by Sandra Hill
They walked down the narrow staircase together, talking about the various meetings to be held tomorrow. With Luc. With Brother Malone, who was flying in from Dallas, representing the Street Apostles. Aaron said that he’d already talked with Ed Gillotte, the on-site construction foreman, to stop any workers from coming onto the plantation grounds for the time being, and with Ed’s live-in girlfriend, a graduate student in physics, to make sure she and Ed’s three kids made no mention of the Bayou Rose guests to anyone, not even their friends, and not to invite anyone in, either.
“I am so sorry for all this incon—”
“Enough, Fleur! Do you realize how often you say those words, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry’? It’s tiresome. You know how you say ‘Click!’ every time you say or think a bad word . . . well, I have an idea.”
“Yeah?” she said hesitantly. “What?”
“Well, I figure every time you say ‘I’m sorry,’ or apologize in any way, you’ll owe me a penalty.”
She smiled at the silliness of his game. “And what would that penalty be?”
“A kiss.”
“Oh, no! I’m sorry but I don’t—”
He chalked a mark in the air for her having said “I’m sorry” again. “Don’t worry about me collecting on the spot, especially if you do your apologizing ad nauseam in front of other people. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you. I’m considerate like that.”
She laughed again, then paused, suddenly aware that he made her feel lighthearted and worry-free for the moment. That was probably his intent.
“And I won’t be collecting on each of those ‘debts’ separately. You’d try to duck out by giving me a little peck on the cheek. Nope, I’ll keep a tally of each of your transgressions, and when I call my markers in after, oh, let’s say ten or fifteen apologies, it will be one super kiss. Definitely on the lips.”
“Oh, you!” she said and went to slap at him with her free hand, but he danced away. Fleur went after him, not realizing that Aunt Mel had just come out of the bathroom, and Fleur almost ran into her. “I’m sorry,” she said, before she realized what she’d said.
Aaron made a great show of marking two lines in the air.
“You are outrageous,” Fleur said, shaking her head at him as he was backing down the hallway toward the other stairway.
“I know. That’s what women love about me,” he declared with a wink.
“What’s that boy up to now?” Aunt Mel asked.
“Just silliness. I think he knows how worried I am, and he’s trying to distract me.”
Aunt Mel nodded. “He has a good heart, Aaron does. He and Daniel both.” She gave Fleur a long appraisal, as if weighing up whether Fleur was worthy. Aunt Mel must know about Fleur’s involvement in the rescue missions, along with Aaron, but did she know about Fleur’s past? That would certainly affect her opinion on any potential relationship between Aaron and herself. She was about to tell her that she wasn’t interested in Aaron that way, but Aunt Mel was already off on another subject. Just like Tante Lulu. “I came up to tell you that dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes. Were you about to take a shower?” she asked, glancing at the pile of clothing and the toiletry bag in her hand.
“Yes. I’ll make it quick.”
“Okay, honey. And listen. Don’t you be worrying about all the trouble that’s been hounding you and Aaron.”
Aah, she realized then. Aunt Mel thought they were hiding out because of something related to their recent rescue missions. She didn’t know about Fleur running into Miguel today.
“You’ll be safe here, sweetie. I promise,” Aunt Mel went on, patting her on the shoulder. “And if you’re not, I’ll take you back to Alaska with me when I return. You and Aaron both. The bad men who are after you will never find you there.”
Tears burned Fleur’s eyes. Over the years, she’d almost never cried, no matter what abuse was heaped on her. But these last few days, she’d gotten teary eyed at the least provocation, and usually it was because someone was being nice to her. Maybe later she would give Mother Jacinta a call. The nun would get a kick out of Fleur’s hard shell being cracked by niceness.
Fleur laughed, again, when she entered the bathroom, not just because of the huge, ostentatious, rain forest shower stall, sitting right next to an old-fashioned claw foot bathtub. But everywhere she looked, there was evidence that Tante Lulu was in the house. A St. Jude bath mat. A St. Jude soap dispenser at the sink. A St. Jude stained glass image suction-cupped to the window.
