The house’s front door flung itself open. “Martell,” Jilo’s voice thundered.
The young man deflated at the sound of her voice. “Ah, I was just messing with her a bit, Gramma.”
“Martell.” I spoke his name, realizing that this was the great-grandson Jilo had helped escape from jail after he’d been arrested on suspicion of having murdered Ginny. To help him break out, she’d bent light around him, making him invisible, but then she had trouble mustering enough power to unbend the light. She had confessed to me that her first use for the power I’d given her was to make Martell visible once more, but I hadn’t given him much thought. “Nice to finally see you. Now back off and let me talk to Jilo.”
He hesitated, but Jilo called out. “Let ’er in. She a Taylor, and Taylors don’t understand the word ‘no.’?” My eyes locked with Martell’s. One last challenge, a warning that told me he loved his great-grandmother, and then he stepped aside.
I opened the screen door and stepped into the darkened room. All the shades were closed, and the lights were off. The way Jilo had banished light seemed less an attempt to keep out the day’s building heat, and more as if she were in mourning. “Now what the hell you want?” The question came to me from the room’s darkest corner. The hum of the box fan was silenced as Jilo’s knobby fingers slid out of the shadow and switched it off.
“I want to see you. Make sure you are all right.” I took a couple of steps toward her, but stopped, shocked at the sight. She seemed to have shrunk somewhat, crumpled in on herself. Her hair had turned a confrontation of steel and snow, without even a memory of the jet it had been only a few days before. It appeared that the years she had managed to forestall had caught up with her overnight.
“You ain’t got to worry none about Jilo. She just tired. She tired of silly people and they silly desires. The way they so lazy that they come to Jilo for magic, rather than tryin’ honesty and hard work to get what they want. She tired of the diggin’ and she tired of the Hoodoo. She don’t want the power no more. She tired of the magic, and she sure enough tired of the Taylors,” Jilo said, and then stopped herself. “Jilo don’t mean you, girl.” Her voice softened. “Jilo will never get tired of her Mercy.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I rushed over to her, sitting cross-legged at her feet. Her hand, cold and nearly leathery, reached forward and began to stroke my hair.
“Tell me what happened, Jilo. What really happened,” I said.
Silence settled between us for what seemed like several minutes. “That damned uncle of yours” was all she said.
“Oliver?” I asked, confused.
“You got any others?” she asked, causing me to realize that with Connor and Erik gone, the list had indeed been whittled down to one.
“What did he do to you?”
“Nothing,” she said, “and then again, everything.” She began humming again, stroking my hair. “Jilo saw it,” she said finally. “She saw the whole damn thing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh,” she said shifting stiffly in her chair, “he ain’t meant to do nothin’ to Jilo, but he had Jilo stand there next to you in that tree of his. Jilo didn’t see anything at first. She just did what yo’ uncle told her to. She sprayed the perfume. She put the dirt in yo’ hand and poured the whiskey over it. But she didn’t see nothing. Not until she look in yo’ eyes. And then she saw the whole thing. Jilo’s entire life, it done flashed before her, just like she was dyin’. And Jilo saw. She saw every single choice she made. How every single action tied into every other single action. Every single wrong. Every single harm. Jilo done saw herself from the outside in, and what she saw was wrong. Jilo saw the beast there waitin’ for her. Just waitin’ there with it sharp teeth to gobble up her sinful heart. It too late for Jilo, my girl. She done the harm she done. She know she gonna have to face up to that. But she ain’t diggin’ herself no deeper. Jilo’s done with magic.”
I should have never waited so long to check in on Jilo, but I’d always thought of the old woman as being carved from granite and dipped in steel. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might need me. I sat up straight, seeing her more clearly now that my eyes had adjusted to the shade. She looked fragile, if not already broken. I had to choose between coddling and tough love. I decided on a delicate balance of both, starting with the latter. “So you are planning to hole up here between now and death?”
She gave a sad cackle. “That comin’ for Jilo sooner than you think, girl.”
“No,” I said as I stood and glared down at her. “You aren’t deserting me like this. I have no doubt you’ve done some things you should be ashamed of. But it seems to me that rather than sitting on your butt and moaning—”
“Now you watch how you talkin’ to Jilo—”
“And feeling sorry for yourself,” I continued even more forcefully. “It seems that while there’s still some breath in you, you should get out and try to mend some of that damage you’ve done.”
“Jilo . . .” She fumbled with a button on her dress as her lower lip poked forward. “She too old. Too tired. What’s done is done.”
“But what isn’t done isn’t,” I said sharply. My voice caught in my throat. “I need you, Mother. I need you.”
She looked up at me, a moistness forming around her eyes. “And what do you need a broken-down old thing like Jilo for?”
I reached forward and took both her hands. They were oh so cold, as if life had already begun to desert them. “Because you are the only one I am sure I can trust. Completely.”
Her eyes looked me up and down. “You so sure about that?”
“Yes,” I responded without hesitation.
“Well maybe you shouldn’t be,” she confessed, pulling her hands out of mine.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, ’cause we both know they is outright lyin’, and then again, they is not tellin’ the whole truth. Jilo know something about you. About yo’ family. That little bastard, the one you called Wren. Don’t forget, he was keepin’ an eye on yo’ family for Jilo long before you born. If Jilo told you what she been keepin’ from you, that trust of yours might up and disappear.”
I fixed her with my stare, causing the old woman to squirm for perhaps the first time in her life. “Tell me.” My heart beat a wild tattoo, but I forced my voice to remain level, calm.
Her eyes darted around me, then fell to her lap. “Those pretty aunts of yours been lying to you, girl. Not like Jilo been by holdin’ back, but outright lyin’. Jilo think maybe Ginny figured it out too, but she not sure about it. Iris and Ellen, though, they know. They had to know all along.”
“They know what?” I asked, growing impatient. My magic reached out to her as I fought the urge to break in and read her thoughts. Deep down, even without rummaging through her memories, I knew what she would say, but still, I had to hear her say it.
Her eyes fluttered up to meet mine. “Your mama, Emily. She didn’t die having you. She ain’t dead at all.”