by Shirley Jump
“And in those days, there was no such thing as disability pay.”
“No, but Alexandre was committed to the people around him. He built the cottage, which later became La Petite Maison, for Charles and his wife and children.”
“That’s pretty generous. It’s a gorgeous property.”
Marjo smiled. “It still pales in comparison with the plantation house Alexandre built for his wife, but that’s another story. Alexandre chose that remote location because Charles was a private man, and Alexandre knew that his friend would want to be away from the lack of privacy in Indigo. Charles was afraid people might alienate him because they thought his illness was contagious or had been some twisted punishment from God. Alexandre spared no expense, even bringing in a doctor from France and housing him in one of the outbuildings.”
“In short, he did everything he could for the man,” Paul said.
Marjo nodded. “In the end, it wasn’t enough. Charles died a year later, a long, slow, agonizing death. From what we’ve pieced together from the sketchy medical records left by the doctor, we think it might have been stomach cancer.”
Paul shuddered. “Not a good way to go. He must have suffered.”
“After Charles died, Alexandre told Charles’s family they could stay in the house, and he would continue to pay them Charles’s salary, even though his friend and the man he considered his true father was gone.”
“A man who thought with his heart,” Paul said, finding the meaning in her words, “not his wallet.”
“Exactly.” Marjo held up a finger, telling Paul the story was far from done. “But here’s where it gets interesting.”
Paul had his spoon halfway up to his mouth, then he paused. “There’s more?”
“After her husband died, Charles’s wife never spent another day in that house. She took the kids, whatever money was left, went to France and never returned.” Marjo quirked a grin. “Oh, and she took one other person with her.”
Paul leaned forward. “Who?”
“The French doctor. Apparently they’d grown very close over her husband’s sickbed.”
“Quite the grieving widow.” He shook his head. “Makes me feel bad for Charles.”
“It worked out okay. One of the maids who worked for Alexandre turned out to be Charles’s mistress, and the child she’d had three years earlier was his. As loyal as Charles was, he apparently made excellent use of his time off.”
Paul laughed. “This is all true?”
“Yeah. We pieced it together from birth records and letters. It was quite the scandal in those days, particularly when Charles’s widow left with the doctor. But until the day he died, Alexandre stuck by Charles and defended his name. He paid for Charles’s illegitimate child to be educated. The maid and the boy moved into the cottage and lived quite well.”
“That puts the little bed-and-breakfast into a whole new light.”
“That’s why I told you that story instead of the one about the opera house. I want you to see the opera house first, like you did La Petite Maison, then hear its story.”
“I have seen it.”
“But not the way you saw La Petite Maison today. You told me you were so wrapped up in capturing that building on film that you forgot the time, forgot our meeting, forgot everything.” She paused and took a sip of water, deciding this was as good a time as any to make her case, to finally get to the reason she’d invited Paul here. “Do me a favor. Spend more than a few minutes with the Indigo Opera House. I think you’ll see it in a whole new light, too. And then you’ll realize you can’t possibly let it go.”
“Don’t you think a new owner would be more supportive of your plans? More involved?”
“Maybe. And maybe not. Besides, all you have to do is remain the owner. I’m sure the town can give you a break on the taxes. And the restoration committee will handle everything else. The same thing happened with Shadows-on-the-Teche, when the original owner’s grandson decided to sponsor a revival of the buildings.”
“It’s not just about the tax bill. I don’t want to own an opera house. To me, that wreck of a building is a tie. And I don’t like ties.”
“But you can’t sell it,” Marjo protested. “Not now. If you put it on the market, we’ll be forced to stop the restoration. We’re having enough problems getting funding since hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Tourism dried up for a long time, and people are afraid to invest in an area that has already suffered so much. The committee, and the town itself, won’t support something that might end up being sold to some developer who will tear it down and put up a discount store in its place.”
“Here? In the middle of nowhere? I think the chances of that happening are remote.”
Did he have to take her literally? “Either way, the committee won’t want to sink any more time or effort into something that might not be there in three months, or six. And you are a Valois, and to the committee, having a Valois on the deed is vital.”
“Why? As far as I know, none of the Valois family has been down here in years. I wasn’t even sure the place really existed, that it was just a family tale, until it popped up in my uncle Neil’s will. An uncle I’d rarely seen, I might add, and who’d never shown up at a Sunday dinner to boast about this ‘treasure.’ To most people in the family, this place was a good story for Sunday dinners, nothing more.”
“Your uncle remembered it,” she said. “He was here once, in the early fifties. Though he never had the money we needed to restore it, I think he wanted to make sure the property stayed in the family.”
Paul sat back in his chair. “My uncle was here? In Indigo?”
“I never met him, but Hugh, the town historian, told me Neil came into town long enough to pay a visit to the opera house. He didn’t stay long. Hugh said he got the feeling Neil was the kind of man who liked to be alone.”
“He was the family hermit. We rarely saw him.”
“Either way, after his visit, he wrote to Hugh once in a while to see how the place was doing. For the last thirty years or so, a woman named Maude Picard rented the opera house and turned it into an antique store. She dealt with a lawyer in New Orleans, and when she died last January, we tried to contact Neil but never heard back.”
