Searching for Eternity by Elizabeth Musser

Author:Elizabeth Musser [Elizabeth Musser]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781441207180
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

* * *

I didn’t come downstairs for breakfast on Sunday, and Grandma and Mama didn’t ask questions. I guess they knew there was no way I was going to show my face in church.

Grandma simply called out, “We’re leaving now, Emile. We’ll be back shortly after noon.”

They were probably relieved to have me stay home, especially since the story continued in the Sunday paper: Negro Remains in Coma after Grisly Beating. It said there was “strong evidence that Edward Hasty had more than one attacker.” Surely that was good news.

Still, I was terrified. Would they lock me in jail for assault and battery or even homicide? Griffin explained these terms to me in graphic detail when he called right after Grandma and Mama had left.

“Anything’s possible, Emile. Sure wish that Edward Hasty would wake up and clear your name. Otherwise, you might be a goner.”

“A what?”

“Let’s just say you’ll need a lawyer.” Then he had another thought. “Maybe we could smuggle you back to France.”

“Great idea, Griff,” I said. I wasn’t about to tell him that, according to my mother, going back to France was even more dangerous than remaining in Atlanta. For some reason I got a smug feeling of importance, like Tintin in the midst of his troubles, when I admitted to myself that either way, I was a marked man.

Mama and Grandma left me in my room most of the day, where I read Tintin, tried in vain to do some math, and dozed off and on, dreaming once that Officer Dodge came in the middle of the night and took me to jail where I’d be locked up forever. Late in the afternoon, with the sky dark and the wind whipping outside, Mama came in and settled herself on my bed.

“Your grandmother and I have been talking, Emile. We think the best thing to do is to get a lawyer—she knows several good ones—and for you to stay home from school for a day or two, until everything is settled.”

“Do you think I’m guilty, Mama?” I asked her in French.

“Of course not, Emile.”

“But won’t it seem like I’m guilty if I stay home and hide?”

“Well, I don’t know . . . I just thought maybe you wouldn’t want all that attention.”

“I can go to school.”

She rose to leave, so I added quickly, “Mama, I’m sorry for causing so much trouble. About Papa and now this.”

She sat back down on the bed and took my hands in hers. “Emile de Bonnery, I am so proud of you, I don’t even know what to say. You’re willing to stand up for the less fortunate. Maybe it seems like you’re causing trouble, but the truth is . . . the truth is we’d all be a lot better off if more people would cause trouble the way you do.”

She hugged me tightly so that I could feel what seemed like two months of pent-up emotion seeping out of her.

After she left the room, I sat at the desk by the dormer window and slid my wristwatch off and turned it over and over in my hands.

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