The Gates of Evangeline

by Hester Young

  Stay with me, Gabriel. You’ve got to tell me more. Who’s the bad guy? Gabriel? Who’s the bad guy?

  But even a two-year-old can sense my weakness. I couldn’t save my own child. How could I save him? Save his mother? The dock, the swamp, the bobbing Goldfish crackers, and the little boy all grow fuzzy. He’s given up on me. I stand up, the only clear form left in a world that is starting to resemble a weird, smudgy piece of expressionist art.

  Why? I beg him. Why don’t you tell me?

  I love my mommy, he says simply.

  28.

  It’s time to leave Chicory, to admit defeat. Because I’ve been defeated. Thoroughly. The child I came to help has lost his faith in me. I have no idea who killed Gabriel Deveau or Sean Lauchlin or why. And I’m nursing a pretty bruised—if not broken—heart, having been stupid enough to fall for a charming liar, at best, or at worst, a murderer. How can I trust my judgment about anything after a mistake this severe?

  I’m heading for a breakdown. Fast.

  I push cornflakes around my bowl and logically assess the mess that is my life. It’s Wednesday morning. I’m supposed to reconnect with Noah tomorrow. I still don’t know if he intentionally left his phone with me or genuinely forgot it. I don’t know if he’ll ditch me or show up looking for me. And I don’t know if I want to see him again. Part of me wants to tell him off, to feel empowered by my anger and not victimized by my hurt. Another part says, Walk away. The only thing you have left is your dignity, girl. And what if he did try to kill Jules? He could be dangerous.

  In the end, I find myself sitting with a bowl of soggy cereal and an abundance of self-loathing. Whether or not Noah turns up tomorrow, I need to return to Stamford. To see Grandma, to put my house on the market, to finish the book somehow. To start my lonely new life, instead of postponing it here in Louisiana limbo.

  I soon discover I’m not the only one having a bad day. In the kitchen, Leeann waves an oven mitt over a pan of smoky corn bread. She holds one hand to her head and looks ready to cry. It’s the day after Mardi Gras, so I assume she’s suffering from the usual postparty affliction.

  “Hangover?”

  She shakes her head miserably. “I got no excuse. Just did’n grease the pan.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Sydney and Brigitte aren’t back yet. No one will care.”

  “I know, I . . .” She takes a deep breath, but her voice wavers anyway. “I had a rough few days at home, is all.”

  “I think the last few days have been rough on everybody.”

  Her eyes fill up with tears. “I can’t even believe it about Jules. I shoulda seen through it, that whole attitude. I shoulda seen him hurtin’.”

  “They don’t know exactly what happened,” I say. “Maybe Jules didn’t mean to . . .”

  She gives me a long look. “I heard ’e took a lotta pills. I don’t think it was an accident.”

  I don’t think it was an accident either, but I’m not about to share my theory with Leeann. Not when all I have to go on is a hunch. Not when I want so badly to be wrong. I change the subject. “Listen, I wanted to tell you . . . I’m leaving Evangeline tomorrow.”

  “What?! No! You mean, like, foreva?”

  “I’ve finished my research.”

  “Oh, Charlie, how can you leave now? I’m gone miss you. It’s gone be so quiet.”

  “You’ll just have to start planning that trip to New York you’ve been dreaming about.”

  “Shoot, if I didn’t have the li’l man, I’d be there in a heartbeat.” She manages a wobbly smile. “But I guess I know someone else who’s gone miss you. How’s Noah takin’ it?”

  Evidently Jules’s possible suicide attempt has eclipsed the news of Noah’s firing. “He took it fine,” I say, unable to look her in the eyes. “The family canceled his project. So he’s going home, and I’m going home.” I shrug and try to look like this is no big deal, like I wasn’t planning to introduce him to my family just twenty-four hours ago, like he’s not a liar and a fraud and maybe even responsible for Jules’s near death.

