The house could wait until she was ready, but Past Perfect was a different matter. It was a viable business concern and she needed to make arrangements for someone to run it until it could be sold. She decided to leave her car where it was and walk the two blocks to the town square. The open grassy area was dotted with huge live oak trees and bisected by brick walkways. A statue of a confederate soldier stood at their intersection. On the statue’s cracked marble base, the names of the Indigo boys who had died in the Civil War were inscribed. First on the list was Alexandre Valois, who had built the opera house and whose widow had paid for the monument. The were also a Robichaux, two Picards, Maude’s great-grandfather and a cousin, and several Boudreauxs, members of Alain’s family.
She smiled. It pleased her that she remembered at least a few of the bits and pieces of Indigo history that Maude had told her over the years. One or two people passed by and nodded pleasantly, trying politely not to stare too hard. Sophie nodded back, recognizing them from the wake and the funeral, but her attention remained focused on the opera house.
The building needed painting she realized as she drew closer, and Marjolaine and Hugh Prejean, the old gentleman she’d spoken to at the wake, were right, the roof did need work. She could see half a dozen places where the shingles were missing just from where she stood. The almost simultaneous blows of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita a couple of years earlier had damaged the old structure even more than the occupation of Union soldiers had.
Sophie turned the heavy key that had been among the items in Maude’s purse in the lock and opened one of the big double doors. Once more the scents of lavender and old leather and dust tickled her nostrils, but this time her sorrow was mixed with happiness. She had always loved Past Perfect. The summer she had been so madly in love with Alain, she had imagined herself living in Indigo and working with her godmother among all these mementos of a bygone day.
Of course, when she’d gotten home to Houston, her mother had disabused her of that notion pretty quickly. And even if she’d had the courage to stand up for herself, Alain’s short, curt letter breaking off their secret engagement because he had decided to enter the army to earn money for college had put an end to her girlish fantasies.
At least until that other summer, the short window of time after her divorce when she’d thought they might find that lost love again, before Alain’s pregnant wife had discovered them in each other’s arms.
In this very building.
The bell above the door jingled a greeting as she stepped inside. Past Perfect’s showroom occupied the lobby of the opera house, a space twice as long as it was deep. The counter, a relic of a demolished Memphis department store, stood directly in front of the tall, carved double doors that led into the auditorium.
That brought her up short for a moment, but she shook off the shiver of embarrassment and remorse. She didn’t have to go into the storage area with its raised stage and two tiny bow-fronted boxes high on the wall—not yet, not unless she wanted to. Eventually she would—sometime when she wasn’t thinking about Alain, but of what a treasure trove of make-believe the opera house had been for a young girl. The narrow stairs to the boxes had been steep and a little scary to climb, but when she was up there looking down, her imagination had had no trouble at all turning the creaky wooden folding chair on which she perched into a velvet and gilt one. She’d populated the shabby seats below with beautiful ladies in hoop skirts and dashing gentlemen in gray uniforms with plumed hats and swords at their sides, hearing voices and music in her head that had once brought the empty space to life. Those were the memories she’d keep in her thoughts when she did venture inside.
She wandered farther into the jumble of furniture and knickknacks, realizing as she always did that her godmother’s seemingly haphazard arrangement of merchandise actually facilitated the flow of customer traffic, leading them eventually to the assortment of antebellum Indigo souvenirs, candles and personal care products, with their generous markups, that brought her a good deal of income from less-than-enthusiastic antiquers and tourists who might otherwise leave the premises without taking out their wallets and credit cards.
She wondered who among her Indigo acquaintances would be qualified to take over the operation of Past Perfect. Sadly, over the past seven years, those acquaintances had dwindled to a handful. But she was getting ahead of herself, thinking about reopening the store. First she needed to have an inventory taken for estate purposes, both here and at the house.
She might as well get an idea of what she was up against.
She headed resolutely for the tall, carved doors leading into the auditorium, took a breath and twisted the handles to throw them wide. The doorbell tinkled and Sophie swiveled her head. Beyond the wavy glass, a tall man in a dark shirt and a gray Stetson was silhouetted against the bright afternoon sun. Alain. Her past had come back to haunt her.
CHAPTER FIVE
“AFTERNOON, SOPHIE,” he said as she used both hands to open the big front door. Maude Picard had been a no-nonsense, down-to-earth woman, but when it came to Past Perfect she’d given her inner belle free rein. Alain moved gingerly into the minefield of trailing scarves, little crystal bowls of sneeze-inducing potpourri and spindly-legged furniture that threatened to trip him up whenever he set foot inside the place.
Sophie didn’t close the door right away and he caught her glancing surreptitiously out over the square. Damn it, was she still gun-shy about the time Casey Jo had caught them in the back room? Hell, they hadn’t done anything wrong, but Casey Jo had jumped to her usual wrong-headed conclusion and come at them like some kind of fury.
He’d had every intention of filing for divorce before that day his wife had boomeranged back into his life six months pregnant, but he’d never gotten a chance to tell Sophie that. As a matter of fact, he’d never been alone with her since, that he could recall.
