Along the Cane River: Books 1-5 in the Inspirational Cane River Romance Series

by Mary Jane Hathaway

  As he walked into the meeting area, Mrs. Connors looked up from her desk with a smile. Their long time secretary had followed Paul to Natchitoches, just like Andy. Her husband had been ready to retire and embraced the idea of exchanging the hustle of the big city for a slow life on the river. As far as Andy could tell, they were both blissfully happy with their decision.

  “Morning, Andy. The meeting room is ready and I put in a tray of those little doughnuts you like.” Andy was over six feet tall but Mrs. Connors could look him in the eye from where she sat behind the elevated, highly polished semicircle.

  “Beignets. Thanks, Mrs. Connors.”

  It had never felt right to call her “June”. As the Chief Financial Officer of ScreenStop, he was technically her boss, but he was also several decades younger. He didn’t really have any reason to pause by her desk, but he did anyway, leaning his elbow on the ebony surface. “Seems like every coffee house in the city makes them. I admit it, I’m addicted.”

  “Don’t eat too many or I’ll have to order you some new suits.”

  It was a tired cliché, but she was a sort of mother figure. She encouraged, supported and all-out bossed him around when needed. She mothered him better than his own mother ever had. In turn, he let himself be honest once in a while.

  “They’re my only consolation,” he said.

  Sympathy flashed in her eyes. “It’s quite a change, isn’t it?”

  He looked down at the desk, rubbing an imaginary spot with his thumb. “How’s Mr. Connors liking the move?”

  “Loves it. He’s an Indiana boy, you know.”

  “Indiana.” He considered that a moment. “I went to Indianapolis for a weekend once. Kind of a big city. I only saw the convention center. His home town, is it much like Natchitoches?”

  “Not really, but it’s similar in the way all small towns are. He always wanted to move back to the country.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m not fond of the humidity and the mosquitos are unnaturally large, but I’m enjoying the change. For the first time, we’re not that weird couple on the sixth floor with the St. Bernard. Lili just loves the big yard.”

  “I bet she does.” Andy had never understood how Mrs. Connors managed such a huge dog in a city apartment. Lili was the size of a miniature horse, had the sweet nature of a kitten, and acted like she was a lapdog. The combination was either endearing or terrifying, depending on whether she was trying to sit on your chest.

  Mrs. Connors reached across the desk and touched his hand. “Give it time.”

  “I will. I am. I brought all my books and I’m slowly rereading them all.” That probably made him sound sad and friendless but it was the truth.

  “How’s Mark?”

  “He wants me to come home. I never realized how much he counted on my visits.” Their parents had placed Mark in a home for the mentally disabled and had visited only at Christmas. Once their mother passed away, their father had stopped going altogether. Now that Andy was gone, Mark didn’t have any visitors at all.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “If I could find out what it is exactly, I’m sure you would. Everyone’s been so nice. And it’s not Paul’s fault that I’m not adjusting. He’s gone out of his way to make me feel at home.”

  “Of course he has. But he’s busy with his own family. He’s got Alice, the baby, fishing partners, old friends. I always thought he seemed a little out of place in New York City.”

  “I know what you mean.” Paul was Creole through and through, and now that he’d married Alice and had a baby, they were more anchored to this place than if they’d grown actual roots into the soil. When they’d baptized Aurora last summer, it seemed like the entire town had shown up for dinner at their farmhouse afterward. Andy had wandered around the backyard with Aurora in his arms, wishing there was pizza instead of gumbo and wondering if zydeco music would ever sound like music to him.

  “I’ll bet you miss your other friends,” she said.

  Other friends. He was the kind of guy who knew a lot of people, but only had a few really good friends. It had always been that way but he hadn’t noticed until recently. It was even more obvious in Natchitoches. “I should probably join some groups or something. I thought I’d meet some other runners, but no luck. Maybe Alice knows a book club that needs another member.”

  “I saw a flyer for cornhole tryouts.”

