The note was written in a scrawl

15) Mrs Latchy Gray
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Eighteen years earlier, a chance conversation one afternoon in New Orleans, caused another woman to accompany River Boy's mother to the hospital the night River Boy was born.

That woman was Latchy Gray.
Both women had affairs with Rich Man, each for a different reason, so they were distantly acquainted, both wealthy from marriage, yet from different sides of the same world. The two women shared little except the birth of a baby boy that put them together for one last time.

Mrs Latchy Gray held the baby when the mother couldn’t. She handed the boy to the adoption lady. She was one of few people in the world who knew about River Boy's beginning.
It was Latchy who told Rich Man where to find the whore, but couldn't stop the advance of events that led to the child's abandonment and death of his mother. She felt terrible for letting the adoption lady take the boy and tried to find him herself ... over the years remembering like it happened the day before.

By coincidence, Latchy Gray just moved back to Trinity after living in Mobile for 30 years.
She re-opened the big house up on Peachtree Hill.
Not many remembered her from before, but according to recent gossip she was a recluse and rarely came out.
While this was partly true, she was mostly cautious about relations without knowing the who’s and what’s of local business and social activity. Fact was, she maintained lively correspondence with people from high circles around the State, occasionally hosting the out of town visitor.

Latchy was smart and hid the hardness of her life behind a veneer of wealth and polish.
Born into an unloving Creole family from the fertile lands along the Mississippi River, they could barely afford shoes.
Her father was an unexceptional man, and mother a weak-willed go-along, but Latchy steered the family into favorable trades that turned their fortunes into near wealth.

Shapely, sheltered and pretty, Latchy's eye for money and gift for social ubiquities attracted suitors in aboundment. Not knowing better among the choices, she married a cold strong-willed southern gentleman of fine breeding, Mr Alghani Gray. He was offsprung from a British-Moroccan family that owed a trading company stretching from Portugal to India.
During prohibition, Alghani began transporting alcohol from Canada and the Caribbean to supply thirsty men and women with a taste of that which Mr Gray supplied.

Within a year, he moved Latchy into the finest house in Trinity, a newly-styled 3-story Victorian built by craftsmen using local timber and Alabama stone.
Under her husband's iron fist, she was expected to be timely and keep a perfect home for the endless line of business and social guests that sought standing among the influential.

By the time she was 22, her husband outwitted rivals to achieve even greater wealth and they moved to Mobile, to more easily mingle with the pillars of power.

Away from her small town comforts, Latchy busied herself in Mobile hiring house staff but quickly grew distant from her husband who disliked a dainty wife with emotional attachments.
His behavior mimicked her childhood and maybe that's why she married him.
Latchy filled the empty days with shopping and chatter among the carefully styled women of her standing.

After Prohibition ended and the depression wrenched the illegal whiskey businesses into failure, Mr Gray invested in ever-larger vessels for improved efficiencies that ended up perfect for delivering war materials when Europe and the Far East splintered into violence.

At war's end, Mr Gray abandoned Mobile and Latchy, spending his time in Singapore shipping opiates to the world.
Latchy, after 32 years of marriage, nearing 50, so she claimed, and alone except for one son that worked with her husband, left Mobile and moved back to Trinity.

She wanted to write a novel about the scorched route that her husband's love caused her to take, hoping that re-telling would relieve the desperations.
It started after catching him in the bedroom kneeling in front of another man 20 years before.

Retreating from the room not knowing whether to scream or cry, she stood motionless in the kitchen barely able to blink.
The minutes slowed past until he came out, naked and erect, and found her staring at him. He had white remnants on his mouth and didn't bother to hide himself.

He forced her to kiss, share, and taste the companion in their home. Then stripped her and took her to the other room, where both men enjoyed themselves with the pleasure of Latchy as a distraction.

It was the first time in years Latchy had been with her husband, and sharing him was too dirty to consider, but meek and unable to confront his power, he convinced her, and they began to have sex with different men each week. Eventually attending parties and masked events where the women were shared by all. Men on men, men on women, women on women. He liked the vicarious thrill of watching his beautiful wife with other men.

