The Gates of Evangeline

by Hester Young

  • • •

  I FIND SYDNEY LOUNGING in the study’s oversized armchair, one leg kicked over the side, while Brigitte complains to Jules about one of the nurses. Although Brigitte is certainly the louder twin, Sydney is the more fashionable of the two. Her short dark haircut makes her blue eyes pop, and a good tailor has made the best of her difficult figure. Brigitte’s fluffy blond mane, on the other hand, looks like a throwback to the eighties, and her white sweater calls to mind a lumpy snowman. Both women have broad shoulders and big hips, but Brigitte has at least thirty pounds on her sister. Marriage, I guess. No one to impress.

  And impress me she does not.

  “We pay these people entirely too much to tolerate any attitude from them,” Brigitte says, in the midst of her nurse rant. “I know my mama, and when I ask the help to do something, I am not looking for their professional opinion on why they shouldn’t do it. You need to replace her, Jules.”

  “I apologize, and I’ll speak to her about it,” he promises as he gathers some folders off the desk in the corner. “Rose is your mother’s favorite caregiver, however. It would be premature to let her go.” Jules knows his way around high-maintenance women.

  “Just tell her Rose quit,” Sydney pipes up from her chair. “Mama won’t notice.”

  I cough lightly, and all heads swivel toward me. Brigitte adopts a large and welcoming smile, but her eyes dart around, calculating exactly how much I heard and what level of blabbermouth I might be.

  “There you are,” Sydney yawns. “Feeling better, I see.” Jules must’ve passed along my sick excuse. “Bridgie and I have to be getting back to the city soon, but we thought we could give you an hour, anyway.”

  Brigitte shoots her sister a look that seems to chastise Sydney for her lack of warmth and enthusiasm. “Charlotte, was it? I’m sorry we didn’t get the chance to speak much yesterday, but with Mama there . . .” She turns to Jules. “Would you please draw the drapes? I can’t stand this awful little man cave of yours.”

  Jules pulls back the drapes obediently, but the study’s dark and somber furnishings expertly fend off natural light. It is a room for migraine-ridden women, scholars burning the midnight oil, grave old white men weighing matters of political and economic import.

  “Raleigh seemed to be enjoying your company last night,” Sydney tells me with a laugh, though I can’t tell if she’s amused by Raleigh’s lechery or my falling victim to it.

  “Oh yes,” Brigitte agrees, “he was very taken with you. After you left, he kept asking where you’d gone. He was really concerned.”

  “It was an interesting evening,” I manage.

  Brigitte plops herself down on an antique cream-colored love seat with carved wooden detail on the back. She folds her dimpled hands in her lap, left over right, so the enormous diamond on her wedding ring is displayed to its best advantage. “Isaac told us that you work for Sophisticate. I want you to know, your magazine ran an article on personal organizers that transformed my life. I’m so happy to be working with you. You wouldn’t believe some of the people Isaac tried to send our way.”

  I thank her and politely suggest we make use of our limited time together. I pull out a recording device and do a quick sound check while Jules slips out of the room, giving us some privacy.

  “Okay, let’s get started.” I smile, though every minute spent with these women seems to confirm Noah’s ill opinion. “Could you tell me a bit about your family before Gabriel went missing?”

  “Of course.” Brigitte leans forward in the love seat, genuinely eager to share. “It all began in 1846, when our great-great-great-grandfather Pierre Deveau built Evangeline for his new wife, Cherisse.” I get the feeling that she’s told this story before. “He was a wealthy New Orleans merchant, and she was the youngest daughter of the Adrepont family. You’ve probably heard of the Adreponts. They ran a very successful sugar plantation until the war, which left them just destitute.”

  She charges ahead, and I realize I’m about to receive two hundred years of Deveaus. Time for an intervention—but how to steer her back to the topic of Gabriel without inviting a debate on the subject of my book? “Now, the Deveaus fared very well in the war,” Brigitte continues. “Our fortune wasn’t entirely dependent on sugar, you see. Our ancestors had the foresight to maintain many diverse sources of income—”

  “Like selling supplies to the Union Army,” Sydney says.