When she was under the absolutely sybaritic shower (It’s probably a sin for something to feel this good.), Fleur picked up a long-handled St. Jude loofah sponge, glanced upward, and said, “So, all these St. Jude reminders . . . are they a sign that I’m not as hopeless as I thought?”
With her eyes closed and her face raised to the cool spray, she thought she heard a voice in her head answer, Oh, you’re hopeless, all right, my child. But you’ve come to the right place.
Beware of little old ladies with big ideas . . .
Louise was in her element. Cooking and being with family.
Oh, none of the folks sitting around this evening on the back verandah, outside the Bayou Rose kitchen, sipping at after-dinner coffees and sweet teas, were blood kin to her. Only Luc, Remy, and René were actual blood relatives through their mother, who had been married to that low-down bum Valcour LeDeux. But over the years, she’d taken into her fold all of Valcour’s other children, born to so many different women. Tee-John, Daniel, Aaron, Simone, Charmaine. The list just went on and on. Tee-John, or Small John, was the name that had been given to one of the smallest of them when he was a boy, not over six feet tall like he was now.
Daniel and Samantha were sitting on a glider that Louise had gifted them for their wedding last year (with St. Jude cushions, of course). Samantha had protested at the time that a modern glider didn’t fit in with the historic décor, but Louise noticed that it had become Samantha’s favorite spot for resting, or a perfect place for her to cuddle with her husband.
Fleur sat on a bench under the kitchen window with Aaron on one side and Mel on the other. The three of them were leaning back, relaxed, with their legs extended.
Ed and Lily Beth sat on the grassy lawn under a tupelo tree watching Lily’s toddler waddling around in a diaper and Ed’s three girls playing with a dog and several cats, except for the big cat that resembled a cheetah which had a mind of its own and lay sprawled some distance away. Well, all cats were ornery sometimes, but this one much preferred its own space and was often off like a shot at the sign of a bird or some wild thing nearby. She’d like to see how Useless would respond to such a pet. Probably run off with its tail between its legs—the gator, not the cat.
And of course among all the animals here (leftovers from Samantha’s pet rescue days) was that little pig, Emily, who sat between Daniel and Samantha on the glider. The pig probably thought she was their baby. Hah! Was she in for a rude awakening when a real baby—or babies—came into the picture! The pig would probably go into another depression.
Louise leaned back in the lone rocking chair on the porch. They should get more. There was nothing like a rocker to give a place hominess.
“So, Mel, were you always a less-bean?” Louise asked all of a sudden. She’d been meaning to ask for some time, and it just popped out now.
“Tante Lulu!” Daniel chided her. “Don’t be insulting.”
“Don’t forget. Our mother was Aunt Mel’s partner,” Aaron added, glaring at her.
“Oh, pooh! I wasn’t insultin’ no one. Were you insulted, Mel?”
“Not at all,” Mel said. “I know you don’t have a mean bone in your body.”
“See,” Louise said to the twin dunces who were still glaring at her.
“Actually, I was married when I was in college. He was the one who got me involved in flying and eventually owning my own air shipping company. We divorced over religious differences.”
“I didn’t know you’d been
married,” Daniel said.
“Me neither,” Aaron added. “What kind of religious differences?”
“He thought he was God. I didn’t,” Mel said with a chuckle.
Everyone laughed then.
“Aunt Mel and my mother were huge Barry Manilow fans,” Aaron told Fleur. “They went to his concerts all over the States. You’re bound to hear his music while you’re here.” He turned to Mel and said, “You did bring some of his CDs with you, didn’t you?”
Daniel answered for her. “Are you kidding? We’ve heard so much of his music that the twins dance in Samantha’s belly when ‘Copacabana’ comes on.”
“Hey, I have an idea,” Mel said, not at all offended at their teasing about Barry Manilow. “Maybe, if one of the twins is a girl, you could call her Mandy.”
“Yeah, but what would the other twin be named?” Aaron asked with a grin. “Oh, I know. Randy.”
Daniel and Samantha groaned. The others just grinned.
A companionable quiet followed. No one wanted to exert the energy to get up and prepare for bed. The dishes were already done; in fact, they’d used mostly paper plates and disposable cutlery to avoid running the dishwasher.
“That was a great dinner,” Fleur remarked into the silence, “even if it was what you called a last-minute hodgepodge.”
