Alton settled in Chicago, where he worked in a meat-packing plant, saved his money, and opened a juke joint two years before Prohibition. Rather than close down when “the biddies started busting the barrels” (this from a letter Alton wrote to his sister—Jerome has found a trove of letters and documents in storage), he changed locations and opened a South Side speakeasy that became known as the Black Owl.

The more Jerome discovered about Alton Robinson—his dealings with Alphonse Capone, his three escapes from assassination (the fourth did not go so well), his probable sideline in blackmail, his political kingmaking—the more his paper grew, and the more his work for other classes seemed insignificant in comparison. He turned the long essay in and received a laudatory grade.

“Which was sort of a joke,” he tells Holly as they roll into the last fifty miles of their journey. “That paper was just, you know, the tip of the iceberg. Or like the first verse in one of those endless English ballads. But by then I was halfway through spring semester, and I had to pick up the slack in my other courses. Make the mater and pater proud, you know.”

“That was very adult of you,” says the woman who feels she never succeeded in making her mother and late father proud. “But it must have been hard.”

“It was hard,” Jerome says. “I was on fire, kiddo. Wanted to drop everything else and chase great-great-Grandpa Alton. That man had a fabulous life. Diamonds and pearl stickpins and a mink coat. But letting it age a little was the right thing to do. When I went back to it—this was last June—I saw how it had a theme, or could have, if I did the job right. Have you ever read The Godfather?”

“Read the book, saw the movie,” Holly says promptly. “All three movies.” She feels compelled to add, “The last one isn’t very good.”

“Do you remember the epigraph of the novel?”

She shakes her head.

“It’s from Balzac. ‘Behind every great fortune there is a crime.’ That was the theme I saw, even though the fortune ran through his fingers long before he was shot down in Cicero.”

“It really is like The Godfather,” Holly marvels, but Jerome shakes his head.

“It’s not, because black people can never be American in the same way Italian and Irish people can. Black skin withstands the melting pot. I want to say . . .” He pauses. “I want to say that discrimination is the father of crime. I want to say that Alton Robinson’s tragedy was that he thought that through crime he could achieve some sort of equality, and that turned out to be a chimera. In the end he wasn’t killed because he got crossways with Paulie Ricca, who was Capone’s successor, but because he was black. Because he was a nigger.”

Jerome, who used to irritate Bill Hodges (and scandalize Holly) by sometimes doing a minstrel show colored accent—all yassuh boss and I sho do, suh!—spits this last word.

“Do you have a title?” Holly asks quietly. They are nearing the Covington exit.

“I think so, yeah. But I didn’t think it up.” Jerome looks embarrassed. “Listen, Hollyberry, if I tell you something, do you promise to keep it secret? From Pete, and from Barb and my parents? Especially them.”

“Of course. I can keep a secret.”

Jerome knows this is true, but still hesitates for a moment before plunging. “My prof in that Black and White sociology class sent my paper to an agent in New York. Elizabeth Austin is her name. She was interested, so after Thanksgiving I sent her the hundred or so pages I’ve written since summer. Ms. Austin thinks it’s publishable, and not just by an academic press, which was about as high as I was shooting. She thinks one of the majors might be interested. She suggested calling it by the name of great-great-Gramp’s speakeasy. Black Owl: The Rise and Fall of an American Gangster.”

“Jerome, that’s wonderful! I bet tons of people would be interested in a book with a title like that.”

“Black people, you mean.”

“No! All kinds! Do you think only white people liked The Godfather?” Then a thought strikes her. “Only how would your family feel about it?” She’s thinking of her own family, which would be horrified to have such a skeleton dragged out of the closet.

“Well,” Jerome says, “they both read the paper and loved it. Of course, that’s different from a book, isn’t it? One that might be read by a lot more people than a teacher. But it’s four generations back, after all . . .”

Jerome sounds troubled. She sees him look at her, but only out of the corner of her eye; Holly always faces directly forward when she’s driving. Those movie sequences where the driver looks at his passenger for seconds at a time while delivering dialogue drive her absolutely crazy. She always wants to shout, Look at the road, dummy! Do you want to hit a kid while you’re discussing your love life?

“What do you think, Hols?”

She considers this carefully. “I think you should show your parents as much as you showed the agent,” she says at last. “Listen to what they say. Get a read on their feelings and respect them. Then . . . push ahead. Write it all down—the good, the bad, and the ugly.” They’ve come to the Covington exit. Holly puts on her blinker. “I’ve never written a book, so I can’t say for sure, but I think it takes a certain amount of bravery. So that’s what you should do, I think. Be brave.”

And that’s what I need to be now, she thinks. Home is only two miles away, and home is where the heartache is.

4

The Gibney house is in a development called Meadowbrook Estates. As Holly weaves her way through the spiderweb of streets (to the home of the spider, she thinks, and is immediately ashamed of thinking about her mother that way), Jerome says, “If I lived here and came home drunk, I’d probably spend at least an hour finding the right house.”

He’s right. They’re New England saltboxes, only set apart from one another by different colors . . . which wouldn’t be much help at night, even with the streetlights. There are probably different flowerbeds in the warm months, but now the yards of Meadowbrook Estates are covered in crusty scarves of old snow. Holly could tell Jerome that her mother likes the sameness, it makes her feel safe (Charlotte Gibney has her own issues), but doesn’t. She’s gearing up for what promises to be a stressful lunch and an even more stressful afternoon. Moving day, she thinks. Oh God.

She pulls into the driveway of 42 Lily Court, kills the engine, and turns to Jerome. “You need to be prepared. Mother says he’s gotten a lot worse in the last few weeks. Sometimes she exaggerates, but I don’t think she is this time.”

“I understand the situation.” He gives one of her hands a brief squeeze. “I’ll be fine. You just take care of yourself, okay?”

Before she can reply, the door of Number 42 opens and Charlotte Gibney comes out, still in her good church clothes. Holly raises one hand in a tentative hello gesture, which Charlotte doesn’t return.

“Come inside,” she says. “You’re late.”

Holly knows she’s late. By five minutes.

As they approach the door, Charlotte gives Jerome a what’s-he-doing-here look.

“You know Jerome,” Holly says. It’s true; they’ve met half a dozen times, and Charlotte always favors him with that same look. “He came to keep me company, and lend moral support.”