Lovie waved her off as if she didn’t have time to remember things from an hour ago. “A pretty girl like you shouldn’t have to work,” Lovie said. “Can’t you find a husband, honey? I’m not surprised, working as a lawyer. Men don’t want a wife that works.”
Lucy chuckled to herself. “I was married, once,” she said. “It didn’t last.”
“Because you work!”
Lucy couldn’t keep the giggles to herself anymore. “No, it wasn’t because I worked,” she said. “He was a lawyer, too.”
She left the question of why she split with her husband hanging in the air, hoping it would be forgotten, but Lovie couldn’t let it go.
“Then what happened?” Lovie asked, putting her hand on Lucy’s. “I just don’t understand the way young people look at marriage these days. Did you know that Beau’s wife walked out on him? Left him with three babies to raise. She tried to come back last year but my Beau wouldn’t take her back. I’m proud of him for doing that. What woman would leave her babies and then try to come back?”
Lucy wasn’t particularly thrilled with the turn of the conversation. They had been quite happily talking about Lovie in her youth, hoping that would lead to the introduction of Laveau Hembree, but the subject had veered away from that. Now they were talking about marriages and spouses walking out, which was not something Lucy wanted to discuss. She wasn’t laughing at the old woman’s persistence anymore.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I wouldn’t have left my family, that’s for sure, but I suppose I think differently. I believe you stick with your spouse, for better or for worse, but my ex-husband and Beau’s ex-wife apparently don’t believe in that. It’s sad.”
Lovie squeezed her hand. “It is sad,” she agreed, letting her go. “Since Beau no longer has a wife and you no longer have a husband, maybe the two of you should get together.”
Appalled, Lucy wasn’t sure how to respond to that when Beau spoke up. “Lovie, that’s enough,” he said, firmly but gently. “You just met Ms. Lucy. You shouldn’t push her like that. It’s rude.”
Lovie waved him off. “I’m honest,” she said flatly. “That’s not a crime. Miss Lucy, I know you’re from California, but what are you doing in Pea Ridge? You got business here?”
They had swung back on to the exact subject Lucy had wanted to discuss from the beginning. The woman was jumping all over the place in her thoughts but with this new focus, Lucy was eager to take the lead. She was more than eager to be off the subject of broken marriages.
“In a sense,” she said. “My grandmother’s funeral was yesterday. My family is in Pea Ridge.”
Lovie was interested. “Is that so?” she asked. “What’s the name?”
“Hembree.”
Lovie blinked as if surprised. She sat back in her seat. “Hembree?” she repeated. “You mean Victory Hembree?”
Lucy nodded. “Victory Hembree Bondurant was my grandmother,” she said. “My father is her son.”
Lovie seemed to lose her humor. She simply stared at Lucy for a minute, for a very long minute, before settling back in her chair even more. It was if is something had settled on her, or pushed her back, for she just sat there and stared at Lucy as she settled way back in her chair.
“Good Lord,” she finally said. “You look like her. I didn’t even realize that until now, but you look like her.”
Lucy had heard that before. In fact, she’d seen pictures of Mamaw in her youth and she knew that she resembled her a great deal.
“Thank you,” she said. “She was a beautiful woman so I’m flattered that you think so. Did you know her well?”
Odd how the loud-mouthed southern woman from moments before now suddenly seemed subdued. Her gaze never left Lucy.
“I knew her, though not well,” she said. “She was older than I was by several years so we never traveled in the same circles, but I knew of her. I remember when she married Hardy. Her daddy forced her into that marriage, I seem to recall. She was quite old when they married.”
“She was close to forty,” Lucy said, thrilled that the woman was speaking on exactly what she wanted to hear. “My dad was born when she was forty years old, in fact. I… I always wondered why she was so old when she got married. You never heard rumor of a boyfriend or anything, did you?”
Lovie’s expression seemed to tighten as if recalling things from the past, things that were unpleasant at best. The change in her demeanor was drastic; even Beau noticed it. He glanced at Lucy to see how she was reacting to it, but Lucy was completely focused on the old woman.
