Unbroken

by Paula Morris

  “I sing and dance, Miss Viola.” Junior did another demonstration, this time a few steps, though it was a struggle for him to balance the hat of money, hold up his jeans, and dance at the same time.

  “We’ll be volunteering this week,” Raphael reassured his aunt. “After school, clearing the weeds.”

  “That’s right.” Miss Viola tapped the wheel, then turned to look at Rebecca. “You should tell your daddy about that. Maybe it’s something you girls might want to help with? Raphael’s school is clearing land and putting in a garden.” She gestured out the window, rolling her eyes. “And with workers like these two, they need all the help they can get.”

  Rebecca agreed right away; the more time she got to spend in Tremé, the more chance she’d have to see the house Frank had talked about, and work out a plan to find the locket.

  They were near Orleans Avenue, so Ling and Rebecca climbed out of Miss Viola’s car, calling out their good-byes.

  The old town house on the corner of Orleans looked forlorn and scruffy. Rebecca couldn’t see Frank anywhere, even though this was the exact spot they’d stood talking yesterday. But there was someone else standing there, leaning against the boarded-up door, his face half obscured by shadows. A scowling middle-aged man with dark hair, who looked at them for way too long as they rounded the corner.

  “Perv alert,” Rebecca muttered to Ling, gesturing toward him. But by the bemused look on her friend’s face she could tell that Ling had no idea what she was talking about. Rebecca might be able to see the dark-haired man — he lurked just a few feet away — but Ling couldn’t see him at all. And that could only mean one thing.

  He was another ghost.

  Safely inside “the compound,” as they’d started calling it, Rebecca scrubbed off all the lakeside mud in the shower. She was still dwelling on Frank and then the dark-haired ghost she’d seen as she drifted into the main house thirty minutes later, looking for her father.

  “Is that you, honey?” her dad called.

  “Yeah.” Rebecca stood in the doorway, blinking into the gloom of the living room. With the front shutters always closed, it was quite dark in there. The exposed brick walls, dark wooden ceiling, and black sofa didn’t help, and the TV — golf on, sound off — was the only glimmer of color in the room.

  Her father sat with his laptop perched on his knees, the sofa and coffee table a mess of scattered papers and files.

  “You’re working?” Rebecca perched on the arm of the sofa, the only available place to sit.

  “Way too much to do this week,” her father said, squinting at the screen. Rebecca leaned over to flick on a standing lamp so he had more light. “Sorry to be so boring. Good day?”

  “Tiring day,” she admitted. “But good.”

  “Miss Viola called,” said her father. “Your Aunt Claudia gave her my number. She said you girls were real troopers. And something about a gardening project at a school in Tremé. You and Ling are interested?”

  “Definitely.” Rebecca picked at a loose tuft on the sofa. “Dad, do you … I mean, have you …”

  “Have I what?” He was clicking from one document to the next, frowning at the screen.

  “Have you ever heard of a New Orleans family called Moo-son?” She tried to echo the way Frank had pronounced it.

  “Mousson? Sounds like the kind of name you’d hear around here. French Creole.”

  “How would you spell it?”

  “M-O-U-S-S-O-N, I guess. Why?”

  “Oh — no reason. It was just a name I heard. Something to do with a local artist. I wondered if it was famous.”

  “Maybe.” Her dad was clearly distracted. “So, Tuesday lunchtime. We can go check out the house.”

  Rebecca’s heart jumped. “Which house?” she almost shouted. Was her father some kind of psychic? How could he know about the house where the locket was hidden?

  “The house you and Anton worked on last May. Lisette’s house. What is wrong with you?”

  “Sorry — nothing. I guess I’m just kind of tired.”

  “Of course you are. Anyway, I thought we could see Lisette’s house and then check out this school garden project. I don’t want to send you girls off there without seeing it first myself. We could go tomorrow, but I have meetings all day, and then we’re having dinner at Claudia’s.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Rebecca was impatient to see the locket house, but another day wouldn’t hurt, she decided. More time to think up a brilliant plan. “We’ll just meet you at Aunt Claudia’s tomorrow, OK? Ling and I can take the streetcar uptown. We’re going to meet up with Anton in the afternoon, and show Ling the neighborhood.”

