a thick coating of dust and grease across the stove. Now, the pain swirled and filled my head like thick smoke rising from a fire. When I tried to get up, my vision blurred for a moment.
“Stay still and answer my question.” The man again.
I still couldn’t see him, his voice coming from somewhere beyond my view. I rubbed the back of my head. “I was just driving around, looking for a quiet place to think.”
“I’ve warned y’all.”
“Can I at least see who I’m talking to?” Speaking to some voice without a face was unnerving.
The man slowly walked out from the shadows and stood squarely in front of me. A Black man, early seventies if I had to guess. I couldn’t be sure because the only thing I focused on was the rifle he held with hands that looked like two large knobs of thick veins. Thankfully, he didn’t point the gun at me, but he had it at the ready. He was a tall, haggard-looking man with deep brown, leathery skin and a scruffy gray beard. Maybe I could make a run for the door. I ran high school track back in the day, but he had a gun and I couldn’t outrun a bullet.
Shit! Where is the door?
“Where am I?” I peered back at the man. “Who are you?”
“I’m asking the questions.”
I glanced around the room. The small, tight quarters. The dirty kitchenette. The tattered brown banquette I was sitting on. I remembered the trailer I’d spotted. I must be inside the trailer. I tried to remember every detail of this place for recounting back to the police if I made it out of here alive. I looked down at my shoes again, at the muddy sand and moss covering them. The old man had dragged me in here. I tried to unmoor myself from the bench.
“Uh-uh.” He tightened his grip on the rifle, holding it across his chest. “Don’t move. Not until you tell me why they sent you out here this time.”
I slowed my roll. Old men and guns are a dangerous combination. This guy was obviously in a fight with someone and now I might become a casualty of his determination to win. “I’m sorry, sir. You know what? Apparently I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have stopped here, Mr. . . . ?”
“You’re the third person that’s been nosing around here in the last few months. Like I told those other two, my mama and daddy left this land to me and my sister, Delilah. Y’all can send as many letters as you want. I’m not leaving.”
“I’m really sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me just leave, okay?”
“Not until you tell me why they sent a Black woman this time.”
A Black woman this time? I didn’t know what the hell this guy was talking about. Maybe I could finesse my way back to my car and hightail it back to Brunswick.
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told the others. I’m not interested in selling. This property’s been in my family for generations. I was born here and I’ll die here.”
I kept staring at the barrel of his gun. No one knew I was out here. This man could shoot me at any moment. If he hurt me, how would anyone find me? I had to get out of here.
“Sir, I assure you, I didn’t know this was your property. I recently lost my mother and I guess I’m not handling it very well. Sometimes I drive around to clear my head. I was just looking for a quiet place . . .” I watched him loosen his grip on the gun. “There must be some sort of mistake.”
“You damn straight there is.” The man gripped the gun tightly again. “Now get up.” His voice was quiet but firm.
What is he going to do?
I struggled to my feet. The room spun again, and I grabbed the edge of the table. The back of my head throbbed. But I wasn’t about to pass on the only chance I might have to get out of here alive. He pointed me toward the door at the front of the trailer. I got my bearings and stepped outside into the blazing sunlight with the old man right on my heels. The sun was searing and worsened the headache I was nursing. I shielded my eyes with my hand to knock off some of the brightness. The dog I’d spotted earlier came over. He raised the one hairy ear again, sniffed me, then looked up at me.
“Now I’m going to walk you back to your car. And you’re going to leave and never come back. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come on, Trooper,” he called to the dog. The dog sniffed me again before he ambled over to the old man. “I don’t know why they keep sending people out here. I’m never gon’ sell it. You’re the first Black person they sent. I guess they thought you could sweet-talk me out of my land. I warned them other two just like I’m warning you. Stay away. The next person to come out here uninvited is gonna catch a bullet right between the eyes. The only reason I didn’t shoot you is . . .”
He didn’t finish his thought. Maybe because I was Black too? A woman? So, the old man was at odds with someone trying to buy his land. He must have mistaken me for someone associated with his adversary.
“Well, I appreciate you not shooting me.” I smiled slightly, trying to lighten things between us. He returned my effort with a solemn expression as if his face were etched in bronze on a museum bust. Again, old men and guns.
“Do you mind if I ask your name, sir?” I would need it when I called the police.
He stared at me for a moment, like he was debating whether to answer me. “Holcomb. Holcomb Gardner. Same name on all them damn letters y’all sending.”