“Afternoon, Alain.” Ah-lane. He liked the way she said his name, still giving it the lilting French pronunciation that had more to do with a high-class private school education than the time she’d spent in Indigo as a kid.
“Saw you walking across the square so I thought I’d drop by and ask if you needed help with anything.” It wasn’t much of an excuse but it was the only one he had.
She didn’t let go of the door handle. “I’m just looking the place over.” He saw her throat muscles work as she swallowed. “This is harder than I thought it would be…going through Maude’s things. I thought maybe it would be easier starting with the shop rather than the house, but I was mistaken.” She looked around and he caught the liquid sheen of unshed tears in her eyes. “It will have to be inventoried, won’t it, for taxes and probate, that kind of thing?”
“I imagine it will. Were you her only heir?” Maybe if he kept the conversation solidly rooted in practicalities she’d stop looking like she was going to cry. Or worse yet, cut and run the first chance she got.
“I’m the executor, too. She made a lot of bequests. The library, the historical society, the church. I want to do my best to carry them out.”
He knew Maude had left Sophie the house and its contents. The old woman had told his grandmother that much about her will and Yvonne had passed the tidbit of information along to him. “If you decide not to run the place yourself, you’ll probably have to have an auction to get rid of all this stuff.”
“I know.” She relaxed enough to shut the door but she wrapped her arms around her waist, maybe to ward off the chill of the unheated room, more likely as an unspoken warning to him not to violate her personal space. “I haven’t even gone into the storage area yet.” Her tone of voice told him she had no intention of doing so while he was around. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to reopen the shop until I talk to Nana’s lawyer. And even then I’m not familiar with anyone in Indigo that I could hire to run the place.”
“I could probably help you there. Maybe Hugh Prejean would fill in for a few weeks? He’s mostly retired from the library now. He knows as muc
h about antiques as anyone around. There are one or two others I could suggest.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep Mr. Prejean in mind.” She waved her hand in a graceful feminine gesture that made his gut tighten a little as he remembered the softness of her fingers on his skin on a long-ago summer day. “I expect she’d want me to try and find a buyer for the business, not just sell off her assets. And then there are the terms of the lease for the opera house. I haven’t a clue what they are.”
He made himself stop thinking of what had once been and start concentrating on the here and now. “You don’t have to settle everything today. Like you said, after you meet with Maude’s lawyer will be soon enough to start making plans.” He laid his hat on the glass-topped counter that held an array of costume jewelry and tucked his thumbs in his utility belt just to have something to do with them.
“I suppose so. The first decision I have to make is to rethink how long I’m going to stay in Indigo.”
Alain felt his heart rate accelerate. “You have work waiting back in Houston?” What he wanted to ask wasn’t whether she had work waiting, but if she had someone waiting.
“Nothing pressing at the moment. We just wrapped up a big fund-raising campaign for Northeastern College near Beaumont.”
“Never heard of it,” he said, figuring honesty was the best policy with her. “Must not have much of a football team.” He tried a little self-deprecating humor and almost got a smile out of her.
“No, you probably haven’t heard of it. It’s a small church-affiliated liberal arts school. I spearheaded the campaign that brought in two million dollars in new endowments over the past eighteen months,” she said proudly.
He didn’t know much about fund-raising beyond the high-school kids selling magazine subscriptions and frozen pizzas to pay for their class trip, but for a small college with no winning football team, two mil in endowments seemed impressive. “Congratulations.”
“I am kind of proud of it myself. Takes a lot of persuasion to come up with that kind of donations when they don’t have any sports program to speak of.” She smiled then, letting him know she’d gotten his joke, and it seemed to him when she did, the bright winter sunshine beyond the windows dimmed in comparison. She wandered over to a claw-foot drum table and picked up a china teacup painted with tiny pink and yellow roses. The pink of the flowers matched her nail polish.
“I never had the chance to tell Nana Maude about it.” Her hair was still a riot of curls but the color had darkened a little over the years from pale moonlight to sun-ripened wheat. She’d pushed the heavy mass behind her ears and held it back with a pair of tortoise-shell clips. His fingers itched to see if it was still as soft and silky as it had been a dozen or more years ago. From the looks of it, it was. “I was so caught up in the campaign that I missed coming to see her over the holidays. I…” Her voice wavered a moment, then steadied. “I thought my grandmother and I could come together for a long visit in a month or so. Now it’s too late.”
“Maude went quickly,” he said. “Doc Landry told me there was almost no pain. She just sat down in her chair and went to sleep.”
“I know.” Her voice was very soft and he had to strain to hear. “He told me that, too, at Savoy’s, when he stopped by to pay his respects. But it doesn’t change the fact I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
He picked up his Stetson from the counter and twisted the brim in his hands. The powerful urge to comfort her took him by surprise. He’d thought of Sophie Clarkson a lot over the past five years since his divorce, but he’d never let it get out of control. Until Maude died. Since then she’d been on his mind almost constantly. Not a good sign.
He settled his hat on his head. He could handle it though. He wasn’t eighteen anymore, so full of hormones and first love that he couldn’t think straight. Or even twenty-eight for that matter, daring to hope for a few days that summer before Dana was born that he might be able to sort out his life and get a second chance with her.
