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just there to see about their father’s goat; that Rascal and Lucia had chased them up the tree. With Mr. Williams’s boys, it was always a risk to trust the words coming out their mouths. Mr. Williams treated them badly because they were his wife’s from another man.
    But my mom still needed the plums picked. So she told the boys to clean the tree and she’d split the basket with them.
    We’d thought that was the end of that. Even when the dogs started up barking again farther into the gardens.
    Then, all of the sudden, we heard something screaming, loud and shrill, like a child. Only it wasn’t a child at all, it was the goat.
    I grabbed the cutlass off the wall again and ran as fast as I could past the plum tree, the guava and baobab trees next to my grandfather’s grave, through the bush, and into the gardens. The day was hot already, but I was too focused on the screaming goat and the feel of the machete’s wooden handle in the grip of my right hand to notice. And then I was right on top of them: the dogs, mixed with pit for protection, their jaws locking onto the hind quarters of Mr. Williams’s small goat, which was tied to a tree with a rope from some drug smuggler’s boat found, perhaps, in the cove at Sommerset.
    I couldn’t think through all the screaming, the goat’s sounding more human still than even the boys’ behind me, and my mom’s. I had a machete. They kept telling me to cut it loose, but I couldn’t get around the dogs, tearing, tearing into flesh. It was then I noticed the heat, there with us all in the humid, tangled, buggy bush. I tried to slap the dogs away with the machete, until I realized you don’t slap anything with a giant knife unless you’re trying to kill it. Finally, I got to the rope. Cut it. And the goat took off into the estate, the dogs behind it; Rascal’s jaw still locked on its left hind leg. The screaming continued for some time. And the dogs came home later, bloody, bloody.
    My grandmother had to pay Mr. Williams the price of his goat, because Sommerset had been pivotal to my Uncle George’s political party, had helped bring it into striking range. But later we heard rumors that maybe the goat hadn’t died after all and that Mr. Williams had been able to heal its leg with salt water.
    Her son not even cold in his grave and already Mama is starting this up again, telling Lil I can’t be trusted with Godwyn because of that damn man and his goat. Saying she’s to add Charles and Martin to the title.
    What is Granny starting up again?
    This business with the title to Godwyn—adding my brothers so neither of us can claim it.
    Neither of “us” … So it’s not about the goat.
    No, Jean. It’s not about the goat. You know damn well what it’s about. And you have to fix it. You have to undo what you’ve done.
    My lungs leaked their air.
    It was my mom and Granny on the deed to Godwyn: survivor take all. Adding my uncles to inherit Granny’s portion—my cousins would run my mom out in no time flat.
    You should have kept your business to yourself , she goaded.
    I tried . Still trying to remain calm.
    You tried? Please, Jean. What kind of fool do you take me for? Mr. Henry lived his whole life in Baobique, led your uncle’s constituency at Port Commons. You think his wife and children don’t know about him carrying on with that man, that Trinidadian chef in Bato? You take us all for fools. But you’re the fool, Jean. Look at what you’ve cost us.
    Jesus, Mom. You think I meant for it to happen? Uncle Martin snuck up on us!
    I don’t need to hear the details! Just tell Granny you take it all back.
    Take it all back? How?
    Breath moving shallow and fast, shallow and fast, in and out of my lungs. I scanned my studio for somewhere to go. On the couch, my mother’s many bags. She hadn’t come to just rest for three weeks with the free plane ticket from my credit card company. She’d come to stay, to make her problem mine, until I took care of it.
    I turned