Jewell (A Second Chance Novel Book 2)

by Tina DeSalvo

Just then, the door to that room opened and Beau took a step to the side to protectively stand in front of Jewell. She looked around him. A nun in full brown and black habit, with a long, thick, brown rosary hanging around her waist walked up to Jewell. Two other nuns, heads lowered, followed her into the small vestibule and walked down the hall, disappearing through another door.

  She extended her hand to Jewell. “I’m Sister Monica,” she smiled. She looked to be in her fifties. Her skin was smooth and fair. Her white coif and wimple were sealed tightly around her head and face, not revealing any hair, but her light eyebrows and eyelashes told Jewell she was a blonde.

  She turned to Beau and introduced herself. After he told her his name, he nodded to the room she’d exited. “Everything okay in there?”

  She laughed and looked at Jewell. “You both heard that it was the exorcism room?” They nodded. “Not any longer. It’s a small prayer chapel now.”

  “I hope that’s because business is slow for exorcisms in the city.”

  Sister Monica laughed. She seemed to laugh easily as she guided them through the dark monastery, speaking of the history of the Carmelites, the vegetables grown in the gardens, and what they were having for dinner that night. When they reached a small wood-paneled office back inside the old monastery buildings, she invited them to sit on two plastic chairs across from her desk. “How can I help you?”

  “We’re here on behalf of my grand-mère, who lived here at St. Teresa with her mother for four or five years in the early 1920s.”

  Jewell gave Sister Monica the details of how Mimi and her mother had come to live at the monastery. She added that both women had helped with the seamstress work even after they left the monastery to live on their own.

  “Of course I know Mignon,” Sister Monica said with a fond smile. “She continued sewing for us and the Cathedral until, what about five years ago?”

  Jewell’s heart grew heavy. “Four. I used to drop off the garments she’d sewn, in the revolving door in front, when she couldn’t do it herself anymore.”

  Sister Monica nodded. “Yes. In years past, she would come in on occasion to have a cup of coffee. That’s how I met her. How is she?”

  Jewell shook her head. “She’s aging. She’s in her end-of-life years. You know…”

  “I’ll pray for her. And you.”

  “Thank you.” Jewell smiled. “We’re here, Sister Monica, because we’re hoping we can examine any files or documents involving them from when they first came to live here and in the following years. Since the sisters were well educated and the Catholic Church is very dedicated to detailed record-keeping, I assume you have files?”

  “Oh, yes. Quite a bit. We’ve just recently copied all those records to the computer.” She shifted, and the vintage office chair she sat in squeaked. “We spent two years scanning all of the old documents. We’ve sent copies to the Vatican so they can be preserved there. Let’s see if we have the files that you’re looking for first.” She started typing on the keyboard on the desk. “Here is something.”

  “Oh, this is wonderful.” Jewell said, turning to Beau.

  “I feel a 'but’ coming,” Beau said, resting his elbows on his knees.

  “I found it, but I can’t give it to you,” Sister Monica said. “I’m sorry. I cannot give you personal information on Mignon if she hasn’t given you permission to do so. In writing.”

  Beau looked at Jewell. “Do you have power of attorney for her?”

  “Yes.” She opened the small cross-body purse she carried and pulled the paper from her wallet. She handed it to Sister Monica

  “Oh, good. I hated having to turn you away.” Sister Monica made a copy of it on the scanner that she slid out from a bottom drawer in her desk and returned the power of attorney letter to Jewell. Swiveling around in her squeaky desk chair, she opened the doors of a recently constructed and painted cabinet behind her. Two huge, thin monitors were turned on with screen savers of cute kittens running through different bible story scenes.

  Beau and Jewell looked at each other and smiled.

  The kindly nun typed on her keyboard for a few minutes, moving from one section to another, then clapped her hands. “Here you go.” She looked over her shoulder “Come. Come.” She waved to them. Jewell and Beau hurried to stand behind her.

