Volume Two: In Moonlight and Memories, #2

by Julie Ann Walker

  “I’m not here to talk about Sally,” I tell her.

  “No?” She drags me toward the steps leading to her apartment, but I stop in my tracks. Peering up at me in confusion, she says, “Then you stopped by to see how I look on a Waistband Monday, is that it?”

  That startles a laugh from me. “A what?”

  “A Waistband Monday. You know, that night of the week when you put on pants with an elastic waistband, order pizza, and binge Netflix with your upstairs neighbor?”

  “That’s a new one on me,” I admit with a smile. “But, Maggie May, you know I always think you’re beautiful. Waistband Mondays included.”

  I’m not lying. With her face scrubbed clean of makeup and her hair in a messy topknot, her allure (while unassuming) is impossible to miss.

  She slaps my arm. “Don’t you dare turn those dimples on me, Lucien Dubois. Save them for the fun-and-done ladies you waste your time with.”

  She’s in a playful mood. I can’t bring myself to burst her bubble right off the bat, so I play along. “You can’t blame me for the dimples. Got ’em from my dear ol’ daddy.” I give her an exaggerated wink.

  “No flirty winking either.” She feigns a frown as she once again tries to pull me toward the stairs.

  “Mind if we stay out here for a bit?” I ask.

  Her pretend frown becomes a real one as she studies me. “If it’s about last night, I already told Jean-Pierre what happened. You don’t need to worry about talking in front of him.”

  “It’s not about last night,” I say. Then I reconsider. “Although, I guess it is in a way. I heard it was pretty bad.”

  The white twinkle lights wrapped around the rails of the galleries cast a fairy glow over her face and highlight the wrinkle that appears between her eyebrows. “Cash said it was bad? And here I thought he jumped up and insisted on walking me home because he was trying not to take advantage of the situation.”

  Confusion has me shaking my head like a dog shaking off water. “Wait. What’re you talking about?”

  She gives me the side-eye. “No, what are you talking about?”

  “Rick,” I say.

  “Oh yeah. Him.” She shivers. “That was bad. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him haul off and punch Cash like that. Although, I’m glad I did see it. It opened my eyes. Finally.”

  She peeks up at me, her face full of chagrin. “Y’all must’ve thought I was a real idiot not catching on way back when. My only excuse is that Cash was always getting into scrapes, and I was such a sheltered girl that the idea of that kind of abuse was more unfathomable to me than a whole slew of dementors showing up at my door and… Goodness gracious! Luc, are you okay? You’ve gone completely white.”

  Holy hellfire. After all this time, she knows. A weight I didn’t realize I was carrying lifts away so fast it leaves me dizzy. I lift a hand to my head.

  “Cash didn’t mention he told you about…” I have to swallow. It feels like all the sand in the Registan Desert has been dumped down my throat. “That he finally came clean about his dad,” I manage to finish.

  “Oh, he didn’t want to. And I don’t think he would have if I hadn’t pieced things together on my own and come right out and confronted him.”

  “I wanted to tell you,” I swear to her. “There were so many times I wanted to say something, but he made me promise never to breathe a word.”

  She steers me toward the metal table and chairs set up beside the tinkling fountain and takes a seat. Her chin wobbles a bit when she says, “I don’t understand why he didn’t want me to know.”

  “Shame,” I say, dropping into the chair next to her.

  She lifts her hands and lets them fall. “See? That’s what I don’t get.”

  “You don’t get how he could be ashamed of sharing the blood of a bastard who could beat his own child? You don’t think an eighteen-year-old kid who’s trying his damnedest to be a man could feel embarrassed that he gets his ass handed to him on the regular by a middle-aged bastard?”

  She looks at me for a long time. Then she says, “But if he’d just told me, I could’ve helped him. Aunt Bea and Auntie June could’ve helped him.”

  I have nothing to say to that, and as the silence stretches between us, it’s broken only by the chatter of the water in the fountain and the clip-clop of a carriage mule passing by outside.