  Andy was used to being one of the smarter people in the room, but he just couldn’t seem to catch up now that he’d moved down South. “Say again?”

  “Cornhole. It’s a sort of bean bag game. They even have a national association that handles the tournaments and rules,” she said. “The flyer I saw was for a team called Maized and Cornfused. They’re having open tryouts on Saturday. I don’t know that much about it except that you have to throw underhand from twenty-seven feet away.”

  Andy tried to imagine himself trying out for an adult bean bag game and couldn’t.

  “It doesn’t seem like it requires a lot of skill.” Mrs. Connors seemed to realize how that sounded and grimaced. “No offense, Andy.”

  “None taken. I agree, actually. I’m out of my depth here.” He meant to stop there but every small irritant seem to be scratching for release. “I mean, when do people bring out their winter coats? Never? It’s October and I’m sweating. And the accents. Sometimes I can’t understand a word people are saying to me. Forget the Creole. I feel awful asking them to repeat themselves and in the end, I just pretend I got it and move on.”

  Once he’d started, it was hard to stop listing all the things he found so very confusing. “The music festival is fun but I think one day of zydeco a year is more than enough. I wasn’t a clubber so I’m not attached to laser light shows or techno but going out dancing here involves jeans and boots and a fiddle. And the food. I don’t care if okra is good for me, it’s slimy. Last week I saw two people almost get in a fistfight over whether Texas or Carolina barbeque is better, and they live in Louisiana. And what is the obsession with grits?”

  “But you like the beignets.”

  “I can’t live on beignets forever but I can’t really tell what’s in most dishes. Then again, it doesn’t matter because whatever it is, it’ll be deep fried.” He sighed. “Sorry for ranting. I know everything will look better in a few months. I’m just―”

  “Homesick.”

  “I guess so.” It was laughable to admit he was homesick. As much as Paul was a product of Natchitoches, Andy was a product of a hundred different places. He’d moved ten times before high school, traveled any chance he got, and he’d never really called any place “home”. He prided himself on his adaptability. He was a modern man who could be happy in a dozen big cities. Now he was pining away for the familiar sight of his last known address.

  “Thanks for listening. I’m sure in another couple of months I’ll be bragging about my bream fishing, gator wrangling, and frog gigging. I won’t even care about how the Yankees are doing.”

  “I hope not. I need my Andy just the way he is. A little of this. A little of that.”

  He straightened up. “I kind of like that description of myself. Now, I better get ready. I need to convince important people to invest their hard-earned money into our company by partnering with two crazy guys who just moved their headquarters to a tiny Louisiana tourist town that’s in the middle of exactly nowhere.”

  “It just shows how forward thinking you are. Next year, all the important people will have headquarters in Natchitoches. Cheryl Sandburg, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, the Pope.”

  He was still smiling when he got to the conference room, imagining a Papal residency in the historic district. Paul’s wife was very protective of the three mile stretch of hundred-year-old, wrought iron decorated buildings, but Alice would probably make an exception for the Pope. Maybe.

  In the middle of the gleaming, oblong table there was a platter stacked with desserts. There were frosted cookies, chocolate and strawberry cupcak
es, and beignets. The beignets had captured his heart with their perfectly golden exterior and sprinkle of powdered sugar. He reached over and snagged one from the top of the stack.

  Incredible. Probably the best one he’d had yet. They tasted like they’d been made minutes before. He reached for another. Mrs. Connors was right. If he didn’t step up his daily running, he’d have to cut out his new best friend, and he wasn’t giving up the beignets. As he finished the last bite, he noticed a little yellow card tucked under a cupcake. Moving the pink and yellow frosted creation, he read Sunshine Bakery in swirly letters. If he wasn’t mistaken, that was somewhere near his apartment. It was probably too much to hope that they delivered but he could still pick some up on the way to work in the mornings.