  “Wow.” Jewell, couldn’t believe what she was seeing. At the top of the page were three black and white photographs. The first was of her great-grandmother, whose birthdate was listed under her name, Adelise Tassé Duet. The next photo was of three-year-old Mignon Tassé Duet. The third photo was of another little girl who had the same light hair and light eyes as Mimi. “Rosary Tassé Duet,” Beau read. He looked at Jewell. “Could that be Martine? Or could Mignon be Martine?”

  Sister Monica spoke. “Adelise claimed to have had the twin girls before coming to America,” she said, translating the French document unnecessarily for Jewell, who had already read that section. “She said her husband died on the ship during the journey from France. She had tried to make her way in the new world, but came to the monastery in need of help.”

  “The girls look healthy, well fed and cared for,” Jewell said. “Their clothes look clean and the fabric, although the photo isn’t that clear, appears to be more of the fabrics the wealthy children of that era would wear. I’ve seen photos of many who were poor. Their clothes were usually sewn of rags, broadcloth. Not fine wool.”

  She looked at Beau, who was studying the photos. “These girls definitely don’t look like the poor children from the port or docks that I’ve seen in many historical papers.”

  Sister Monica continued reading silently for a few moments, then spoke again. “This is odd.” She looked at Jewell. “It says Adelise was poor and had no family, but here,” she pointed to the monitor, “she had a wealthy benefactor who visited her three times a year. The benefactor would make a generous donation to the monastery upon her visit.”

  “Did it name the benefactor?” Beau asked.

  Sister Monica shook her head. “No.”

  “Would there be other documents that might list who made charitable donations to the monastery at that time?” Jewell asked.

  “I can research that, but it will take some time.” She clicked to continue to the next page. “Oh. No.” She looked at Jewell.

  “Yes. I see it.” Jewell turned to Beau. She shook her head. “Oh, Beau. It says that one of the children died of influenza at the age of five while still living at the monastery.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Mignon.”

  ***

  They hadn’t said much to one another since leaving the monastery. Jewell understood that Beau, like her, needed time to sort what they had learned in their own way. When they arrived at her fire station warehouse they were ready to speak about what Sister Monica had shared with them.

  “Have you had time to digest the revelations about Rosary and Mignon?” Beau asked, as Jewell unlocked the fire station door and flipped on the light switch.

  “I have more questions. A lot more questions.”

  “Me too.” As they entered the downstairs bay, where the fire trucks had once been parked, the room lit up. Beau walked into the space and looked around. He whistled. “Impressive.”

  She locked the door behind them.

  Beau leaned against the eighteenth century Dutch marquetry armoire she had covered with a drop cloth. “Do you think the girls exchanged names? Did someone write the wrong name in the document of the child that passed?”

  “Both possibilities.” Jewell folded her arms and sat on what looked like a sofa covered by another tan drop cloth. “We didn’t actually see a death certificate.”

  “Do you believe they were twins or did Adelise Tassé Duet lie about that? If she lied, why?”

  “I have no proof that Mimi was a twin. I’ve seen her French birth certificate.” Jewell blew out a breath. “Or, rather, the birth certificate of one of the girls if Mimi isn’t Mignon.” She shook her head, swa
llowed past the emotion tightening her throat. “And, Beau, on that birth certificate the box that should be checked for multiple births was blank.”

  “Indicating she wasn’t born a twin.”

  “Yes.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “And, Jean Duet’s name was listed as her father.”

  “Do you doubt he was her father?”

  “To tell you the truth, I wondered if maybe Aguste had returned home from fighting in Europe after World War I with a baby he’d fathered there…and her mother. Maybe he tried to pass the baby off as the twin of the baby his wife had nine months later.”

  Beau’s eyes widened. He ran his hands through his hair. “I hadn’t considered that.” He sat thinking about it a minute. “If he did that, he would’ve had documents to back up that story. Not that anyone would believe it.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen all of the family documents and the letters that Aguste sent home to his father while he was off at war. There was nothing in the documents that said he had a second daughter until Tante Izzy was born. And, there was never any mention of him fathering a baby while off at war.”

  Jewell shook her head. “That’s not something you’d write home about.”