“Hodgepodge is the best kind,” Louise declared. Everyone was too full to do anything other than nod their heads in agreement.
They’d combined Louise’s Shrimp Étouffée with Daniel’s barbecued cheeseburgers, her dirty rice with Mel’s tater salad, Alaska-style. Samantha had stirred up a quick green salad made with a basket of veggies Louise had ordered a grumbling Aaron to pick from her garden before they left her cottage; it was served along with corn on the cob brought by Ed and Lily Beth, which they’d cooked in their husks on the grill, slathered with Cajun Tabasco butter.
Yum!
Aaron had also insisted that they whip up some fried green tomatoes, having recalled from the last time they’d been here that it was Fleur’s favorite. Fleur had looked at him with wonder when he’d not only remembered her preference, but sliced, breaded, and fried them himself on a cast iron skillet in the overheated kitchen.
“I’m sorry I didn’t do more to help,” Fleur said suddenly.
Aaron gave her a nudge with his elbow and made a few chalk marks in the air.
“Tsk-tsk!” Fleur remarked, elbowing him back.
It was good to see those two getting along better. Everyone knew that elbow nudges were a first step in courtship.
Yes, things were going just the way Louise had thought they would.
“Ya know, Daniel, I got an idea . . .” Louise started to say.
“Oh, no! You and your ideas! I swear, if this is about that frickin’ . . . I mean, stinkin’ swimming pool, forget about it.”
“No, it’s not about the pool, though I ’spect there’ll be one here, come hell or high water, afore long.” She glanced at Aaron and gave him a wink. “No, I was jist thinkin’, if you and Samantha are really gonna move up ta Baton Rouge . . .”
“What? Who’s moving?” Mel asked.
Daniel gave Aaron a dirty look, which Aaron in turn flashed at Louise.
“Oops!” Louise said. “Anyways, Daniel, if you really do decide ta move, mebbe those cottages could be put to a better use . . . well, not better, but different.”
She had everyone’s attention now.
“How about they become nests fer fallen birds?”
Aaron and Fleur were the only ones who understood and they gaped at her, stunned. The others just looked confused.
Then everyone spoke at once.
“Have you lost your mind?” Daniel exclaimed.
“What fallen birds? Like a bird sanctuary? I don’t get it,” Mel said.
“If Daniel and Aaron wouldn’t let me make this a dog and cat rescue sanctuary, why would they consider birds?” Samantha asked.
“I know your heart is in the right place, Tante Lulu, but I’m sorry, that is impossible,” Fleur said.
Aaron grinned, made another slash in the air in front of Fleur, then said to Tante Lulu, “Tell us more.”
“Nothing is impossible,” Tante Lulu told Fleur, but to Aaron she said, “It was just a thought. Something you and Fleur could do together, but let’s wait and see what Luc and that priest fellow have to say t’morrow.”
“I am going to be a nun,” Fleur told Tante Lulu through gritted teeth.
“Uh-huh,” Tante Lulu agreed, but she winked at Aaron.
Another day, another click! . . .
It was déjà vu all over again, Aaron thought, as he awakened at dawn in the garçonniére apartment: people hiding out on the plantation while its residents went about their normal business, or seemed to.
Aaron had to wonder if this place had a history of being a refuge, maybe even back in the days of slavery and the Underground Railroad. He would have to ask Samantha how to check that out. Or ask Tante Lulu, who knew everything about the Bayou Black region.
The old biddy was always conning . . . um, talking . . . dumb outsiders into renovating some of the rundown plantations, aka money pits, which locals wouldn’t touch with a bayou barge pole. Like that motorcycle riding Angel Sabato and his wife, the former Grace O’Brien, who had been a nun, come to think of it, over at Sweetland. (Is that a hopeful sign for me? The nun bit, not the plantation.) Like that odd Viking Ivar Sigurdsson, who worked as a chaplain at Angola Prison and was married to Gabrielle Sonnier, a lawyer, over at Heaven’s End plantation. Like him and Daniel with Bayou Rose.
