Swamp Happens: The Complete Swamp Bottom Series

by Cora Kenborn

  Finally, she found her voice. “I ordered the right one, Ads, I swear. I don’t know what happened. There was a Mardi Gras themed bachelorette party that came in after me at the party store. I guess they got us mixed up.”

  Standing motionless, I vaguely heard Zep and my mother call my name, but I was too busy trying to catch my breath to care. I’d dreamed of shopping for little pink dresses or little blue sailor outfits with my sister and mom, and now all I had were a bunch of Creole confetti that I wanted to shove up someone’s asshole.

  I gasped.

  I hyperventilated.

  And then?

  I completely lost my shit.

  “Well, that’s just fucking perfect,” I screamed, pacing around the remaining balloons while kicking at the offending confetti. “My big moment, my big reveal, and what’s it reduced to? Fucking hooker colors. That’s right. Hooker colors. These colors only work if I’m having Goldfinger, a fucking alien or a giant purple goddamn dinosaur. Am I having any of those, Savannah? Huh? Can’t wait to push out a dinosaur. Maybe we can get a special on TLC for that shit. Hell, if that couple can get a show for popping out sixteen kids, surely we can get one for shooting a purple dinosaur out of my crotch, right?”

  Savannah was frantic, wringing her hands and following behind every step of my pace. “I swear, Ads, I watched them write it down, I ordered the right one. I saw them write down, blue confetti.”

  “I don’t care what the wrote down, Sav. What they delivered was—”

  I stopped so suddenly, Savannah plowed into the back of me, almost knocking both of us to the ground. Unlike most people, I had the memory of a steel trap. I could remember dates, facial expressions, exact words that were said, and locations they were said in. I also knew once I turned toward Zep, I’d never forget the look on his face as long as I lived.

  “Oh my God, did you just say blue confetti?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my sister grin the biggest grin I’d ever seen. “Yeah, Ads. I said blue. Surprise, you’re having a boy.”

  My eyes were still locked on Zep. Although I knew how much he wanted to be a man in this situation, I lost control of my emotions when his steel eyes misted over, and his chin quivered under his beard.

  “I’m having a son,” he whispered, barely moving.

  I could only nod.

  “I’m having a son!” he hollered, letting out a whoop and scooping me up in his arms, twirling me around as if I didn’t weigh a ton.

  The dam broke. I cried like I’d never cried before. The room erupted into cheers and screams. By the time Zep put me down, I felt drunk and dizzy, high on happiness and the little boy I was now responsible for bringing into the world.

  Never one to let a happy moment pass without being the first to be the first in the know, Savannah wiped an uncharacteristically rare tear away and bounced on her toes. “Well? Do you guys have a name picked out?”

  Of course, we did. It’d been one of the first things we’d discussed after coming to a truce about the pregnancy. And knowing we were having a boy drew out a fresh round of tears.

  “Charles,” I answered with a quiver in my voice. “Charles Beaudean. But we’ll call him Charlie.”

  The room went silent, and every eye turned toward the back of the bar where one barstool slowly turned around, the hinges creaking as loudly as her old bones.

  “Charlie?” She asked, her crackly voice shaking. “After my Charlie? You name baby after Pappy?”

  I tried to speak, but I was too overwhelmed. Instead, Zep squeezed my hand and took over. “Charlie was the best man I knew, Babs. He was my Grandpa’s best friend and gave him part of Dubois Fishery when he was down and out. He never looked down on me and to be honest, ma’am, Mr. Charlie’s passing was what brought Addie back to Terrebonne…and back to me. He’s the reason little Charlie is here. There really wasn’t any other option for a name.”

  Babs cleared her throat a few times. I’d never seen my grandmother at such a loss for words. Finally, she picked up a shot glass of vodka, raised it in the air and stood on the rails of her barstool. “Where is death, is life. Where is old, is new. Rest In Peace, Charlie Dubois, and welcome to world, Charlie LeBlanc.”