  “I think it was.” Beau sat in silence a moment. “The man who wrote the letters I read believed in family honor. He was passionate about it. It was a vocation for him. Hell, it dictated his actions.” His voice grew stronger, like he was giving closing arguments in court. “Jewell, the letters and the family story told over the years are consistent and corroborate who Aguste, the man, was.”

  Beau stood and began to pace as he spoke.

  “The family story is that Aguste enlisted in World War I. He hated the Germans because he was raised on his father, François’s, terrible tales of his experiences living in France. He lived there during the Franco-Prussian war, a tough time when France endured ruthless dictators.” Beau sat next to Jewell again. “So when the war broke out between the United States and Germany, Aguste felt a family obligation to fight the Germans. He fought them for his father. He fought them to protect his family from ever having to endure what his father had.” He turned to face her. “No, Jewell. Aguste wouldn’t have hidden his child. And if he tried to protect her by pretending she was one of his twin daughters, there would’ve been documentation supporting that.”

  Jewell nodded. What he said made sense. It wasn’t the right thing for a researcher and historian to do, but she accepted what he said as fact without seeing the evidence to prove it herself. He’d seen the papers and she trusted what he said was true.

  “Okay, then. Martine is Aguste’s child. Mignon is Jean and Adelise’s? Who is Rosary? If Mignon died, who is my Mimi…really? Who am I? It’s all so confusing?”

  “Complicated,” Beau corrected, squeezing her hand. “Let’s try to make sense of this. Let’s deal in the facts. What do we know for sure?” He held up his fingers and started to fold one for each point he made. “One, we saw the photographs of the two girls. They were at that monastery and lived there until one died when she was five years old.”

  “Two,” Jewell said, taking her turn. “Two girls of the same age and coloring, like in the photographs, were pictured in the painting in your room of a Bienvenu family scene at Sugar Mill. That places the two girls with a young woman holding their hands there. Whether those girls are the same girls in the monastery, we don’t know for certain.”

  “Three.” Beau said, his voice even. All business. “Your grand-mère claims to have a twin or a sister or someone she calls Twinnie that she was close to and whom she claims to have lived with on a plantation. Most recently, she claimed it was Sugar Mill plantation.”

  Jewell nodded, blew out a breath. “Mimi has knowledge of a hidden nook at Sugar Mill. She also has knowledge of a cistern that once existed at the plantation when she would’ve been a very young girl.”

  “Four,” Beau continued without hesitation. “Sister Monica confirmed that Mignon’s mother, or the woman who claimed to be her mother, was an excellent seamstress and embroiderer. Mignon claimed it was her mother who did the beautiful needlepoint on the footstool that she’d taken from the nook at Sugar Mill.”

  Beau paused to give Jewell a chance to jump in with the next point. When she didn’t, he spoke.

  “Five.” He looked at her, angling his head as if questioning Jewell. “Do you have a five?” He sat next to her on the sofa. It groaned under his weight.

  “Five is what Mimi said today to Ruby about the nuns insisting that she and Twinnie keep their nails clipped and clean. That places her at the monastery with Twinnie.”

  Beau nodded. “The photos in point number one do that.”

  He slid his arm over the back of the sofa, then cupped his hand on Jewell’s shoulder.

  “I think we can conclude that Mignon was at Sugar Mill when she was a little girl,” Beau said. “Knowing of the hidden nook, the footstool and the cistern makes that fact indisputable.” He leaned forward to look into her eyes. “Because Mignon and Martine are the same age, I think it’s safe to assume they were both at Sugar Mill at the same time…”

  “Despite Adelise claiming she’d just come from France with her twin daughters,” Jewell added. She rested her head on Beau’s shoulder. Emotion made her weary. “Who are you, Mimi?” she whispered.

  Beau stroked her hair. “I know you’ve considered this, Jewell. Your grand-mère could be Rosary.”

  “Or Mimi could be who she is, Mignon, and Mignon actually didn’t die and Rosary did. They may have switched the girls’ names for reasons we don’t know. But who is they?”