  This wasn’t the whole truth, exactly, but Rebecca didn’t want to say “Lafayette Cemetery.” She and her father hardly ever mentioned that place anymore, and she didn’t want him to freak out — as she’d said to Frank — at the thought of her going back there.

  “Wish I could ride the streetcar with you,” her dad lamented, squinting at the screen again. “I haven’t done that for years. But I’ll probably just get a cab to save time. You probably don’t want me around anyway.”

  “Don’t be silly!” she protested, though he was right: She didn’t want him there, telling her to keep out of the cemetery.

  “Whatever,” he said, laughing. “Anton will make sure you girls keep out of trouble.”

  “Sure,” Rebecca said, slithering off her perch. “I’m just going to go get ready for dinner.”

  “Rebecca,” said her father, before she had a chance to disappear. “Have you ever mentioned anything about … you know, what happened last year? To Ling, I mean. Does she know anything about Lisette?” He’d lowered his voice to a concerned whisper.

  “Nope.” Rebecca shook her head.

  “That’s good,” her father said, pushing his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. “She probably wouldn’t believe it, anyway. It’s all in the past now. No more ghosts, right?”

  “Right,” said Rebecca, trying to smile. There wasn’t any point bringing up Frank with her father right now. He’d probably tell her to steer clear, to keep out of someone else’s unfinished business. Lisette had been a Bowman; she was a Bowman family ghost. Rebecca’s fate had been inextricably linked to hers. But Frank O’Connor was just a sweet boy from Liverpool who’d come to New Orleans to make his fortune — and ended up murdered in a house in Tremé. His history had nothing to do with Rebecca or any of her ancestors. Rebecca had no reason to take on his troubles. That was exactly what her father would tell her.

  She walked back into the dappled light of the verdant courtyard and slowly climbed the wooden staircase to the upper gallery. Ling was getting ready in the bathroom, singing some approximation of the song they’d heard in the parade today.

  Her father was wrong, Rebecca thought. Nothing was in the past — or, at least, things that were meant to be in the past didn’t always stay there. They came back to haunt the present. They wouldn’t go away.

  The taxi driver had promised them no rain until later in the week, but Rebecca awoke on Monday morning to the sound of rain pattering onto the wooden slats of the gallery and the fat leaves of elephant plants. Now, she thought, snuggling back beneath the covers, they were really in New Orleans. The rain was the true sound of this city — maybe because in these old wooden houses, with their flimsy walls, the rain always made itself heard.

  But it wasn’t a tropical New Orleans downpour, thundering onto the streets and turning gutter puddles into raging torrents. So this meant Rebecca and Ling could wander the Quarter as planned that morning, with just a shared umbrella to fend off the drizzle. Everything was new and different to Ling, even all the things Rebecca had learned, back when she lived here, were just for tourists: the tap-dancing buskers with washboards on the steps of St. Louis Cathedral, the stacks of garish feathered masks in the old French Market, the little stores selling voodoo charms or pralines or Mardi Gras beads or packet mixes of jambalaya.

  In the colorful encampment o
f fortune-tellers, buskers, and painters around Jackson Square, they looked for Aunt Claudia, but she wasn’t there.

  “I guess a rainy Monday isn’t the greatest day to be sitting out here,” Ling reasoned. “It’s usually much busier than this, right?”

  “Absolutely,” Rebecca said, steering Ling toward their next stop, Café Du Monde. She’d promised Ling a plate of beignets — delicious hot squares of donut, coated with a snowy blanket of powdered sugar. “She’s probably ‘making groceries’ for dinner tonight. That’s what they call going to the supermarket here.”

  “If we have beignets now and a muffaletta for lunch, I don’t think I’m going to be able to eat any dinner,” said Ling. “I’m still recovering from that giant burger last night at — what was that place called?”

  “Port of Call.”

  “I loved that street it was on. All those beautiful old mansions. Esplanade Avenue, right?”