  “No, Syd. No, the Union Army commandeered—”

  “It’s not commandeering when they pay you,” Sydney argues, and from the outrage on Brigitte’s face, another Civil War may erupt right here in the study. I take advantage of the opening.

  “Of course I’ll be researching all of this,” I say. “But what I’d really like to focus on for the moment is your family, the family you grew up in.”

  The twins glance at each other. Brigitte shrugs, a bit grumpy. “There’s not much to say. We were a regular sort of family.”

  “Our father was gone a lot on business,” Sydney elaborates. “We three kids were off at boarding school. And Mama stayed here or in the New Orleans house. By herself and then with Gabriel.”

  “Did you spend much time together as a family?” I ask, suddenly wondering if they ever really knew their little brother.

  “Oh, sure,” Sydney says, “we had summers and vacations, usually on the water. Daddy would hire a crew and we’d sail the Virgin Islands, the Greek isles.”

  “Your average, all-American family, would you say?” Somehow I keep a straight face.

  “Definitely,” Brigitte replies, “until we lost Gabriel. Our poor mama, she . . . went through a hard time.” She turns to her sister. “Do you remember, Syd, Thanksgiving break after he went missing?”

  Sydney shakes her head at the memory. “Oh, it was awful. She just looked . . . well, she didn’t dress herself very nicely, I’ll just leave it at that. She was . . .”

  “Completely mismatched,” Brigitte supplies. “And her hair . . .” She shudders. “Mama had this awful pink robe,” she tells me. “Morning, noon, and night, she wouldn’t take it off. She just kind of wandered around the house like someone’s doddering old granny. It felt like we’d lost her right along with Gabriel.”

  “And how did your dad take it?” I ask, ready to assume the worst of the late Neville Deveau.

  “You’ve seen the security measures around here, haven’t you?” Sydney says. “That’s how he took it. Also, I think he punched a few reporters.”

  “One reporter,” Brigitte corrects, “and that man said something nasty about Mama. Daddy was grieving as much as she was, Syd. He just didn’t show it the same. You know he had such high hopes for Gabriel.”

  I jump on this. “What kind of high hopes?”

  “Just—doing the things a father does with a son. Sports, fishing, sailing,” Brigitte explains.

  “Did your father do those things with Andre?”

  Sydney wrinkles her nose and stretches. “Andre isn’t that type. He was more interested in school.”

  “He was a good student,” Brigitte adds. “All A’s. Unlike us!” She giggles.

  Until this moment, I never knew how annoying a middle-aged woman’s giggle could be.

  The image of Neville as a would-be involved father bothers me. It doesn’t mesh with my preconceptions of a child-molester-turned-killer. And the lack of interest in Andre, Neville’s not-stereotypically-masculine-enough firstborn, seems so . . . normal. Sad and ignorant, but normal. He hurt me, Gabriel told me in the dream, and my gut instinct has been telling me he meant his dad. Now I’m not sure.

  I try to direct the twins back to their little brother. “How would you describe Gabriel?”

  “He was only two when he disappeared. And we didn’t see all that much of him.” Sydney sits up in her chair and checks her watch.

  My time is running out.

 
“He was a happy kid,” Brigitte volunteers. “He couldn’t sit still. Tired Nanny right out.”

  I ask them as many questions as I can about family dynamics and the night that Gabriel disappeared, but the only thing either woman has much to say about is their sweet sixteen party. Brigitte, I learn, still harbors resentment toward Andre for not attending and isn’t shy about voicing her complaints.

  “He had a date,” Sydney tells her, trying to calm her down. “Probably the first date of his life. You know how shy he used to be with girls. Cut him some slack.”

  “It wasn’t a date,” Brigitte declares, “it was some boy Andre knew. He should’ve been at our party, there was no excuse.”

  Poor Andre, I think. No wonder you’re living in the closet. They don’t want to know.

  Sydney climbs off her perch on the chair and stretches. “Bridgie, we should get going.”

  “Just one more question.” I can’t let them get away without giving me something, anything. “You had a lot of different people working at Evangeline over the years. Did any stand out to you as strange or overly interested in Gabriel?”

  “Roi Duchesne,” says Sydney automatically, “that man they arrested at first. He was shady.”

  “But he didn’t do it,” Brigitte protests. “They proved that.”

