by Karen White
I shook my head. “No, not really. She did read my palm, but I wouldn’t call it scary.”
“Really? What did she say?”
I stopped, trying to remember all of her words. “She said I would have a choice to make, but that I would only fall in love once, and to choose wisely.”
“That’s odd.”
We faced each other, and he looked directly into my eyes. His were darker than Gary’s, deeper. I felt myself blushing, and I silently cursed this affliction of mine.
“Why are you blushing?”
I could feel my face turning at least two shades darker. I studied my feet, not really sure how to answer.
He touched my chin and brought my face back up. “Don’t be embarrassed. The ability to blush is an admirable trait—I certainly don’t see it very often. You get that red when you’re angry, too, you know.”
His hand dropped, and I grinned. “It’s a good thing, then, that I don’t get angry very often. Wouldn’t want my head to explode or anything.”
He laughed and shook his head. Turning around, he gestured for me to follow him back to his house. “Nope—wouldn’t want that to happen to such a pretty head.” His words were teasing, but I found myself straining to hear more in his voice.
Gary stepped out from my grandmother’s front gate. He wore white Converse sneakers and rolled-up blue jeans, his starched plaid shirttails hanging out the back. “Aimee! I thought we were supposed to go for a bike ride.”
“Hang on; I’m coming.”
Wes sent me a sidelong grin as I walked back with him. Then I remembered something he had said. I pulled on his sleeve. “Why is what your mother told me odd?”
He looked down at me, his blue eyes bright in the morning sun glow. “Because she told me the exact same thing.”
Before I could respond, he waved to Gary, then walked across his front garden and into the house.
My attention returned to Gary, who was leaning over with his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths. “Shit, I can barely breathe in this humidity.”
“Do you kiss your mama with that dirty mouth?”
He gave me a crooked grin. “Where do you think I learned it?” He stood up straight. “Instead of a bike ride, wanna go to McKenzie’s? I’ve been dying to have one of their éclairs.”
“Sure.” I followed him down the sidewalk toward Prytania, where Greek Revival mansions mingled with gingerbread Victorians. I stopped, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention, and looked behind me. I saw Aunt Roseanne on our porch, stiff broom in hand.
She waved to me and shouted, “You be back by eleven, you hear? Your grandmama wants to take you shopping.”
I waved back, still feeling the prickly sensation at the base of my skull. Before I turned around, I looked at the Guidrys’ house in time to see a curtain close in an upstairs window, the lace sheers swinging slightly. I turned and ran to catch up to Gary. Grabbing his hand, I pulled him across to the other side of the street.
“What’s the matter?” Gary gripped my hand tightly, his eyes anxiously searching mine.
I shrugged, not sure how to explain what had just happened. “I just got spooked, that’s all.”
He continued to hold my hand until we reached the bakery. He held the door open, and I stepped in ahead of him. The sweet smell of baking bread hit me full force, immediately making me hungry. I sat down in a wrought-iron chair and slid up to the table while Gary placed our order at the counter. I stared at the shelves on the side of the store crammed with cookies, ladyfingers, brownies, macaroons, and Belgian slices. My gaze traveled along the wall to the refrigerated cases where the clerk was plucking up pastries for Gary with a giant tweezer. I saw the famous McKenzie Doberge cakes under the glare of fluorescents, and thought of Aunt Roseanne, who sometimes hid one in the kitchen for me out of Grandmother’s sight. I could almost taste the thin layers of cake tucked between additional layers of pudding. I licked my lips, then turned to look out the window.
Gary returned to the table, his tray laden with creamy confections. Feeling self-conscious, I smoothed down my napkin over my thighs.
“Life isn’t fair,” I said as I took a sip of my Coca-Cola.
“Whaddaya mean?” Gary asked with his mouth full, a blot of cream perched on the corner of his lips.
“You eat like a horse, but you’re so skinny. I’ll probably get fat just by watching you eat.”
He paused in his chewing. “I sure hope not. I don’t think your blue jeans could get any tighter.”
I opened my mouth to make some retort about how I wasn’t fat nor my blue jeans tight—like my grandmother would allow that—when the glass door swung open, the bell ringing loudly in the quiet room. The same woman I had seen behind the screen door at the Guidrys’ walked in.
Gary turned to see what I was looking at. He gave the woman a wary smile as she walked up to our table, and I became aware of other people turning to watch. She walked as if she owned the place, and it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if she’d sat at our table.
“Garrick, you know you’re not supposed to be eating that stuff.” Her words were precise and measured, allowing no room for any kind of accent, as if she’d rehearsed them over and over again until she got them right. “And you forgot your medicine.” She slid a small vial of pills across the table to him.
The pink stain on Gary’s neck spilled over his jawbones and spread up to his forehead until even the tips of his ears were afflicted. He grabbed the pills and shoved them into his shirt pocket. “I’ll take them when I get home.”
The woman reached over and took the vial out of his pocket. “No, your heart needs them now.” She opened the lid and two pills clattered onto the tabletop.
I stared at the woman in surprise. “His heart?”
I found myself looking into a pair of pale green eyes. “His heart is fine now, because he’s taking his pills. But those doctors over at Ochsner know this young man quite well.”
