“Josephine had one more secret she was keeping,” Brooke said, looking at Felicia. “Lizzie found it by accident this week as she was going through Josephine’s papers looking for material for her magazine article, but it didn’t make much sense until yesterday when the sheriff gave me the report on the DNA comparison between Josephine and C. D.”
Lizzie nodded. “After I found that letter from the priest, Father Ryan, telling Josephine about that little boy, Charlie, I started to wonder again why Josephine was so concerned about that particular boy and no other child.”
Felicia’s eyes widened as she realized what was coming. “Oh my God,” she whispered. She grasped her great-aunt’s hand. “Josephine lied, Auntie. She told you your baby was dead, but that was a lie. She gave the baby away! To an orphanage.” She turned to Brooke and Lizzie. “I’m right, aren’t I?” she asked. “C. D. isn’t Josephine’s son. He’s hers!”
“What’s that?” Varina asked, confused. “You’re saying my son is alive? He didn’t die? How can that be?” She shook her head violently. “No! Josephine wouldn’t have done me that way. She wouldn’t hide my child from me for all these years. Let me think he was dead when he wasn’t?”
“I’m so sorry, Varina,” Brooke said. “There’s no explanation for it, but yes, we think that’s exactly what she did. A priest who was the pastor at a black church in Savannah was the go-between. He found a couple, probably in his parish, who took the baby for a few weeks, and then he turned the boy over to a Catholic orphanage, where he stayed until he was six. After that, he went to live at the Good Shepherd Home for Boys.”
“And you think my boy, my grown-up son, is C. D.? Living right here on this island, working for Josephine?” Varina asked. “I don’t understand.”
“That bitch!” Felicia exclaimed. “Playing God with people’s lives. How dare she!”
“My baby is alive,” Varina said, looking from Lizzie to Felicia. “I can’t believe it.” She turned pleading eyes to Brooke. “How can you be sure it’s him after all these years?”
“The only way we can be really positive is if we tried to DNA match you with C. D. There are so many compelling facts it can’t be a coincidence. The DNA report we had done on C. D. showed he had African heritage. C. D. was told he was named after the priest who found him abandoned in his church after Sunday mass. That’s the same priest who wrote Josephine to give her an update on the baby. We talked to a nun in Savannah; she’s nearly a hundred years old, but she remembers the little boy named Charlie who came to live at St. Joseph’s Children’s Home. The nuns gave him the last name of Anthony, for St. Anthony, who is the patron saint of the lost. And the priest who brought him there, he was driving a new Cadillac not long after that. The rumor was that the Cadillac was given to him by that baby’s family as a reward for keeping his mouth shut. When Charlie was six, he was sent to the Good Shepherd Home for Boys. We talked to a man who lived in the same cottage at the boy’s home. He remembers C. D. from that time.”
Brooke reached for her phone and scrolled through her camera roll. She found the photo from Good Shepherd of the boys standing in front of their cottage. She enlarged it and handed it to Varina, tapping the photo of the boy the others had nicknamed Buck. “That’s him.”
“Oh, my. Oh, my,” Varina whispered. “He looks like my brother Omar.” She thrust the phone at Felicia. “See? Doesn’t he look like a Shaddix?”
“I’ve never seen a blue-eyed Shaddix before,” Felicia snapped. But she examined the photo closer, reluctantly nodding. “He was light enough to pass, wasn’t he? You know, I’ve seen that old man dozens of times since we started staying over here, but I never saw it until now.”
Varina could not take her eyes off the photo. “When it was my time, the pains were awful. We knew something was wrong. There was so much blood! When the doctor came, he gave me a shot. And when I woke up, there was no baby. Josephine said the baby was born dead, and the doctor took it away with him. She said it was better that way so I wouldn’t be so upset.”
“I hope she rots in hell,” Felicia said. “I’m glad Gabe killed her. Josephine needed killing. I only wish I’d done it myself.” She stalked over to the counter, picked up the cooling cake layers, and dumped them into the trash. “I’ll be damned if I’ll bake a cake and sit in a church and pretend to be sorry that old bitch is gone.” She looked over at Varina. “Come on, Auntie. We need to get you home and give you your meds. I don’t think I can stand to be under Josephine’s roof for one more minute.”
“No, ma’am,” Varina said. Her voice was loud and clear.
“Now, Auntie Vee,” Felicia started.
“You go along home,” Varina said. “You’re upset. I’ll be along in a little while. Lizzie will bring me home, won’t you?”
“Happy to,” Lizzie said, earning her a glare from Felicia, who stomped out of the kitchen, slamming the screen door as she went.
“Fetch me those cake layers out of that trash, will you, honey?” Varina said. She pointed in the direction of the door. “That girl has had a temper her whole life. There wasn’t no reason for her to throw those cakes out. I’ll put some icing on ’em and nobody will know the difference.”
Lizzie reached into the trash and rescued the cake layers, which had split in half. She brushed away some stray potato peels and placed them on a plate.
“Are you all right?” Brooke asked as the old woman returned to chopping pecans. “I know you’ve had an awful shock.”
“I’m going to pray about this,” Varina said, not looking up. “I don’t rightly know what to think.” She blinked back tears, and a moment later, her shoulders shook as she sobbed quietly on Brooke’s shoulder.
Lizzie slipped from the room. A moment later she was back. Varina had regained her composure. Lizzie put two items on the table in front of her. One was a small prayer card with a color rendering of the Virgin Mary, eyes cast heavenward. The other was a string of mother-of-pearl rosary beads.
“These were with one of the letters the nuns sent Josephine, after she’d paid for a new kitchen and hot water heater at St. Joseph’s. I thought you might like to have them.”
Varina picked up the rosary, letting the smooth beads slide between her fingertips. She clutched the silver crucifix dangling from the end. “Thank you.” She looked up. “Could you take me home now?”
“Of course,” Lizzie said.
“I’m going over to visit C. D. in a little bit,” Brooke said. “I have to tell him that his DNA didn’t match Josephine’s. Should I tell him about you?”
Varina wound the string of beads around and around her narrow wrist. “What’s he gonna say when he finds out? How’s he gonna feel about having a mama who’s black and a daddy…” Her voice trailed off.
78
“This really sucks,” Lizzie said as they trudged toward the chauffeur’s cottage.
“Totally. I don’t blame Felicia for being outraged. I feel like burning down the house too. I don’t see how Josephine was able to live with all the pain she caused all those years,” Brooke said.
“I guess, at the end, she thought her money would absolve her of all her sins,” Lizzie said.
As they approached the cottage, they spied C. D. on the porch, sitting on a wooden kitchen chair. His right arm was in a sling, and as they grew closer, they smelled the acrid smoke from his cigarillo.
He was awkwardly pawing through the contents of a rusted red metal tackle box with his left hand. “Hey,” he said. “Excuse me for not standing up.”
“How are you feeling, C. D.?” Brooke asked.
“Still kicking,” he said. “How about you?”
“Better. The headaches from the concussion are gone, and my face seems to be healing.”
“Glad to hear it.” He touched his shoulder. “I did a tour in Vietnam, came home and worked on the docks, and been thrown out of just about every bar on this coast, and this is the first time I’ve ever been shot. Some folks would say I was overdue.” He studied the two women’s serious expressions. “You just come over here to check up on me?”