Volume Two: In Moonlight and Memories, #2

by Julie Ann Walker

  I force a serious expression. “Sorry. No. You’re absolutely right. I mean, in a world of criminal fathers, corrupt police superintendents, and traumatic brain injuries, cabinet selection ranks right up there.”

  He gives me the evil eye. “Fine. Make fun. But now you don’t get to flip through the catalogs and help me pick them out.”

  I sit up straighter.

  Like when he asked me to look at paint swatches or approve the kitchen countertops, a trill skips up my spine. But I remind myself that I’m not supposed to read too much into it. Same as I’ve had to remind myself over and over again every time I see my parents’ rings on the mantel that he doesn’t want me attaching too much meaning to the gift.

  “You want my help?” I ask hopefully.

  “Wanted,” he emphasizes. “Past tense.”

  “Aw, come on. “ I stick out my bottom lip. “Don’t be a bitter bear. I’d love to come flip through catalogs with you.” Whoa. Was that too eager? “I’ll swing by while I’m taking Yard for a walk tomorrow morning.” There. That sounded like it’s simply another part of my day, right?

  The waitress arrives with their coffees and beignets, and our conversation turns to their trip to Shreveport. Luc has me enthralled with the story his mother told him about Santa’s reindeer.

  “She says they’re all female.”

  “What?” I nibble on a fat pillow of fried heaven. For the record, it’s topped with the perfect amount of powdered sugar.

  He nods. “She read that both male and female reindeer grow antlers. But the males shed theirs in late fall, whereas the females keep theirs until after they’ve given birth in the spring.”

  I screw up my face, conjuring up every depiction of Santa and his reindeer that I can remember seeing. Yep. Antlers. One and all. From Dasher to Dancer to Prancer to Vixen.

  “Mom says she’s suspected it all along,” Luc says.

  “Really?” I lift an eyebrow. “How? Why?”

  “She says only a group of women can drag a fat man around the world and not get lost.”

  I laugh, picturing Helene saying this in her earnest and forthright way, with a hint of a sparkle in her dark, dancing eyes.

  “Speaking of the holidays.” I lick the powdered sugar from my fingers. “What are your plans for New Year’s Eve? I ask because Aunt Bea is throwing a big party. Something along the lines of the Halloween ball and bachelor auction, but without the ball and the bachelor auction part. No tuxes or gowns required. Just cocktail attire. There’ll be a band and a dance floor and roaming waiters with trays of canapés. A champagne fountain—at Auntie June’s request, natch—a balloon drop, and lots of party hats and horns. Y’all should come.”

  Luc cocks his head. “You’re not hosting something at the bar?”

  “Nope.” Then I reconsider. “Well, there is a big bash planned, but every year I leave it to Gus and Chrissy to handle. The Quarter is so packed, and people are feeling so generous on account of the holiday season, that my employees can make a month’s worth of tips in one night. I figure they’ve earned it. And the truth is, I like ringing in the New Year at Aunt Bea’s. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the end of the year and everyone feels like they can get as rowdy and as drunk as they want since the next day they can claim a fresh start. But of all the events Aunt Bea hosts, this one is where her high-class friends let their hair down. It’s something to see.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Luc shrugs.

  I turn to Cash. “Lauren and Kelsey are coming too.”

  He narrows his eyes. “Is that supposed to be an enticement or a dissuasion?”

  I study him closely. “You tell me.”

  “I have no plans to start anything with Kelsey. She was entertaining for a couple of days, but we haven’t even texted each other since the hurricane party.”

  Relief slides through me, even though I tell myself it shouldn’t. We’re just friends, right?

  “Fun for now but not forever?” I ask. “Watch out. You’ve been hanging around Luc too long. His bad habits are rubbing off on you.”

  He shrugs. “Considering I’ve been the bad influence for over a decade, I figure it’s only fair. And since we’re on the subject… You take up the priesthood or what, Luc? Haven’t heard you talk about a woman since Sally Renee ran off to find herself in Europe.”

