Meet Me in the Garden

Part 1 - Chapters 1 to 6

Part 1 - Chapters 1 to 6

The Garden

In the garden behind the iron gate, Odette sits with her cousin Delphine, who reads a book on interpreting dreams. Delphine asks if Odette has been remembering hers. Odette hasn't. Not one since Papa died.

On impulse, Odette suggests they draw each other. She tears two pages from her sketchbook and proposes a technique from one of Papa's old books: they must look at each other and imagine their eyes and pencils are one, never glancing down at the paper. It becomes easy after the first minute. Delphine is her cousin, closer than either of her sisters. They have met here nearly every day for two months.

Delphine murmurs that she has a secret to tell her. Odette is taken aback. Delphine explains she did not want to burden her while she was mourning. Odette insists she tell her now.

The secret concerns the photographer's studio on Magazine Street, the one with portraits in the windows and a Whites Only sign. Delphine tells how, about two months ago, she stopped to look at a portrait of a young boy and could not tear herself away. The photographer, a very tall, handsome man, came out and watched her. He invited her in to have her portrait taken anyway, claiming the sign was not meant for Creole girls like her. Delphine admits she disliked that reasoning. If she had been darker, she doubts he would have felt the same way.

Odette feels the weight of that confession. A few months earlier, Al, her sister Adele's husband, was turned away from a Creole dance for being too dark. They left the dance in protest and vowed not to show their fair wrists at doorways anymore. And now Delphine has done exactly that again.

But Delphine keeps talking. The photographer, Bill, refused to take her money. He set her against a plain gray backdrop. He refused to let her touch up her hair or put on lipstick, wanting to capture her as she was. When it was over, she hated that it was over. He told her to return the next day for the proofs. She went in and found her portraits spread across his table. They were beautiful. She saw herself in a whole new way, and the sight filled her with a shock of recognition: she was spectacular.

Odette tells her she has always been spectacular.

Delphine continues. Bill insisted on photographing her again, right then. They stayed for hours. She drank his bourbon, enough that when he finally kissed her, she did not worry about the fact that he is white, and older. Except now she is in trouble. No, not that kind of trouble, they have been careful. She means in love. Yesterday he hung her portrait in the shop window.

Odette asks if she is afraid someone will see it. Delphine points out their mothers never go to Magazine Street. Odette counters that other people do. Delphine asks if she thinks her reckless. Odette says maybe reckless, or brave. Delphine prefers brave. She is outgrowing her life, she says. Both of them are. Odette agrees.

Odette forgives her. She has no other choice. They look at their drawings, expecting to laugh, but something in them moves her. The features are not where they are supposed to be, yet they capture each other perfectly.

They part at the gate. Delphine is not taking the streetcar back to the Lower Garden District. She is staying in the Marigny to steal an hour with Bill. At the gate, Delphine takes Odette's hand and searches her gaze. What does it matter, really, what anybody thinks of them?

Odette does not plan to do it, but when the streetcar stops at Magazine Street, she steps out. She wants to see Delphine's portrait. The studio rises from the corner. She does not see Delphine at first. Then she turns, and there she is, spotlit behind the glass. Her same beautiful face, the one Odette just drew. But there, right next to her, is the Whites Only sign. Delphine is smiling at her from the window, and Odette cannot tell who the joke is on.

Painting in the Pink-Walled Living Room

Back home on Louisiana Avenue, in her sisters' half of the side-by-side shotgun house, Odette takes out her paints. She is going to paint Papa's easy chair.

A month ago, Maman had her new husband, Jean Pierre, drag the chair out to the street. Odette watched, disbelieving, from the window. Papa's chair. His mornings with the paper, his evenings with the magazines. Bernard, her eldest sister Claire's husband, helped her carry it back inside. They cleared a spot for it in the corner, near the door.

Alone in the house, Odette sketches the chair. There is a burning in her chest at how Maman tried to discard it, the same way she discarded Papa.

Papa came home from the war in springtime. He suffered from insomnia, from memories that would not let him be. He was sad and he was changed, but so were all the men who came home. He was sometimes confused. He sometimes drank too much. None of this was enough for Maman to have him sent away that morning, no warning, the men in white forcing him into the car, off to the East Louisiana Hospital for the Insane, where he was supposed to get better but where he got tuberculosis and died instead.

