Marisa Carroll - Hotel Marchand 09

by Her Summer Lover

  “You should have made a stipulation about her checking in once in a while.”

  “Yeah, I guess I should have.” He’d screwed up there big-time. Casey Jo had him right where she wanted him this weekend and she was enjoying being the one calling the shots. He could deal with her playing these little games, but not if they compromised Dana and Guy’s welfare. “I won’t make that mistake again,” he said.

  Guy traced a design on the table top with his cell. It was a picture phone, barely bigger than a matchbox, and it had cost plenty, but Guy had paid for it with his own money so Alain had let him buy it. The silence stretched out. Alain listened as the washer on the back porch whined into the spin cycle and a piece of loose change clattered away in the dryer. “I think you made a bigger mistake letting Dana go with her, at all,” Guy replied with a shade less animosity in his voice. He didn’t meet Alain’s gaze, but kept his eyes on the twists and turns he was making with his phone.

  Alain had wanted to broach the subject since Sophie had told him about her conversation with the boy, but Guy hadn’t given him a chance. Now it was his son who had brought it up. He didn’t want to let on just how much he knew. He wouldn’t break Sophie’s confidence. “Why do you say that, son?”

  “She left me alone in the mall once when I was really little. She just plunked me down on a bench and took off. She was gone a long time. I was there so long a security guard thought I was lost. I was scared and hungry and I had to go to the bathroom so bad I thought I’d pee my pants. I cried and cried. Because I figured the guard would take me to jail for being alone.” The words came out in a rush. Guy paused and took a breath, getting control of himself. “Little kids think of screwy things like that, y’know. And when she got back she told me never to tell you or you’d be really mad at me for causing a scene. Not at her for leaving me alone all that time.”

  “I’m sorry, Guy. I never knew that happened. I wish you’d told me about it before tonight.”

  The cell-phone design grew in complexity. “Yeah, I see that now. But all the time I was growing up, I figured you knew. When you’re little and something like that happens, you think your mom and dad know everything in the world and you believe what they say.” He shot Alain a quick glance. “But lately I…I talked to a friend about it and I realized you couldn’t have known if no one told you.”

  “Did your mom leave you alone other times? Times when I wasn’t home?”

  Guy shrugged. “She might have. Never that long though or I’d remember. Funny, I never remember her hitting me, or even yelling at me a whole lot. Only leaving me that one day. It seemed like she was gone forever.” He stopped working the elaborate design and flipped open the phone, still without meeting Alain’s eyes. “I don’t want that to happen to Dana. Especially in some place as big as Disney World.”

  “I don’t want that, either.” It was Alain’s turn to trace designs on the table. He moved the water bottle around in ever-widening circles. “I’ve always done the best I could for both of you.” A lump formed in his throat and he swallowed it down, but the residue made his voice rough around the edges. “You two are my whole life. You know that, don’t you?”

  Guy lifted his eyes from the tiny screen of his phone. His Adam’s apple jumped up and down. “I know, Dad. I was never afraid again after we moved to Indigo. I guess I knew by then that you’d be there to take care of me. Of both of us. That’s why I went ballistic the other day. It always seemed like you were almost as smart as a superhero or something, and somehow you should have known about that day, too.”

  “I hate to tell you this, pal, but dads don’t know everything.”

  Guy’s lip curled into a half smile. “No kidding.”

  “I’m sorry that your mom scared you that way when you were so little and helpless, but since you don’t remember any other incidents like that, it makes me feel a little better thinking it was a one-time thing. Your mom’s not a bad person, Guy. She’s just…”

  “Sort of like a female Peter Pan.” Guy clicked the phone shut and closed his palm around it. It disappeared and Alain realized his son’s hands were almost the size of his own. “She’s probably having more fun at Disney World than Dana is and that’s why she hasn’t called. Not because she’s kidnapped Dana and run off with her to start a new life somewhere.”

  “That’s what I believe.” Dear Lord, he hoped he was right.