  Luc stares down at the steaming liquid in his mug before finally lifting his chin. “Life’s been busy. Or haven’t you noticed?”

  “Oh, I’ve noticed.” Cash nods. “But a busy life has never stopped you from—”

  “I’m sure Maggie May could do without the details,” Luc interrupts.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Back to New Year’s Eve.” I pin Cash with a look. “You coming or not? I need to let Aunt Bea know.”

  “Sure.” He lifts one shoulder. “Why not? Let’s raise a glass and celebrate the fact that, come next year, life as we know it will look a whole lot different.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I frown. Then, “Oh, you mean you’ll have a new house, and you and Luc will be starting your new business.” I don’t add, And hopefully you’ll be well on your way to figuring out something to help with your head that doesn’t involve a daily bottle of Gentleman Jack.

  Something strange flashes across his face. Something that piques my curiosity, but before I can ask about it, I hear a familiar voice. My skin prickles and I’m reminded of that old saying about someone walking over my grave.

  “Let’s get outta here.” Luc pulls some bills from his wallet and tosses them atop the table.

  “Way ahead of you.” I stand and grab my jacket from the back of the chair.

  As the three of us race out of the café, I don’t dare glance back over my shoulder. Afraid of what I might see. Who I might see.

  We’re about to step off the curb when I hear, “Tucking tail and running like scared rabbits, are ya?”

  I cringe and slowly turn, thankful for the reassuring hand Luc closes around my elbow.

  George Sullivan clomps toward us, his cowboy hat pulled low over his scowling brow.

  “Shouldn’t you be packing your bags and heading for a nonextradition country?” Cash dons a falsely curious tone.

  That brings Sullivan up short. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Cash rolls his eyes. “If you don’t know, you’re dumber than you look.”

  Beneath Sullivan’s mustache, his lips curl into a snarl that reveals his tobacco-stained teeth. “What’s happening with your dad don’t got nothing to do with me. It’s about his dirty business dealings.”

  “Is that what you’ve been telling yourself?” Cash’s expression is the picture of naked disbelief with a smidge of disgust thrown in. “You don’t think Rick will finger you for being his accomplice in this blackmail scheme faster than you can say ‘traitor’ if it means cutting a better deal for himself?”

  The tendon in Sullivan’s neck starts twitching like crazy. Something flickers in his eyes.

  I reach over and pinch the back of Cash’s arm. My intent is clear. Stop poking the bear!

  His jaw clenches, and I can see he wants to say something more, but he heeds my warning and turns to me and Luc. “Let’s go.”

  The three of us hasten across the street. It’s only after we’re on the opposite sidewalk that I chance a quick look over my shoulder. Sullivan is staring after us, hands on hips, his face the color of Auntie June’s summer radishes.

  “What the hell was that about?” Luc demands of Cash as we head deeper into The Quarter.

  “I want him focusing on something besides you two,” Cash explains. “Now”—he rubs his hands together—“how do you guys feel about knocking off another excursion? The Museum of Death is open today.”

  “The Museum of Death?” I ask dubiously. “Like our morning hasn’t already been grim enough?”

  “It’s a good way to remind ourselves that some people have it worse than we do.”

  Chapter Fifty-nine
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  Cash

  Dear Cash,

  I don’t know what possessed me, but I woke up this morning and climbed into Aunt Bea’s attic to go through my parents’ things.

  I thought I knew every single thing we kept of theirs, but apparently not. Because I came across a bunch of letters tied up with red ribbons and stuffed inside shoeboxes. I’ve never seen them before.

  Turns out, they’re love letters.

  Did I ever tell you that my folks were high school sweethearts? Then graduation—and colleges in two different states—forced them apart. But they kept in touch by writing to each other.

  Some of the letters are boring, mostly filled with the details of their day-to-day lives. But some of them are unbelievably sweet. Two young lovers aching and yearning for each other across a great distance and through four long years.

  I’m sure the letters don’t tell the whole story of that part of their lives, but they told me enough to know that my folks’ love for each other never wavered. Not once.