  “Here, here.” Everyone in the room joined her in raising a glass and drinking to the two Charlies who had changed so many lives.

  I was wrong.

  My sister had thrown the perfect baby shower.

  “We really don’t need to take this shit to your house, Addie. We can drop it by the office and just keep it there.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I laughed, stopping by the mailbox and collecting two-days-worth of letters Savannah had neglected to pull in. “Why would we keep all this stuff at the office when there’s plenty of space here?”

  He seemed jittery, glancing at me every few minutes as if second guessing himself about something. It concerned me at first, and then I just chalked it up to pregnancy paranoia. The last thing I wanted to do was disrupt the bizarre harmony we’d somehow managed to create.

  After the shower, Zep had driven us back to my house to drop off all of the baby paraphernalia loaded up in the back of his truck. Everyone had been more than generous and the jitters had finally started waning. Halfway through the pregnancy, the shock had worn off, and the reality that Zep and I were about to be parents had started to become exciting.

  As Zep cut the engine, we walked up the driveway, while I sorted through the mail. The moment my eyes landed on one return address it felt like I’d waited a lifetime on, I screamed.

  “Oh, God, it’s here!”

  He shuffled closer, trying to get a look at the letter. “What’s here?”

  I didn’t answer, ripping open the envelope with gusto, not giving a shit about paper cuts. All that mattered were the words in front of me as I unfolded the letter and scanned the gold embossed emblem at the top.

  “Addie?”

  “I’m free.” I traced the words with my finger, not really believing them to be true.

  “What do you mean, ‘you’re free’?”

  “Roland,” I beamed, unable to hide the smile breaking across my face. “He signed the divorce papers. I’m free.”

  “You’re free?” He stepped forward and cradled my cheek.

  Unable to speak, I nodded, holding up the signed papers, my eyes blurry with emotion.

  “This is fucking perfect,” he chimed in, taking my lips in a heated kiss, speaking words we didn’t need to. As he kissed me, ten years of loneliness and ownership disguised as love dissolved in a four-line letter, igniting thirteen years of longing and love masked as hate.

  Finally breaking away, I glanced up at the clouding sky and nodded to the haul in the back of the truck. “We should unload before it rains. We don’t want to ruin all of Charlie’s stuff before he gets here.”

  Zep grinned, a dimple sinking deep in the middle of his thickening beard. “It doesn’t seem real, does it? I’m gonna have a son. I get to make things right.”

  The honesty in his voice gutted me. “We get to make things right,” I corrected him, placing a hand over his.

  I should’ve known that any tender moment between Zep and me couldn’t last. It was like watching some chick-flick. You knew even though things were going great with the two main characters, some shit was right around the corner and one of them was going to do something to fuck it up.

  Operation fuck-up set in motion the minute Zep went for his pocket.

  I immediately pulled away, the smile fading from my face. “No. Please, Zep, don’t.”

  Before his name even passed my lips, he’d pulled out the simple diamond ring and held it up between us like he was closing a sale. “Addie, I’ve asked you to marry me at least fifteen times now.”

  “Seventeen.”

  He pursed his lips. “Yes, thank you, seventeen. And you’ve turned me down all seventeen times. We’re having a baby, and you know how I feel about bringing my son home to a broken family.”

  “We�
�re not broken,” I insisted, intentionally stepping away from the ring. “Charlie will have two parents who love him unconditionally. How is that broken?”

  “What will his legal last name be, Addie? Have you thought about that?”

  “No.” I hadn’t. It honestly hadn’t crossed my mind. I didn’t even know the legalities of last names.

  “I want Charlie’s last name to be LeBlanc. I want your last name to be LeBlanc. I want to marry you, Addie…not because I have to, but because—”

  I shook my head, covering my eyes. “Don’t. Don’t say it.”

  Prying my hands away from my face, Zep steadied a confident gaze on me, stroking the skin on my arm with his thumb. “Because I love you, Addie.”

  Oh shit. He said it.