But back to the present. Daniel planned to go into the medical center in Houma at nine, as usual, but he would come back at noon to take Samantha to an appointment with her obstetrician. Aunt Mel would do the regular shopping at the Starr Supermarket. And Aaron couldn’t ignore his job at Bayou Aviation as a pilot without being conspicuously absent; so, he had to report for work by one at the latest.
Even though Remy had accommodated him with a rearranged schedule, Aaron couldn’t let him down. Their flight schedule was overbooked with not enough pilots to handle the work. At the very least, Aaron would have to make three copter runs out to the oil rigs, carrying workers, back and forth, as well as some big wigs in from China. Remy would handle the morning flights of food supplies and machinery parts.
Offshore drilling was big business in the Gulf of Mexico, and at any one time there were more than 30,000 workers on thousands of platforms, going in or out on 14- to 21-day rotations. Called “floating cities,” the platforms, the size of two football fields, with colorful names like Mad Dog, Bullwinkle, Thunder Horse, and Magnolia, had everything the workers needed for home away from home, including good food, which had to be transported daily. It was hard work, but skilled hands could make more than a hundred thousand dollars a year, even in a bad economy.
Aaron showered and shaved, noting in the bathroom mirror that he needed a haircut. That would have to wait, of course. Besides, if I end up in prison, I can get a free haircut there, he joked with himself. Jailhouse humor. Ha, ha, ha.
Leaving the garçonniére, he relished the cool morning air. It wouldn’t stay that way for long. Summer in Louisiana could be brutal. But then, he’d experienced the other extreme in Alaska. Way below zero. He preferred the heat.
He saw a flash of gold and black rustle the jungle-like brush that was always encroaching on the property and figured that Maddie was on the scent of some wild breakfast. Snakes were her fav. Snake kibble. Yuck!
Heat shimmered off the water of the bayou that could be seen across the lawn and road, some two hundred or so feet away. It was easy to forget that at one time, a couple centuries ago, barges navigated these waters, carrying sugarcane to the New Orleans markets. And maybe slaves on the run, he thought, going back to his earlier musing about this plantation having possibly been a refuge.
But mostly, it was the birdsong that caught his attention this early in the morning. As he rounded the side of t
he house, he saw that the St. Jude birdbath in the rose garden was especially busy. Maybe, if he actually went through with his plans for a swimming pool, and Tante Lulu got her wish for a St. Jude shrine tour, they could add bird-watching to the activities. Hell, why not just turn the whole place into a bed-and-breakfast?
When he entered the kitchen through the open back door, he wasn’t surprised to see that Aunt Mel was already up and coffee was brewing. She wore a knee-length, floral robe, belted at the waist, leaving her skinny legs bare to red leather slide slippers. Her dark hair was in curlers covered with one of those stretchy sleep caps that older women wore. Her Inuit-like features—broad cheekbones, wide nose and mouth—brightened into a big smile on seeing him.
He loved her like a mother.
“Good morning, sweetie,” Aunt Mel said, handing him a mug of the steaming brew as he sat down on a bench at the table. She’d already added the one spoonful of sugar and dash of cream, as he liked. “Want some breakfast, honey?”
“Not yet. Coffee will do for now. Sit down and join me.”
She did, with her own cup of coffee. “I’m worried about you, Aaron,” she said, right off the bat.
“Don’t be. This issue with the creep threatening Fleur will be taken care of, one way or another.”
“It’s not just that. Your whole involvement with these missions bothers me. Sex traffickers are very dangerous people.”
“No question, but how can I stand by and do nothing? You and Mom taught us well. ‘Help others and God will help you.’ ‘Compassion without action is just observation.’ ‘The man who sits on his butt will just get a big butt.’”
Aunt Mel grinned at the reminder of those sayings that were always leveled at him and Daniel, usually when they’d been playing video games as teenagers, instead of going out to do volunteer work, or something constructive.
“Do you know, at this very moment, there are probably twenty thousand kids, mostly girls, under the age of eighteen who are being held in sexual captivity, in this country alone? The average age is thirteen, and their life expectancy is seven to ten years. Everyone is shocked when they hear about ISIS kidnappings, like those girls in Nigeria, but it’s happening everywhere.” Aaron winced. Quoting funny proverbs was one thing, but this sounded like a lecture, even to his own ears.