  “Why did you have to marry her, Dad?”

  Once more Alain was caught off guard. He’d expected arguments and recriminations, raised voices. Instead he was talking to an image of the man his son would soon become, not the boy he had been only a day or two before.

  “She was pregnant with you.” He wasn’t going to lie and say he loved her. He owed Guy’s new-found maturity that much honesty.

  Color stained his cheeks but Guy didn’t look away. “I can count. What I mean is, why did you think you had to marry her just because she was going to have a baby? Lots of guys wouldn’t do that. One or two guys in school brag about it. Making babies but not having to marry the girl.”

  “I married her because it was the right thing to do, and I hoped we could learn to be happy with each other. We were probably too young, but I gave it my best shot.”

  “Did Mom?”

  “If I told you she did the best she could, would you think better of her or worse?”

  Guy’s mouth twisted in a half smile. “That’s one of the lady-or-the-tiger questions, isn’t it?”

  “I guess it is.”

  “I’ve finally figured out she’s never gonna be a real mom to me or Dana. She’s not like Mamère Yvonne or Grandma Cecily. She’s one of those people who need someone else to take care of her, not be responsible for others. Right?”

  “Yes,” Alain answered. “That’s as good a way to say it as any.”

  “I’ve been thinking about stuff like that lately. I think maybe when I start looking for a wife, I want to find a girl that will be my partner, too. You know. Not that I couldn’t take care of her. And I will. But someone who’ll be there for me, too.”

  “If you find a girl like that, you hang on to her, hear?” Alain said with a smile. “She’ll be worth her weight in gold.”

  “Is that the kind of woman you’d want? I mean, if you marry again?”

  Alain hoped the sudden twist of pain he felt in the middle of his chest, right over his heart, didn’t show on his face. “Yeah, that’s the kind of woman I’d want.”

  Guy studied him for a long few seconds. “We—Dana and me—we wouldn’t mind if you did get married again.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Just don’t you be in any hurry to find Ms. Right yourself. Okay?”

  “Don’t worry about that. I was just talking in the abstract, you know. Something that might happen. Someday. Maybe. We’ve been studying that in school. Right now I just want Dana home. If Mom keeps her word this time, maybe I’ll be able to start thinking about being her friend. Someday.” Guy pushed away from the table, pocketed his cell phone and walked out of the kitchen.

  “I THINK you can count yourself one hell of a father if Dana and Guy grow up and embrace Casey Jo as a friend. It’s more than she deserves.” Cecily had waited until Guy left the kitchen to come in off the back porch.

  “You heard, eh?” Alain asked, not getting up from the table as she poured herself a cup of coffee that looked black enough and strong enough to keep her on her feet another four hours.

  “Of course I did. In the first place, I couldn’t help but overhear without sticking my head in the dryer. In the second place, I didn’t try not to. You’re two of the three most important people in my life. I wanted to hear what he had to say about his mother.”

  “I swear I never knew about her leaving him in the mall like that.”

  “I’m not surprised it happened, but there’s no way you could have known about it.” She sat down beside Alain at the table. It had been in the family for almost a hundred years. She’d been raised around this table, so
had her mother and aunts and uncles, as well as her own three kids. One of the hardest things she’d had to do after her husband died was to stop setting his place each night.

  “He’s afraid she’ll do something like that with Dana.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her,” Cecily said before she could censor herself.

  “Guy asked me why I married her.” Alain ran his thumb up and down the side of his water bottle. He was wearing an old plaid shirt of his dad’s and he looked so much like him that her throat tightened with tears.

  “You thought it was the right thing to do. And I encouraged you.” Cecily sighed. “But believe me, I’ve asked myself that same question a lot of times the past fifteen years. I thought she’d grow up.” She looked up from her coffee cup. “I thought you were over Sophie Clarkson and that you and Casey Jo would have as good a chance at making a go of your marriage as anyone else in that situation. I was wrong on both counts, wasn’t I?”