  “She asked about weird people and Roi was.”

  “I assume you were both questioned several times, too,” I say. “That must have been exhausting.”

  “Oh, it was endless.” Brigitte clutches her chest as if the very thought is too much for her poor nerves. “And then all that business about us passing out drunk—I had one glass of champagne that night. One.”

  “Bridgie.” Sydney turns sharply to her. “Don’t.”

  My ears perk up. From what I understand, Sydney and Brigitte’s alibi that evening has always hinged upon their supposed intoxication, a night spent unconscious and sick in the hotel.

  “Oh, what does it matter?” Brigitte brushes off her sister’s worries with a toss of her hair. “You think they’d come bothering us now? It’s been thirty years.”

  “I think you’re forgetting what it was like dealing with a bunch of rabid journalists out to make a name for themselves,” Sydney says through clenched teeth.

  But Brigitte has already moved on. She casts her sister a dreamy look. “You know who I was wondering about the other day? Sean Lauchlin.”

  Sydney frowns. “Nanny and Daddy Jack’s son? You thought he was suspicious?”

  Could this be Noah’s father, the guy who went AWOL?

  Brigitte twirls a strand of hair around her finger. “He was around Gabriel sometimes when he visited.”

  Sydney bursts out laughing. “Honey, Sean Lauchlin was not overly interested in Gabriel. You were overly interested in him.”

  “I know I had a little crush,” Brigitte admits, “but think about it. He wasn’t around a lot, and then he’d come back and just hang around the house all day with Mama and Gabriel or Andre or us. He could’ve done anything, and nobody would’ve thought twice.”

  “He was in the army, sweetie, visiting Nanny and Daddy Jack on leave.” Sydney pats her sister on the shoulder. “He wasn’t even around when Gabriel disappeared. Now we’d really better go.” Her expression indicates she finds the Sean Lauchlin hypothesis both childish and sad.

  I disagree. “Do you remember the last time you saw Sean?” It’s a long shot, but Brigitte does not disappoint me.

  “June,” she answers immediately. “Right after we got out of school. He had some kind of fight with his folks, and he left. I always wondered what happened to him.”

  “Stalker,” Sydney sighs, and grabs Brigitte by the hand, pulling her to her feet. “Lovely to see you again. Can’t wait to read your book,” she tells me as she marches Brigitte out.

  I flip off my recorder and stand alone in the study, listening to them call for their suitcases. What was Sean fighting with Maddie and Jack about? I wonder. And if Sean Lauchlin ditched Noah, his own son, in June, why come back for Gabriel two months later? Money, I’d assume. I’ll have to ask Detective Minot if anyone ever looked at him as a suspect.

  As I stand there in the study surrounded by expensive objects, all I can think of is Keegan, what he would have done to this room as a toddler. Climb the desk. Shimmy up the drapes. Track dirt on the upholstery. I wonder if this room was always so beautiful, so impersonal. Was this ever a house that wanted children, or did it just tolerate them until they were old enough to send off to boarding school?

  Who would Gabriel have been, had he lived? A superficial socialite like his sisters? An uptight businessman ashamed of his true self like his brother? Someone even worse, even sadder?

  I’m losing my way. Allowing morbidity to overwhelm my sense of purpose. I step into the hallway and shut the study door firmly behind me. If only death were something you could lock away in a single room. If only grief, like a kid in a long game of hide-and-seek, would grow bored, give up, go home.

  • • •

  THAT NIGHT, for the first time in months, it happens. The sweet dark. The fading out. A message coming through.

  I must have been asleep at some point, but now I’m dimly aware of my body. Blankets, pillows, the squishy mattress in my guest cottage. I shed these physical sensations one by one. Step past them into what’s waiting.

  Then I’m so alert it hurts. My head rings like someone’s turned the volume button all the way up. I blink away the noise. Allow myself to calibrate.

  Pay attention. You’re going to see something important.

  A long hallway. I’m making my way down a red-and-white-tiled floor. Blue lockers line the walls, and the sickly fluorescent lighting makes the colors unnaturally bright and jarring. A school.

