Chapter 1
One
Isit in my favorite café, as I do every day, and wait for Death to arrive.
It’s a nice enough place to pass the time while I anticipate our usual meeting and his assessment of my latest writings.
Sunlight streams through the wide front windows, bathing the Parisian-themed café in a warm, pleasant glow. The bell jangles as new customers crowd in, decked out in crop tops, shorts, and flip-flops, drawn by the scent of fresh pastries and strong coffee.
They flock to the counter, their cameras out, diligently recording their authentic Savannah experience as they linger over tempting displays of rainbow-hued macarons, pain au chocolat, and fresh croissants.
The place hums from their conversation and the soft music that floats from hidden speakers, mingling with the whir of the bean grinder and the gurgle of the espresso machine as it spurts smooth streams of richness into white cups.
I lift The Savannah Tribune and reread my latest weekly column, Dust Tracks, revisiting the hidden Black history in the city and surrounding area. It’s odd, this need to see the words in print, but I can never resist.
I look up every few minutes to eavesdrop on the tourists babbling about the antebellum mansions and cobblestone streets and the rumors about ghosts roaming the national historic landmark district. The noise of it all is a welcome distraction from the spirits chasing me.
This café is a good place to wait until I can face Death again.
And wait, I have.
I didn’t think it would be this long.
I’d thought Death would come see me the instant Winston died.
I imagined looking up from his bedside to find Death leaning against the hospital door, his head tilted, arms crossed, mouth smug, eyes glinting with the knowledge that he thought he’d won—that he might’ve been right all along.
He should’ve come.
Winston was my last person to lose. The last straw to break me, to make me write less and less.
But he didn’t.
Not then.
Not now.
Not for the three years, two months, six days, and sixteen hours since I left that hospital room.
I’ve gone years without seeing Death, sometimes with more than a decade between visits.
In the beginning, I used to fear him showing up, never knowing when he’d appear, uncertain if the words I’d published would be enough to please him and continue our eternal wager .
. . leaving my soul and the souls of all at stake.
Even with the momentousness of the task, I can’t deny that there have been perks, in the wondrous things I’ve experienced.
I’ve watched Marian Anderson sing on Easter Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial, sat with Langston Hughes as he wrote “The Weary Blues,” detailing one of our nights out, and ridden with Ollie Stewart on the convoy behind Charles de Gaulle during the liberation of Paris in 1944.
I’ve covered the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by Lyndon B. Johnson.
I’ve watched on a grainy black-and-white TV as men took the first steps on the moon and then written about it.
I’ve gathered and recorded mountains of evidence attesting to humanity’s goodness—our miraculous wisdom and inventions and our redeemable nature—for more than two centuries.
The task has always been difficult—cobbling together stories from all the people I’ve met and the places I’ve been, scrambling, hoping I’ve found enough proof to save everyone.
We’re two weeks from the 240th anniversary of our first meeting in the cabin.
I wonder what he thinks of my latest little column.
A tiny blip of a piece, in contrast to the travelogues and articles I used to write and the grandiose publications they appeared in.
But writing for a Black newspaper has always felt bigger, as if my words might linger forever.
I should be working on the next one, my deadline imminent, but I ignore my notebook.
My phone pings. A reminder. The lecture tonight.
I flip back to the front of the paper and trace my finger along the black-and-white write-up of Dr. Sebastian Moore, historian of international journalism specializing in Black journalists.
The headline haunts me: The Missing Voices—Excavating the Black Women of Historic Journalism Through the Work of Jimi Ireland and Beyond.
That name is a firework. One of the many iterations of myself. Even after all this time, it still startles me to see my past self in print.
I trace the four letters of my old name, so small, that lifetime so far away now, and I can’t resist the tide to return to a sliver of it.
I’ve kept internet alerts for all my names in case they pop up in scholarly databases or online.
Apparently, some overinflated academic decided my work was worth critiquing—in the New Yorker, no less—with all the smugness of someone who’s never left their ivory tower.
I intend to find out who, exactly, he thinks he is.
I check my phone for the hour and eye the thinning line at the register. I’ll have barely enough time for another cup if I’m going to make the lecture on time. I have to know what he plans to say about me and my work.
“Vivian!”
I glance up. I’ve been isolated for so long I’ve nearly forgotten this name, my current one. I push back my pen and notebook and scoot off the high stool, grateful for the distraction.
Ruby waves from the pickup counter, holding a to-go cup in my direction. She’s the closest thing I’ve had to a friend in the time since I moved back here, checking in as she fills my cup and asks about my work—always curious about what I’m writing next.
Perhaps it will be her. She deserves to be written about.
The hardships she’s had to endure hidden beneath her beauty.
