I stalked across the house to my bedroom, undressing as I moved. I loved the house for what made it a home, but the pool had sealed the deal. I tugged on my trunks, grabbed my phone and a towel, and stepped through the French doors that led from my bedroom to the patio. The 12 x 40 lap pool shone like a jewel in the darkness of the back yard. I felt my shoulders loosen just looking at it. Barefoot, I stepped to the edge and gazed at the glassy surface, soaking in the quiet. The night was mild. May had not yet turned humid, and the sun hadn’t blazed like it would in July or August, so when I dove in, the cold water shocked me, stripping my mind of all thought.
I pulled my way down the length of the pool in steady breaststrokes to warm up, loving the water’s embrace, the blessed silence beneath its surface. Work was an aggressive, noisy kind of distraction, but swimming was bliss.
Once the chill had seeped out of my skin and my muscles warmed with exertion, I changed up to a front crawl and got to work. My second day in the house, I’d mounted a digital clock at the far end so I could track my pace, and I checked it each time I flipped. My best time had been sophomore year in the Olympic size pool at Tulane’s Reily Center. Back then, I’d clocked my two-hundred-meter free at two minutes and fifteen seconds.
That had been two months before hell opened up in front of me. After that, I didn’t touch a pool until I was a senior. I couldn’t say now why I’d stopped. Maybe I thought I couldn’t spare the time. Maybe I was punishing myself. Probably both.
These days, I was happy if I could swim a two hundred in under three minutes. But now I had no excuse not to train every day — so long as it wasn’t lightning. I’d only been in the lap pool a few times, but part of the fun now was seeing how fast I could go. Pushing myself until my lungs burned, my shoulders ached, and my thighs turned to granite.
About twenty minutes in, panting and exhausted, I flipped onto my back and stared up at a moonless, cloudless night sky. The sight stole my breath. So many stars! Lafayette had twice as many — three times as many as New Orleans. I’d forgotten how beautiful it was.
Just like Elise.
The thought came up from the depths and nearly pulled me under. I couldn’t deny the truth. But the night sky had been so much easier to forget than Elise Cormier. And now, worn out and loose, I didn’t feel the same urgency to shove her clear from my mind.
Even now, I would still wake up at night with the taste of her kiss in my mouth. As if no time had passed. She would come to me in my dreams where I was powerless against her, unable to mount the defenses that I needed to keep my longing for her at bay. Guilt and Grief. My two best friends.
She’d be in my arms, making me laugh. Demanding that I kiss her. Demanding the very thing I wanted to give her. I would feel her palm on my belly again, a touch she’d stitched into my memory with titanium thread. I couldn’t snap it or wear it down. With that touch, she had sought and claimed me. I’d never felt so wanted.
And I’d wake up rock-hard and angry. Knowing I was alone. Knowing exactly what I’d lost because I hadn’t been able to control myself that night. To focus.
I’d lost my family. I’d lost my mother to my father. I’d lost Ava to her pain.
And I’d lost Elise.
We’d only had that night, but we’d also had the promise of what could have been. A promise I’d broken. Because how could I see her again after what happened? I didn’t deserve her. I didn’t deserve anyone. I certainly couldn’t be trusted. Just look at my track record. I destroyed everyone close to me. If my mother’s end wasn’t proof of that, then my sister’s life surely was.
Light from the house pulled me back from this particular abyss, and I set my feet on the bottom of the pool.
Ava.
Her bedroom light. She was home.
Relief coursed through me. I hauled myself out of the water and made quick work with my towel. If she’d fallen off the wagon, she’d be more than just an hour late. She might not even come home at all.
I entered by bedroom and moved through the house.
“Ava?” Her room was on the other side of the kitchen and living room from mine, but I called her before I even reached the hallway.
“I’m back!” she yelled from the direction of her room. “And I’m glad to see you weren’t pacing a groove in the floor.”
At this, I actually grinned. I had been pacing before my swim, but she didn’t need to know that.
Still dripping and scrubbing my hair with the towel, I turned down the hall to hers and found her door closed.
Why was it closed? Did she score some drugs at the hospital? Was that what had taken her so long? How hard could it be to get your hands on some opioids in a hospital? And if she got them, would she save them for later when I wouldn’t be around? Like Monday when I had to go to the office?
“Are you standing outside my room?” she asked behind her door.
“Uh… I was just—”
The door whooshed open, and my sister stood before me, frowning.
“—I was just going to ask—”
“You’re checking up on me.” Her voice carried a hint of accusation, but her eyes looked resigned. “I get it.”
