As we rounded a bend, an old, weatherworn pier emerged from the shadows, leading to a crumbling shack half-swallowed by vines. Juju docked the pirogue with practiced ease, gesturing toward the dilapidated structure.
“Here?” I asked incredulously. “This is where he grew up?”
Juju nodded solemnly. “This is where his roots run deep.”
I stepped out hesitantly, the boards creaking underfoot. Something about the place felt alive, as though it had been waiting for us to arrive. Juju stood back, letting me take the lead as I moved closer to the shack, my heartbeat quickening with each step. Whatever lay inside, I knew this was the start of something bigger—an unraveling of truths I wasn’t sure I was ready to face.
Inside the shack, the air was thick with the scent of age—wood, damp earth, and faint traces of smoke, as though the place had once been alive with stories and gatherings. The walls, mottled with water stains, seemed to whisper memories, their cracks tracing lines that could have been the veins of an ancient tree. A single chair sat in the middle of the room, its wicker seat frayed and sagging.
Juju lingered at the entrance, his gaze steady but distant, as though he was already lost in the echoes of Wade’s history. “Every mark in this room tells a tale,” he murmured, his voice soft yet heavy. “Some louder than others.”
I crouched beside a wooden trunk, its hinges rusted and its lid slightly ajar. “You think Wade left this here?”
Juju shrugged. “It don’ matter who left it. What matters is what’s inside.”
My fingers hesitated before lifting the lid. Dust and fragments of time spilled out to reveal a faded photograph, its edges curling away from the past it depicted. A single picture of a man and a young boy. Happy and smiling as he looked up at the man who stood proudly beside him. I knew the young boy was Wade. I’d know that cheesy grin anywhere, but my eyes lingered on the man beside Wade.
My God, he was handsome.
Looking at the man who fathered Wade, I felt a rush of anger wash over me because I was denied the chance to meet him. Turning the picture over in my hand, I gasped as I read the names on the back.
Sean and Elliot.
Glancing at Juju, I whispered, “I don’t understand. I thought this was Wade?”
“I knew Wade wouldn’t be able to tell you the whole truth. It’s too painful for him. He’s never gotten over it. The past is a dark cloud over him and sometimes the weight of it drowns him,but you needed to know. Eustis Coltraine didn’t just kill Wade’s dad that night; he also killed Wade’s twin brother.”
For a moment, the world seemed to tilt, the weight of Juju’s revelation crashing down with a deafening silence. My hands trembled as I clutched the photograph, trying to reconcile the innocent smiles with the tragedy I now knew. Sean and Elliot. Two names bound forever by love and loss, their lives severed by a night so cruel it left Wade and his family broken beyond repair.
Juju stepped further into the shack, his footsteps soft against the warped wooden floor. “Wade ain’t ever been the same since then,” he continued, his voice steady but laced with sorrow. “Eustis didn’t just take lives that night; he took futures, identities. Wade’s been carryin’ the weight of both his own grief and the one Elliot didn’t get to live out.”
I stared at the photograph again, searching for answers that might never come. “Why didn’t Wade tell me?” I whispered, my voice cracking under the heaviness of it all.
Juju sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as though trying to ease a burden of his own. “Sometimes, we bury the truth so deep it feels like it’s safer there. Wade’s been tryin’ to protect you from it, but there’s only so much a man can hide before the past claws its way back to the surface.”
Suddenly, the air in the shack felt colder, the scent of damp earth more suffocating. I placed the photograph gently back into the trunk, as if its fragile edges carried the weight of generations.
“How do I help him, Juju?” I asked, my voice small but determined.
Juju’s eyes softened as he looked at me, his steady gaze holding a glimmer of hope. “Truth don’ heal overnight. It’s messy, painful. But it’s the only way through. Come. You’ve got more to see.”
Chapter Twenty
Three days had passed since Devlyn took off to stay at mymôman’s. From behind the bar at The Bourbon Bar, I looked up and smiled as my beautiful cousin C.C. walked through the front doors. “Well, lookee what the cat dragged in.” Poor girl wasn’t having the best of luck lately, and I had a feeling I knew why she was gracing my doorstep.
Walking over, she sat on a stool as I handed her a cold beer.
“Thought you’d be at the track gettin’ ready for your next race,” I said, leaning against the bar, taking a drink of my own beer.
“Not medically cleared yet,” she muttered, chugging the cold brew.
“Heard through the grapevine that Ansel’s bringing in some heavy heat.”
C.C. exhaled sharply, her fingers tightening around the bottle. “Word travels fast.”
“You’re a local legend, C.C.” I smiled. “Every soul from here to Talladega’s got their ears perked for your next move. But Calvin Hall? That’s a name I haven’t heard in years.”
“Yeah, well, some ghosts you just can’t shake.”