  The French Quarter is oddly quiet tonight. Maybe it’s because it’s Monday and everyone is recovering from the weekend. (Although, here in New Orleans, where drinks and dancing can occur anywhere at any hour of any day, Mondays are more similar to Saturdays than in other places.) So perhaps it’s something else.

  There’s a feeling in the air. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s there. Like something is stirring far in the distance. Something aggressive and slightly sinister.

  Or maybe this whole mess with George Sullivan has me imagining things.

  “What did you mean when you said you thought Cash jumped up and walked you home ’cause he didn’t wanna take advantage of the situation?” I ask.

  “Oh, well…” A small grin flirts with her lips. “I told him I still love him. And then, you know…” She makes a rolling motion with her hand. “I kissed him.”

  I sit back in my chair, shocked not only by her words but also by the feeling skittering through my chest like a prickly legged centipede. I should be happy. Two people I love more than life are finally making progress toward each other. Except…

  No. Not except. I should be happy. I will be happy.

  Her expression turns tentative. “I probably shouldn’t be talking about this stuff with you now that…now that…” She swallows, unable to finish.

  “Maggie May.” I take her hand. “I wanna hear anything and everything you have to tell me. So please, please don’t stop. Okay?”

  She searches my eyes. Her face betrays her skepticism even as she says, “Okay.”

  I open my mouth to assure her that I mean what I say, but before I can get a word out, the door to her apartment opens and Jean-Pierre appears on the gallery. He has Yard on a leash and is shrugging into a suede jacket.

  “Me, I’m takin’ dis dumb dog for a walk,” he calls. “He been eyein’ me and whinin’ for da last five minutes. Y’all come inside dis house before you freeze to death.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” Maggie hops up from the chair and makes her way to the bottom of the stairs. “I’ll put on some shoes and get my coat.”

  “Need to walk off dat pizza anyway, cher.” Jean-Pierre bends to kiss her cheek as he and Yard step off the last tread.

  She snorts. “So you’ll be walking until next Sunday?”

  The Cajun pats his flat stomach. “’Bout thirty minutes should do it.”

  “I hate you and your metabolism,” she jokingly gripes.

  Jean-Pierre flashes a smug smile before turning his attention my way. I stand from the chair and shake his hand when he offers it to me. “When you goin’ to come play with me again, yeah?”

  “First chance I get,” I promise him.

  Disregarding the run-in with Todd the Tool, that night playing with Jean-Pierre at Maggie’s bar was one of the best I’ve had since I came back. The only place where past troubles and current worries can’t touch me is onstage. There, I’m able to focus on the music and nothing else.

  “Dis Thursday?” Jean-Pierre asks. “Me and mine are havin’ a birthday party for my uncle. Come join us.”

  “Done and done,” I say, happy to have a distraction to look forward to. “Should I bring a gift?”

  “Bring yourself, your guitar, and your appetite. Oh!” He snaps his fingers. “And a stiff constitution. It’ll be a true fais do-do.” With an ornery laugh, he makes his way toward the gate.

  After watching him go, Maggie and I take the stairs to her apartment. Once inside, I give Leonard a scratch beneath his whiskered chin, then I settle into the corner of one of her sofas. She doesn’t grab the spot next to me. Instead, she chooses the wingback chai
r across the way, perching awkwardly on the edge of the cushion.

  “Y’okay?” I ask with a frown.

  Instead of answering, she pulls her locket from inside her sweatshirt and worries the filigreed heart with her fingers at the same time her teeth worry her bottom lip.

  Here’s the thing you need to understand about me. Thanks to my daddy, I have the patience of Job. He (my daddy, not Job) taught me early on that I should take my cues on how to live life by watching the bayou. And the bayou knows there’s no hurry. It’ll get where it’s going. Don’t try to rush it.

  So I sit quietly and wait for her to work up to admitting to whatever’s got her knickers in a knot.

  Eventually, she does.

  “I’m glad you told me what you did on Halloween. But now I don’t know how to…” She stops and spreads her hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know how to be when I’m around you.”

  Pulling her out of the chair, I situate her next to me on the sofa and throw an arm around her shoulders when she looks ready to bolt. “Just be yourself, Maggie May. You’re still you and I’m still me. Only difference is there aren’t any more secrets between us.”

