“No wonder Letitia could afford that new Lexus,” Annie says.
“Not to mention that the newspaper got wind of this right before the election,” I add.
Merrill grins slyly. “I’m not saying anything.”
The two of them urge me to stick around and spend the night at their place. I consider it for a moment, but when they start suggesting ghost workshops in the store, I know it’s time to leave.
“I missed an attraction when I was here with the group and my editor specifically wanted me to write about it,” I tell them. “I’m going to stop by there and do a quick interview, then head home.”
We down our drinks, toast our mothers — even though mine is probably devising an evil gris gris for me back home — and we hug tightly outside Merrill’s shop.
“One more thing,” Annie asks. “How did you know about me if Lori couldn’t tell you? How did you know she had a child?”
A week ago I would have made something up, anything to prevent me from discussing Lillye. Today, I’m open to talking about my pain. “I lost a child,” I tell them. “She was five when she died. I recognized that pain in Lori’s eyes.”
No one says a word but Annie grabs me and hugs me tightly. After a few moments, Merrill drapes her arms over us both. We laugh through our tears and I suddenly realize how sharing pain does help, that empathy and a hug can ease one’s suffering.
We say our farewells again and I watch Merrill and Annie walk arm in arm down the alley to the Hanging Man door, then disappear inside, two beautiful women I will miss deeply. I get back in my car and say goodbye for good to Eureka Springs.
Chapter Twenty-one
I was flying pretty high considering I solved several decades-old mysteries and reunited a mother with her child using my newfound SCANCy ability. Hot damn, I thought driving back to Bentonville, I can talk to ghosts and help them move on.
Once I get in the air, however, it’s like someone has shot a hole in my fuel tank. All the courage, confidence and optimism leaks out of me slowly until the pilot announces our descent into New Orleans and I crash. Suddenly, I’m so incredibly tired. And just what am I coming home to?
It’s late once again, our plane one of the last to arrive, and the New Orleans airport lacks the usual hum of tourists. I’m heading out the gate along with the other travelers, all of us moving like sleepy cows to slaughter, when I spot my Opera Singer looking lost around darkened gate number four. Even though I’m surrounded by people, all of whom cannot see or hear her sing, I pause at the Opera Singer’s side.
“What do you want?” I ask her.
The businessman to my left looks over at me apparently speaking to air but says nothing, keeps walking. It’s late, everyone’s tired and frankly I don’t care anymore. The Opera Singer stares at me, surprised that someone is talking to her. “I’m waiting for my kids to come get me,” she tells me.
“What’s your name?” I ask and she complies.
I have no trouble finding my car this time and speed back to Lafayette while gulping coffee to keep me awake. I can’t wait to return to my miniature sanctuary, even with its nasty bathroom and lack of furniture. It’s early morning when I arrive and both potting shed and big house are deep dark and I stumble getting the key in my front door.
When I finally get inside and flip on the light, my new home greets me for what it is, a tiny efficiency lacking everything from curtains and bedspread to artwork on the walls. The bare concrete floor appears so barren in the light of the early morning, with no baseboards and rugs to offer a homey touch. I think of how I will awaken to a brown-water shower and sandpaper towels gleaned from the sales bin at Bed, Bath & Beyond. The starkness of my post-Katrina life reopens the hole in my heart, the one I left home with one week before. I feel the malaise spreading over me again and I haven’t the strength to fight so I fall into bed and don’t even bother removing my clothes. Within seconds I am sound asleep.
An insistent pounding wakes me and I squint to see my landlord knocking on my front door. I dread greeting him knowing how awful I must look — or how I must smell; it’s now day three in the Crescent Hotel Polo. I open the door slightly. “Hey Reece.”
“Hey Vi.” It’s obvious Reece is working on the main house for atop his clean purple and gold LSU Polo and khaki pants a tool belt graces his hips. He’s country cute, as my mom used to say, although it usually wasn’t a compliment coming from her. He’s rugged and a bit thick around the middle, as if he enjoys barbecue and beer on the weekends, but solid like a bulldozer. He could be butt ugly and I still would appreciate those dimples, his kind smile and that sexy Cajun accent. But he’s not ugly. He’s just married.
“I wanted to check on you,” Reece tells me. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Why?”
He cocks his head and one dimple appears. “You’ve been sleeping a long time, chèr, so it had me worried.”
I look outside and the sun’s warmed in the sky. “I got in late last night.”
Reece hooks his thumbs in his tool belt. Now there are two dimples. “You got in late the night before last.”
“What?” I grab my purse lying on the front table and pull out my phone. Sure enough, I’ve been sleeping for more than thirty hours. “Holy shit.”
“Are you feeling okay?”
I smile and shake my head. “That’s a loaded question. You have no idea the week I’ve had.”
“Want some coffee?”
I gaze at my sad little kitchen and wonder if there’s any milk, sugar or even coffee in the house. Reece takes the opportunity to open the door wider and come inside. “I was here this week doing some improvements to your bathroom and I hope you don’t mind but I took the liberty of making myself a pot of coffee one day.”
He’s in the kitchen now, pulling out my French press and pouring water into my teapot like he owns the place — which he does — but my mind is focused elsewhere. “What did you do to my bathroom?”
