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"You don't need to go, Alf," I said.
"Bye-bye," she said, jittering her fingers at us.
"I've made peace with my father, Dave," Lila said, watching Alafair walk up the steps of the gallery. Then: "Do you think your daughter should talk to adults like that?"
"If she feels like it."
Her eyes wandered through the trees, her long lashes blinking like black wire. "Well, anyway, my father's in the car. He'd like to shake hands," she said.
"You've brought your—"
"Dave, I've forgiven him for the mistakes he m
ade years ago. Jack Flynn was in the Communist Party. His friends were union terrorists. Didn't you do things in war you regretted?"
"You've forgiven him? Goodbye, Lila."
"No, he's been good enough to come out here. You're going to be good enough to face him."
I propped my rake against a tree trunk and picked up two vinyl bags of leaves and pecan husks and carried them out to the road. I hoped that somehow Lila would simply drive away with her father. Instead, he got out of the Oldsmobile and approached me, wearing white trousers and a blue sports coat with brass buttons.
"I'm willing to shake hands and start over again, Mr. Robicheaux. I do this out of gratitude for the help you've given my daughter. She has enormous respect for you," he said.
He extended his hand. It was manicured and small, the candy-striped French cuff lying neatly across the wrist. It did not look like a hand that possessed the strength to whip a chain across a man's back and sunder his bones with nails.
"I'm offering you my hand, sir," he said.
I dropped the two leaf bags on the roadside and wiped my palms on my khakis, then stepped back into the shade, away from Terrebonne.
"Scruggs is blackmailing you. You need me, or someone like me, to pop a cap on him and get him out of your life. That's not going to happen," I said.
He tapped his right hand gingerly on his cheek, as though he had a toothache.
"I tried. Truly I have. Now, I'll leave you alone, sir," he said.
"You and your family pretend to gentility, Mr. Terrebonne. But your ancestor murdered black soldiers under the bluffs at Fort Pillow and caused the deaths of his twin daughters. You and your father brought grief to black people like Willie Broussard and his wife and killed anyone who threatened your power. None of you are what you seem."
He stood in the center of the road, not moving when a car passed, the dust swirling around him, his face looking at words that seemed to be marching by in front of his eyes.
"I congratulate you on your sobriety, Mr. Robicheaux. I suspect for a man such as yourself it was a very difficult accomplishment," he said, and walked back to the Oldsmobile and got inside and waited for his daughter.
I turned around and almost collided into Lila.
"I can't believe what you just did. How dare you?" she said.
"Don't you understand what your father has participated in? He crucified a living human being. Wake up, Lila. He's the definition of evil."
She struck me across the face.
I stood in the road, with the ashes of leaves blowing around me, and watched their car disappear down the long tunnel of oaks.
"I hate her," Alafair said behind me.
"Don't give them power, Alf," I replied.
But I felt a great sorrow. Inside all of Lila's alcoholic madness she had always seen the truth about her father's iniquity. Now, the restoration of light and the gift of sobriety in her life had somehow made her morally blind.
I put my arm on Alafair's shoulder, and the two of us walked into the house.
