Chapter 16: The Register

I took my thumb off his shoulder.

"Then it's you," I said.

"It's a diary, Varina. A young man's diary, with brandy at breakfast in it."

"It's Papa's diary." I held it up. "And Papa never once in his life wrote down a horse he hadn't looked at twice."

Laurent rubbed his face with both hands.

"If it's true," he said slowly, "then the house, the barns, the land..."

"Are yours."

"Were always mine." His voice was hollow, disbelieving. "And she knew. Every portrait. Every time she sat me by the salt."

Below us, Aurore banged on the barn door with a spoon.

"Coffee's poured, and I'm not bringing it up a ladder!"

We came down.

Aurore took one look at the two of us and the book in my hand and put the coffeepot down.

"What happened?"

I read it to her at the kitchen table.

When I got to "I know which one I held," she set her cup down so hard it slopped.

"That witch," she said. "That witch in black silk."

"It's one man's word," Laurent said. "And he's dead."

"Then find another one," Aurore said.

She was right.

The priest wrote everything down.

Every baptism in the parish went into the big register in the sacristy.

We rode into town at ten, Laurent on Gambit, me on Sable, with the diary inside my jacket against my ribs.

St. Martin de Tours was empty on a weekday morning.

One of the altar society ladies was on her knees at the altar rail with a rag and a tin of polish.

She was one of the three who'd voted against my share.

She looked up at us and went back to her rubbing without a word.

The priest came out of the sacristy wiping his spectacles.

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