The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel by Lisa Wingate Page A

years enough to be white-frosted at the muzzle and eyes. Her forelocks bounce, keeping the flies off.
    We come three miles down the farm levee, then cut over at the little white church where Old Missus made us go every Sunday back in slavery days. Dressed all us up in same white dresses, tied blue ribbons at our waists so we’d look impressible for all the neighbors. Up in the balcony we’d sit and hear the gospel of the white preacher. I ain’t been in that building since the freedom. We got our own meetings now. Places where a colored man can preach. We move the spot all the time, to keep the Ku Kluxers and the Knights of the White Camellia away, but we all know where to go and when.
    “Stop here,” Missy says, and I pull up the mare. We’re goin’ to the church house? I can’t ask it, though.
    Out from behind comes Juneau Jane, sitting a ladies’ saddle on a big gray horse, her skinny legs hanging from her little-girl dress in long black stockings. Now, in the light, I can see that the stockings are more darns than threads and her button boots are almost wore through at the toe. The blue flower-stripe dress is clean, but strained at the seams. She’s growed some since that dress was bought.
    The horse she’s on looks like a handful, tall with a cresty neck that says he was left for stud awhile. The girl’s most likely got a way with animals, though, devil-fired, like her mama and all the rest of her kind, with them strange silver-green eyes. That long hair of hers swirls down her waist to the saddle and into the horse’s black mane, so the two seem like one creature.
    Juneau Jane rides up to the calèche with her chin propped up so high her eyes go to thin slits when she looks down into the carriage. Still, they send a shiver over me. Did she see me watch her last night? Does she know? I push my shoulders up toward my hat to fend off any curse she might try to cast on me.
    The air hangs so tight between her and Missy Lavinia you could fiddle a tune on it.
    “Follow behind,” Missy bites out, like she can’t stand the words in her mouth.
    “C’est ce bon.” The girl’s Frenchy talk rolls like music. Reminds me of the songs the orphan children sung when the nuns traipsed them out in chorales to perform at the white folks’ parties before the war. “Indeed, my intention was thus.”
    “I won’t have you sullying my father’s carriage.”
    “Why should I have need of it, when he has given me this fine horse to ride?”
    “Which is more than you merit. He assured me as much before he departed for Texas. You will soon see.”
    “Indeed.” The girl ain’t scared as she should be. “ We will soon see.”
    The leaf springs complain and groan when Missy shifts in her seat, locking her hands together and stuffing them in the folds of a red day skirt Tati sewed up last summer for her to take off to school. Got to keep up appearances, Old Missus said. The red skirt was a remake from one of Old Missus’s dresses. “I am merely being practical, Juneau Jane. Realistic. Were your mother a sensible woman, and not so terribly spoiled, she wouldn’t be in a hardship after only a few months of no aid from Father. So, in a way, you and I both find ourselves victims of parental folly, don’t we? My goodness! We do have something in common. We have both been betrayed by those whose duty it was to protect us, haven’t we?”
    Juneau Jane don’t answer, except to mutter in French. Maybe she’s casting a spell. I don’t want to know. I hunker forward over the footboard, far away as I can get, so it’ll miss me. I pull my arms in close and stick my tongue to the roof of my mouth and shut my lips tight, so if that curse does pass by, it won’t get inside.
    “And, of course, we will follow Papa’s intentions to the letter, once we know them.” Missy Lavinia goes right on talking. She never minded a one-way conversation. “I do intend to hold you to your commitment. Once Papa’s papers are found, and should