  “No,” I begged.

  “I love you,” he repeated, his voice stronger. “I’ve always loved you. I’ve never stopped loving you. Even when you belonged to someone else, I loved you—so much more than he did.”

  I wanted to say it back. Because I did love him. Just like he said, from the first day I walked into the classroom to tutor him, I’d loved him. But something inside of me wouldn’t let me say it. The words wouldn’t come. They stuck in my throat like molasses, years of emotional abuse protecting my spirit from being destroyed again. My fear punished Zep for Roland’s sins, and while my head knew that, my heart was too raw to fight it.

  “Me too.”

  It was all I could offer right now.

  However, the grin that lit up Zep’s face made me realize he knew me better than I ever gave him credit for. I couldn’t say the words he wanted to hear, but the man standing before me would be the only man who could ever read between my confusing lines and hear me.

  Really hear me.

  He knew I loved him.

  But I couldn’t marry him.

  Closing my hand around his wrist, I lowered it back to his pocket. “Now’s not the time.”

  “I’ll go to thirty times if I have to, Addie. I’m not giving up.”

  I knew he wouldn’t. Thirteen years of waiting had proven that.

  “Thirty-two,” I countered with a grin.

  Chuckling, he tucked the ring back into his pocket, his eyes tracking back to my front porch with an edge of concern I didn’t understand. “Addie, we should probably—”

  Cutting him off, I dangled the keys in front of my face. “Later. I’m going to open up the house, and you start carrying stuff in.” Blowing him a kiss, I clambered up the steps to the porch before I heard him curse under his breath and call after me.

  “Addie! Addie, wait, don’t go in yet. Addie, we need to talk…”

  The rest of what he said faded away as a buzzing sound filled my head the minute I opened the door. My mouth dried as I scanned the jam-packed living room. There was barely any space to walk with shit piled in every available space—a worn black leather couch, a ripped La-Z-Boy recliner, glass tables, kitchen ware, sports paraphernalia, a flat-screen television that I inherently knew included a DVR filled with every season of The Bachelor and Pretty Little Liars.

  “What the fuck is this?” I breathed, finally finding my voice.

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Zep said, placing a tentative hand on my shoulder. “I signed over the lease on my apartment to Cole.”

  “You did what?”

  “Savannah gave me the keys and Cole, and Michael helped me move my stuff in while you were at work this morning.” Reaching into his other pocket, he pulled out a key that matched the one I held in my hand. “I’m moving in.”

  55

  The Escape Clause

  Savannah

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  I glanced at my list for the umpteenth time that afternoon. It was official. I’d become a list person in the three months since Pope had all but told me we were getting married. It was weird, to say the least. I wasn’t used to being responsible, but what was more bizarre, I liked it.

  No wonder Addie had been harping on me all these years. It was amazing what you could accomplish when you were organized. I’d ordered the cake and flowers, confirmed with the restaurant for the rehearsal dinner, and picked up Addie’s maid of honor gift, and it wasn’t even noon. The only thing left on my list was the marriage license. Pope and I had filled out the paperwork at home. All I had to do was take it to the courthouse, get it notarized, and we’d be all set for the wedding in less than a month.

  Because, yeah, who needs to wait when you have a man like Quentin Pope?

  Holy fuckballs! I’m getting married in less than a month!

  I gave myself a momentary reprieve from being ultra-efficient and cranked the volume on the old radio until the speakers crackled in the old truck cab. Dancing in my seat, I threw myself an impromptu dance party in the parking lot of City Hall.

  Party break completed, I hustled across the asphalt and up the stairs into the old building. The heels of my boots clicked on the marble floors and echoed around me like my own personal theme song. When I turned the corner and pushed into the clerk’s office where the county website had directed me to go, I met with a line that rivaled the DMV.

  That’s what I got for slacking off to the tune of “Party In The USA” by Miley Cyrus. I should’ve known better. Pop princesses bring nothing but trouble.

