Gold, Fire & Refinement

Chapter Four

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." ~Maya Angelou

All it took was one phone call. After that, everything changed. She wouldn't be spending the week or even the evening alone with her fiancé. A woman who exerted a stronger "gravitational force" was pulling him away, and that meant everything else in his life and hers had to change. His maternal grandmother, Bettina Beauregard McNeese, that morning told him she'd found a lump on her left breast, so now the world had to stop. The possibility that she might have cancer meant instead of getting ready to spend a steamy hot week with her, Harvey Evan Wilson was heading to the Mississippi Delta, to the McKinley Charles Francis McNeese Plantation.

His biological mother's mother, "Grandma Betty," had spoken. His only worldly connection with his birth mom told him she "desperately needed her dearest grandson" to visit; to hold her hand over the weekend. And she needed him to go with her to the hospital in Memphis on Monday morning to get a biopsy on the lump. 

Zarah had never met Grandma Betty, and she had a very good reason to not be looking forward to meeting her. Ever. As the news sank in, the sweet, rose-petal fragrance in the room started to sour. The room was no longer hosting a happy occasion. The place she loved most in their palace, the room she thought was the perfect one for making their first child now felt cold and antiseptic—like a hospital waiting room. Their beautiful sanctuary, the four-room suite with a wall of windows, one with a deck that overlooked the backyard and a stunning view of Lake Bellwood, that room had turned dark. Even the tiny room inside the suite; the one she decided to turn into a nursery, felt like just a room. Just an empty room. An empty, depressing room. She couldn't bring herself to look at the man she loved as they sat together on the bed holding hands. "She won't get the biopsy?" she asked. "At all? If you're not there?"

"That's what she said."

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They spent the rest of the afternoon packing for a seven-day trip, instead of making up for weeks spent apart. After contacting loved ones to let them know where they were going, they made final arrangements with his household staff for being away for seven days. Once they finished, they sat holding hands on their freshly made, elegant, mahogany four-poster bed. He couldn't help feeling broken and helpless, even as they sat on top of a Hästens Grand Vividus—the world's most luxurious and expensive mattress. Worn out from worry, he was hurting inside from having no choice but to change their plans. Zarah wasn't talking. She was sulking. Angry and hurt that he'd changed their plans without talking to her. Although they were holding hands, the promise he made to his grandmother had driven a prickly wedge between them. 

He was pretty sure he knew what she was thinking. She wasn't just fighting mad. She was disgusted. Not only did his grandmother's plantation have a despicable history. Despite what Bettina McNeese was saying now, his grandmother once told Zarah to never  visit her home.

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I can't believe that old white woman has changed, Zarah thought. Tightening her grip on Harvey's hand, she closed her eyes. She needed to remember, in vivid detail, exactly what happened that awful day. She and Harvey got engaged the night of her twentieth birthday, and one week later, his biological mother's mother sent her a hateful message. She wanted her to know that even though she was a white-skinned black woman engaged to her white grandson, she still wasn't white. Not only that, the woman also said she would never be welcome, ever, at the McNeese Plantation. "I'll never forget it," Zarah said, her voice slicing through the silence. "How hard it was ... for your uncle. Remember? When he brought us that letter? Your Uncle Drake was so pitiful. The saddest messenger I've ever seen."