“No…,” Lovie said after a moment. “I never heard of a boyfriend. I remember… I remember that her daddy didn’t let her out of the house much. In fact, that whole family seemed to stay bottled up in Glory. He let her out to go to church with her mama, but that’s the only time I really remember seeing her out and about, so I don’t think she had a boyfriend at any time before marrying Hardy Bondurant.”
It was information Lucy had never heard before. So Laveau kept Victory a prisoner after the whole event with the child and Lewis and Aldridge? Seeing that Lovie was reluctant to speak on the subject, she sought to loosen the woman in the hopes of gaining more information.
“I have to tell you, it’s really fascinating talking to someone who knew my grandmother when she was young,” she said, smiling. “I know so little about her from that time in her life. In fact, I don’t know a lot about my great-grandfather, either. She never talked much about him.”
Lovie snorted. “She wouldn’t,” she said. “Beau, I want another Manhattan.”
Beau was about to deny her but a pleading look from Lucy changed his mind. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll go get it.”
As he got up, Lucy didn’t give Lovie a chance to think over her statement. She went in for the kill. “Why would you say that, Ms. Lovie?” she asked. “I’ve heard that my great-grandfather wasn’t a very nice man, but as I said, she never really talked about him. Didn’t they get along?”
She was feigning ignorance, hoping the old woman who’d been a chatterbox all evening would keep it up. Lovie picked up her empty glass and tried to get a last drop out of it.
“Honey, no one got along with Laveau Hembree,” she said. “I don’t want to upset ya’ll, but he was a mean son-of-a-bitch, and forgive my French for saying that. If ever there was a wicked man to walk the earth, it was Laveau Hembree.”
Lucy continued to play ignorant. “Really?” she said. “Did you know him?”
Lovie wasn’t looking at her; she was looking at her empty glass. “Everyone in town knew him,” she said. “Or, at least, of him. He’s gone now so I suppose it doesn’t matter if I talk about him, but there was a time when no one talked about him. If you did and he didn’t like it, you’d find your dog strung up in your yard, gutted, or the brake lines on your car cut. No sirree… you didn’t speak of the devil or he would come after you.”
Lucy found it very interesting to hear about her great-grandfather from someone who had lived during his time. In fact, it was fascinating. “And no one stood up to him?”
Lovie snorted. “Who?” she asked. “Terhune? My husband’s father was a coward. He just did what Laveau told him to do.”
Lucy could sense her disgust. “That’s shocking,” she said, eyeing the old woman. “But… well, I can’t help but wonder why he kept my grandmother so caged up. That’s just so cruel. You never heard why?”
Lovie didn’t reply for a moment. “There were rumors, of course,” she finally said. “But we didn’t really speak of them. No one wanted Laveau’s men to show up on their doorstep.”
“What rumors?”
Lovie shifted in her seat uncomfortably. “You’re asking me about unpleasant things about your own family,” she said, a rebuke in her tone. “I don’t want to be the one to tell you things like that.”
Lucy thought she might have lost her witness. “If you don’t tell me, no one will,” she said, pressing gently. “Everyone who knew my gran
dmother as a young woman is dead now. I… I guess I’m just curious to know more about her, that’s all. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, though. I apologize if I did.”
“Sometimes it’s better to let the dead lie.”
“Excuse me?”
Lovie seemed to realize she’d been mumbling to herself. She spoke louder. “It was just a rumor we’d heard,” she said. “I overheard Terhune talking about something Ms. Victory had done, the reason Laveau kept her locked up.”
Lucy couldn’t even dare to hope. It was a struggle not to show her eagerness. “What was it?”
Lovie leaned forward and put her hand up to her mouth as if to whisper. “She tried to run away with a colored,” she hissed, looking around to make sure no one heard her. “Laveau kept her locked up because she tried to run away with a colored man who worked for him.”
Lucy nodded, her mind whirling. It was part of what had had happened in a sense, but not all of it. “Really?” she said, acting surprised. “That must have been really shocking, especially back then.”