Now Odette mixes the blues and violets and blacks on a sheet of glass, hands trembling. She needs to really paint. But an hour passes and then another, and the painting is splotchy and crude, absent of any true feeling.

Her sisters come home. Claire carries a bag of groceries; Adele has Baby Rudy on her hip. They ask about her evening. Claire sighs that Delphine never comes around anymore. Odette tells them there is a place they like to go. She thinks of Delphine blushing and saying Bill's name, and wonders what her sisters would make of it. But Adele wrinkles her nose at the smell of turpentine. It is fine that Odette is sleeping on the sofa, she says, but does she have to paint here too?

Odette has commandeered a tiny corner of their pink-walled living room for her supplies, her basket of clothes, the blanket and pillow she sleeps with. Six people live on her sisters' side. Only Maman and Jean Pierre live on the other side of the wall, in the bedroom where Odette lived all her life until two months ago, when she heard Maman and Jean Pierre late at night, their love sounds unmistakable, just four weeks after Papa died. Odette left that night, made her bed on her sisters' sofa, and has slept there ever since. Maman has not said a word about it. Odette has not said a word to her either.

Maman always told Odette she was too much like her father, not enough like her sisters. That comparison stopped three years ago, when Adele announced over dinner that Al had proposed. Maman was silent, then said, of all the fine Creole men in the ward, Adele was choosing the darkest, undoing a century's worth of progress. From that moment, Odette went from being the perplexing, concerning child to being invisible. Adele has been trying to regain Maman's approval ever since. She did not protest when Maman sent Papa away. She bit her tongue when Claire said Maman certainly knew best. She shushed Odette when Odette would not stop demanding that they all visit.

Odette tells her sisters she understands about the painting. Adele smiles sympathetically, asks if she is sleeping okay on the old sofa. Claire studies her and says she looks tired. It might not be a bad idea to take a break from all this anyway. Adele invites her out with Al and her the next night. She can even invite Delphine along.

The Dew Drop Inn

The next evening, while the sisters wash up in the kitchen, Odette asks Adele if she can borrow a dress. Adele agrees, with restrictions. Claire takes Odette's hand, scrutinizes the paint around her cuticles. Together they study Odette's nails, her face, her hair. Poor thing, Adele says. Let's get her fixed up. Claire ventures that maybe Odette will catch a cute boy's eye tonight.

They brush and pull back her hair, make her fingernails passable, darken her brows, rouge her cheeks, pink her lips. Odette wears a pale-blue dress with a red belt and matching heels.

Delphine knocks on the door in the same dress as yesterday. Claire eyes the unusual silhouette. Delphine says she just likes the way it moves when she dances.

Adele and Al appear at the doorway, arms looped around each other's waists. The moment they are up the block, Adele glances back at them and asks if they can keep a secret. They are not going to the Jeunes Amis. Al says they are going to the Drop, easy, as though it is a small thing to go against Claire and both their mothers. Delphine reaches for Odette's hand and squeezes. It is not only the two of them keeping secrets. They are buoyant, the four of them in on something.

A few blocks later, they slip inside the Dew Drop Inn, past the

Part 2 - Chapter 7

Chapter: "Part 2 - Chapter 7"

Her sisters write to her while Cyril is away, telling her how to be a wife: write letters, at least one a week but more is better, fill them with details of home. Odette complies, sending Cyril news of his mother's dinners and his father's backyard vegetable crops. At the end of January, a letter from Delphine arrives. Sitting in the winter sun on the front porch, Odette tears open the seal and knows from the first line that something is wrong. She fears it is about the baby, skims, finds no language to latch onto, and begins again slowly. Delphine has gotten herself into something she cannot find her way out of. The house she and Bill bought is in a white neighborhood, a thing Odette thought did not exist in Los Angeles. Bill made inquiries at the studios: none of them employ colored people in high-level positions, and he did not dare ask about the prospects of white men with colored wives. Then Delphine says it plainly. She has let Bill convince her to pass. She must become white now, a woman with no family besides her own little one, the only way to do it and not get caught. Odette is not to contact her when the family reaches Los Angeles. Delphine says she is sorry, and says it three times.

