Her eyes widened. “But that hasn’t happened in years … No, it can’t be …” she stuttered.
“What hasn’t happened?” Really this was ridiculous.
Grasping hold of his arm, Cerise tugged him inside and shut the door. She crossed to her dresser. Digging around in a small drawer, she produced what must have been a key because she inserted it in the lock.
“Look, we talked about this,” he said. “I’m not …”
“You are not going back out there.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t need protection from your grandmother.”
“For the last time, that was not my grandmother.”
“Well, there’s no one else, and you said yourself she was trying to mess with our heads.”
Her hand on his chest forced him over to the bed. She pressed his shoulder and he sank onto the frilled bed cover. “Lie down.”
He did so, and she settled in beside him, nestling her head on his shoulder. “This is the next best thing.”
He exhaled. Yes, it was. But she hadn’t answered his questions. “Cerise, why do you keep saying it isn’t your grandmother?”
Why did he really not want to know?
Her hand trailed over his waist. “My grandmother takes sleeping pills at night. Plus, Yolanda locks her door from the outside.”
Locks the door? Again, he didn’t want to know, but heard himself ask anyway. “Why?” Medication. The memory rushed in. Earlier, Cerise had told Yolanda to give the old woman medication – sleeping pills.
“She has borderline dementia. She’s worse at night.”
He exhaled. Dementia? So the old woman was going crazy?
She answered his next question before he could ask. “She wanted the new fixture in the glass room before she’s too far gone to remember it. At least, that’s what she said to me.”
A fist formed in his gut and punched. “Then she wasn’t in my room?”
Cerise wagged her head, their bodies now warm and sealed together. “Told you that …” she said sleepily.
“Cerise.” He shook her, and one eye flicked open. “Then who was that?”
She shut her eye. “Lucille.”
“Lucille?”
“Delbert Delacroix the Third’s wife.”
***
Sunlight spilt through the glass across the bed directly into Andre’s eyes, almost foreign. He squinted and rolled over, content to lapse back into sleep, but the ruffled bedcover and empty place beside him sat him upright. Cerise was gone, and the sun was out. That meant––
His head like lead, he slumped back onto the mattress and groaned. Images from the previous night flickered through his head, the last some talk of a ghost named Lucille. A ghost? He didn’t believe in ghosts. Spirits and the supernatural, yes, but not “the souls of dead people wandering the earth.” Over and above that, he’d been taught of God’s power over demons through believers, so he had nothing to fear.
This didn’t stop him from speculating about it, speculation which soon turned to disbelief that anything in the last twenty-four hours had happened. Had he really come here to measure for a glass fixture and learned the story of his father? An incredible story and a sad one.
What had his dad thought after leaving this place? Knowing the love of his life was here and what had happened to her yet powerless to do anything about it. He’d obviously tried to move on. His own life was the result. But his dad had failed in part, and his mom had paid the price.
She was happy in her own way though, and intensely proud of him. She had friends and hobbies. She hoped to have grandchildren someday.
He made a face. What would she think of Cerise? Given whom she was, would she accept her or would it be too painful?
He didn’t know the future, but he wanted Cerise in it. If he believed in fate, he’d say it was destined to be – him and her. He’d say what their parents endured was for their benefit, because they needed to find each other. And maybe, though chance and fortune weren’t part of his personal views, maybe in some small part that was still true. Maybe what had happened was for their benefit, otherwise he wouldn’t be here, he wouldn’t have met her, and already, he couldn’t picture that.
The snap of the lock preceded Cerise’s return to the room. Her pink skirt flared out behind her in the draft of her movements. Balancing a breakfast tray in her hands, she kicked the door closed and carried it over to the bed. “Sit up.”
He did so, scooting upward and leaning on the rolled edge of the elaborately carved bed frame. She set the tray in his lap.
“What’d I do to deserve this?” he asked.
She smiled and turned the handle of a fork his direction. “You are so cute.”
He gave a short laugh. “I’ll do cute more often if it earns me favors.”
Her smile straightened then and her eyes became introspective.
“What is it?” he asked.
She rose from bed and made to turn, but stopped. “I brought you food because you haven’t much time.”
“Much time?”
She waved at the window. “The sun has returned. My grandmother wants to see you downstairs in half an hour.”
CHAPTER 6
Andre Garner never ceased to take her breath away. His eyes were captivating, their clear blue depths as crystalline as the glass he was known for. But it was more than their color that held your gaze. It was the spark in them, some impertinent expression that dared you to find one flaw. She couldn’t. From every view, in every conversation, he’d shown a certain confidence, a manner that said he knew who he was and offered no apology.
But without pride. He wasn’t conceited, simply sure of himself, making right choices because they were right. He was right to turn her away the night before. She would have regretted it, but not from a moral standpoint. She hadn’t his belief in abstinence. No, for her it would have been that he wasn’t strong enough to refuse her. Except he’d shown he was. He’d faced down the horrible story of her life and cared for her enough to deny himself anyway.