And then I realized that her eyes — though communicating her weary resentment — were clear. She met my gaze dead on. No nystagmus. No averting. She might have used her time at the hospital to score drugs, but she clearly hadn’t taken any. I’d never know for sure if she had any in her possession unless I searched every nook and cranny of her room. And I wasn’t going to do that.
Not because I didn’t want to. But because I knew it would hurt her.
I took a measured breath and reminded myself I had to try. I had to try to trust Ava. Trust the process. “How was the meeting?”
She held my gaze for a minute before crimping her lips and shrugging. “Not as good as the Hazelden group meetings, but okay.” She raised a brow at me, making her look somehow older, more jaded. “There were only seven of us, which sucked because it’s hard to disappear in such a small group, but I may have found a sponsor.”
A sponsor. Thank God.
“Oh? What’s she like?”
Ava’s brow climbed higher. “He has been clean and sober for six years.” Her words dripped with snark. “That’s who I was talking to.”
An armada of questions lined up in my mind. “What’s his name? How old is he?” The first two fired off before I could think better of them, and I knew by the way Ava cocked her jaw and regarded me with a sour glare they weren’t appreciated.
“This has got to stop,” she leveled.
I pulled in a deep breath. She was right. In theory. But why couldn’t this sponsor person be, say, a woman in her sixties? Ava was beautiful and vulnerable. A man could take advantage of her.
She trusted far too easily. She always had.
A vision of a Halloween night years ago lit up my brain like a bomb blast. I kept the memory to myself. She hated when I brought it up. I emptied my lungs. Ava was home now. That needed to be enough for the moment.
“Alright. You can tell me about him when you’re ready,” I offered. “Hungry? I can make pancakes after I shower.”
All frustration fled her face, and Ava’s eyes widened with delight. “Breakfast for dinner? You’re on!” Her eyes grew even wider. “Can you add pecans and chocolate chips like Flora used to?”
And just like that, I was back in Flora’s kitchen, sitting at the table across from Elise, teasing her to get her to look at me, pancakes piled high on our plates. A bittersweet pang clenched my gut. Thanksgiving. A month before I’d kissed her. I hadn’t thought about that morning in years. And now I could taste. Smell it.
As though seeing Elise had caused a prison break of memories I’d kept on lockdown.
My God. Despite my silence, my paralysis, the desire to talk to her at the gallery had been unbearable. But if she hadn’t disappeared, what would I have said? What could I have said?
“Sure thing,” I answered, ducking my head in a nod and hoping my sister h
adn’t the pass over my face. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Ava said, wiping syrup off her lips. “These are awesome pancakes… but they aren’t as good as Flora’s.”
I swallowed my mouthful. She was right. They were good, but they couldn’t touch Flora’s. Over the years, it was one of the things Ava and I could talk about. No one cooked like Flora. Sure, we could get a fantastic dinner at Carmo on Julia Street and have a great brunch at Satsuma Cafe uptown, but comfort food? Homecooking? No one came close.
And by whatever tacit agreement we’d made eight years ago, we could not and would not talk about that night. Which meant talking about our parents was impossible because their memories were inseparable from that night.
But we could talk about Flora.
She had always been a steady source of nurturing and nourishment. Whatever memories we held of growing up in that house, those in Flora’s kitchen were the brightest and warmest, and when we hungered for home, it was for a meal at her table, not a cold, formal family dinner in the dining room.
And she’d kept in touch with us. In her own way. Ava and I would get cards on our birthdays, and on New Year’s. Not Christmas. It was as though Flora understood we needed to look ahead instead of looking back. The cards were simple, sappy affairs with only Lots of love, Flora penned on the bottom, but we knew what they carried. Her well wishes. Her regret that she couldn’t have done more to help us. Her understanding of who we were.
I don’t know about Ava, but I returned the favor, sending flowers on Flora’s birthday — I’d had to look up the date among my father’s papers — and, because she’d always given us sweets, a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day.
I never sent a card, but Flora had to know they were from me. That first year, doing those two things had made me smile when little else could.
But beyond those missives, we hadn’t reached out to her, and after I had sold the house and given her a severance, she hadn’t called us. My guess was she knew we were trying to start new lives, and she was giving us the space to do that. Letting us cut ties. I, for one, appreciated the space. When I’d first told Flora my plan to move us to New Orleans, she had advised against it, saying we needed to grieve and come to terms.
How the hell do you come to terms with what happened in our house?
I hadn’t faulted Flora for her unwelcome counsel. She didn’t know any better. No one did. Not my father’s business partners who had looked like lost children when they learned the truth about him. Not Louis or his parents. They’d all had advice. But none of them knew.