  He tucked the card into his pocket and glanced around the empty conference room. In less than an hour, he’d be back doing what the company needed. If only he could spend every minute creating new games or playing, he’d be happy. He loved writing out the story lines, the hidden rewards, the optional missions, the character attributes. Coding was secondary but he loved it almost as much. Unfortunately, meetings had taken over his days and even “real life” had been swallowed up by his company responsibilities. At this point, the most exciting part of his real life consisted of searching out the best place for beignets. Pretty depressing.

  If he were honest with himself, it wasn’t all bad. He’d moved back into the apartment he’d shared with Paul when they first came to Natchitoches three years ago. It was right above By the Book, Alice’s pride and joy. By the Book was the state’s oldest bookstore, housing thousands of rare and vintage books. Although nineteenth century literature had always been Paul’s thing, there was something comforting in being surrounded by something that was neither New York or Louisiana. Down in the stacks, he was just another reader.

  He’d gone downstairs a few weeks ago to look for a copy of Dante’s Inferno and been pulled into the Greek and Latin classics like a fish on a hook. The gaming industry was constantly reinventing itself but what never changed was the desire for a great story. It had been a few years since a small company developed a “slash and hack” version of the first part of the fourteenth century epic poem Divine Comedy. Since then, Andy had been wondering what other piece of dusty literature could lend itself to a breakout concept. Paul was only interested in turning the books into digital copies, but Andy had never been able to shake the idea of an action adventure game based on the great myths. Now that he was in his own version of limbo, he’d had time to wander the aisles.

  Walking to look out over the countryside below, Andy decided that his lack of a life was going to change. Mark would never get the chance to see the world or live independently, and he owed it to him to live every day as fully as possible. Starting today, he would make an effort to get out of his apartment, make some friends, explore the city. He might not join a cornhole team, but Mrs. Connors was right. He’d always taken the best of every situation and turned it into something he could use. A little of this, a little of that. Plato said it was easy to forgive a child who is afraid of the dark, but the true tragedy is men who are afraid of the light. It would take time to adjust to his new home, but in the end, he would fit right into this strange place called Natchitoches.

  ***

  Roxie rocked her large pink foam cupcake body and waved with both hands. Back in high school she got a good work-out by blasting Shania Twain or the Goo Goo Dolls while she gyrated on the corner of Trudeau Street and St. Louis Avenue. She couldn’t call it dancing because even with music, she had never been very coordinated. Now she was reduced to simply rocking back and forth, as if the pedestrians were like those snakes which are only able to see an object when it’s moving.

  Her hair was plastered to her head and her T-shirt was soaked with sweat. And to think people paid money to sit in saunas. She should hire out the suit as the best way to lose unwanted water weight.

  Water. She tried not to think of it, tried to back out of the image, but it was already in her head and her mouth went dry with yearning for an icy glass of cold water. The vent at the front of the suit had a small hole in it and the hot breeze hit her collarbone like a punctuation to her fantasy.

  The Crawfish Festival was a few blocks away on the waterfront and but the bakery still had a nice uptick of business when a festival was going on. People would stop to take a picture with her, then sometimes wander toward the bakery. The sidewalk crowd was getting friendlier by the hour. She’d point behind her to the bright yellow building and clap as if she were excited for them to visit. Most people realized she wasn’t going to carry on a conversation, but some asked other questions about the historic district or what went into the cupcakes. She probably could have made herself heard if she’d bent and shouted, but trying to list preservatives through the vent sure didn’t appeal. On their end, the conversation never went further because nobody wanted to spend the time trying to communicate with a mute cupcake.

  A bead of sweat trickled down the side of her face and she fantasied about sitting in the walk-in freezer. She’d already taken several breaks. She would wiggle on the corner as long as she could stand it, then retreat to the bakery. Stumbling into the hot kitchen and shimmying out of the foam top, she inhaled deep breaths of greasy air. Desperate to guzzle a gallon of water, she forced herself to take careful sips for a few minutes because the more water she consumed, the more time she’d spend getting in and out of the suit. After her body temperature had returned to a more normal range, she’d suit up and trudge back to her personal purgatory.