Her heart beat tender in her chest, every pulse squeezing tighter, forcing more and more of her breath out aching lungs until she was left a shell, her life minus Andre Garner nothingness.
Yet he’d walk through those doors and be gone. He had no choice.
Cerise clutched the staircase railing tighter and forced her feet downward. She couldn’t look back because he was standing there. She felt his presence as strong as the apparition that had visited his room last night.
He hadn’t been scared of that either, but angry. Of even the spectral world, he demanded respect. Who did that? Who dared the devil to cross some line in the sand?
Not her. She was weak. She catered to an old woman, whose mind was going, living a life of solitude she no longer wanted, in a house that held nothing but hatred and violence, all made darker by the brief light he’d given. She was weak. Like her mother unable to keep from falling for a man she was never meant to have. Weak, unable to beg him to take her along. Weak, unable to tear herself away. Instead, caught in a vortex of superstition and fantasy, which held her in their grip.
At the bottom of the stairs, she turned left and walked toward the double doors to the glass room. His footsteps fell behind her. His fragrance. His heat. Still, she didn’t look back, but grasped the knobs and turned. Pushing them open, light flooded out, a splendor reserved for a few of which he was one.
She ducked her head to avoid his gaze and backed toward the wall. He paused. He wanted her to look up, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t say goodbye.
“Cerise,” he whispered.
She pointed inside. “Go. She’s waiting.” And revolving on her heel, she walked away.
***
The sun’s brilliance in the glass room was more than he could take. Careening from surface to surface, off bottles and jars in a thousand shades, it split and refracted until there was nowhere to escape. He shut his eyes against it finally, allowing his retinas to cool.
But she was wrong. Whatever had caused his dad to try to move on from the loss of her mother was irrelevant to him. He was, after all, half of his mom as much as half of Levi Garner and therefore able to make his own decisions.
“Mr. Garner.”
Andre pulled his eyes open and gazed into the aged face of Mrs. Delacroix, and his thoughts changed direction. She showed no sign of dementia, but appeared bright-eyed and sharp. She wore a floral gown with bell-like sleeves. A pink ribbon cinched her waist and a gilt comb shone in her hair.
“You like the room?” she asked.
He turned his gaze around the visual spectrum, tallying up the thousands of dollars of glass so perfectly arranged. “It’s amazing.” And it was. It was a glass-lovers paradise, an optical ecstasy of incredible magnitude.
“I’m curious though,” he said. “Why would you treasure it so much given the history of your family?” He stated the accusation plain and looked for her reaction.
Physically, she didn’t react at all, but her eyes became daggers, stabbing outward. “You speak impertinence,” she said.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I speak the truth, something which hasn’t been said here in many years.”
“Cerise has coddled you.”
Cerise. She’d used her as a weapon against him, or she’d tried to.
He blew out a breath, loud and harsh. “Cerise is damaged by it all. You are as responsible for that as anyone else.”
She mashed her lips into a line. “I’ll have you escorted out.”
He half-smiled. “You will do that anyway, but only after I agree to design your coup de grace.” Her swan song. Something to one-up all that her husband had sought to obtain. That’s what this was about. Not that she loved the glass, but that she wouldn’t let him be the master of it.
“You are sure of yourself, so was my husband.”
He studied her. What exactly did she mean by that? They’d fought, she and her husband, so Cerise had said. Over what? The horrible behavior of their son? Over Mr. Delacroix’s part in his death? She wasn’t likely to reveal the answer, whatever it was.
He refocused himself. “You brought me here as punishment. You sought to inflict pain on yourself as much as Cerise, and you seek to assuage the curse.”
How much she believed in such was gauged by her answer. She cackled, a gurgling sound. “The curse? You don’t believe in it.”
He shook his head. “I believe in curses well enough, but I believe in fear more. Because that is their greatest weapon, and I’m not afraid, of the house, of the glass, of you.”
No, she was the one afraid. There she stood watching all she’d sought to attain die around her: prestige, a good name – all of her family gone but one girl, who sought escape.
“You are a blind man groping around in the darkness,” he continued. “You hope your money or your influence will save you, but nothing you try will do that. Not a year’s salary or an expensive glass fixture. The only hope you have will be found on your knees begging grace and forgiveness.”
She was rigid now, incensed, her pallor flickering red and white, and staring at her, a thought fitted in place. The design. She wanted the ultimate design to hang central to the room, and in that instant, the shape and form of it flashed in his thinking, the colors he’d need, the contour.
A smile crawled on his face. “Six months,” he said. “I’ll have it completed and float it over on a barge. It’ll take five workers and all day to hang. We won’t stay the night, so timing with the weather will be at my discretion.”
He wouldn’t be trapped here again.
“Very well.”
“And Cerise is free to leave when she will to go where she will.”
The old woman’s face twitched, a cross between her previous anger and a hint of amusement. “You’d throw her in with the deal? She won’t leave.”