  “You two seemed so sweet togetha,” Leeann says wistfully. “I thought maybe things was gone work out.” The old rust-colored dog wanders into the room, a welcome diversion. Leeann looks thoughtfully at her ruined batch of corn bread. “Come see, chien,” she calls, and the dog trots over obediently. She sets down the pan and he digs in, his tongue and nose carving their way eagerly through the crumbs. Leeann scratches his ears while he gorges himself. “Always got one fan, don’t I? You a good boy.” She turns to me. “Neva met a betta dog. You shoulda seen him with Jo-Jo. Had the patience of a saint.”

  For a second, just a second, time stops. My heart stops. My blood freezes in my veins. “Jo-Jo?” I repeat.

  “Jonah,” she says, making kissy faces at the dog. “Ma son.”

  I lived in the big white house. I had a doggie.

  Oh. God.

  “Leeann,” I croak. “You said you used to live in one of the cottages, right?”

  She grimaces. “A few months, yeah. Then we got floodin’ from a storm, and our cottage was full up with mud. They spent all last spring remodelin’.” She takes the pan away from the dog and begins soaking it in the sink. “Lucky for us, Hettie had a sweet spot for Jonah and let us stay in the house. But I was so glad to leave. I swear, meetin’ Mike and movin’ in with ’im was the best thing ever happened to us.”

  Mike.

  He made me go, Jo-Jo said when I mentioned the big white house. And Mike did, in his way, by inviting Leeann—and her son—to share a home with him.

  Where can I find you? I asked the boy in last night’s dream.

  I’m with the bad guy, Jo-Jo said, and my mind turned to the macabre, imagined some serial killer fetishist who was hanging on to his remains. But it was simpler than that, much simpler. It’s so obvious now, so clear what’s been going on.

  Mike, who watches her son every day. Mike, who, according to Leeann, loves her baby like his own. Mike, who saw the young, vulnerable, unwed mother of a toddler and made a terrible, evil calculation.

  I might puke.

  How could I have been so utterly blind? This isn’t the first time I saw something before it happened. I dreamed about Zoey’s injury in advance, and Didi’s death. Why did I assume that I was seeing a child from the past? Why, when Jo-Jo was so close, did I overlook him again and again? I knew Leeann had a son. She talks about him all the time. I knew he was three years old. I knew she left him with Mike all day, just the two of them, and that her son called her once at work, sobbing, begging her to come home. I knew about this little boy, and not once, as a friendly gesture, did I ever ask his name.

  Because I was jealous. I didn’t want to hear about her child, not when I’d lost mine.

  No wonder Jo-Jo gave up on me last night. He saw me for what I was. Clueless. Selfish. Too caught up in my own sadness to help anyone.

  “Where is Jonah?” I ask faintly. “Right now, where is he?”

  “With Mike,” Leeann says, searching through the pantry. “I think they goin’ fishin’ today.”

  “Fishing? Like, on a boat?” It gets worse and worse.

  “Yeah, Mike’s got a motorboat for swampin’. Jonah said he didn’t wanna go, but Mike was so keen on it. He tries, Mike really does, but it’s hard these days. Ma baby’s goin’ through a mama phase where he cries any time I’m not holdin’ ’im.”

  Her ignorance leaves me breathless, although it’s not so surprising, really. Faced with two explanations, the clingy child versus the sexually abusive boyfriend, what would most people prefer to believe? Sometimes, to stay sane, you let yourself trust the shiny surface instead of digging for the darkness beneath. And I’m hardly one to cast stones at someone who has grossly misjudged a lover or failed to see her child was in danger. There’s just one more question, one last piece to fall in place.

 
“Leeann, this might sound weird, but does Jonah have a chipped tooth?”

  Please say no, I think. If he hasn’t chipped his tooth yet, maybe there’s time. Maybe I can stop it.

  Leeann peers at me, mouth hanging open. “He broke ’is front tooth yestaday ridin’ ’is bike. You givin’ me the frissons, Charlie. How’d you know that?”

  I cover my face with my hands. Despair is setting in. I’m too late. Too damn late. “We need to find him. We need to find your son right away.”

  “Why? Why you lookin’ like that?” She’s getting panicky now.

  “What’s Mike’s last name?” I need to tell Detective Minot who we’re looking for.

  “Findley. Mike Findley.” She wrings her hands. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “I want you to call him. Call him and tell him there’s an emergency. Tell him you need Jonah home right away.”