  “Yup.” Rebecca nodded. Esplanade Avenue, where Frank had been supposed to deliver the locket entrusted to him back in 1873.

  That was another thing she hadn’t considered. Even if she managed to rescue the locket from beneath the floorboards of the house in Tremé, how was she supposed to track down the rightful owner? The cousin of the artist must be long-dead by now, and though lots of houses stayed in the hands of one family for years and years, many of the big places on Esplanade were B&Bs these days, or fancy condos. The “Moo-son” family could be long gone.

  “Rebecca?” An expectant Ling was looking at her. “The umbrella?”

  “What? Sorry, I was in my own world.” Rebecca realized she had to confide in someone about Frank, or she’d go insane. But could she tell Ling now, in the middle of their fun tourist day? She wouldn’t even be sure where to start.

  “I know,” Ling said. “It’s raining again, FYI. What’s up? Are you worried about this secret cemetery trip with Anton today?”

  Rebecca hadn’t even thought about that, but now that Ling mentioned it, she added it to the list of things to obsess over. Anton and Phil were meeting them at the Sixth Street gate of Lafayette Cemetery at four. But Rebecca had been counting on Aunt Claudia still being out at work then, not at home in the little yellow house on Sixth Street, able to look out the front parlor window at any point. Or, even worse, to bustle out and stop them.

  “I don’t want my aunt spotting us,” she told Ling. They were approaching the open loggia of Café Du Monde now, and she could see an empty table. Unfortunately, a pigeon was standing on it and pecking at crispy golden beignet crumbs, its claws making a trail across a tabletop still sprinkled with powdered sugar.

  “Why would it be such a big deal going in the cemetery? Is it dangerous?”

  “Not really.” Rebecca pointed to another empty table, this one pigeon free, and they wended their way toward it.

  “Why does Anton have a key to the cemetery? Isn’t that weird?”

  “It has to do with his family, I think,” Rebecca said, playing dumb. “They’ve lived overlooking it for years and years and … well, I don’t know the whole story. All sorts of weird things go on here with the old-line families.”

  “Old line? Is that like a second line?”

  “No!” Rebecca laughed. The thought of the snooty Grey family or the Bowmans or the Suttons joining in with a second line was ridiculous. “Old-line just means old. They’ve been here forever.”

  “Whatever.” Ling scrutinized the very short menu on the back of the napkin dispenser. “I don’t know what ‘forever’ means when you’re American. Most of us are immigrants, one way or another. I hate all that high-society snobbery. Like Miss Manners says, ‘old money is just new money, the sequel.’ How ‘old’ is Anton’s money?”

  “His great-whatever grandfather moved here just before the Civil War, I think.”

  “Hello! The Civil War was, like, five minutes ago,” Ling said, making a face. “You know, in the grand sweep of history. If Anton was a descendant of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, say, then that would be old-line. Anyway, speaking of Anton — I think you guys need some alone time. When we’re in the cemetery later, I’ll wander off with Phil, OK? So you two have a chance to talk.”

  “Thanks,” Rebecca mumbled, blushing.

  Ling was clearly thinking along romantic lines. But alone time with Anton was exactly what Rebecca needed right now. Anton knew about Lisette. He knew Rebecca could see ghosts. If there was one person she could confide in about Frank, it was him.

  There was something surreal about going back to the Garden District almost a year after she’d left. Rebecca felt as though she were wandering through a dream world in which everything was gorgeous and colorful, even on a gray day like this. The voice she could hear telling Ling about the history of the neighborhood was her voice, but it felt disembodied and fake. With all her might Rebecca tried to sound calm, but part of her wanted to scream. This is the school where I was really unhappy. This is the cemetery gate where Toby Sutton threatened me. This is the street I was dragged along when a bunch of people in masks decided they wanted to kill me….

  “You never said it was this beautiful,” Ling was saying, and she was right, of course. Everything about the neighborhood was beautiful and elegant: the lines of oak trees shading the narrow streets, the grand mansions with their cast-iron galleries and ornate gates, the lush gardens, the high white walls enclosing the cemetery, the pristine steps and pillars of Temple Mead Academy.