No, she wouldn’t go right now. She needed more time. Time to realize she was only as tied down as she allowed herself to be. Time to believe in something other than a pile of old stories.
“You will allow her to leave.” He reiterated his statement. “Or I will tell what I know of this place to everyone I can.”
This turned the old woman’s ire into rage and a change of her voice to one frothing with wrath. “I saved her,” she said. “My son tried to kill his own child. Did she tell you that? He tossed her mother around, thinking the baby wouldn’t live. But when he failed, he demanded I give her to him. But I knew what he’d do, so I secreted her away. I fed her myself with a bottle. Her mother wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t see her.”
Awful. But he wasn’t surprised. Yet still there were questions.
“Your husband,” he said. “He killed his son.”
The temperature of her blood was almost palpable in the room, yet she was strangely calm. Ice-like. “He killed himself.”
And the full circle stared back at him again. He had to get out, get away from this place. Escape. Except for Cerise. She was here, and she didn’t deserve to be left with a woman capable of such things. That she’d done the idea framed in his head, he had no doubt. This was her triumph. She had her husband’s glass, his prized possessions, his granddaughter that she’d saved, and apparently his madness as well.
“God keep her,” he mumbled.
The old woman squared herself, blocking the path to the door he entered through, and waved him the opposite direction. Confused and not willing to risk going against her, Andre took the indicated path, around the shelves to a wide spot in front of a garden entrance. At that instant, it opened and Osiris stood there. He was dressed in his boatman outfit, wool jacket, white pants, blue button-up shirt, and he wore a cap with a gold logo embroidered on it. He looked regal almost.
“Your ride,” the old woman said.
His ride. He glanced behind, but the door to the house was shuttered. So that was her game and why Cerise had been so upset, why she’d refused to look at him. She knew he’d not be allowed back inside.
The sun sparkled off the rain-laden grass in a splendor only second to the one surrounding him.
“Six months,” Mrs. Delacroix said. “You can call me.”
He took a step forward and paused. Looking back at her, another question formed on his lips. “Who was Lucille?”
Her anger was gone. Perhaps she felt now she’d won. He’d be gone, exactly the same way his father had, and Cerise would be left behind. His breakfast soured in his gut.
“Lucille?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Delbert the Third’s wife. She was an odd sort, used to wander the halls and peek in the guests’ rooms. More than one awakened with her hovering over the bed.”
He clenched his teeth tight to prevent the contents of his stomach from rising and hastily left the room. The door slammed shut.
Osiris motioned the way down the path through flowers hanging water-heavy heads over the soggy soil and a bird bath overflowing with rain to the same trail they’d walked up only the day before. One day. Had it been only one day? It felt like a lifetime.
He stumbled ahead, his heart filling his chest. He hadn’t counted on this, hadn’t thought he’d have to leave so suddenly. He’d planned it out, what he’d say to her, what comfort he’d give, and yet as everything here had been so unexpected, this was no different. The ground sloped downward and gravity pulled him faster toward the cypress swamp.
He took another step, and another, and another, emotion warring in his soul, at the edge of the trees, pulling to a halt. He spun around and strained his gaze for the house. This was wrong. He’d promised her. He made to return, but Osiris hand landed on his arm.
He shook his head then jerked his
chin to the left.
Andre looked in the indicated direction and there, her hand on the trunk of a tree, stood Cerise. She squeaked and dashed across the space, landing in his arms. He wrapped her tight.
“I thought you were avoiding me,” he said.
Her tears dampened his collar and her hair clung to his cheek. Her hair. He gazed down at her. She had it down. He pushed her back and gripped her face.
“I didn’t want to say goodbye,” she said. “I thought … thought I could walk away, but I can’t. I want what my mother never had, whatever this is. Destiny. Fate. God. I want to be strong like you and move past what happened to fall in love with a man I think all of heaven has ordained. But I can’t leave yet.”
He gulped. “I know.”
“She’s old and ill and hateful, but she’s all I’ve got. I have to figure some things out first.”
He couldn’t speak for the words caught in his throat.
“I have to come to the mainland in about three weeks – to see my mother. You said if I did …”
Hope pooled in her voice, and he lowered his mouth to hers, a gentle caress, an exchange of hearts. “Come find me,” he said. “I’ll be there waiting.”
She pressed herself against him.
“It won’t be like the last time. I’m not going to walk away from you,” he said. She had to know that, had to believe it.
Her hand around his waist, she wadded his shirt her fist. “I want to believe,” she said.
He breathed in the scent of her hair and memorized the fit of their bodies together. “There is a Bible in the library,” he replied. “Start with the book of John. Read every day if you can. Will you do that?”
She bobbed her head, her cheek scrubbing against his shirt. “Yes.”
“We must go.” Osiris spoke from the side.
Andre raised his gaze then switched it to her face. She pulled away, but only a space, and straightened. “Until next time, Mr. Garner.”
He smiled. “Until next time, Cerise.”
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