  “His phone won’t work in the swamp.”

  “Try.”

  “That look on you face—you think somethin’ bad gonna happen, don’t you?”

  “Where were they going fishing?” I persist. “Do you have any idea where Mike might’ve taken him?”

  She shakes her head, big-eyed. It doesn’t matter. Because I know where to find them. I’ve known all along.

  • • •

  THANK GOD Detective Minot answers his phone. I can’t imagine trying to explain this situation to a 911 dispatcher. “Hey.” I’m almost breathless. “You remember the boat launch I took you to? The one near Deveau property?”

  “Sure. You find something?”

  I jog along the gravel path toward my car. “Get every boat you can out there, Remy. There’s a three-year-old boy, Jonah Landry, who’s in danger.”

  Detective Minot exhales deeply. “Please tell me you’ve got more than a hunch to go on. I can’t launch some large-scale Water Patrol search if you don’t have—”

  “He’s with a man named Mike Findley. And I think Mike’s going to kill him.” I’m fully prepared to fabricate some story about a kidnapping if necessary, but Detective Minot jumps to conclusions without any deliberate deception on my part.

  “Oh, Jesus. Findley took the kid?” From his voice, the name is not unknown to him. “I knew that pervert couldn’t keep his hands to his damn self. I’ve been waiting five years to nail the piece of shit.”

  I climb into the driver’s seat of my car. “This is your chance.”

  “We’ll get him,” he promises me. “I’ll move on this fast as I can. Just . . . stay out of it now, okay? Findley was arrested before when a kid came forward. The state felt we didn’t have enough to prosecute and dropped charges, but Findley’s not going to forget that. He’s not going to leave witnesses this time. You don’t want to mess with one of these creeps when they get cornered, Charlotte.”

  I make a noncommittal noise and hang up. I remember how long it took the ambulance to arrive when Paulette was having her baby, and I can’t imagine Water Patrol will move any faster. I’d be out there in a heartbeat if I knew how to help, yet despite my hustle to the car, there’s little I can do at the boat launch. Assuming Mike has already got them in the water, I’m helpless. Land-bound. I could try to take Andre’s airboat, but I have no idea how to operate the thing, and it’s docked in front of the house, anyway. I’ve got no idea how the waterways connect, if at all.

  I feel sick to my stomach. It’s like Keegan all over again. I realize something’s wrong only when it’s too late. By the time help comes, Jonah will be gone. Mike will undoubtedly have some story prepared about a terrible fishing accident. And Jonah will never have the chance to speak against him, to reveal the awful things Mike did. There is nothing I can do to stop this.

  Unless.

  There’s a piece that I’ve been forgetting. The boat. That spooky old rowboat in the carriage house.

  Leeann said Mike had a motorboat, and that makes sense. There’s no way he took Jonah out in that rowboat, no way he’d have access to—or even knowledge of—that item. And yet, when I touched the wooden boat that night, I had a clear vision.

  I’m pushing the boat into the water. Trying to hold it steady.

  I’m peering over the side. Searching. Searching.

  Water. Murky. Plunging deep. Deeper.

  What if this, like my dream of Jonah, was not a vision of the past but of the future? Before, I was convinced that boat was an instrument of Gabriel Deveau’s death. What if it could be the only way to save Jonah Landry’s life?

  I take off running for the carriage house, praying that Jonah is still alive to save.

  29.

  The sky is a misty gray when I pull up to the boat launch. The threat of rain only strengthens my conviction that Mike’s intentions are pure evil—who would take a small child fishing in this weather? No people, no boats in sight, but I do observe a beat-up station wagon parked nearby with a hitch on the back. That’s got to be them. Thank goodness I left Leeann back in the kitchen. I don’t know what I’ll find here, but it could be something no mother should ever have to see.

  I step from the car, expecting a barrage of nasty sensations to strike as they have before, but there’s nothing. Nothing but my own rising dread. The air sits thick and heavy in my lungs, making it hard to breathe. Am I too late? What now? I’ve got nothing to aid me except memories of what I’ve already experienced.