Lovie nodded, sitting back just about the time Beau returned to the table with her Manhattan. The old woman took it eagerly. “Some said that Laveau killed the man she wanted to run away with,” she elaborated. “If he did, they’d never find that body. No, sirree.”
Beau sat down next to his grandmother, having heard her last sentence. “Laveau killed somebody?”
Lovie nearly choked on her drink. “Shush,” she said. “Don’t say that so loud.”
Beau grinned. “Why?” he asked. “Nobody cares, Lovie. It’s not like the man is going to rise up out of his grave and come for you. Who did he kill?”
Lovie slurped down about half of her Manhattan. “A colored boy,” she said, shushing him again when he opened his mouth to question her. “Just one of the many rumors surrounding that man. I was just telling your lady friend how terrified we all were of him and how he kept his daughter locked up for a long time until she married Hardy Bondurant.”
Beau was glad that his grandmother had evidently spilled what she knew about the Hembrees. “Whatever Dad has said about him wasn’t good,” he said. “I don’t ever remember granddad talking about him except in passing.”
Lovie wiped at her smeared lipstick with a cocktail napkin. “He wasn’t a man to speak about, ever.”
Beau could sense his grandmother’s nervousness. “You’re still afraid of him?”
Lovie shrugged. “Mr. Hembree’s evil goes beyond the grave,” she said. “That kind of evil wasn’t meant to die.”
“Why?”
“Because of everything he did. That kind of evil just keeps going, in every family it touched. It’s like… like the ripple of a pond. It just spreads. Someday, it’ll die down and be forgotten, but not soon. Poor Ms. Victory… she was at the center of her daddy’s evil. I feel for her.”
With that, she drained her Manhattan like a shot, all of it gone in a gulp. Lucy looked at Beau and, together, they silently determined that Lovie was, perhaps, done for the day. It was a lot of excitement for an old woman and Lucy was completely willing to let the subject go for now.
Little did she know that Lovie wasn’t.
“Well,” Lucy said after a moment, “I appreciate you telling me something about my family history. It’s truly been an honor, ma’am. I’ve enjoyed meeting you.”
Lovie smiled at her, but it was forced. “Have you seen the ghosts yet?”
Lucy looked at her, puzzled. “What ghosts?”
“At Glory,” Lovie clarified. She was most definitely feeling her alcohol, made worse by the second drink. “It’s full of ghosts, you know. People have said that Mr. Hembree buried bodies all around the place, so if I were you, I’d dig up that yard and see what’s there.”
It was horrific thought. “I haven’t seen any ghosts,” she said hesitantly. “People have really said there are bodies buried on the grounds?”
Lovie nodded. “Since I first married Beau’s grandfather,” she said. “People have talked about the men Mr. Hembree killed. He buried some of them on his property so they couldn’t be dug up. No sane man is going to come onto Laveau Hembree’s land, you know. That’s what they say, anyway. People around here think that Glory is cursed. You know that colored man that Ms. Victory was supposed to run away with? I heard that Mr. Hembree killed him. He’s probably buried around the house, too.”
Lucy stared at the woman in shock. What had started out as an evening of trying to manipulate an old woman into telling what she knew of the younger years of Victory Hembree turned into more than Lucy had bargained for.
“You heard about that?” she asked, aghast.
Lovie nodded. “That’s what they say,” she said, starting to slur her words. “You want to know something else? I wasn’t going to tell you, but if you want to know about your family’s history, you may as well know – people said that Mr. Hembree kept his daughter locked up because he got her pregnant. Got his own daughter pregnant! I’m sure that baby is one of those bodies buried around the place. He kept that poor girl locked up because he didn’t want anyone to know the truth.”
Beau stepped in at that point; he had to. The two Manhattans were causing his grandmother to run off at the mouth with horrible stuff, true or not. He didn’t even know and he didn’t even care. All he knew was that Lucy, sitting across the table from them, was pale with shock. He felt a good deal of pity for her.