What did they say? Third time’s the charm?
Not for this country boy.
She was a damned desirable woman, but he’d sworn off women, desirable or otherwise, until his kids were raised and on their own. He wasn’t being noble. He didn’t have much choice with an unpredictable, unstable ex-wife like Casey Jo in the picture.
“I think I have customers,” Sophie said, putting the teacup back on its saucer. She inclined her head toward the door, and sure enough, there were his kids, just off the school bus, Guy carrying his sister’s shiny new Bratz book bag along with his own. At fifteen, his son was tall and awkward, all gangly arms and legs that he didn’t seem to know what to do with when he wasn’t on the football field or the basketball court. He reminded Alain of himself at that age.
Dana was small and slender with jet-black hair and emerald eyes, just turned seven and the spitting image of her mother. Except that even at seven, Casey Jo wouldn’t have worn her hair stuffed up under a backwards baseball cap with a Saints sweatshirt and scuffed runners. Casey Jo was all girl, and at the moment, his daughter wanted to be anything but.
“I’ll tell them to wait in the truck,” he said, heading for the door, but Sophie beat him to it.
“No, let them come in. I’d like to meet them.”
“Hi, Daddy.” Dana bounced into the store and wrapped her arms around his arm, avoiding the holstered .45 Sig, billy club and mace container at his waist.
“Hello, petite,” he said cradling her head with his free hand. “How was school today?” He spoke in Cajun French, but she answered in English, too shy to practice the French words in front of a stranger.
“Good. I was the first one done with my writing paper. I can do a whole paragraph.”
“Bon.”
She kept hold of his arm and peeked at Sophie from the corner of her eye. “Who’s she?” Dana asked shyly. This time she spoke in French and Alain saw Sophie tighten her lips to keep from smiling.
“Dana, this is Sophie Clarkson. Miss Maude’s goddaughter.”
“Hello, Dana.”
“Hi.”
“And this is my son.”
“Hello, Guy.” The French pronunciation of the single syllable slid like warm butter over his skin. He wasn’t the only one affected by Sophie’s charm. She turned her stunning smile on his son and the boy’s mouth dropped open and hung there for a moment or two before he pulled himself together and shook her proffered hand.
“Nice to meet you,” he finally managed to get out.
“We did meet before, when you were a little boy,” Sophie said.
Guy cocked his head, then shrugged. “I’m sorry I don’t remember.”
“It was a long time ago,” she said softly, and Alain wondered if he only imagined a hint of regret in her words.
“What are you two doing here?” Alain asked to change the subject so his own memories of that second time around with Sophie wouldn’t stir enough to keep him awake in the middle of the night.
“She saw the Explorer parked out front and insisted on coming inside,” Guy explained, motioning to his little sister. “Grandma must have worked late today and wasn’t there to pick us up at the bus stop. Good thing it wasn’t raining or she’d have been soaked. She forgot her umbrella.”
“I didn’t forget it. I didn’t take it with me. The sun was shining when I woke up. It’s still shining.” Dana swung on Alain’s hand as she dismissed her brother’s lecture. “He doesn’t care if I get rained on. All he really wants is for you to buy him a car so he can drive it to school.”
“I do, too, care,” Guy insisted, but he turned slightly pink and looked down at his shoes.
Dana snorted. “Yeah, sure.” She might be only seven but she had her big brother’s number when it came to getting himself a set of wheels.
“Dad—”
“Knock it off, you two. Thanks for looking out for your sister’s welfare, son. But you won’t be sixteen for another three months. Time enough to talk about getting a car in the spring.�
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Guy opened his mouth, then thought better of what he was going to say and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ve got conditioning. Can you drop me off at home so I can get my gym bag?”
“I suppose.” He’d been headed that direction for an end-of-shift patrol of the neighborhood, anyway.
“I’ll wait in the truck.” Guy hunched his shoulder and gave Sophie an apologetic smile. “It was nice meeting you, but I need to get out of here. I feel like I’m going to break something every time I move in this place.”
Sophie laughed out loud. She couldn’t help herself. He really did look afraid to move an inch from where he was standing. Suddenly she remembered how it felt to be not-quite-sixteen and suddenly at odds with your body. “I agree there are a lot of booby traps in this place. I should probably do some rearranging—make it easier for the customers to move around. What do you think?”
“I think it’s a good idea.” He cast a wary eye around the overcrowded space. “A real good idea.”
“I’ll consider it. If I can find some help.”
Guy glanced at his father. “I help out at the B&B sometimes. Mr. Carter could vouch for me. And I…I know a couple of guys who are good at moving furniture. We work pretty cheap.”
“I’ll remember that.” She held out her hand once more. “Goodbye, Guy. It was nice meeting you, too.”
He shook her hand, gave his father a half wave, half salute and loped out the door. While Sophie and Guy were talking, Dana had let go of her father’s hand and wandered farther into the store. “I don’t feel like I’m going to break anything,” she said, running her fingers over a ratty-looking fox stole draped over the back of cane-bottomed chair. “I like this place just the way it is.”
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