Without looking up, he picked up his pills and put them both in his mouth. Then he leaned back in his chair, his arms folded across his skinny chest, and shoved the last bite of an éclair into his mouth.
The woman turned to me. “You must be Mrs. Mercier’s granddaughter. The girl who made Garrick go into the river.” Her cool eyes appraised me, and I felt she found me lacking.
Gary tilted his head in her direction. “This is Ray Von Williams. She helps Mama get through her days.”
Ray Von crossed her arms over her chest and looked at Gary. “And him, too, when he’s smart enough to let me.”
Gary resumed his attack on the pastries, but the scowl still sat on his face. He barely glanced at me.
Ray Von returned to me. “If you need any love potions or some such you just let me know. When you grow into your looks you’ll be needing potions to keep all them boys away—two in particular I can think of.”
I felt the blood rush to my face and looked at Gary for relief. His face was conveniently averted as he began digging in his pocket for money. “You and your ghosts and voodoo stuff, Ray Von. If my father ever found out about any of your mumbo jumbo, he’d fire you in a minute.”
Ray Von gave him a regal stare. “You know as well as I do, Mr. Garrick, that that will never happen.” She picked up the vial of pills and put it back in her purse. “And don’t forget to take your pills next time. I don’t have the time or energy to go chasing you all over New Orleans.” Her tall, lean form left the bakery, and heads turned to watch.
I looked back at Gary, who was slapping change on the table. “Who is she really, Gary?”
He slid his chair back and stood. “She’s been with Mama’s family since she was born. Ray Von’s mother was their cook, and she just sort of grew up being around my mother. Considering Ray Von’s the only person who can handle Mama, she’s pretty much the boss.”
“Like a companion?” I asked, recalling the occupation of one of the heroines in the novels Aunt Roseanne liked to read. I hadn’t k
nown that such a thing existed in the real world.
“Something like that.”
He held the door open for me, and I stepped out onto the wide sidewalk. Ray Von was nowhere in sight. “Where’d she go?”
Gary glanced both ways on Prytania and across the street to First Street. “I don’t know. Ray Von’s always doing stuff like that. Don’t let her worry you. She’s always looking out for us. And she takes good care of my mother.”
We started down the sidewalk, the summer heat slowing our pace. As we reached the intersection of Prytania and First, I swung an arm out and knocked him in the shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me about your heart? It’s not like I would tell anybody if you didn’t want me to.” It had suddenly occurred to me why he wore a T-shirt when we went swimming. He told me it was because he burned easily, but I now had a suspicion he was hiding something.
His jaws clenched, and he kept his gaze straight ahead. He walked as he talked, not once looking at me. “I don’t want anyone thinking I’m a wimp or anything. I see how people treat my mother, and I don’t want them to look at me that way.”
I tugged on his arm. “Your brother said she’d been in a home for delicate women. What’s wrong with her?”
He stopped so abruptly, I almost ran into him. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he angrily wiped it away with his forearm. “Besides my father, you mean? God knows—she’s got lots of problems. But he’s the reason for every single one of them.”
He stared at me as if he knew he had already said too much. “I gotta go. I’ll see you later.” Gary pushed open the black iron gate leading into his front garden, then let it slam behind him before rushing up the path and into the house.
The little boy in the fountain continued with his business, the only sound in the still garden. I was about to turn when a movement at the corner of my eye caught my attention. Tilting my head back, I saw a face in a third-story window. I was sure it was a boy—a few years older than me—with light brown skin. One eye was closed, the other one staring right at me. Something about his skin and closed eye didn’t look quite right. His hands were pressed against the panes, as if to form another barrier between him and me. Slowly, he backed away, out of my sight, until the window again appeared as an empty eye on the front of the house.
Despite the heat and heavy humidity, goose bumps prickled my arms. Without turning my back on the house, I inched my way to the gate, then walked away as quickly as I could to the safety of Grandmother’s house.
CHAPTER 9
Center: Generally speaking, the vertical axis of a tropical cyclone, usually defined by the location of minimum wind or minimum pressure.
—NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER
Julie
I looked down into my empty wineglass, wondering how long it had been since my last sip. “Is that why you needed a place to feel safe?”
Aimee looked at me, and her eyes were tired. “Because of Xavier?” She shook her head, then stood. “No. It was because of how my mother died, and why nobody ever spoke of it or her again.”
I stood, too. I felt light-headed from the wine, and it loosened my usual reserve. “How did your mother die?”
She paused for a moment, leaning heavily on the table. “It’s a long story, and it’s too late to go into it now. Another time, all right?” Without waiting for me to answer, she placed her wineglass in the sink and headed toward the kitchen door, holding it open for me.
“Your room is ready—it’s the blue room right next to Beau’s, and there’s a connecting bathroom in case he gets up and calls for you. You’ll probably want to leave the doors open. There’re clean towels behind the doors, and I put a night-light in there, too. Please let me know if there’s anything else you need.”
“You’ve been more than generous, Miss Aimee. Thank you. But there is one thing.” I hesitated just for a moment, not wanting to ask her for anything else. “Do you have a computer I could use? I need to access the Internet.”