“He was quite ill. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry,” she said with sincerity. She clasped her hands on her lap, praying she could get her message across to him. This moment might be the only one she had to convince Paul not to sell. “You need to understand something about Cajuns. If there’s one thing that’s important to the people of this area, it’s their heritage. Their traditions. Their customs. The opera house is a part of that heritage.” She lifted her hand and toyed with her spoon. “This area is…unique, just like I hear Nova Scotia is. It’s filled with people who are fiercely protective of their heritage. We have our own dialect. Our own type of food. You won’t find what we have here anywhere else in the world, and because of that, a lot of us are fighting to preserve our heritage.”
“Even as the world around you changes.” He spooned up some gumbo.
“Yes.”
“Fine. Then I’ll sell it to someone who promises to keep the building as it is. Maybe I’ll even name it The Valois or something. That should make you happy and honor my uncle’s wishes.”
Again, he was trying to wash his hands of the building, as if it were bothersome dirt. “That’s not enough,” Marjo protested, ignoring her gumbo, which was quickly growing cold. “To keep it truly the Indigo Opera House, it has to be owned by a Valois, because they’re the ones that founded it, and to people here, nothing can replace generations of ownership. If you knew the history—”
“I know enough. If there’s one thing my uncles and aunts like to do, it’s talk about where they came from. They rehash several hundred years of history and make it sound as if we were still trying to get out from under the English. Just because my relatives are like that doesn’t mean I am. I like feeling disconnected—unattached to anyone or any thing. I l
ive out of a backpack and I don’t worry about being home for supper for anyone. I come and go as I please, and thankfully, I get paid to do that.”
Marjo shook her head, unable to believe anyone would prefer to live their life free of family ties and roots, particularly someone who had grown up in an area so entrenched in its history. She’d always been such a part of this community and found it inconceivable that someone wouldn’t have a place to call home, a place that surrounded you like a warm blanket on a chilly night. “To me, that’s sad. What kind of life is that?”
“Depends on who’s living it. I happen to think my life is perfect the way it is.” He went back to his soup.
She glanced at his left hand. No wedding ring. She shouldn’t be surprised, given what he’d just told her, but she was. Paul was tanned, fit and seemed to be a happy, successful man, the kind any woman in her right mind would want. Yet when Marjo looked in his blue eyes, she got a feeling—those same feelings her granny Lulu used to get about storms on the way—that Paul Clermont’s life was not as perfect as he painted it. “Why don’t you come out and take pictures of the opera house?”
“I already took a couple, in case I need them for the Realtor or maybe a piece down the road. I don’t see the need for any more photos.”
“If you see the inside, the amazing construction of those nineteenth-century craftsmen, I’m sure you’d think differently. I don’t know anything about photography, but I know something about you, about your work. It’s damned good.” She clasped her hands together once again, before she went overboard. “I saw that series you did on the tribe in New Zealand. The Maori tribe who’d never seen an outsider before? Their culture was dying, because the very seclusion they sought had become a double-edged sword. You captured their story, but not in the captions. It was the pictures of their faces, their homes. And I have to admit, you did it really well.”
He sat back, surprised. “You looked up my work?”
“Even out here in the sticks, we get Internet access. And some of us actually know how to use Google.”
He grinned. “I’m flattered you looked my work up, and even more flattered that you liked it.”
“Then please do this one thing,” she said, sliding her bowl to the side and reaching briefly for his hand. When she touched him, once again the contact ignited something inside her. She’d meant only to emphasize her point, but clearly something more than that had happened here.
“What?” he prompted.
She pulled her hand back. “Look at the Indigo Opera House as an assignment. As a way to capture someone’s story. Maybe you could even get that magazine of yours to run a piece on it. That way, we all win.”
“How do you see that?”
“I get the publicity I need to fund the rest of the restoration, as well as spread the message about the importance of preserving our Cajun heritage. And you’ll undoubtedly end up with dozens of offers from rich philanthropists in New York or Hollywood who will invest in the property as a conversation piece.” She had to choke out those last few words, but surely anyone who saw the opera house would love it as much as she did.
“I’ll think about it,” he conceded. “You’ve whet my appetite with the story of the bed-and-breakfast. Not enough to make me want to own a piece of Indigo, but enough that I want to see the rest of the opera house through my lens.” Paul considered her words, his body still. “But only if you tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“What’s in it for you?” He leaned forward, and his piercing blue eyes seemed to zero in on her, slipping past her defenses. “Because there’s more to this for you than just fixing up some old building and making people remember a way of Cajun living that is disappearing faster than fog on a sunny day.”
“I don’t want anything more than that.”
“As you say down here, that’s a load of toad crap.”
She laughed. “We say it a little less pretty than that.”
“I’m with a lady,” Paul said, tossing her one of those grins that he seemed to have in abundance. “A lady who has a secret. And until I find out what your story is, Marjolaine Savoy—”
The sound of her name slipping from his lips in that deep, intent tone made her heart skip a beat.