Odette takes the letter to her sisters. They stand in the pink living room with their shoulders touching, reading it and reading it again. Numb, all of them. None of them speaks. Back at the Laurent house, in Cyril's room, Odette sits on his bed and looks at the long strip of wallpaper between the ceiling and the picture rail. It is a child's wallpaper, trains passing through forests and tunnels, and she cannot tell whether it is the same train, a progression through time, or different trains at various points in their journeys. She does not recognize her life. She imagines Delphine and herself holding separate ends of a very long string, singing the same song in different rooms.

When she wakes, her dream from the night before is still vivid, the first since Papa died: flowers, a snake, a pool of clear water, a full moon so low it skims the ground. She reaches for the stationery before she remembers she cannot write to Delphine.

Lionel in trouble

After three weeks in the Laurent house, the phone rings early in the morning. Hattie knocks on Cyril's bedroom door. It is Claire. Lionel is in trouble. They need Odette to come over. She dresses quickly, drinks the coffee Mama Laurent presses on her at the bedroom door, and hurries through the streets to the blue house. Rudy fusses and lifts his arms; Odette scoops him up. Adele watches out the window. Al is coming from the police station with Lionel, and Claire says it has never been as bad as this. Bernard, leaning forward on the sofa and rubbing his forehead, argues that they are so close: if they can stay just two more weeks, they will get the payment. Claire thinks Al is probably just scared. Then they see the two men on the stairs, Al's shirt unbuttoned, sweat on his skin despite the mild weather, and behind him Lionel with the entire right half of his face purple and swollen.

Lionel insists he is fine. Al says he is lucky they did not kill him, that apparently Lionel resisted arrest. The police did this. Al tells them to see Lionel's ribs; Lionel jokes that it is a good thing he was in handcuffs. Lionel flinches as Adele dabs at his wounds, whispering that it is almost over. When he lifts his shirt: bruises against his brown skin, a gash at his ribs. Rudy pulls at Odette's hair and touches his nose with his tongue, a trick, and Odette wants to be light and playful for him, but Lionel's face, Lionel's ribs, the fear in the room, all of it is too much. Al's voice is hushed and strained. Lionel cannot cross the street without a cop coming after him. It is time. They cannot drag this out any longer. Bernard asks for a minute to think: they all care about Lionel, no one wants him to suffer more, but they are so close, and it would be a shame to walk away without the full payment in their pockets. Al's voice rises. They have a target on Lionel's back. Rudy starts to cry. Adele says they need the money, but Lionel has been going through this for years. They need money, but they need each other more. Bernard's eyes squint while he works something out. Then he gives himself a nod. Two days. They go to the mill today, finish the hand carving and detail sanding on the banquet tables, into tomorrow morning if they must go without sleep. Tomorrow, first thing, assembly. He knows a craftsman who can apply the French polish to all the tables; a job like this, no way he turns it down, but they will have to pay him well. Tomorrow afternoon they go over everything with him and his men. Next morning, they get on the train, and they hope to God the client sends their share of the money when it is collected. Forty-eight hours. Al agrees. The morning train day after tomorrow.

Her sisters exchange one of their private looks, and an alarm runs through Odette's body. She needs to visit Papa's grave. They need to say goodbye. Adele winces: there is no time to go all the way to Jackson and back with only two days to pack and prepare. Claire says they have everything left to do, and besides, she would rather remember Papa as he was. It is too sad to go to that place. Nobody wants that. Lionel, quiet until now, opens his swollen eyes. He wants it. He will borrow a car and take Odette. Claire refuses. Lionel is staying here. But Lionel reminds her, gently and firmly, that she is not his mother. Claire goes cold and turns to Al, saying this is his mess to handle. Al weighs it, asks whose car, learns it is Petey's, that Petey has a clean record. He decides it might not be a bad idea to get Lionel out of town; Lionel needs to lay low today and ice his ribs, help with the assembly in the morning if he can, and take Odette to Jackson in the afternoon. Odette thanks Lionel. Lionel tries to smile at her. She thanks Al. He winks. Claire asks what they will tell Maman. Adele says it is Odette's choice, and they have plenty to worry about already without telling Maman anything.