Reece puts the pot on to boil and begins scooping dark roast Community Coffee out of a pound bag — that I certainly didn’t buy — into my French press. “Oh it’s nothing, really, had some leftover tile and marble so I decided to update your bath. I feel horrible that you’ve been using that old bath all this time. When I get to the kitchen in the big house, I’ll update your kitchen as well.”
I gingerly peer around the corner to my tiny bath the size of a seventies closet and sure enough, it’s glistening with a beautiful tile floor, pedestal sink and a brand-new marble shower. I’m so excited at this spa-ready bathroom but at the same time remember my job situation.
“Reece, I can’t pay for this.”
He doesn’t turn around. “I’m not asking you to.”
“You don’t understand,” I say, my throat catching because I so very much want to take a shower this morning in this lovely new room if only I had the money. “I have a story to write on this trip I just took but I doubt there will be any more. I screwed up and my career’s dead in the water and I have no idea where my next meal is coming from.” I pause because if I continue I will be bawling for sure.
Reece finally turns around, arms folded across his chest, eyes stern like a father’s. “I’m not asking you to, Vi. It’s what needed to be done. Besides, it’s all leftover from the main house.”
I shake my head because I know he’s lying. “No more Katrina pity. You’ve been more than generous.”
“And you’re doing me a favor by looking after this place while I renovate.”
I bite the inside of my mouth to keep the tears away and stare at my bare feet. “That’s not the equivalent of rent and you know it.”
“It is to me.” He says it so confidently that I look up and notice the darkness in his baby blue eyes. “My wife and I are splitting up and I need to pause on the renovations for a while, need to spend every moment with my kids right now. So you looking after this place is more important than ever.”
“I’m sorry,” I mutter but my brain is
considering the possibilities now that he’s a free man. “Stop it,” I tell myself.
“What?”
Oh my god, did I say that out loud? “I said of course. I’m here to help in any way possible.”
“Just keep an eye on things until I’m able to work on the house again.”
That house is his baby, his dream, and I know what he’s going through. Dreams are hard to give up.
Reece smiles sadly and heads for the door, pausing at the threshold. “I know things have been rough, Vi. But sometimes when you least expect it, life has a way of turning bright again.”
It just did, I think, and this time I silently admonish my brain. I should feel bad that his marriage is on the rocks but I just can’t. Something’s telling me I have a future with this man.
“Come up to the house later,” Reece adds. “The LSU game is on at two and I’m making a big pot of gumbo.”
“Sure, thanks.” The malaise has lifted, replaced by football, gumbo and an adorable Cajun who gives me hope.
Reece smiles and leaves and suddenly things don’t seem so bleak. I throw off my smelly clothes and jump in my new shower, making love to that marble while I turn into a new woman. Coffee is ready and I savor my Louisiana blend, lounging about in my Goodwill robe that’s seen better days but is pretty darn comfy this cool spring morning.
About the second cup I know it’s time for reality so I pull out my laptop and rest it in my lap for several minutes before I find the nerve to turn it on. Time to look for another job, go back to the newspaper, maybe find something in public relations. First, who is Agatha Fowler and why haven’t her children found her after Katrina. After a few searches on Google and coming up empty, I make a mental note to call the New Orleans morgue and find out if she died at the airport.
I start to check a few more sites when the mail clicks with new entries and I get distracted. Yes, life does have a way of surprising you, I think, as I spot an email from Henry among the spam, freelance writing lists and demands from family.
He’s writing to know if I’m interested in a summer press trip to the Smokies.
I lean back in my chair and smile. Am I ever.
Sneak Peek: Ghost Town
(Book Two in the Viola Valentine Mystery Series)
“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”
— Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey
Hell could only be hotter than Louisiana in summer, brutal heat indexes topping one hundred and a stifling stillness to the air that suffocates even the hardiest among us. Thunderstorms roll in violently from the Gulf of Mexico and offer a temporary respite, but temperatures quickly resume like the steam seeping up from the banquet, or what we call in New Orleans a sidewalk.
I look out on to my patio that only one month ago was ablaze in color and full of hope. Now, my poor plants are wilting, gazing back in agony.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, as much to apologize for the intense heat as to the fact that I’m not braving that swelter to water them.
As if on cue, my neighbor’s cat scratches at the back door, demanding entrance. He’s really the neighborhood cat, belonging to no one, but we all feed him whenever he shows up. I managed to have him neutered and you would think he would consider me an enemy for life but he returns daily for my cans of cheap cat food. Honestly, I don’t get it — if I were a cat, I wouldn’t eat the stuff — but these days, I welcome the company.
When his scratches become insistent, I know it’s ungodly hot outside. I open the door and he jets off towards the bathroom where I keep the food and there’s a nice stretch of cold tile to sleep upon.
“Nice to see you, too,” I say to the orange, yellow, and white streak darting through my tiny living room.
I live in what my mom lovingly calls a “potting shed,” the mother-in-law unit of the big house in front. My landlord, Reece Cormier, took pity on my soul when I showed up one month after Katrina destroyed my hometown of New Orleans, asking him if he would rent out the back unit. Reece was renovating the front house at the time, ignoring the rear apartment, so I hoped for a vacancy considering that there were no rentals to be had in Lafayette due to the influx of Katrina evacuees.