  When I feel her relax against me, I ignore the warmth that spreads through my blood. For a while, we silently watch the candles burn in the fireplace. Then Sheldon slinks from beneath the sofa in that watery, sinuous way of a feline. He sniffs my boots before rubbing his whiskered cheek across the worn laces.

  “It’s the darnedest thing,” Maggie says, scowling at her cat. “You’re the only person on the planet he seems to like, which is super unfair considering I’m the one who keeps him in Fancy Feast and fishes his giant turds out of the litter box.”

  I chuckle. “Can’t blame him for having impeccable taste. I mean, have you seen me lately?”

  She shakes her head in mock disgust. “What happened to that shy, humble teenager I used to know?”

  “He grew up and got crazy-hot.”

  She laughs, as I’d hoped she would. It’ll take time for things between us to get truly comfortable again. But I don’t regret telling her the truth. I feel like I’ve shed the skin of my past. What’s growing back in its place is thicker, tougher. More me.

  “So? You told Cash you still love him, huh?” I prompt, proving to her (and to myself) that I truly am still the guy she can talk to about anything. “What’d he say to that?”

  She wrinkles her nose. “I didn’t give him a lot of time to respond. Which, in retrospect, probably wasn’t the smartest move. Like I told Jean-Pierre, now I don’t know how to interpret the kiss that followed. I mean, on the one hand, I felt all the old feels. On the other hand, Cash hopped off that mattress like it was covered in poisonous snakes and nearly dragged me home by my hair. So, now I’m wondering…” She trails off and shrugs. “Well, now I’m just left wondering. He hasn’t called or texted today, so what does that tell you?”

  When I don’t immediately answer, she continues, “My mind’s been jumping like hot grease in a skillet, and the result is a Waistband Monday and two too many slices of pizza.” She rubs a hand over her belly. “I’m capable of eating my feelings at a professional level, in case you were wondering.”

  “I’m sure you’re winding yourself up over nothing,” I reassure her. “Given all that’s happened, Cash is probably just aiming to take things slow.”

  “You think? Did he mention anything to you?”

  “No.” I shake my head, shifting awkwardly because it’s time I say what I came to say. “But I reckon that’s only ’cause we were too busy working out how we aim to deal with this bad business with Sullivan.”

  I hate the fear that makes her brow pinch. “Did something happen after he came at us in Café Du Monde?”

  “That’s what brought Rick ’round to see Cash last night. He wanted to tell Cash to keep his distance from us ’cause Sullivan has declared war.”

  “War?” Her eyes go as wide as pie plates.

  “Little does Sullivan know, I’m pretty damn good at war,” I assure her. “And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the best defense is a good offense. We’re gonna hit him where it hurts. You think you could set up a time for us to talk with Miss Bea?”

  She blinks. “What does Aunt Bea have to do with this?”

  “If we’re lucky, she’ll have the information we need.”

  Once again, she unconsciously grabs her locket, squeezing it in her fist. Every time she does that, it feels like she’s hanging on to a piece of me. Which gives me a thrill even though it shouldn’t.

  “I wish I could undo what I did that night,” she whispers.

  I tighten my arm around her. “All you did was defend yourself. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Tell that to George Sullivan. Or more like, tell that to Dean Sullivan. Oh, wait. You can’t. He’s dead.”

  I blow out a weary sigh and glance out the window at the starless night. I’d planned to go stag to my senior prom and meet Cash and Maggie at the dance. But when Cash stopped by on his way out of town, beat to shit and with a savage look in his eyes, I did as he asked and took Maggie in his stead.

  In hindsight, it was the biggest mistake of my life.

  “I shouldn’t have dragged you to that stupid prom,” I grumble, remembering the destroyed look on her face when I handed her the letter Cash had written and explained to her that he was gone. “I shoulda sat with you on that porch swing until your aunt Bea called you to go inside.”

  “I wanted to go to prom,” she insists. “Cash had just broken my sixteen-year-old heart. I needed a distraction, and you provided it. I’ve never thanked you for that, have I?”