  Even in death, they are still teaching me about the kind of person I want to be. The kind of person who doesn’t give up when the going gets tough. The kind of person who can give her heart away and then never ask for it back. The kind of person they would be proud to call daughter.

  Lord, I miss them. And I miss you.

  Love always, Maggie

  The world is full of injustice.

  Butter is bad for you. The sun gives you skin cancer. Unprotected sex can result in unwanted pregnancy and STDs. And men like my sperm donor and George Sullivan can spend years terrorizing people and leaving carnage in their wake.

  Standing outside the Museum of Death, this shrine to the end that all of us are barreling toward, I’m struck by the unfairness of it all.

  “They say death is the great equalizer,” I mutter. “I think that’s lip service used to make dumb schmucks feel better about how fucking unfair life is.”

  “This is gonna be fun,” Luc grumbles. “Remind me again why we’re here?”

  “Because it’s on the list and it’s a New Orleans institution.”

  Maggie makes a rude noise. “I don’t know about institution. Preservation Hall is an institution. Commander’s Palace is an institution. The Museum of Death is more of a curiosity, don’t you think?”

  “Whatever. We’re here, so let’s go in.”

  After paying our entry fees, we walk into a large room filled with everything death-themed. From body bags to skeletons to letters from serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. There’s hair from the OJ Simpson trial, a weird jar full of yellowed teeth—not sure how that relates to death—and one of Dr. Kevorkian’s suicide machines.

  It’s damned macabre, especially the graphic crime scene photos. Don’t know what I was expecting, but when I thought of a Museum of Death, I thought of stories of dying. When it happened. How it happened. Why it happened. What happened afterward. How the people left behind coped with the loss.

  Something meaningful.

  Looking around, however, I realize this is merely a place of shock and gore. There are no answers here. No insights into that great, lonesome journey into the beyond.

  Pulling my flask from my back pocket, I throw back a long swig, trying to temper the terrible ache in my head and the slow, insidious slide of disappointment.

  “Hey, buddy! There’s no drinking in here!” the guy behind the counter calls.

  He barely glanced up from his comic book when he took our money—with his Buddy Holly glasses, skinny jeans, and man bun, he’s the epitome of the modern-day hipster and the picture of apathy—but take one nip of Gentleman Jack and he’s Mr. Pays Attention.

  “Right. Sorry, man.” I salute him with my flask before shoving it back into my pocket.

  I’d already made up my mind that I’d seen all I needed to see of this place, but that clenches it for me.

  Spying Luc and Maggie by a glass display case, I amble over in time to hear Maggie ask, “What do you think it means?” She’s clutching her locket in her fist.

  Luc shrugs and throws an arm around her shoulders. I envy them their ease with each other. They’ve been that way since the beginning.

  “Can’t rightly say,” he murmurs. “All her poems are ambiguous. I remember reading an article once that called her stuff ‘a study in abstractions.’”

  I peek over their shoulders to see what’s caught their attention.

  It’s a human skull, carved with intricate and slightly crude black designs. In front of it is a placard that lists the name of the skull’s curator along with a single line attributed to Emily Dickinson. Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.

  “It’s about loving someone and losing them,” I say.

  They both glance at me. Then Maggie turns back and rereads the line aloud. For a minute she says nothing. Eventually, “Yeah. I still don’t get it.”

  “She’s saying that loving someone is heaven on earth. It’s as close to heaven as any of us will come. And then losing someone you love, parting, is hell on earth.”

  Luc drops his arm from her shoulders, and I see something that looks strangely like relief flash through her eyes.

  I cock my head and study her.

  Are her cheeks pinker than usual? Her pulse is certainly hammering in her neck.

  “Wow. Who are you and what’ve you done with my best friend?” Luc says to me.

  “Just because I don’t sit around writing my deepest, darkest thoughts down on paper doesn’t mean I don’t have a few of them. So go on and fuck yourself.”

  “I’ve tried.” Luc laughs. “It’s impossible. The most I’ve managed is to beat off like a zoo monkey.”