  The hall ends abruptly with a white concrete wall, blank except for a large round clock. Beneath it, a girl with shoulder-length red hair stands, as if waiting for an appointment. Fifth, sixth grade, maybe? She looks young but carries herself like a much older child, glancing at the clock, the floor, then back at the clock again with a very adult anxiety.

  I try to get her attention.

  Hello?

  She looks up, and for a moment our eyes meet. She’s wearing lip gloss, and her nose and cheeks have a smattering of freckles. Her mouth opens, as if she wants to tell me something. From somewhere in the bowels of the school, a bell begins to ring, loudly and insistently, almost like an alarm.

  The girl covers her mouth, suddenly looking ill, and makes a beeline for a door marked GIRLS. I follow her inside, concerned, and find a restroom with three stalls, a sink, and a mirror. I catch a whiff of lemon-scented toilet cleaner and notes of old urine.

  Are you okay? I ask, but the stalls are empty. The girl is gone.

  Suddenly my stomach begins to churn. I’m going to be sick. I step into one of the stalls and drop to my knees, vomiting. I gag, heave, spit. When I look into the toilet bowl, I see long red hair floating in a slow, ominous circle.

  As I back out of the stall, eyes on the swirling hair, I feel someone behind me. I spin around, realize it’s the mirror. My own reflection gazes back at me, bald. My scalp is smooth as an egg.

  I gasp. Hold my head for a moment. Stare at my hands. Fistfuls of red hair spill from my fingers, littering the floor. No, no, no, I say. No.

  It’ll be okay soon. Someone is patting my back, consoling me. It’s almost over.

  The girl is with me. She’s the one who has lost her hair, not me. No hair, no eyelashes, and just a trace of eyebrows. I recognize her only by the lip gloss and the faded sprinkling of freckles on her nose. She pats my back again, but her big eyes against that pale, alien-looking skull are anything but comforting.

  And the setting has changed. We’re in a dim pink room now, standing beside a neatly made hospital bed. Nearby, an IV drip adds an air of menace. I don’t think
it’s an actual hospital, judging from the whimsical balloon bedspread, the ballet-shoes lamp, or the shelves of teddy bears. Her bedroom, maybe.

  Are you dead? I whisper.

  She shakes her head. I’m sick.

  Are you going to get better?

  She shakes her head again, and she looks so old, so tired. I’m not strong enough. I’ve been sick too long. She sighs heavily. My mama and daddy are sad all the time ’cause a me.

  Her voice, I note, sounds local. Is she from Chicory?

  It’s not your fault, I murmur. Sometimes people just get sick.

  Like your li’l boy, she says, and I freeze.

  You know him? You know Keegan?

  She climbs into the hospital bed, ignoring my question, and settles herself under the covers. I don’t have much time. Will you tell them? My mama and daddy? They’re gonna wanna be here.

  But I’m not ready to do her any favors, not without an answer. Do you know my son?

  She leans back against the pillow and closes her eyes. You wish you coulda been with him, don’t you? You wish you coulda said good-bye.

  Where is he? I grip her shoulder harder than I mean to. The bone is heartbreakingly tiny. Have you seen Keegan? Please, I want to speak to him.

  She doesn’t open her eyes again. Her voice is sleepy, distant. One more day. I’m gonna give them one more day. Then I can go.

  The light in the room turns inky and thick. I can feel myself rising out of the moment, moving away even as I try to hold on. All that remains is the sound of her, soft and faraway. Tell my daddy, would you? Tell him four sixteen.

  “Who?” I ask. “Who do I tell?”

  My voice echoes throughout the dark cottage. I sit up, momentarily disoriented by the configuration of furniture, so unlike my bedroom in Stamford. My toes feel half-frozen, but my forehead and bangs are damp with sweat. Another disturbing dream of children. Another message. And the girl in my dream knew about Keegan.

  Hope, wild and desperate, takes root within my chest. If I do what she wants, can she help me talk to him? Can I finally see my son? But I lost the picture before she could give me something concrete. I don’t have a clue who the girl is, don’t know how I’m supposed to track down her father. And even if I did, what would I say? Hi, I’m Charlotte Cates. Your daughter came to me in a dream and told me she’s going to die tomorrow. And do the numbers four and sixteen mean anything to you?