The Gates of Evangeline

by Hester Young

  “Me? Honey, I don’t get to decide—” But I realize then what he’s telling me.

  I’ve had only one period since Keegan died. When I stopped menstruating after his death, the doctor told me not to worry. It was stress related, she said, not uncommon. Eventually I should resume having them normally. And I did have a period, one period, just after Christmas. Which means, assuming my body did somehow get back on schedule, I would’ve ovulated fourteen days later. Right around the time I met Noah.

  Oh. My God.

  “Mom,” Keegan tells me, “my little sister is growing in your belly.”

  It’s both the best news and the worst news I could imagine. I have nowhere to live and no job, and Noah does not want a child. I don’t want to be with a man who isn’t ready and ecstatic to be a father. Having a baby will mean the end of us.

  But.

  It’s a baby. A daughter.

  No matter how ill-timed, how crazy or inconvenient her arrival, she will be my child. The joy of that will get me through all the rest.

  I hug Keegan tightly to me. He’s the only one who can share in my happiness. “Thank you,” I murmur. “I didn’t know.”

  “That’s how come I had to tell you.”

  I nod. “It’s . . . a surprise. A really good surprise.” Something terrifying occurs to me. “Keegan, what about her brain? Will she be like you? Will she . . .” I can’t even finish the question.

  He nestles his head on my shoulder and yawns. “She’ll be okay,” he assures me. “She won’t get sick.”

  He’s so matter-of-fact, so devoid of blame, yet I still can’t shake the guilt. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, baby. I’m sorry I didn’t see something was wrong.” I swallow. “I wish that I’d . . . paid better attention.”

  “I had to leave, Mommy.”

  “No. It was my job to keep you here. To keep you safe. And I didn’t.”

  He sighs, like I’m missing the whole point of everything. “If I didn’t leave,” he explains patiently, “then you wouldn’t grow my little sister.”

  Is that how it works? I want to ask. Is the universe really this unfair? To lead you on a circuitous path to one child, it takes away another? What a crock. Had anyone given me a choice, I would’ve chosen Keegan. I would’ve chosen him a thousand times over. I would’ve kept my crappy job and stumbled through my lonely single-mom existence until the end of time if only he could’ve stayed. No matter what Keegan says, I’m not convinced there’s a master plan in any of this. As far as I can tell, life is pure chance, with good events and bad falling randomly upon us. Do the why and how even make a difference? I have to live in this world regardless.

  “Kee?” Suddenly I feel sleepy, too exhausted to contemplate any of this.

  His head shifts against my shoulder as he looks up at me. “What, Mommy?”

  “What was the last thing I said to you?” It’s always bothered me. I’ve reviewed the day he died in my mind a thousand times, but I can never remember our final moment together. “When I dropped you off at school, what was the last thing I said?”

  He rolls his eyes. “What you always say. You said, ‘Have a good day, Kee, I love you.’”

  Something in me relaxes. It shouldn’t matter, not after everything, but it does. “Good,” I say. “I hope you never forget. I love you so much. Always.”

  Even now, my love is unremarkable to him, maybe even a little embarrassing. His mother will forever be something he can take for granted, and I’m glad. “I know, Mommy,” he says. “I know.”

  • • •

  WHEN I WAKE UP, my son is gone. There’s a hollow space in my arms where I held him. I should feel loss, emptiness, devastation, all the emotions I’ve been wrestling with since he died. Instead, I feel calm. A sense of peace has fallen over me, wrapped me in its warmth like a soft, protective blanket.

  He was here, I think. He was really here.

  I could’ve been dreaming. There’s no proof that I wasn’t. All I have to go on is this feeling of comfort, and yet somehow that’s enough. I believe in something impossible. For the first time in my life, I have faith. Not in some omnipotent creator or the weird workings of the universe, but in my son. I believe in my son.

  It’s still dark out. Not quite six a.m., according to my phone. Beside me, Noah snores loudly despite the pillow covering his head. I slip from bed, away from his warmth, and press my face to the window, gazing down at the parking lot. The cars sparkle beneath the streetlights, covered in a thin layer of frost. Spring will be here soon, then summer. Come autumn, I will have a baby girl.

  I stand by the window for a long time, watch the rising light. A pair of birds skitter across the branches of a tree and fly away. An early riser begins to scrape the frost from his windshield in long, laborious strokes. From the couch, I hear Noah rustling around.

  “Whatcha see out there?” he asks.