  I’d run out of lives on Candy Crush, Two Dots, and Trivia Crack before it was my turn. Stepping up to the window, I smiled at the clerk. I couldn’t help it. I’d been wearing a shit eating grin for months now.

  “Hello, Charlene,” I said, glancing at the woman’s name placard.

  The older woman grunted at my greeting. “What can I do for you?”

  I slid the application through the open space below the bulletproof glass that separated my new best friend and me. “I’m just here to get my marriage license.”

  Charlene nodded and took the application, but didn’t say anything. I took in my surroundings and tried not to seem impatient as she finger-pecked her way through the alphabet, taking her sweet-ass time entering my information.

  Stay positive, Savvy. No need to get snippy. She’s just doing her job.

  The urge to ask if there was anyone who’d taken a typing class back there to help with data entry boiled just under the surface, but I managed to tamp it down. After what felt like nine years, she turned her attention back to me.

  She opened her mouth and her nasally voice uttered the six words that had the power to bring my life crashing down around me. “Do you have your divorce decree?”

  I blinked, unsure I’d heard her right. “I’m sorry, my what? I think there must be a mistake. I’ve never been married before.”

  Her bushy eyebrows drew together, and she looked back at her screen. “You’re Savannah Lynn Dubois, born January 23rd, 1992?”

  My mouth ran dry. There had to be some sort of mistake. “Yes, that’s me.”

  Charlene grunted again. “It shows here we have a marriage license on record for Savannah Dubois and Patrick Tugsmore, married August 17th, 2015, Clark County, Nevada. Ringing any bells?”

  I felt the blood rush from my face, and a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature raced up my spine. It couldn’t be. It was impossible. We’d been drunk off our asses. There was no way that little chapel had been legit.

  “You can’t actually get married in Vegas while you’re drunk. It was for show!” I screeched.

  The woman behind the glass pursed her lips, and her eyes went from dull and emotionless to filled with pity. “Unfortunately, you can, and according to the government, you did.”

  My hands started to shake as I gripped the counter to keep from falling over. Of all the stupid, asinine things I’d done, getting saying “I do” to a fake marriage that turned out a real one took the cake. Pope was going to lose his mind.

  But what if he doesn’t have to know?

  I braced myself on the counter. There had to be a simple solution. “How do I fix this? I’m getting married in less than a month to th
e man of my dreams. I will not let a stoner ex-boyfriend from college fuck this up.”

  An expression of understanding washed over her face. “We need a divorce decree or annulment papers to process your marriage license.”

  Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck!

  “How the hell am I supposed to get a divorce in time?”

  Clucking her tongue, she shook her head. “You can’t, but an annulment doesn’t take as long.”

  “What do I have to do?” I was willing to do anything to make this go away.

  “Well, if you try to mail in the papers it’ll take weeks. But if you and your husband file for an annulment together, you could have the papers in a week or less.”

  “It’s that easy?”

  She shrugged. “It’s Vegas. How do you think they get away with letting idiots who’ve been sucking down the hooch all night sign a legal document? An easy escape clause. The only problem is, you’ve got to do it at the Clark County courthouse, and you’re going to need him to be with you.”

  “Fuck!” I hissed. While I was pretty sure I could get in touch with Patrick, I had no idea where he lived, and I sure as hell didn’t have time to fly to Las Vegas for a quickie divorce.

  Casting a furtive glance to her left and then to her right to make sure no one was listening, she leaned in close and gestured for me to do the same. When I complied, she bent down further and whispered through the opening below the glass. “A death certificate would work just as well.”

  Was she friends with Babs?

  Charlene winked and sat back in her chair as if she’d just given me the list of eleven secret herbs and spices.

  I ran a hand through my hair. This could not be happening. “So those are my only options?”

  She gave me a sympathetic smile that did nothing to dampen the pity that filled her eyes. “That’s all I’ve got for you, sugar.”

  There was only one thing for me to do. I needed to grab my sister and get our asses on a plane to Vegas.