Back in the Laurent house, Hattie is lingering in the kitchen, waiting. Odette tells her they are leaving the morning after next. Hattie says she thought it might be something like that. They stay together in the kitchen, saying nothing, just looking at each other, and then Hattie goes downstairs. In Cyril's room, Odette packs her suitcase, fitting in as much as she can. She presses her ear against the worn floorboards, listening for the sewing, the humming and stopping, humming and stopping. She lies on her belly with her eyes closed, palms open against the floor. At dinner she tells Mama and Papa Laurent that it is their last meal together. They hug her tearfully and say it hurts, but they know it is right. Mama Laurent asks if she will make the rounds tomorrow, and Odette knows the ritual well: knocks at the door, classmates and cousins and old friends saying they will see each other again sometime, though most often it is farewell for good.

A last walk through New Orleans

In the morning, with Hattie already in her sewing room, Odette pauses on the front steps, struck by the sensation that she is in a play with no audience. She talks to no one and seeks nobody out. She walks through the Lower Garden District to Magazine Street, runs her fingers against the glass of Bill's old studio, papered over from the inside. She passes shotgun houses and mansions and shops, under oak trees, through the cemetery. She rides the rattling streetcar, buys one last beignet at Lorraine's Bakery, and lets the powdered sugar coat her fingers. Across from the shop, three colored children play music on the stoop of a bright yellow house with turquoise trim: a boy with a drum, a girl with a trumpet, another girl singing with a voice louder and stronger than seems possible for her age. Al's voice rises in her memory: our birthplace is the birthplace of jazz. Five generations of Honorés in Louisiana. Five generations of summer heat and magnolias and thunderstorms, of bright colors, courtyard gardens, zydeco, second-line dancing, warming spices over the stove.

She remembers her fifteenth birthday. When the party was over, Papa took her aside and handed her a yellowed page: his great-grandmother's free papers. He told her the history. Born into slavery, taken as a child from a Virginia plantation, chained to a ship, delivered to the New Orleans port, sold to the Honoré plantation. Freed by the head of the family and made to be his lover. Fifteen years old when she gave birth to Odette's grandmother. All her children born free. Odette felt that other fifteen-year-old alive and present, felt her fear and her effort and how she made a home here. And now they are leaving. She cuts through Washington Square into the garden, where the iron gate, the ferns, and the bench under the Angel's trumpet all

Part 3 - Chapters 8 to 12

Part 3 - Chapters 8 to 12

The sun rises over Paulsen Avenue, where Odette lives with her sister Adele, Adele's husband Al, and Odette's young son Clément. Three years have passed since they left New Orleans. Mornings follow a steady rhythm. At eight o'clock Odette kisses Clément and heads out with Lionel and Al into the Los Angeles sunshine. Three doors down Bernard appears. Al and Bernard are the first colored managers at Columbia Records' Hollywood pressing plant. Odette works the Finishing line, hired on Bernard's recommendation without an interview.

In the evening Clément bursts out of the front door with his daily joys and complaints. At dinner Claire arrives with Oysters Rockefeller. Bernard, uncharacteristically quiet, says they never could have had any of this back home. Then he is crying. He reminds Odette she didn't even have to interview for her job. "What a privilege," he says, "to make it easy."

At bedtime Odette reads to the children, then climbs into Clément's bottom bunk. She blames herself for his early melancholy, remembering Cyril, her acquaintance-husband, killed in a training accident before the war ended. She received the news with her hand on her belly. After losing Delphine and Hattie and Papa, after losing all of New Orleans, what was one more thing? She whispers into Clément's ear that he is perfect, the one she loves most.

Lionel's firing and an unsettling arrival

A couple of months later Lionel is fired from the plant for smoking a reefer in the break room. In the yard sit Lionel, Jeremy from the Art Department, and a woman named Ginny with short, dark hair. Seeing her sends a flush through Odette, an awareness she had hoped only Hattie could spark. She holds Clément tight and tells herself there is no room for this feeling. Ginny works the night shift. Al asks if she's wearing her boyfriend's clothes. She says the clothes are hers. Ginny reveals she lost her previous job because her boss's wife took an interest in her. When Odette and Ginny lock eyes, Ginny winks at her.

Adele's confession

Later that night, Adele asks about their mother. Maman called today. Adele has been waiting for Maman to think well of her again. She finally asks what happened between Odette and Maman before they left home. Odette explains: when she was hired at the plant, she called the hospital long distance and ordered a tombstone for Papa's grave, worthy of his discerning taste. It took most of two paychecks for the marble and two more for the engraving.