  He looks bizarrely content for someone who spent the night on a foldaway bed in the house of an eighty-seven-year-old woman. But he’s never asked for much. This whole trip he’s just seemed glad to have a place to go.

  “You okay?” He squints at me. “You look all spooky.”

  I don’t reply. For as little time as he’s known me, he reads me pretty well.

  “You had one of those dreams, didn’t you?” He leans forward, fascinated, but also creeped out. “What did you see?”

  I hesitate. There’s only one key part of my Keegan encounter that I should share, but I don’t know how he’ll react. “I need to tell you something.”

  He’s lost his family, I think. Maybe he’ll change his mind. Maybe he’ll want the baby.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” he says.

  I don’t draw it out. “I think I’m pregnant.”

  “What do you . . . but how?” He blinks a few times. “By who?”

  This is worse than I was expecting. “Did you really just ask me that?”

  He’s too busy trying to wrap his brain around my pregnancy to apologize.

  “Wait, so . . . you’re gonna have a baby? My baby?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t get it.” He climbs out of bed looking more befuddled than distraught. “You said you don’t get a period. I didn’t think you could have kids. And we’ve been safe. After the first time, we’ve always used—” He stops. “You think it was the first time?”

  “I’m guessing.”

  “Jesus. So that would make you . . . uh . . .” His math skills fail him. “How far along?”

  “About eleven weeks. It’s a girl.”

  “A girl.” He rubs his eyes like he might be dreaming. “This is crazy. You’re sure?”

  “Pretty sure.” I remove all the pillows from the bed, peel off the sheets, and begin folding up the couch. It’s easier not to look at him. “Listen, you’ve been very up-front with me about the kids thing, and this was more my mistake than yours. I have no expectations here. If you want out—”

  “Out? Out of what?”

  “Of us. Of being a dad. I know this wasn’t part of your plan.”

  “Well, no, but . . .” His voice gets very, very quiet. “Are you tellin’ me you want out? That you don’t want this baby?”

  I stop fussing with the couch. “I want this baby more than anything.”

  “Well, good.” He looks tremendously relieved. “Me too.”

  Now it’s my turn to be confused. “I thought you and Carmen split up because you didn’t want kids.”

  His face asks how I got such an absurd notion in my head. “No, we split up ’cause I did.”

  I’m at a loss for words.

  “I didn’t always want kids,” he explains. “When Carmen and I got together, neither one of us did. I was kinda a party boy, I guess, and she never liked little ’uns. But then my granddaddy got sick, and I dunno. Somethin’ was m
issin’. I realized I didn’t want it to be just her and me forever.”

  “You changed your mind,” I say softly, recalling now the conversation we had the night we met. He said he and Carmen used to be on the same page about children, but he changed his mind. Not knowing him, I’d assumed he was one of those guys who fear responsibility, who put off their wife’s requests for a baby with an I’m not ready yet. But that’s not Noah. Of course it’s not.

  Noah flops down on the reassembled couch and massages his temples. “I thought you knew where I stood on this. Remember when I asked how you felt about kids, and you got all weird on me, just totally shut me down?”

  I nod, dazed; it was right before Rae came to visit.

  “I didn’t get why you were actin’ so funny until Rae told me about Keegan.”

  Of course. The little chat they had in the garden. Why would I ever underestimate Rae’s big mouth? Noah, however, is clearly grateful to her.

  “She said I shouldn’t give up on you,” he tells me. “That you were a great mom. She said you loved kids.”

  Listening to Noah speak, I suddenly have the odd feeling that Keegan is with me. The curly head, the Batman pajamas—they’re close, if only I knew how to see. “I do,” I say. “I do love kids.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to go like this,” Noah says. “I wanted to give you some time. To grieve, you know? I thought, when you were ready, we could see a doctor. And even if we couldn’t have a kid together, we could maybe adopt. But I thought it could work.”

  It could work. It could actually work. I hear sounds of my grandmother moving around her bedroom, louder than necessary, as if warning us she can hear. This isn’t the most private place to have this conversation, I realize, but I can’t imagine putting it off.

  “You really want to do this?”

  “I’m not pretendin’ it’s gonna be easy,” he acknowledges. “We got a lot to do before this little lady comes. I hope you weren’t lookin’ for a big weddin’.”

  “Wedding?” I raise my eyebrows.

  He acts like this is no big thing. “Well, sure, we gotta get married.”