She endured a level of humiliation during the endless course of shared sex, but also discovered power.
Latchy Gray learned how to free a man of his boundaries. Her body commanded attention, and her skill increased with each encounter.
Slow long short fast it didn't matter.
Latchy Gray understood men.
Urging but never demanding she led them to fulfill their pleasure with her tongue, her mouth, her breasts her soft behind.
Every opening was accepting of a man's need.

Selfishness began to dominate her life, imitating her husband's cold control, yet unable to break free of him.

Not a paid whore of herself, she met the finest women of pleasure, including the lady from New Orleans who was parceled up to Jackson County by Rich Man before she got pregnant with River Boy. Latchy knew Rich Man from the parties, finding time on occasion to meet him alone.
She lost contact with him after the murder.

The house in Trinity sat empty for nearly 30 years. A groundmans lived there with his family and kept the place in repair, but people called it the ghost house.
Most people in town were happy someone moved in, but the decision to come to Trinity created a fate that put Latchy and River Boy together again.

Next morning after the murders in Blacktown, River Boy took Abagail to the Greyhound, and then stopped by the pharmacy to see if Bethel Wilkerson heard anything. It was a normal day, so nobody said a word yet. He was distressed imagining the reaction. The whites would tear Blacktown apart.
Bethel, unaware of the murders and the ruin it portended for Trinity, asked River Boy to run an errand.
Her husband liked to fish on his days off and she wanted River Boy to pick up his birthday gift, a new fishing reel, and deliver it to the house.
Mostly however, Bethel had a daughter that needed a boyfriend. Her name was Susan Wilkerson. She was going to be a junior in High School.

The popular girls at school liked cars and parties, but Susan worked at her father's auction business and liked fishing and walking in the woods. You could say she and River Boy were a lot similar, and Bethel thought they'd make a good match, plus she knew her daughter would be home when River Boy delivered the reel.

In any case, the trip into Trinity to pick up Mr Wilkerson's fishing reel caused River Boy to stumble into view of Latchy Gray. At first glance, she thought it was Rich Man. Looked exactly like him except younger, causing her to immediately wonder if this was the baby boy she held in the hospital 18 years earlier.
Her Negro gardener, Roy, told her about a boy who lived down by the river, who ran away from a foster family. The pieces fit, and now she had to find out who he was.

River Boy delivered the fishing reel as expected. And just as Bethel intended, Susan Wilkerson answered the door.
Susan, having spent an afternoon with her father fishing next to River Boy while he made funny jokes and scared away the fish, was not impressed much. She took the reel, yeah thanks, then closed the door, while he stood there and said, sure, goodbye to the doorknob.
It was a busted plan.
Tough luck there, but not for River Boy.
A younger boy who was running to catch up finally caught up out of breath. The boy said, there's a lady ... stopping to breathe and leaning on his knees. The lady ... you know the rich lady ... who moved ... into the house .... the big house ... there on Peachtree ... wants ... you to come to her house.

River Boy hadn't met the lady. He knew the house. She'd lived there several months and River Boy heard that she barely came out.
What's she want?
I dunno. She gave me a nickel to tell you. My mom told me she used to live here a long time ago.
Yeah, I heard that too. Anything else around?
The boy asked, like what?
Oh you know, anything new?
Naaw. School starts in three weeks.
Yeah, summer's over.
Yeah, then we sit there and it's hot but we can't open the windows.
River Boy laughed, and when it's cold we wear coats.
Both laughed. OK, yeah ... see ya later.
Okay. Hey, you want me to tell the lady you're coming over?
Naw, next day of so. I'll see what happens, thanks.

After Latchy saw River Boy walking downtown, she went into the hardware store and asked the clerk who River Boy was and where he lived.
The store clerk's answer convinced her that River Boy was indeed Rich Man's baby boy, but the inquiry put them front page on the town gossip.
Then she bumped into the younger boy and asked him to run after River Boy with the message.
But forget that, the reclusive rich lady that everybody wanted to know about was asking about River Boy who, among many questionable attributes aside from living in Blacktown and stealing chickens, had aroused a following of people that began to like him ... all happening just before the Blacktown murders were going to sweep through town with fear and anger.

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