Odette tells Adele she visited Papa at the hospital once, with Delphine. Papa was exactly himself. He didn't seem insane, maybe a little tired, definitely sad, but there was no reason for him to be locked away. Adele admits she never went. Then she confesses something she has kept for years: once, while pregnant with the twins, she and Claire saw Delphine in Robinson's department store, pushing a pram. Claire steered Adele away. They decided not to tell Odette, thinking it would only stir up old hurts. Adele says they made the wrong choice. "I wish I'd stayed and talked to her. But I didn't."

Confrontation and a sudden loss

The next day Odette confronts Claire about Delphine. Claire says she doesn't hate Delphine. She was angry. "You don't just abandon people," Claire says. Odette argues that Delphine didn't want the laws to be what they are. Claire insists Odette is picking a fight. Then a sound comes through the bathroom door, a gasp and a wail. Claire was pregnant. She is bleeding, losing the baby. Odette kneels beside her and whispers she's sorry.

On Monday, Bernard says Claire is sensitive about how difficult it has been for her when her sisters haven't struggled at all. Odette remembers back home when Adele announced her pregnancy and the sorrow flashing across Claire's face. Days pass. Claire won't see Odette. Adele says Claire has been so hard on herself that maybe she needs to think it might be someone else's fault, just this once. Adele describes the glimpse of Delphine: more mature, her hair up in an elegant twist, diamond studs in her ears, an expensive pram. The baby was a girl, very fair and pretty, all in pink.

A quiet reckoning

The next Monday at lunchtime Odette sits on a bench at the edge of the parking lot. Delphine is here, in Los Angeles. She has a child and she has money. She would have talked to Odette's sisters if they had let her. The knowledge dislodges something in Odette. They are okay, both of them. She is so deep in thought that when a little white car pulls in, it feels like an answer. Ginny climbs out with a box. This is the first time Odette has seen her since they met. Ginny is moving, and invites Odette to a going away party on Saturday.

Ginny's going away party

Odette goes with Lionel to Ginny's apartment. She meets Ginny's roommate Mare, a tall, strawberry-blond woman. Mare and Ginny are moving to Montana to work at Glacier Park Lodge for Christmas. Mare quotes Emily Dickinson: "We dream. It is good we are dreaming. It would hurt us, were we awake."

Later, Ginny needs air and Odette joins her outside. Ginny asks what Odette once saw for herself when she dreamed with Delphine. Odette lists silly things: a second-story bedroom with white curtains, lunches at nice restaurants, a vase of wildflowers. Then, without thinking, she adds, "A woman in my bed."

The confession hangs between them. Odette asks about the gold chain at Ginny's throat. She steps closer, pulls out a medallion: a lion's head. The touch is electric. Then their mouths meet. The kiss is soft and teasing, a kiss for what might have been and a goodbye before they have even started. It is safe because Ginny is leaving.

On the drive home, something inside Odette has opened. She begins to see a possible little life: an apartment of her own with Clément, a woman in her bed. Lionel asks if she ever thinks about moving out. Then he asks whether she sees herself getting married again. Odette knows he might be on the verge of finding her out. Not yet. She answers with part of the truth: she will never get married again.

A winter of saving

Winter comes gently. Claire joins dinner again with a determined cheerfulness that makes clear they will not talk about what happened.

Through winter and spring, Odette saves. Each payday she cashes her check, deposits a quarter into Al's mortgage account, puts half of what remains into a shoebox in her closet. She interviews everyone about where they live, trying to figure out how to make a home of her own.

One night in spring, Lionel announces he signed a lease on an apartment. Envy flares in Odette's chest. Her shoebox is nowhere near enough. Adele gently frames it as a matter of priorities: a car she can borrow, or a little home of her own for her and Clément.

On Friday the family helps Lionel move. Claire brings curtains, then returns with new ones. Odette tells Claire it is unfair: Claire is so good with children, and her life is all set up. Claire cuts her off, her eyes filling with tears. "I can't talk about this." Odette apologizes. Claire squeezes her hand, forgiving her.

Outside, Clément begs to go with Uncle Lionel on an adventure. Lionel takes them to where the rich people live. A white man named J.J. leads them to a shed where pigeons step and flutter. J.J. opens the coop and the birds burst into the sky. One pigeon suddenly falls away from the rest, spinning down, catching itself and rising again. Lionel points out two pigeons breaking away and says, "They're us." Odette watches them spin and fall and cannot tell whether they are ecstatic or struggling, but they are mesmerizing.