  Beau shrugged. “Wouldn’t a three-year-old child know her name and protest a change or not go along with it? Certainly the girls wouldn’t have keep the secret.”

  “We only know what we know of the girls from written documents,” Jewell said, turning to face Beau. “And my guess is that they were pretty much cloistered like the nuns. We don’t have accounts of what stories Adelise told the nuns or….”

  “Or who the benefactor paid off,” Beau said, interrupting Jewell. “Money is a powerful silencer.”

  “Fear is too.” Jewell rested her head on his shoulder again. “Who wanted to keep them silent? Who wanted to keep Martine hidden away?”

  Beau tapped her on the side of the head. “That’s the question that will give us the answer to the mystery, smart lady.” He kissed her on the top of the head, stood and began to pace again. “Who had the most to gain with Martine gone?”

  Jewell sighed. “I wish I had the bible with the family tree with us. I know the answer to that is right there.”

  He stopped pacing and looked at her. “We can put our heads together and remember what’s in it, Jewell. You and I both have done enough research on the family to know the players.”

  She stood. “Let’s go to my office. I have a blackboard up there that was left from when the upstairs was used as community classrooms.”

  Jewell led him up the spiral metal stairs she’d reclaimed from a demolished building uptown. They passed through a hodgepodge of small paneled offices and halls, turning on lights as she led the way. Finally, they reached a large room at the back of a narrow hall and walked inside. On one side of the room was a wall of mirrors and a ballet bar. The other side had floor-to-ceiling blackboards. A long, full, modern black leather sofa sat alone on the third wall. An air conditioner in a high rectangular window, with an old dented metal desk beneath it, filled the fourth wall.

  Beau smiled. “This is a multipurpose room from the community center, I presume.” She nodded. “And these furnishings are treasures you found on the side of the road?”

  “The desk and desk chair are. The sofa was Mimi’s. She was tossing it out to buy another.”

  Jewell picked up a piece of chalk from a narrow shelf along the floor under the blackboard and wrote the name Martine at the top of the board. She drew a line down from her name.

  “Who didn’t want her at the plantation?”

  “The wicked
stepmom?” Beau shook his head as Jewell wrote Stepmom Claudette Isaure Joubert. “You know, I hate that we automatically assume it’s the stepmom,” Beau said, picking up a piece of chalk. “My experience is that the stepmom is pretty damn wonderful.”

  Jewell smiled. “Following the stepmom thread, as wrong as it may be…Why didn’t she want Martine on the plantation? She was just a precious toddler.”

  Beau rubbed his hands together to wipe the chalk residue off them. “Hell if I know.” He smiled and crossed his arms over his chest. “Let’s see if we can find an answer from the family stories, as Tante Izzy tells it. Louise Olivie, the first wife, was left behind to live at Sugar Mill. She had to hear of her father in law, François’s, anxiety that his son wouldn’t return from war and produce an heir. Day in. Day out. François obsessed about it.” He frowned. “He only had the one son to produce an heir, to carry his name forward.” He continued. “As Tante Izzy says, Louise Olivie grew malade, sick with worry. By the time her husband returned from war, she insisted on having a child right away. Despite being frail.”

  “She died in childbirth. Martine survived.”

  Beau nodded.

  “She wasn’t the heir the patriarch wanted. Martine was a girl, after all.”

  Beau nodded, again. “Aguste was distraught. He was so in love with his wife. He was filled with guilt. Still, he had a sense of obligation. He was, after all, the son who went to fight the Germans to avenge France for his father and his family.” Beau looked at the board. “He eventually remarried.” He underlined Claudette’s name. “They had more children. Tante Izzy and the male heir, Ben’s grandfather.”

  “Yes, but not before Claudette had two miscarriages. Both girls.” She rolled the chalk in her hand. “No babies at first from her husband, who clearly loved his first wife and was still pining over her death. According to the bible inscriptions, the babies she miscarried were girls. She had to wonder if she would ever have a boy and carry him to term.” She thought about the anguish this woman must’ve felt. “She may have also thought that if she could just have a boy, she could make her husband happy. Stop him from mourning for the first wife. Make him love her.”