  The afternoon sun was beating down as if it had a personal vendetta against her. The only thing that kept her on the corner as tourists streamed by with their large sodas and crushed ice snow cones was the idea of her Mamere’s disappointed face. It was one day. She could suffer through one day. She was a tough woman, raised by tough women. She didn’t remember her father but everyone said Quentin Hardy made the best gumbo this side of the Mason Dixon. He fought hard to stay alive and help raise his little girl, but heart disease won in the end. The doctors said it was heart disease, but Mamere said after Quentin’s brother died he seemed only a shell of his former self. A few years later, he was gone. All Roxie had were a few shadowy memories: the echo of his laugh and the way he sang hymns late into the night while sitting on the porch swing, accompanied by bull frogs and crickets.

  “Look, Al, it’s the cupcake.” A woman’s voice cut through her thoughts. She felt herself being tugged to one side. Another tourist. They almost never asked permission, just pushed her into position. “Take my picture. No, wait, let me act like I’m gettin’ a bite.”

  Roxie peered through the vent. She wasn’t Odysseus anymore, but the Cyclops. All she could see was a low cut tank top, short shorts, and some sandals. The ensemble came closer. “Hold my drink so I can put both my hands on it.” A clear cup filled with iced tea passed directly through Roxie’s line of sight, so close she could see the drops of condensation on the plastic.

  “Quick, Al. Take the picture. My mouth is getting tired.” The speaker was pulling Roxie off balance but she did her best to hold still. She forced a smile even though no one could see her. “Ugh, this tastes horrible. And smells gross.” There was the sound of someone spitting and then she was released.

  Stumbling a little as she got herself upright again, Roxie caught a glimpse of two retreating pairs of feet. For a few seconds, she simply stood there, getting her bearings. The heat was secondary to the feeling of being an object, unworthy of basic respect. She should just pack it in for the day. No amount of money could convince her to keep going. But this is for Mamere.

  She took a deep breath and went back to her slow shuffle-step-wobble. People were suffering all over the world. She could certainly handle a few more hours of discomfort and occasional humiliation. A few more hours, then a few more weeks, then she’d be home in Philadelphia and all of this would be a terrible memory. That’s what she told herself as she waved her hands
cheerily at the passing tourists, tears burning in her eyes.

  Chapter Three

  The worst feeling in the world is the homesickness that comes over a man

  occasionally when he is at home.

  ―E. W. Howe

  Andy parked the car in the lot behind By the Book and sat for a moment watching the tourists stream past. The sun sparkled off the river and the sky was a shade darker than the palest blue. In New York City, the sky would be gray and swollen, threatening to rain. A band was playing somewhere nearby, probably on the temporary stage he’d seen erected this morning. It was directly across from the bookstore and he figured it was a good thing he wasn’t a morning person. This party wasn’t going to wind down by bedtime.

  Paul and Alice had invited him to the Crawfish Festival. It had been a long day. But only a few hours before, he’d promised himself that he’d get out of his apartment, and not just to browse the books downstairs. He hadn’t even met the woman in the next apartment. He heard her singing in the shower some mornings and it made him smile to think of how their first meeting would go. She’d say, So, you’re the one who sets off the fire alarm every time he cooks. And he’d say, Yes, that’s me. And I’m really enjoying your early morning serenades.

  His stomach growled. The beignets had been hours ago. He’d be having crawfish for dinner, or pretending to have crawfish. He’d tried to like it. He really had. But as much as they told him it was just like lobster, it really wasn’t.

  His options were limited. He could go try to cook something and see if his neighbor would introduce herself when the alarm went off, or he could walk down the riverwalk to find some food. As curious as he was about the shower songstress, that first plan still wouldn’t get him any dinner. Stepping out of the car, he winced at the heat. Paul said it was like people from Alaska not feeling the cold. Eventually his body would acclimatize and he wouldn’t notice the humidity. That was the theory, anyway.