  He had been staring at a spot on the wall beyond her left shoulder, but now he brought his gaze down to hers.

  “I’m still hoping she’ll grow up before Dana does,” he said, ignoring the other half of her question.

  “I’m not holding my breath.” She stood up and poured the rest of her coffee into the sink. It was too strong even for her. She couldn’t spend half the night lying awake, stewing over those damned stuffed animals again. She had to be on duty at seven the next morning, the Lord’s Day or not. She turned around and leaned her hip against the counter. Time to get another worry out of her thoughts and into the open. “Alain, what about you and Sophie?”

  “She’s heading back to Houston on Monday,” he said, pushing back his chair and rising to his feet. He was taller, leaner than his father had been. He took after her side of the family that way, just as Guy did.

  “For good?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Did you ask her to stay?” She usually kept her nose out of his love life but she sensed what he felt for Sophie Clarkson was too important to keep quiet about.

  “No,” he said bluntly. “What can I offer her?” He pushed his hand through his hair, making it stand up on end just as it had when he was a little boy. “My life is pretty much a soap opera right now, Mom, you have to admit that. Even if she was willing to take on a man with two half-grown kids and a perpetual-adolescent ex-wife, there’s the problem of her having a life in Houston that she doesn’t want to give up.”

  “Did you ask her that?” Cecily held her breath. Had it gone that far? Had Alain asked Sophie to marry him—again?

  “I asked her if she believed in second chances,” he said, and the sadness in his voice was so well hidden she suspected no one but his own mother would have detected it.

  “Everyone believes in second chances,” Cecily whispered.

  “That’s what I told her.” He aimed the empty water bottle at the wastebasket in the corner. “She told me we had our second chance seven years ago when Casey Jo burst into the back of Past Perfect and found us together. She said this was our third time around.” He shoved his hands in his pocket. “And three times wasn’t a charm. It was three strikes and you’re out.”

  “Oh, Alain, that’s not true.” She was afraid if she said anything more she’d start to cry, she hurt so badly for him.

  “Maybe if things were more settled here I’d be able to convince her of that. But as it is, Dana has to come first.” One corner of his mouth ticked up in a travesty of a grin. “It’s not like I haven’t been here before.”

  She watched him turn and leave the room and her heart ached for him. The dryer buzzer went off like a hundred angry bumblebees. Automatically she went to take out the load of towels and fold them. It kept her hands busy while her thoughts wheeled around in her brain.

  The last thing in the world she wanted to do at the moment was bother him with her own problems. The damned toy animals, in full view of the town now in the window of Past Perfect, would have to wait. Her baby was hurting, and as Alain had just said, your children’s welfare came first—even before unfilled prescriptions and jail time.

  Maybe she should talk to Sophie, tell her Alain loved her, because she knew with absolute certainty that he did. If she had any inkling that Sophie loved him back, she’d get down on her knees and beg her to stay in Indigo until this mess with Casey Jo was put behind them.

  Maybe if she’d done that years ago, things would be different now. But she hadn’t wanted to interfere in his love life then any more than she did now. And who knew that Casey Jo was going to show up after six months of silence, looking like she’d swallowed a watermelon and demand that Alain take her back just as though she’d never up and left him and her precious baby boy to follow her own foolish dreams?

  Casey Jo had a lot to answer for. Maybe if she explained all that to Sophie it would change her mind?

  Or maybe not.

  The phone rang and she picked it up, hoping against hope it was her ex-daughter-in-law calling to apologize for not checking in for more than two whole days.

  “Cecily, is that you?” It wasn’t Casey Jo but her mother.

  “It’s me, Marie. Have you heard from them?” she asked without preamble.

  Her answer was a sigh. “No. I was hoping you had.”

  “Not a word since Thursday night. Alain is fit to be tied. Casey Jo will have a lot to answer for if she doesn’t have Dana back here on the dot of seven tomorrow evening.”