  “We’ve got two divorces between us, Noah, and the ink on your papers is still wet. We’re not getting married.”

  “Yes. We are.” He meets my gaze straight on, and from the way his jaw is set, I know I’ve met my match in stubborn. “Nobody’s gonna look at me and think I’m not committed to the mother of my child.”

  “Sorry you feel that way,” I tell him evenly, “but I don’t give a crap what people think. I’m done with marriage. And I’m certainly not going to get strong-armed into it just because I’m pregnant. What century do you Texans live in, anyway?”

  He takes a deep breath, drawing on some deep reserve of calm that is probably available only because my grandmother is in the other room. “We’re not gonna argue about this now,” he says. “We got plenty other decisions to make.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, to start, we gotta find somewhere to live. Carmen got the house, and my place isn’t right for raisin’ a family.” He rubs his chin, thinking it over. “We can spend a couple more days here, but we should probably get back and start house-huntin’.”

  “Get back where? You think I’m going to raise my kid in Texas?” This will be an even bigger sticking point than marriage.

  “You’ll like Sidalie,” he promises me. “The schools are good. We can get a big house, big yard—”

  “I’m not living in Texas. How can you expect me to just . . . drop everything . . .”

  “Honey, that’s where I work. I gotta oversee my company.”

  I call bullshit. “You just inherited a quarter of the Deveau fortune. Don’t tell me you have to work.”

  “I happen to love my job,” he begins, and then decides this line of reasoning will get him nowhere. “Just come to Sidalie with me. Give it a chance. You’ll like it, I know you’ll like it.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I like it or not, it’s in Texas! Are you listening to me? Texas is out.” I don’t know if my blind resistance to the Lone Star State is a result of hormones, a fear of change, or what, but even I can hear now that I sound a little nuts.

  “You can’t rule out an entire state you’ve never been to,” Noah says in a tone that indicates some experience dealing with unreasonable females. “You should at least visit. The weather is better, the real estate is more affordable.”

  I’m about to launch a spirited defense of the Northeast, but suddenly in the middle of what seems to be a Very Important Debate, I can’t help myself. I break into a huge, stupid grin. I start to laugh. It’s too amazing, too miraculous for me to get angry. Where will we live? Should we get married? These are our issues. This moment is too good to waste on petty squabbling. Because what were the chances? After abandonment, betrayal, a pair of failed marriages, and personal losses too great to enumerate, Noah and I have survived. We’re semifunctional human beings. We’re expecting a baby. And we’re together. One way or another, we’ll have to iron out the details. But right now, how can I be anything but happy?

  Irritation flashes across Noah’s face as he realizes that I’m not absorbing any of his pro-Sidalie talking points. “Charlie? Why you smilin’? I don’t find this funny.” His reproof only broadens my smirk. He already sounds so fatherly.

  “Babe,” he says, trying again. “Please. Stay with me on this. We’re talkin’ about our future. We’re talkin’ about our daughter.”

  “I know.” My whole body seems to tingle at the words “our daughter,” so wonderful and strange to my ears. I reach out and weave my fingers through his, feel him relax slightly at my touch. “That’s why I’m smiling.”

  Acknowledgments

  Anyone interested in Louisiana’s historic plantation homes can learn much from the knowledgeable guides at Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie and Shadows-on-the-Teche in New Iberia. They answered several questions for me as I got started with the writing process. Visiting a currently occupied and somewhat modernized plantation home, on the other hand, seemed a tall order. I am fortunate that former governor Mike Foster and his wife, Alice, generously open Oaklawn Manor, their family estate in Franklin, to the public. On both my visits, guide Mary Edwards provided chatty and colorful tours, which proved immensely helpful in the writing of this novel.

  My appreciation goes to Rosaleigh Young, Deborah Hoff, and Carolyn Wise, who each offered thoughtful commentary on various drafts. Over and over again, Ellen Madigan and Todd Moore gave me the child-free writing time I needed in the homestretch—I am so grateful for their friendship. For nurturing my interest in writing from an early age and comparing my mediocre fifth-grade stories to the classics, I owe my father, John, a thank-you as well.

  Above all, my profound gratitude goes to Spencer Wise, who read each chapter as I wrote it, happily accompanied me on several research trips, and pushed me to put my work out in the world when I was tempted to hide it in a drawer. I have wanted to be a writer since I was six years old. Spencer, you were the wind in my sails that brought me here.

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