“—I’m not making any promises.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NEXT MORNING Paul stood by the slow-moving Bayou Teche, his camera in hand. Centuries-old oak trees coated in moss stood like silent sentries over the water, their branches weighed down and reaching toward the bayou like the hair of Mother Nature herself. It was the kind of place where a man could fall completely off the map, lost in its lush wilderness.
Of course, the beauty around him included alligators lurking in the bayou, a thought that reminded Paul he needed to pay attention.
Through his camera lens, he sighted a brightly colored bird in a tree, then turned to frame a stand of dead oaks that looked like blackened ghosts. He didn’t depress the shutter button, instead he simply observed the landscape through the narrowed, distant eye of the lens.
The bayou was, as Marjo had said, unlike any place he’d ever been before. It seemed to combine the desolation of the desert with the teeming life of the rain forest, and yet there was also an other-worldly feel to the place. Before him, a gnarled cypress reaching at least a hundred feet up to the sky as an elegant red-shouldered hawk circled overhead, watching, always watching, for prey.
Last night’s dinner with Marjo had been enjoyable, even if the two of them butted heads more often than they agreed. If he could just get her to accept his plans for the opera house, maybe he could leave this place.
“What’s that?”
Paul turned around, lowering his camera as he did. A boy, well, a young man, stood behind him, eyeing the camera, a quizzical look on his face.
“A camera,” Paul said.
“Does it make those instant pictures?”
It took Paul a second to understand the question because of the Cajun accent. “A Polaroid? No, not exactly. But it does let you see the pictures right away.” Paul held out the camera, showing the young man the review screen.
“Is that a picture you just took?”
“No, just the scene from the viewfinder.”
The young man’s face scrunched up at that word, but then he nodded, apparently satisfied with Paul’s answer. “I’m Gabriel,” he said suddenly, thrusting out a hand. “I make twenty-two at my next birthday.”
“Paul.” They shook, Gabriel’s hand pumping up and down.
“What are you doing in the bayou?”
“Well…” Paul paused, filtering the information. Gabriel seemed to be a little mentally challenged—not much, but enough that Paul didn’t think entering into the legalities of his ownership problem would be a good idea. Besides, the way word traveled around here, anything he said would likely end up in the weekly paper. “Selling some property.”
“Why?”
Gabriel’s face was guileless, truly curious. “Because I don’t want to own it anymore.”
“You don’t want to live here?”
“It’s not exactly the kind of property someone lives in,” Paul replied, skipping the main question. He didn’t want to live here, or anywhere.
“Oh.” Gabriel considered this, shifting back and forth on his feet in an almost rocking movement. “Why can’t ya?”
The words came out blended, like, “I-cancha.”
“The building I own is the opera house,” Paul said, figuring if he didn’t say that straight-out, they’d be playing the why game for a while.
The boy’s blue eyes brightened. “You own that? Wait till I tell Marjo. She’s gonna want to meet you.”
“I already met Marjo.” And tangled with her twice, earning a spot on her permanent enemy list, a dish of gumbo notwithstanding.
“She’s my sister.” Another beaming smile.
“Oh,” Paul said, surprised. It wasn’t that he’d expected Marjo Savoy to exist in a vacuum, he ju
st hadn’t pictured her as part of a family. Her well-mannered brother didn’t seem to have inherited an ounce of his older sister’s disagreeable nature.
“You should keep it,” Gabriel said. “The opera house, it’s really important to people. I forget why, but I know it’s really important.”
“Well, I’m going to think about that,” Paul said, deciding he would, indeed. Owning an opera house wasn’t a hardship, as Marjo had said, and required little more than keeping his name on the deed. Still, the idea of being a landlord wrapped around him like a tentacle.
“Good!” Gabriel’s wide smile risked becoming contagious. “You gonna take pictures of it?”
“Well, I hadn’t—”
“I love pictures,” Gabriel said. “Some of them make me sad, but some make me happy. Know what I mean?”
Paul nodded.
“You must like pictures a lot.” Gabriel looked again at Paul’s camera, longing clear in his eyes. “I wish I had a camera like that. Then, whenever I wanted to see something again, I could just look at the picture.”
Paul smiled. He’d had the same wish as a child. How many times had he begged his parents for a camera? And then, when he’d finally received his first one for his twelfth birthday, he’d never been without a camera again. “Here, why don’t you try this one on for size?” He carefully handed over the Nikon to Gabriel.
He took it from Paul, weighing the silver camera in both palms. “It’s big. Heavy. Like a rock.”
Paul chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“Can I take a picture?”
“Sure,” Paul said. “But, first, let me show you how it works.” He came around behind Gabriel, helping him lift the camera into position and sight the image of the bayou in the lens. Then he showed him how to flick the zoom in a little, perfecting the shot. “Now just push that button.”
Gabriel looked back at Paul, hesitating only a second, before returning his gaze to the camera and doing as Paul suggested. The image imprinted on the digital card inside, then an instant later, appeared on the screen. “I did it!”
His joy was evident, the pride in his eyes like a beacon. For the first time in a long time, Paul remembered exactly why he’d gone into this job. “Yeah, you did. And you did a great job.”