“I think it’s time for us to go,” he said to his grandmother. “I think there’s been enough talk of ghosts and rumors, don’t you? Where do you come up with this stuff, Lovie?”
Lovie’s gaze had been lingering on Lucy, undoubtedly looking for a reaction to what she’d been told, but now she turned to Beau. She smiled.
“Such a sweet boy,” she crooned as he stood up from the booth, reaching out a hand to pull her out. As she reached out to take his hand, she continued to speak to Lucy. “Ask your daddy, dear. See if he knows about the relationship between his mama and her daddy. Maybe he’s not really Hardy Bondurant’s son at all – Hardy was married for years and never had children. He married Miss Victory and suddenly, she had a son. It may very well be that your daddy is really Mr. Hembree’s boy. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Now the conversation was turning venomous. It was disgusting what the old woman was suggesting. Although Lucy had ridden in the car with Beau and his grandmother to the restaurant, she wasn’t going to ride home in the same car with that woman. The tides had turned against her in the conversation and she was about as offended as she could possibly be. This wasn’t what she had bargained for at all.
As Beau escorted his grandmother out to the car, Lucy made the excuse of going to the restroom when, in fact, she went out another entrance to the restaurant. Her hotel wasn’t too far off and, in the darkness of a Mississippi night, she nearly ran the mile back to the hotel and shut herself up in her room for the night.
When her room phone rang about an hour later, she ignored it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
~ The Plot Thickens ~
It was night.
That was the only time Laveau would let her out of the house, at night, to walk around the property near the house, covered up in a shawl that draped over her entire body, walking the grounds with her mother by her side so she could get some exercise. Come any weather, she and her mother walked in circles for an hour or two.
The weather was mild tonight, fortunately. A placid moon hung high in the heavens, bathing everything in a silver glow as Victory and her mother trudged beneath the canopy of oaks. Victory was tired from the walking, made worse by the fact that the baby was growing bigger.
Dr. Latling figured she had about another month to go before the birth and, like an execution date, that was all Victory could think of. She knew her life was going to change in a month, the very moment her child was pulled from her body.
She was terrified.
“Mama?” she asked quietly.
“Yes?”
Caroline remained stoic. “If you’re thinking on keeping your child, honey, I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”
Victory’s eyes welled with tears. “I didn’t think Daddy would let me keep her,” she said. “But… but it’ll be Daddy’s grandchild. What if it’s a boy? He’s always wanted a boy.”
Caroline sighed faintly, a wispy breath like the sound of the gentle breeze through the dark leaves in the trees.
“Not this boy,” she said softly. “You know how your daddy feels about this situation, Victory. You got yourself into it and you’re just going to have to accept his decision in all things. He knows what’s best.”
Victory came to a halt, facing her mother in the moonlight. “Does he?” she wanted to know, her manner growing agitated. “He wants to kill her. That’s all he’s wanted to do since the beginning. He killed poor Aldridge Ragsdale because he thought he was the father. Now he wants to kill the baby, too. He’s just waiting until she’s born so he can get his hands on her and smash her head against a tree. But I won’t let him do it, do you hear? I won’t let him!”
She was becoming loud and Caroline shushed her. “Quiet down,” she said, grabbing her daughter before the girl could bolt off. “Do you want him to hear you?”
Victory was sobbing. “Please, Mama,” she wept. “Please don’t let him kill my baby.”
Caroline held fast to her girl. “Your daddy will do what’s best,” she repeated.
Victory shook her head. “I can’t believe you would let him do this,” she said. “You’re my mother – you’re supposed to protect me!”
Caroline’s expression was devoid of emotion. “I’m his wife.”
“And that’s more important than saving your child’s life? Saving the life of your grandbaby?”
“He’ll do what’s best.”
It was the standard answer Caroline had been giving her since almost the day they’d learned of the pregnancy. It was an answer that was becoming increasingly frustrating to Victory. Her mother just didn’t seem to get the urgency of the situation.
In the Dreaming Hour Page 12