  Things often looked beautiful on the surface, Rebecca thought, but that wasn’t the whole story — like the tombs in Lafayette Cemetery, which looked like creamy marble from a distance but were really plastered-over brick.

  The lot where the Bowman mansion once stood, gray and elegant and imposing, was now a building site. The burnt remains of the old house were all gone now, and the steel skeleton of a new structure was rising up in its place. The only remnant of what once stood there, looming over the cemetery, was the elaborate wrought-iron fence.

  “There are the boys!” Ling waved toward two figures ambling along Prytania Street, still dressed in their school uniforms. “They look like seniors at Hogwarts,” she whispered to Rebecca.

  “Hey!” Phil called along the street, beaming his wide smile. He’d just started at a strange new school, but he always appeared to be in a good mood, Rebecca thought. When she glanced at Anton, she wished her stomach didn’t decide to perform backflips at the sight of him. He made the St. Simeon’s uniform look rumpled and dashing, somehow.

  “Coast clear?” he asked Rebecca by way of a greeting.

  “My aunt may be around,” she told him. Ling and Phil were talking to each other naturally and easily, as though they’d known each other for years. Why were things so serious and awkward with her and Anton?

  “We just saw her maybe ten minutes ago, driving that way on Magazine.” Anton gestured uptown, and then jingled his pocket. “I got the keys. Let’s go.”

  Lafayette Cemetery, surrounded by its white walls, had four different entrances, all guarded by tall iron gates. By this time of day, the last of the tour groups had left, and all the gates were locked. Just standing by the Sixth Street entrance, waiting for Anton to creak open the gate, agitated Rebecca. She wasn’t sure if she’d calm down once they were safely inside the cemetery and hidden from prying eyes — they were creeping in after-hours illegally — or if there was no such thing as “safe” inside this cemetery. With its long alleys of overgrown foliage and silent tombs, the cemetery felt like an abandoned city, a place of ruins and secrets.

  For a while they all walked together, Ling and Phil marveling at the tree-shaded paths and the ornate decorations on some of the tombs, and lamenting the ones that seemed to be crumbling or neglected. Rebecca could barely pay attention. She wanted to see Lisette’s grave, but not with everyone else in tow. And she really, really wanted to talk to Anton about Frank and his missing locket.

  “You guys must have been in here a hundred times before,” Ling said at last, pausing while Phil too
k a picture of a tomb topped by a stone urn. “Why don’t we meet you back at the gate in about twenty minutes? We can just be tourists for a while and take a million pictures.”

  Before a bemused Phil had a chance to say anything, Ling grabbed his elbow and started steering him down a side path. Anton stood watching them go, then raised an eyebrow at Rebecca.

  He didn’t need to say anything. They were going to the Bowman tomb.

  The tomb was tucked away in a hidden corner of the cemetery where even on a sunny day light struggled to break through the trees. The earlier rain had turned the ground springy underfoot, and muddy in large, slick patches. In the jagged crevices formed by broken slate, murky puddles formed, clogged with leaves.

  It had been almost a year since Rebecca had last visited the cemetery. She’d come then to say good-bye to Lisette, laying a laurel wreath on the steps of the Bowman family tomb. Back then, the stone angel that once perched on the tomb still lay in smashed pieces on the ground.

  Now the laurel wreath was long gone, and the broken angel had been cleared away. The tomb looked cleaner than those around it, and there was a new name carved into the marble slab covering the vault’s door: HELENA BOWMAN. She’d died here that night, killed by the fall of the stone angel. Rebecca swallowed hard at the memory.

  There was another recent addition to the marble slab. LISETTE VILLIEUX BOWMAN, 1836–1853.

  Someone seeing the Bowman tomb for the first time would have no idea, of course, that for decades Lisette had haunted this very cemetery, visible only to girls of the Bowman family.

  “So we’re all set?” Anton was talking, but Rebecca hadn’t been paying attention.

  “Sorry — set for what?” She drew her fingers over the carved letters of Lisette’s name. She missed her friend. The cemetery seemed an emptier, lonelier place without her warmth and her dark, sparkling eyes.