  “I know,” Marie said, and for once she didn’t tack on some kind of convoluted excuse for Casey Jo’s behavior. “I just hope they’re both all right.”

  “You’d better get yourself down to St. Tim’s to say a prayer to back that wish up.” Cecily hunched her shoulder to hold the phone against her ear while she continued to fold towels.

  “I already have.” Her tone changed. “Did you know that Sophie Clarkson put those damned stuffed animals out on display?”

  It was Cecily’s turn to sigh. “Yes. Guy mentioned it. Dana told her that’s what Maude did. She was thinking of the ones that people gave back to her when they took out the meds, I suppose. She used to sell some of them, remember.”

  “She’s got Amelia Prejean to run the shop for her. She’s reopening Monday morning.” Amelia was about Cecily’s age but they were the merest of acquaintances. Hugh’s niece had only moved to Indigo the year before, after she retired from teaching school back east somewhere, to help look after her aging uncle. She wasn’t going to be any help in getting the animals out of Past Perfect.

  “He told me that, too.”

  “We’ve run out of time. We’ll have to break into the opera house tonight.”

  Cecily felt tears burn the back of her eyelids, but instead of letting them fall, she punched the pile of folded towels with her fist. It wasn’t as satisfying as a good cry, but it didn’t make her eyes red, either. “Not tonight. I can’t do that. Alain’s here. He’ll hear me leave and wonder what I’m doing going out at this time of night.”

  “Tomorrow, then. It’s our last chance.”

  “I won’t be home from the hospital until six-thirty or seven.”

  It was Marie’s turn to sound exasperated. “We aren’t going to do it in broad daylight.”

  “But Alain…”

  “Tell him you’re going to spend the evening with your mother because she’s worried about Dana.”

  “She is worried about Dana,” Cecily snapped.

  “She’s my grandbaby, too, don’t forget. She’ll be fine. They’re just having too much fun to be checking in every five minutes.” Cecily ground her teeth but didn’t get a chance to respond. “Just do as I say for once,” Marie continued. “Tell him you’re going to Yvonne’s. Your mom will be your alibi.”

  “How will we get in the place?”

  “Leave that up to me.”

  Cecily felt a chill race up and down her spine. She wasn’t in the least bit psychic, but she didn’t need to be to know this was going to turn out badly; she�
��d been convinced of that since the day Maude had died. She just hoped Sophie Clarkson wouldn’t end up blaming Alain for what she was going to do.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SOPHIE STOOD at the window of her suite at the top of La Petite Maison and looked out at the break in the rain clouds that bathed the grounds in watery sunlight. The silence was so complete that the only competition for the church bells of St. Timothy’s calling the faithful to worship from over a mile away were the twitters of a few birds in the oaks beside the house. She cradled a mug of Luc’s excellent coffee between her hands and thought a bit wistfully that the next Sunday morning would find her in her kitchen in her condo in Houston, staring at a bare white wall, listening to the muted roar of traffic from the expressway that even her building’s soundproofed walls couldn’t completely filter out.

  She was making the right choice going back to Houston, she told herself. Her grandparents would be home from their trip to Australia on Wednesday and she wanted to be there to greet them. And, of course, she needed to get back to work, as well. Her father had been relieved. She could hear it in his voice when she’d called to tell him she was leaving Indigo as soon as the alarm system was reset and she got Amelia Prejean squared away at Past Perfect.

  Perhaps once she was back in her own home, among her own things, the feeling that she was making a terrible mistake leaving Indigo…leaving Alain…would stop niggling at the back of her mind.

  Surely, if she were truly, no-turning-back in love with him, she wouldn’t be able to just up and walk away? Would she?

  Her suitcases were open on the quilt-covered pine bed. She was almost finished packing. She would check out of La Petite Maison after breakfast the next morning, pack her car, make sure Maude’s little house was securely locked up and then leave for Houston directly from the store. A knock sounded on her bedroom door.