Her eyes softened, as if she knew the reason, and I felt like a child with her hand caught in the cookie jar. “Trey has one in his office that I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you using. It’s the door next to the kitchen by the stairs. If the door’s closed, just knock. Otherwise, you’re welcome to go in.”
We said good night, and I stood in the foyer watching until she was safely up the stairs. The door to the study was open, but I tapped anyway, not wanting Trey to find another reason to dislike me. It was a man’s study, with dark wood paneling and red plaid fabric on the windows, with a small couch tucked between the windows. A partner’s desk was positioned near the middle of the room, a flat-panel monitor monopolizing a back corner of it. A wastebasket sat by the desk, and I recognized the wadded foil from our dinner sitting on top.
Two walls were lined with crammed bookshelves that went up to the ceiling. Curious, I moved closer to get a better look at them. Most were law books of various vintages. Several had bindings that were shredded at the top, the binding threads exposed through the leather, the gold lettering on the spines nearly vanished. Others had barely a spine crease, either because they were new or maybe just never opened.
There was very little fiction, and most of it the oddly placed Nelson DeMille or Stuart Woods thriller, but there was also a surprising collection of art books. I counted at least five on the potter George Ohr, and at least as many about William and Ellsworth Woodward and Newcomb pottery. They were like old friends to me, and I itched to be able to take them off the shelves and read them. I decided to borrow one to take upstairs to read when I was finished on the computer.
I was about to head toward the desk when a slender volume in a red dust jacket caught my attention. It was placed on a high shelf, just about out of my reach, and stuck between two larger books so that it was almost hidden, and would have been except for the color of the jacket. And the fact that I recognized the book.
A short wooden ladder sat in the corner, and I pulled it over, and even then barely managed to dislodge the book from the shelf. It stuck slightly to the wood and created a puff of dust as I pulled it down, making me sneeze. Abe Holt: The Man and the Artist. I owned the book, and had since its first printing in 1999. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find the book on these shelves, considering the subject matter of the other books, except that this was my great-grandfather, and the artist of the portrait Monica had given to me.
I stepped off the ladder with the book and placed it on a small table by the door to bring up with me when I went upstairs. I stared at it for a long moment, a feeling of déjà vu enveloping me, before turning away from it and moving to the desk.
I sat down and jiggled the mouse to get the computer out of sleep mode, then stopped when I saw the computer desktop background, my eyes suddenly blurry. It was a photograph of two sun-bleached blond children at a beach, building a sand castle. A young boy, unmistakably Trey, about ten years old, appeared to be digging a moat, his tongue tucked between his teeth as he concentrated on his task. But eight-year-old Monica, wearing a red bathing suit with a ruffled peplum, was tucking small shells into a lacelike pattern along the edges of the parapet of the castle and doorway arch. The shadow of the photographer loomed over the sand castle and children as Monica looked at the camera with a mixture of surprise and concentration. I sat back in the chair and looked at her face, and the innocence of childhood that was long gone by the time I’d met her. I remembered Aimee’s words, something about childhood summers before the burdens of growing up had found them. Looking at the picture on the computer screen, I knew exactly what she meant.
“That’s Biloxi Beach about 1990.”
I startled and jerked around in the chair. Trey stood behind me, holding a short glass with gold liquid and an ice cube in it and looking at the monitor.
“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I’ll get up if you need to use the computer. Aimee said I could use it if you weren’t in here.”
I stood to leave, but he held me back with his hand. “You’re fine. I
was just coming in to shut it off.” He pointed at the picture. “That’s so Monica. She could never just build a castle. She always had to make it a work of art. And then she’d cry for a day after the tide washed it away.” His words almost sounded critical, but the picture was on his computer screen, where he could see it every day.
I looked back at the screen. “Who’s taking the picture?”
“Aimee. She’s the only one who took pictures of us as children.”
I studied Monica’s face again, wishing I had one more chance to talk with her. Without turning around, I asked, “Where were your parents?”
I felt him shrug. “Who knows? They rarely came to River Song. I think that they and Aimee had a mutual agreement about that.”
Facing him, I asked, “Where are your parents now?” I knew they were still alive—Monica had told me that much—but she hadn’t mentioned them with any frequency or affection.
His voice sounded nonchalant, but there was a current of hurt there, too: the same current I recognized in Monica’s voice as she’d told me her stories. “Our mother is on husband number four and living in Costa Rica. Our father is around somewhere. He’s a real estate developer, so you can imagine the kind of hit he took from Katrina. You can normally find him at Tipitina’s or Miss Mae’s—the first has great music; the second has cheap beer. Or any other establishment that serves alcohol that’s close enough for him to stumble home to his apartment on Magazine.” He took a drink from his glass and ice clicked against the side.
He indicated the computer. “Is there anything I can help you navigate to?”
“I can’t find your Internet Explorer icon. After that, I can manage on my own.”
It looked for a moment as if he would say something. Instead, he leaned over and clicked the mouse on the far left corner and then went to the bookmarks tab and a folder called “Monica.” The tabs inside the folder were listed alphabetically, and he scrolled down until he reached one labeled “FBI.” He straightened but remained silent.