After I had inquired, and mentioned that I had arrived in the town two hours west of New Orleans when the National Guard dropped us off here, the man started crying. He stood in his front yard, power drill in his enormous hands, and cried, big manly tears falling down his sunburned cheeks. He grabbed the top of my arms and silently nodded, then walked me back toward the unit and introduced me to what would become my little haven.
And the key to opening my prison door.
The storm blew away my excruciating newspaper job, covering the cops and school board beat in St. Bernard Parish on the edge of the civilized world — well, at least to a New Orleans city girl like me. So, even though I call Katrina a bitch, she gave me a chance to follow my dream job, that of being a freelance travel writer. And this tiny rent-free apartment is helping me do just that.
The unit needed work when I moved in, but it was livable, the toilet flushed, and the shower released enough of a water stream that I would never go dirty, even if I had to hold the bathtub release with my toe to keep the water flowing down the drain. After I paid my electricity deposit, the lights worked too. I connected to Wifi and the outside world and happily started my new career.
Two years later, I’m still alive and traveling, although the current recession is keeping me up at night.
Stinky — my name for the orange tabby — turns to me when he finds what I have left him and lets out a pitiful cry.
“Sorry dude,” I tell him. “I’m broke.”
The sound only gets worse, as if he’s being de-balled all over again.
“That’s what you get for visiting a writer, you idiot. Try the Broussards down the block. It’s a double lawyer household.”
He doesn’t relent, so I open the front door. “Take it or leave it.”
The cat gets the message. Either that or eating crappy cat food from the Dollar Tree is preferable to being outside in Louisiana. He heads back to the bathroom.
Before I shut out the humidity invading my air-conditioned oasis, I notice Reece on the back porch of his house. He’s standing catty-cornered from me with the patio and swimming pool in between. I instinctively raise my hand to wave, then catch myself and pull the door close. I’m mad at him right now.
I check my watch. Fifteen after twelve. Late as usual.
I glance around, evaluating for the umpteenth time to see if everything in my meager apartment looks right. I moved here without furniture — hell, without anything — so there’s no consistency, no color scheme, no master design. The table came from the Johnston Street Goodwill that offered free items to those with the right New Orleans area codes. The two accompanying chairs that don’t match I found outside my door one night. The mattress I bought from Sears with my credit card, although the sheets hail from Salvation Army and are topped with blankets culled from various travel press trips. Because we’re in the dog days of summer, I’m using my Gulf Shores beach towel and a throw that sports “Shreveport – Louisiana’s Other Side” as bedspreads.
In my work as a travel writer I get invited to join press trips with other journalists. We’re flown to various locations, put up in hotels, and wined and dined in the hopes of us generating great press for their destinations. It’s a dream job, yes, but it’s also hard work. And it doesn’t always pay well, hence the squeaking feline in the other room.
I love my little abode, even with the tacky swag I bring back from the Southern cities I visit, including the rug with the cheesy photo of Gatlinburg and the picnic basket from Georgia with plastic plates and utensils that I dine on every night. They not only remind me of the places I have visited since Katrina washed away my job with the New Orleans Daily News but of escaping my overbearing family and ex-husband back in the city.
As soon as that thought flits through my mind, I hear m
y mother and sister approaching.
“Vi lives here?” my sister Portia says incredibly. “Are you sure we’re at the right place?”
“This is her dream house,” my mother answers, and you can cut that sarcasm with a butter knife.
I try to swallow that ball of hurt that lodges in my throat every time my attempt to garner family approval fails. It sits there, blocking my air, when I open the door and smile as if nothing is wrong.
“You made it,” I say pleasantly but the words come out hoarse and weak due to that lump that refuses to move.
“No thanks to the Baton Rouge traffic,” my mother says entering the apartment. “I don’t know how you can stand that Basin Bridge.”
Portia follows, gazing around my living room — which is really one big room serving as dining area, sleeping quarters and work space — as if she’s afraid to touch anything for fear of catching some awful disease. My mom runs a hand across the one nice piece of furniture I own, an antique desk some other generous Lafayette resident placed at my door.
For months the items kept coming, no doubt because Reece had spread the word about the Katrina refugee — god, I hated that word — who landed on his doorstep after spending two days on her roof before being rescued to the Cajundome, Lafayette’s version of a domed stadium. Despite what my mother calls my apartment, there’s an actual shed behind my place that now holds all the donated items I received since Katrina blew away my hometown.
“Isn’t that pretty?” I ask my mom, because I can’t stop appealing for their approval. “Some anonymous neighbor gave that desk to me.”
“How do you know it was a neighbor if they were anonymous?”
Give it to Portia to be literal. My older sister graduated high school at fifteen and passed the bar at twenty-one. She’s a card-carrying Mensa member and constantly reminds me of that fact.
I decide to change the subject.
“Y’all want something to drink?” I head to my dorm refrigerator in the makeshift kitchen and pull out the fresh lemonade I made for their visit. Neither one seems interested.
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