The Cherokee Rose. Tiya Miles

since she had been back in Oklahoma. Right away, people had started coming to her with their research questions. “Your great-aunt Angie used to say you’d know this,” they’d begin as they put a question to her about a fifth cousin, once removed. “Your aunt Angie said to ask you, if she wasn’t here,” they’d explain when they inquired about a rift on the nineteenth-century Tribal Council. That was how Jinx came to know that she had inherited not only a house but a role as well: family historian. Because the Creek Nation was one big family of families, all interwoven through the cartilage of kinship and history, and because Jinx was not just Creek, but Cherokee, too, on her father’s side, the role of family historian could be the work of a lifetime. Aunt Angie had devoted herself to the study of history. Jinx had failed at it.

      Jinx replaced the letter in its envelope and handed it back to Deb without speaking. She reached inside her pocket for a ten-dollar bill, placed it on the counter, and took one last long swig of Coke. Beneath the tinkling of the diner’s bell, she made her escape.

      c

      “Are you going to Deb’s tonight?” Jinx’s cousin Victor said on the telephone.

      Jinx had spent the afternoon on the back porch of the bungalow typing up her column. Now she was in the living room fiddling with Aunt Angie’s ceramic figurine collection.

      “I’m getting a little tired of Deb’s cooking. I thought I might go to Applebee’s or cook at home. Do you and Berta want to come over? I can make Indian tacos.”

      “Okay, spill it.” They had grown up like sister and brother, and Victor could still read her mind.

      “Long story or short?” Jinx fingered the fringe on her cutoff blue jeans.

      “Short,” Victor said.

      “I messed up my last column and might have told only part of the truth. Deb Tom is pissed off and wants to send me out on assignment.”

      “ ‘Early Christianity in the Creek Nation.’ I read that one. A little dry, maybe, but that’s no crime. Don’t let Deb Tom push you around, Jinx. I know you feel close to her, but there are limits. You don’t need to be all torn up about some column. I mean, you didn’t lie. You didn’t slander anybody.”

      “Libel. Slander is when the defamation of a person is spoken. Libel is when it’s written.”

      “Fine, you didn’t libel anybody. What does she want, anyway, some kind of retraction?”

      “She didn’t say that, not directly. She wants me to go to the Southeast and research this girl. She wants me to find out what really happened to her.”

      “A road trip? Now you’re talking. Does Deb Tom pay mileage?”

      “You don’t think I should go, do you?” Jinx said, freezing in front of the figurine shelf.

      “I think you want to go, or you wouldn’t be upset about it. And I think you could use a vacation. You need to get out of that house. It’s like a mausoleum in there. If you don’t watch out, twenty years will pass and you’ll be on Hoarding: Buried Alive with a wall of old newspapers blocking your door. So if Deb Tom is giving you a reason to get out of there for a while, I say you should take it.”

      “I’d have to get time off from the library,” Jinx said, walking into the bedroom to pace in front of her great-aunt’s dresser mirror.

      “If you give me a week to arrange things, I’ll come with you,” Victor said. “Where is it we’re going?”

      Jinx smiled at that. “Georgia.”

      “What? The Coca-Cola capital of the world, and Jinx Micco’s still sitting there? When do we leave?”

      “Victor, you’re a Hotshot. It’s fire season. You can’t just take off.”

      “But you can. The children’s library will make it without you for a week.”

      “The library’s not just for children, Vic. We have other programs.”

      “The Saturday ladies. Right.”

      “How is it that you always end up pissing me off?”

      “Because I know you too well, little sister. You’ve already got Monday off for the holiday, so it’s like the weekend hasn’t even started yet. Pack up your stuff and come over. We’ll chart your route on MapQuest.”

      c

      Jinx wheedled a week’s vacation out of Marjorie and spent the late afternoon making plans in Victor’s trailer. If she got as far as the Arkansas border tonight, then did just six hours a day, she would have two days each way for travel and four days in between for the research.

      Back at the bungalow, she packed a nylon duffle bag with T-shirts, cargo pants, underwear, and athletic socks. She stuffed her orange canvas messenger bag with the Mary Ann Battis file, a Craig Womack novel, and a Nancy Clue mystery. She stuck her toothbrush and deodorant into a plastic baggie and left a message on her mom’s machine telling her not to panic. She didn’t contact Deb Tom.

      Grabbing a fresh can of Coke and an unopened bag of Twizzlers, Jinx headed out of the quiet house. She locked the door behind her and climbed into her Chevy. It was the same truck she had driven cross-country thirteen years ago, setting off for graduate school with Aunt Angie beside her. Jinx could almost see her now, a ghost riding shotgun, with burgundy curls, soft-veined hands, and thick eyeglasses.

      Headlights blazing, gas tank full, Jinx flew out of town.

      2

      Cheyenne Rosina Cotterell read the auction notice aloud, bracing herself for the onslaught.

      “Forty acres?” her friend Toni said in her pushy attorney tone. “You can’t be serious about this, Cheyenne. All you’d need next is the mule.”

      “Fourteen acres,” Cheyenne corrected as her girlfriends listened, stunned. “Right below the Cohutta Mountains. It used to be a five-hundred-acre estate, back in the 1800s, but most of the land was parceled out and sold off over the years. The original plantation house is left, some cabins, a peach orchard, and a whole lot of mosquito-ridden river cane. And yes, I am serious. I’m buying the place next week.”

      “Now I know you’ve lost your mind. You can’t live in the mountains, girl. You’re 100 percent city.” Toni leaned back in her chair and raised the smooth arch of an eyebrow. She savored the crispy end of a sweet potato fry that would probably go straight to her hips.

      De’Sha nodded, sipping her Chardonnay.

      Layla adjusted her black-frame glasses and skimmed the state auction notice Cheyenne had placed on the tabletop.

      Cheyenne eyed her three closest friends, a tableau of black urban chic. Toni wore a sleeveless tangerine sundress that showed off the deep tone of her shoulders and complemented her sultry bleached-blond hair. Layla was dressed in hand-dyed jeans and impossibly high heels, a look that punctuated her short natural haircut and stylish glasses. De’Sha was still wearing her beige crepe suit from work, her hair coiled in shiny black ringlets that touched the collar of her jacket. Cheyenne knew she had thrown a Molotov cocktail into their weekly dinner conversation. The four of them had met in a reading group for single black women a year before and instantly hit it off. Now they got together every Friday night at Aria, a hip new eatery in Buckhead with too many rich desserts on the menu for Cheyenne’s taste.

      “I thought that place was a public museum for Cherokee history,” De’Sha said. “I remember going up there for a field trip when I was in grade school. Is it even habitable? I mean, for a real person?”

      “I have to say I agree with them, Cheyenne. This plan is a little unrealistic,” Layla said. She was a graduate student in public policy at Georgia Tech and took it upon herself to play the role of the thoughtful one in their group. “Why would you buy an old house up in the boonies? A plantation house, no less. Doesn’t the idea freak you out just a little bit? You’re doing well at Swag. You just got promoted to lead interior designer.