  “Considering how things turned out, there wasn’t much time or much call for thanks.”

  “Well, now there’s time and call for it now. Thank you.” She lifts her hand as if to tug on my ear, then hastily drops it, curling her fingers into a fist on her lap.

  I hate that she second-guesses herself when it comes to touching me. But I have faith she’ll get past it. I just have to give her time to realize I wasn’t kidding when I told her nothing’s changed for me.

  “You were always there for me when I needed you.” Her voice is soft when she emphasizes, “Always.”

  “Still”—I shake my head—“dinner and the dance shoulda been enough. We never shoulda gone to that party afterward.”

  “As I recall, you didn’t want to. I was the one who insisted. By that point, my heartbreak had morphed into pure-D fury. I was going to show Cash I didn’t need him. Show him I could have a grand ol’ time without him.”

  She had been crazed that night. Wild-eyed and single-minded in her pursuit of fun.

  “Yeah, but as soon as I drove up and saw Dean’s truck there, I shoulda turned right back around.”

  “You couldn’t have known what he’d do.”

  “Maybe not. But I knew he was bad news.” Thinking about Dean, even all these years later, still makes my teeth clench. “I shoulda known he’d try something after Cash beat the living shit outta him. He was the sort to nurse a grudge.”

  Maggie shivers, and I know she’s reliving those hellish moments in the swamp. If someone ever invents brain bleach, the first thing I’ll do is use it to wash her clean of the memory of what happened there.

  “Whose place was that anyway?” she asks. “Do you remember?”

  “Cory something-or-other. It was his dad’s fishing house.”

  “That’s right.” She nods. “Cory Jackson. He was in the marching band.”

  “Not a day goes by that I don’t regret dragging you outta that house and into the swamp,” I admit.

  She gives me a disbelieving look. “The baseball team was getting baked in the corner. Half the girls on the cheerleading squad were bonging beers; the other half were getting felt up by drunk teenage boys. And Dean and his butthole buddies were looking to fight anyone and everyone. That place was a powder keg waiting to explode. You got me out of there because it was the smart
thing to do, and I’d gone way past making smart decisions. And besides, for a while afterward it was…nice.” She nudges me with her elbow. “You taught me how to waltz, remember?”

  My mind drifts back to that clearing in the swamp…

  A cool breeze stirred the air. The bullfrogs and bugs and gators were in fine form, singing their lament in the moonlight as I led Maggie away from the house on stilts and down a narrow path into the heart of the bayou.

  “What should we do now?” she asked me, the stars above twinkling in her eyes. Even though she’d fixed her mascara after crying her heart out on the porch swing, there were still smudges below her bottom lids. Her hair had slipped a little from its fancy updo. Tendrils of black curls fell across her shoulders, flirting with the edge of her sweetheart neckline.

  She looked like a temptress in that red sequined prom dress. A temptress who didn’t yet know her own power.

  “Wanna dance?” I offered her a hand. We could still hear the music from the house party, even though we had to be a hundred yards away.

  “To this?” She wrinkled her nose.

  Someone had tuned the radio to a zydeco station. The fiddles whined. The accordion wailed. And the lead singer opined ever leaving the black water of the bayou for the sun-baked hills of Texas.

  “Sure. You know how to waltz, right?” When she shook her head, I winked. “Come on, then. Let this swamp rat teach you a thing or two.”

  “I can’t dance here in these shoes.” She pointed to her strappy high-heeled sandals. “The heels will get stuck in the dirt.”

  “So kick ’em off.”

  “And have a twig stab through my foot?”

  “You can stand on my feet. No more excuses, woman. I’m teaching you to waltz.”

  “So bossy,” she accused, even as she bent to undo the clasps on her shoes.

  Her innate coordination had her learning the steps to the waltz in no time. We moved around that little clearing as one, and I tried not to notice the feel of her soft hand in mine, or the way her hips twisted in that slinky dress.

  It was different dancing in the middle of nowhere than it had been dancing in the festooned school gym. There, two hundred sets of eyes had watched us, wondering what happened to the combative blond-haired boy who was supposed to be her escort. But out in the bayou, it was only us.