Union Station

A few weeks later, Lionel takes Odette and Clément to Union Station to pick up a bird arriving on the 5:15 train. Inside the station, a voice calls out: "I have a special delivery for the one and only Lionel Dumas."

It is Felix, another porter, carrying the crate with Lionel's bird. Odette recognizes him from New Orleans. The last time she saw him was her wedding day; he caught her when she stumbled. Felix embraces Odette. Inside the crate, a beautiful cream pigeon with blue markings puffs his feathers and warbles. Felix says the bird has traveled sixty-eight hours. Odette invites Felix to stay for dinner, but he has more work. She leaves him with an open invitation to call.

The picture show

The next week, Odette joins her friends at lunch. They decide to see The Snake Pit at the Admiral. Odette is briefly nauseous, remembering the separate entrances and balconies for people like her at theaters back home. Here, one by one, the whole group pays without hesitation.

Marcus comes jogging up just before they reach the booth. He is sweet-faced and young, and he looks so much like Cyril that Odette's chest got tight

Part 4 - Chapters 13 to 16

Part 4 - Chapters 13 to 16

Odette marks one year in Los Angeles with seven hundred dollars hidden in a shoebox, though saving has slowed under the weight of fuel costs, insurance, car repairs, and tuition now that Clément is starting kindergarten at the Catholic school Rudy attends. She has done the math: once she pays rent, maintains the car, fills the refrigerator, and covers tuition, she will be lucky to save a few dollars a month. Any emergency will force her to dip into that box, and once it is gone, she will not be able to refill it. So she needs to store up as much as she can while she can.

A Thursday in September changes her prospects. In the coworkers' lounge, sharing Ivy's cigarette, Claud appears and tells Odette that Lawrence is moving out of a darling two-bedroom just blocks from work, renting for only seventy dollars a month. Odette repeats the number, almost unable to believe it. Lawrence will move at the beginning of the year and is happy to let her take over the lease. Odette tells him she is interested, and Bernard and Al agree to stop and see the apartment on the way home.

The Apartment

Lawrence walks them through the building's shared foyer with an eye to impressing the managers, while Odette gravitates to the row of silver mailboxes and imagines a small key of her own, turning and opening. Up five flights, at door 522, Lawrence welcomes her inside. The living room overlooks the street, with the city fascinating from above: apartments and shops, moving cars, the tops of people's heads. There is room for a bookshelf in the corner, even an extra chair with a reading light. Al approves of the tidy space, and Lawrence credits the army plus the fact that his girl stops by unannounced. Al winks.

In the kitchen, Odette loves the scuffed blue-and-white linoleum and the little brass light fixture above the breakfast table. She pictures Clément and herself here in the mornings over eggs and grits, playing games in the evenings while dinner warms in the oven. She moves through the apartment, furnishing it in her mind: a bright-blue quilt in the far bedroom, a modern dresser with simple lines. In the second bedroom, memory overtakes her: Cyril's train-covered wallpaper, his twin bed, his small desk. A boy's room. She will ask Clément what he wants and decorate alongside him.

When she finishes her tour, Odette says it is perfect for her. Bernard points out that it is across town from the rest of them, but she does not mind: it is the same city. Lawrence mentions that a family with children lives at the end of the hall, and Odette imagines Clément running back and forth with the neighbor kids. The move is set for after Lawrence's December wedding: he is buying a house instead of taking a honeymoon. Bernard suggests a nice anniversary trip later, and Al jokingly agrees to keep Odette and Clément a few extra months. On the drive home, Odette tunes out Bernard and Al's conversation and pictures Delphine in a sunroom, sewing a button onto her daughter's dress, then stopping and closing her eyes. Odette believes her life is coming together, and she is certain Delphine senses it, that Delphine knows.

Delphine on Crenshaw

A week later, on Friday, Odette sees her. Heading to pick up groceries with President Truman on the radio, the cars ahead swerve and stop, forcing Odette to slam on the brakes. A woman stands in the middle of Crenshaw Boulevard, holding up traffic across four lanes, her back to Odette: slender, long dark hair, a brown dress, mirage-like. Odette knows it is Delphine. Then the woman turns, profile unmistakable. Odette opens the car door and calls her name, expecting Delphine to rush toward her. There will be Delphine and Odette alone in the car, going anywhere they want.

