The Clouds Roll Away by Sibella Giorello Page B

stomachache.”
    Having used these same sleep and stomachache excuses myself, I was tempted to tell him it was real food this time. But she was shuttling among the stove and sink and fridge, working like a woman preparing brunch for twenty.
    â€œIs Helen coming?” I asked.
    â€œHelen?” She took orange juice from the fridge, decanting it into a glass pitcher. No carton for this morning. “Helen has finals this week; she’s much too busy.”
    She poured me a glass of OJ, using the good leaded crystal, and I glanced down at my plate again. Tiny holly leaves danced around the gold rim. Her best Christmas china.
    â€œSo who’s coming?” I asked.
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œBreakfast.”
    â€œNobody.”
    â€œJust me?”
    â€œBut she promised to see us for Christmas.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œHelen.” She tilted her head to the side. Normally it was one of her most endearing gestures, the long, dark curls cascading next to her porcelain face, a gesture of pure femininity as she looked at me with a mother’s evaluative love. But today her hair didn’t move. It was stuck, sprayed stiff into some dark helmet. And she didn’t seem to see me.
    â€œIs something the matter with Helen?” she asked.
    â€œNo.” I picked up my fork. “Helen’s great. Helen’s always great.”
    She watched me take the first bite. The golden crust broke delicately, a fluffy texture inside. I smiled, chewed, smiled, and within seconds a sharp metallic flavor seeped across my tongue. My throat closed, tasting aluminum. Baking soda. Way too much baking soda.
    â€œHow are the pancakes?” she asked.
    â€œWow.” I grabbed the orange juice. “It’s been a long time since I tasted something like this.”
    â€œI’ve got plenty more where those came from,” she said. “Eat up.”

    Just as his secretary said, the sheriff for Charles City County was sitting at the small table beside the window facing Route 60, eating his breakfast at Jean’s Country Diner in Providence Forge. Newspaper in one hand, biscuit in the other.
    â€œMind if I sit down?” I asked.
    He looked up. Reading glasses perched on his small Irish nose, his blue eyes flickering with unspoken assessments.
    â€œBest biscuits in town.” His voice drawled rural Virginia, the vowels slow and undulating.
    I took the seat across the table, my stomach aching from my mother’s metallic pancakes. But I’m a girl who never refuses good food, particularly good Southern food, and the diner smelled of butter and salt, milk and flour. Hot biscuits. Food heaven. The sheriff raised his hand, signaling the young woman behind the counter, and slipped his glasses into the chest pocket of his brown uniform. He glanced out the window, his eyes following a truck thundering past the diner, heading east on the Pocahontas Trail.
    â€œWhat can I do for you, Agent Harmon?” he asked.
    â€œI’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast, sir. I wanted to speak with you in private.”
    â€œYou tell my secretary you were with the FBI?”
    I shook my head, sliding my card across the table. Last summer the sheriff took my statement down by the river. It wasn’t a professional encounter; it was victim and law enforcement, and we never spoke again. His sparsely populated county—as close to Williamsburg as Richmond—consisted of working farms and river plantations and boasted one of the lowest crime rates in the state. Our records showed just one FBI arrest, nearly a decade ago. Hale Lasker.
    He picked up my card, slipping it behind the reading glasses. His old skin looked weathered and ruddy, the face earned by a committed fisherman. “Y’all looking into the cross burning?” he asked.
    â€œYes, sir. Your department responded to the 911 call, is that right?”
    â€œI was there.”
    â€œCan you tell me what you saw?”
    â€œYou