  I jog over to the station wagon and peer inside, hoping for some clue about where Mike might have gone. There’s a car seat in the back littered with orange crumbs and Goldfish crackers. I shudder, remembering my vision, and check the front seat. No telltale maps, but on the passenger side of the car, I spot fishing tackle. Which means by the time they got out of this vehicle, Mike was no longer telling Jonah they were going on a fishing trip.

  Jonah must’ve been conscious on the drive over—he was eating Goldfish, evidently. Did he sense something bad coming, or was he used to bad things happening every time he was alone with his mother’s boyfriend? I remember the first time I came here. Even before I’d seen Evangeline, this terrible place drew me in, showed me its secrets. I felt what Jonah must’ve felt, a crack to the back of the head, panic, no air. I told Detective Minot that he drowned, that his abductor threw him into the water while he was still living. If I’m right, Jonah might not be dead yet. He could still be out there, on that boat.

  Leeann once told me her son saw angels. If ever there was a time for heavenly intervention, I think, it’s now. I run back over to my Prius. The old Deveau rowboat protrudes from the back, too large to fit properly into the trunk and backseat. I’m not sure this thing is even seaworthy, but it’s my only option. Heaving the front of the vessel onto my back, I drag the boat to the launch area. Every step is a struggle, but I don’t care. Leeann’s child is out there. Adrenaline is giving me the extra push I need. I run back for the oars and strap on a life jacket, pausing for just a second to peer out at the dark, motionless water of the swamp. I shiver.

  Nowhere left for me to go but in.

  • • •

  ROWING IS HARDER than I thought. The boat wobbles precariously when I get in, and even after I’ve righted her, she seems to have a mind of her own—a sign, no doubt, that I’m completely incompetent at steering. Branches, half-submerged in the relatively shallow swamp water, scratch at the sides of the boat as I slip by. It’s unnervingly quiet, nothing but the occasional bird and the gentle shhh of parting water. I recognize this place, the brown water and swirls of green scum. I know the dead leaves, the eerie gray light, the rotted branches curling like fingers. I dreamed it.

  I catch a flash of movement in some weeds. My heart pounds, expecting the worst: a small boy bobbing facedown. Instead, I see watchful green eyes peering up at me, a bumpy snout. The only time in my life I will ever be relieved to see an alligator.

  About fifty yards out from the launch area, I have choices to make. The swampy wa
ter funnels into different channels, narrower pathways broken up by oddly jutting fingers of shoreline and islands of weeds and bowing trees. Where do I go? I’m at a loss. Why, oh why, must my intuition fail me now? Have I really endured these disturbing visitations for nothing? I stop rowing and listen. The silence, I realize, is more than just creepy. Mike’s in a motorboat. If he were nearby, I would hear him. Unless he’s shut off the motor.

  Think this through. Why would he stop?

  He could’ve stopped to throw Jonah in the water, of course. I’ve been here a good fifteen or twenty minutes without hearing a motor, though, and throwing a child overboard shouldn’t take that long. He’d want to get away as quickly as possible, wouldn’t he? If Mike is like most pedophiles, he’s a coward, too weak-willed to resist his own urges, equipped with an endless propensity for self-justification. Detective Minot said he’s had a previous run-in with the law. I suspect Mike’s getting rid of Jonah as a practical matter, afraid the boy will expose him.

  Maybe he’s trying to weigh down Jonah’s body. That could take twenty minutes. I quickly dismiss the idea, however. A body that’s been deliberately weighed down would discredit any stories of an accidental drowning. He wouldn’t be that dumb, would he?

  I’m starting to despair. Mike’s boat must be out here, just beyond my hearing, and if I can’t even hear his motor, how can I possibly find the right spot?

  There’s one more possibility, one that gives me hope. Maybe Mike heard someone coming, another boat. Maybe he killed the motor to avoid detection.

  Water Patrol has to be on the alert by now. Maybe they’re out there, searching, and Mike is hiding, waiting for his chance to dispose of this child. I look around. Plenty of places to hide in the swamp. With all the trees and brush, it wouldn’t be hard to duck down a little waterway and wait for someone to pass by.

  I take a few strokes with the oars, and suddenly, without warning, the hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise. There, floating in the water beside my boat, is a single orange Goldfish cracker. Soggy but not yet totally dissolved.