But Delphine does not look up. She is barefoot on the road as horns blare. She lifts a tube of lipstick in one hand and a compact mirror in the other, and begins to color her mouth, oblivious. Odette watches from two car lengths away as red smears across Delphine's lips, her teeth, her cheek. Strangers shout from their windows. Odette cuts the engine and leaves her car in the middle of the lane, hurrying toward Delphine, but her voice is nothing against the horns. When she reaches her and touches her arm, Delphine shakes her off and steps back. Her wrists are bare, her hair greasy, her gaze fixed on the compact mirror. Odette tells her who she is, urgent and panicked, trying to stay calm. Delphine drops the compact, silver and engraved with roses, onto the asphalt. Odette bends to pick it up, and in that single second Delphine turns and runs across Crenshaw. The cars are moving again, the drivers honking now at Odette as if she has lost her mind and taken Delphine's place. Odette races back to her car, steers after her, circles and weaves through the streets, scans every window, parks and runs the blocks where Delphine vanished. She does not find her.

At home, Adele calls out from the kitchen, expecting groceries. Odette has a folded list in her pocket, bread and rice and carrots and butter, but she forgot everything. Her legs give out; Adele crouches in front of her, demanding what is wrong, and Odette chokes out the story. What follows is a flurry: the children are hastily fed, Claire and Bernard arrive, Betty from across the street comes to babysit, and Adele calls New Orleans, pressing Auntie Bertha for any recent news about Delphine, any address, any idea at all. Odette asks Adele to request Delphine's last name. Adele's questions become more grasping until she finally asks, almost trembling, "Isn't there anything you know about your own daughter?" and Odette is grateful to hear fear in Adele's voice. She is not the only one afraid.

Claire proposes checking hospitals and police stations discreetly. Al takes charge: the women will handle the stations, he and Bernard will take the hospitals. The tension reminds Odette of panic-charged nights in the blue house when Lionel was missing and no one knew if he would be okay. She slips underwater, following her sisters' movements like a ghost, putting on her shoes when they do. At the station, the world snaps back: ringing phones, shuffling papers, voices firm and plaintive, wooden benches along the wall where Odette scans for Delphine. She waits in line between her sisters, comforted by being an Honoré sister, not herself but the youngest of three following along.

Claire speaks for them, telling an officer what happened on Crenshaw. He returns with a senior officer, and Claire repeats the story from the beginning. The older officer says nothing about her cousin was picked up, only that she caused a traffic jam. Odette asks about a little girl, a five-year-old daughter, and says she has a bad feeling. The officer explains that a five-year-old with a missing mother would be taken seriously, if they can give a description. Adele admits they have been estranged. The officer concludes that, for all they know, the girl might be tucked safely in her own bed. Odette suggests a way to learn Delphine's address so they can check themselves, but the older cop sighs and walks away. Reuniting long-lost relatives is not part of the job.

The Search

The next morning, before breakfast, Claire and Bernard return. Odette is curled at the far end of the sofa, thumb running over the silver compact in her dress pocket. Delphine carried this compact for years, from her old life into her new one, and dropped it to escape. Adele takes charge: Al and Bernard stay home to keep the phone line open and watch the children, while the women go to Claire's house to make calls. Odette is grateful for her sisters' determination. They set up at the kitchen table with orange juice and the phone book, alternating between police stations and hospitals. Adele makes it through half and rests her head on the table, overwhelmed by the size of Los Angeles. She clings to the possibility that Delphine went home to Bill and her daughter, that everything may be fine if only they knew her last name to look her up. Claire is judgmental about Auntie Bertha not knowing, but Odette cannot judge anyone, because she let Delphine leave without learning her new name, and the few letters Delphine sent never included it.

Then an idea comes, right and unnerving. Odette calls Mama Laurent in New Orleans. Mama Laurent is delighted, carrying on about the photograph of Clément, calling him her grandson, promising to show him to everyone. Odette asks for a favor: she needs to find Delphine, but she does not know Delphine's married name, and neither does Bertha. She asks whether Hattie, with all her business connections, could ask around and find the name of the man who once owned the portrait studio on Magazine Street. It is an emergency. Mama Laurent promises to ask Hattie when her fitting is done.

After hanging up, Claire fixes New Orleans-style coffee, creamy and sweet. Both sisters agree it