Her sunny disposition radiates out, enveloping the customers in its glow, as she efficiently manages the café.
There’s no hint that she’s picked up the pieces since the fire that took her mother’s life and nearly took hers, or the struggle of raising her brother.
Ruby is one of those people, the redeeming ones who do things despite the challenges, still believing that life can be good. She reminds me a bit of myself.
“You must be a mind reader,” I say as I approach.
“Tough writing?” she asks, nodding to the open notebook back at my seat.
I shrug, taking the offered cup. “You know, one of those days.”
I’ve struggled with writing anything serious as of late, Dust Tracks being my latest attempt.
Mostly it’s been reviews of bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants or informational visits to obscure historical sites.
After Winston, I stopped traveling and stopped collecting other people’s stories.
But I couldn’t not write, a habit centuries in the making.
Now my notebooks hold only false starts of things I’d love to write, the messy drafts of my column, and mostly a smattering of memories—vignettes of the lives I’ve lived and people I’ve lost. My mother, my brother Silas, all the loves I’ve had along the way—little parts of the centuries leaking across the pages and sometimes feeling more like fantasy than reality.
If someone ever got to read my scribblings, they’d never believe them.
Ruby nods sympathetically. “It’ll come. You have to have the best to write for The Atlantic! Inspiration will strike soon, and you’ll have plenty more stories to tell,” she says, beaming.
“Some days, I’m not so sure,” I reply. Especially as I wait for Death and his latest assessment.
“You have all the time in the world to leave your mark. As my mama used to say, ‘You’re a spring chicken.’”
“Not hardly. More long in the tooth.”
Ruby laughs. “Sometimes you sound a hundred years old.”
I smile. If you only knew. I sip the coffee, a heady mix of espresso and lavender bloom, the honeyed deliciousness sliding over my tongue. “How much do I owe you?” I juggle the cup and riffle through my purse, realizing I’ve forgotten my wallet. “I don’t—”
“Allow me.” A hand appears with a fistful of dollars.
I glance up at a tall man. He’s wearing a white button-down that contrasts against his rich, dark-brown skin, and his square glasses give him the look of a Black Clark Kent.
His hair, cut in a fade on the sides, the top a touch longer, forms tiny curls, the shadow of a beard along his jaw.
In his early thirties, I’d guess, he’s in shape, the lines of his biceps visible through his shirt.
He clutches a yellow legal pad and a red book.
I wonder what he’s reading. A tendril of curiosity unfurls in me.
His arm grazes mine as he places the money on the counter.
I startle. Surprised at his gesture and how the feel of his skin sends a rush of heat through me. It’s been so long since I’ve been touched. It’s been so long since another person has had that effect on me.
“Th-thank you,” I say as Ruby’s eyes cut back and forth between us. “But I can’t—”
“You don’t have any money,” he teases as his intense gaze holds mine, and a small, hopeful smile grows on his lips.
My face flushes, leaving me mixed up inside as we stand there frozen, his eyes examining me and mine examining him.
The glances . . . the elevated pulse . .
. the heightened emotions . . . I can almost hear the faint whir of destiny and wonder What if ?
A tiny question I haven’t pondered for years, one I thought I might never ask again.
I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be seen and admired.
“Do we know each other?” His eyebrows lift. “I have the strangest feeling we’ve met.”
“No.” I finally find my words. “And I couldn’t possibly accept. Ruby, could—”
“You’ll just owe me.” He smiles. “Perhaps you can buy me one another time?”
I start to answer him when a thin edge of darkness snatches my attention away.
A tall man with milklike skin and thinning auburn hair stands on the other side of the window, milling with the other tourists—his shadowed edges distinct, but only to me.
Heat rushes through me as he passes, just out of sight of the windows, my breath coming in quick bursts.
It’s him.
Death.
“Are you okay?” The handsome man trying to buy my coffee looks concerned, his eyes kind. He reaches out but stops just short of touching me.
Ruby’s eyes narrow.
I swallow, struggling to breathe, blinking my eyes clear. “I’m sorry,” I blurt out. “I’m sure you’re great, but I have to go . . . I’m late.”
I jam my notebook in my bag before the man can respond.
The bell on the door jangles behind me as I run into the afternoon sunshine. I stop outside the shop entrance and scan the street, the air thick with dust and exhaust from the neighboring construction.
Tourists mill about, sitting at the wrought iron tables or admiring downtown Savannah’s architectural gems as traffic streams past the café.
I search the crowds, anticipation humming inside me.
I’m chilled despite the hot, humid sunshine, and hug my bag closer, my papers rustling, knowing what this means.
It’s time to find out if the world is about to end.