  “Hello!” Maggie raises her hand. “In case you’ve both forgotten, I’m standing right here.”

  “What?” Luc nudges her. “Are you telling me you’ve never engaged in a little DIY time?”

  Now her cheeks are flaming red.

  He chuckles and puts his arm around her shoulders again. “You don’t have to answer that.” His grin is sincere and guileless when he looks over at me. “So, we going into the back to watch the autopsy videos or what?”

  I shake my head. “Hell no. I’ve had enough of this place.”

  Maggie’s brow wrinkles. “But it was your idea to come. Now you want to bail before we’ve seen half the stuff?”

  “This isn’t what I thought it’d be.”

  “What’d you think it’d be?” Luc eyes me curiously.

  “I don’t know. Not this. I thought… I wanted…” I shrug helplessly.

  “I’m with you.” Maggie shudders. “Let’s get out of here. I mean, I know we spend our lives separating ourselves from death. We don’t kill our food. It comes butchered and encased in plastic wrap in the meat section at the grocery store. We don’t prepare the bodies of our dead. We let the undertakers do that, pretty them up so that by the time we see them again, they look like they’re sleeping. But I’m fine with the status quo. The inevitability of death is hanging above our heads every day. It’s there whether we like it or not. The least we can do is stop ourselves from staring it in the face by coming to places like this.”

  “It’s not that so much,” I say, chewing the inside of my cheek. “It’s more like…” I stop, reconsider, and decide to ask the question that’s been burning a hole in my mind since I woke up this morning, knowing we might come here. “What makes a life well lived, do you think?”

  For a moment, Luc’s dark eyes are so intense that I think maybe he knows. Then, he quietly says, “That’s easy. A life well lived is one that’s filled with family and friends and love. One that does more good in the world than harm. One that addresses mistakes and makes up for ’em. One that leaves a positive mark on those left behind.”

  “Yeah.” Maggie nods. “All of that. And the only thing I’ll add is that it’s also one that takes a few risks. I mean, what’s life without risk, right? Without reaching for the stars?
Without following your dreams and your heart?”

  “Exactly.” Luc smiles down at her, and something inside me breaks even as something new is born. “A well-lived life is one that’s open to changes of heart and changes of mind. It’s one that isn’t afraid to meet challenges and accepts that, in the end, it’s okay to have more questions than answers.”

  There’s a lump in my throat. Playing it off, I tease, “Okay. Enough. You’ve both proven your points that when it comes to deep, dark thoughts I’ve still got a lot to learn.”

  Luc snorts. “Don’t ask profound, philosophical questions if you don’t want profound, philosophical answers.”

  “Duly noted, Sergeant Major.” I offer him a halfhearted salute. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  After we’ve exited the museum and are heading toward Smurf, I can’t help turning back to get a final look at the front of the building. The museum’s name is proclaimed in brightly lit letters, and hanging in the front windows are two pieces of stained glass that depict nattily dressed skeletons. It’s a cheeky entrance to what turned out to be a pretty disturbing collection of artifacts.

  “That place freaked you out, didn’t it?” Maggie falls into step beside me, leaving Luc to walk ahead and unlock the truck.

  I hitch one shoulder. “All it showed was the horror of dying. But I’d like to see the flip side.”

  “The flip side?” Her right eyebrow arches.

  “Yeah. You know, where dying is easy and gentle, like falling into the arms of a lover. Not like running screaming from an ax murderer.”

  Chapter Sixty

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  Luc

  Dear Luc,

  I took a walk down by the river this afternoon. The Steamboat Natchez was taking off with its load of tourists, and I could hear its mysterious calliope music drifting back to me across the water.

  I remember you telling me that the guy who invented calliophones thought they would replace church bells. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but today I realized how disappointed he must’ve been when they only caught on with steamboats. Since there aren’t many steamboats left, there aren’t many calliophones left. Soon his creation might go the way of the dinosaur, fall into the dustbin of history, never to be heard again.