They didn’t know what it was like to survive it. And they sure as hell didn’t know what it was like to bear the blame. To be the one who gave the killer his gun.
“We should go see her,” Ava chirped.
I blinked for a moment, jarred from my spiraling thoughts. “What?”
Ava’s eyes were on me, and a hint of a frown creased her brow. “Flora. We should go see her,” she said. “I bet she’d give us her pancake recipe.”
My mouth opened. I closed it. Go see Flora? “I… I don’t—”
Ava’s frown deepened. “If you don’t want to come, I’ll go on my own, but I bet she’d love to see you.”
I choked on nothing. Swallowed. Cleared my throat. “Maybe we could do that after you’ve settled in.”
My sister rolled her eyes and shot me a look as if I was crazy. “Settled in? Cole, you’ve completely moved me in. There’s not even a pair of socks left for me to unpack.” She stabbed at her vanishing pile of pancakes. “Any more settled, and I’ll turn to stone.”
I narrowed my eyes at my sister. Where was the snark coming from? Ava whined. Ava pouted. Ava gave ultimatums. She didn’t make jokes, and she didn’t trade barbs. Not sober, anyway.
This was new. And I liked it.
“Fine. If you want to see Flora, we’ll go see Flora.”
Chapter 20
COLE
After we’d decimated the last of our pancakes, and Ava and I cleaned up the kitchen together — something that literally had not happened in about five years — I told my sister goodnight, assuring her I’d try to get in touch with Flora.
But I didn’t immediately do that. Instead, I pulled out my phone and searched online for Elise Nicole Cormier. And surprise smacked me in the face. The first hit was her website. Elise Cormier Originals. The same one I’d created for her.
It looked nothing like the one I’d mocked up, of course. The themes, color scheme, and fonts were completely different. And a hell of a lot nicer. But the URL was the same. And the contact information listed the same email I’d set up for Elise years ago.
Wow.
The site featured page upon page of custom-designed jewelry. Delicate, stunning, intricate stuff. She seemed to prefer silvers and blues. Pewter and sterling. Aquamarines and sapphires. The site had pictures of earrings, bracelets, necklaces, rings.
But no pictures of Elise.
According to the homepage, customers could find the high-end items of Elise’s jewelry line at Buttross Jewelers in the South College Shopping Center, but the rest of her designs could be ordered online or sampled at the farmer’s market at the old horse farm on the first Saturday of the month.
More searching yielded her Instagram account, which was public, but the first twenty or so images were jewelry, sketches, or shots she’d hashtagged #inspiration. These ranged from wildflowers to wedding dresses, all striking, and I could see something stirring in each. Something delicate and elevated. Mysterious. Like she was.
But then I found her. A picture she’d posted about two months ago. It had clearly been taken at her farmer’s market booth. The morning must have been a cold one because her cheeks and nose were pink. She wore a form-fitting denim jacket, buttoned up tight, and a scarlet scarf at her throat. She’d painted her lips a matching shade, and the brilliant red made her amber eyes blaze.
A little girl, who couldn’t have been older than seven or eight, appeared to be Elise’s customer. The girl had her back to the camera, but she had all of Elise’s attention. Elise’s mouth was curved up in an stunning, open smile as she pointed to a ring on her table.
But that smile.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it. She looked happy. More than that.
She looked like happiness.
I stared, question after question lining up in my mind. Did she still sing off-key while she worked? Did she still love sweet tea? Did she still like to be read to? Did she have a boyfriend now who did that for her?
It was the last question that pushed me to open my contacts and tap Flora’s number.
The next morning found Ava and me at Cafe 20.3 on the Bayou.
As it turned out, Flora’s number hadn’t changed in eight years — and after her initial fit of squeals and prayers of praise — we’d made plans to have breakfast at the new restaurant where she now worked.
As soon as we cleared the door of the small cafe, a loud whoop from the back was the only warning we got before Flora — heavier, grayer, and a little slower than I remembered — crushed us in her embrace.
“Oooohhh, my babies!” She pulled both of us into her generous bosom, planting a kiss on my cheek before landing one on the top of Ava’s head. “My babies.”
Growing up, I hadn’t tolerated Flora fussing over me. She’d manage to claim the rare hug, but most of the time she’d had to settle for patting me on the back or squeezing my bicep. Now, tucked into the comfort of her billowing arms, I cursed my younger self for being so stupid.
Flora’s hug eased me. As though weights I’d held on my shoulders for decades slipped to the earth.
Ava obviously sensed it too. I felt her beside me, her arms wrapped around both of us, holding tight. With a force that surprised me, my eyes stung, and I had to grit my teeth and clear my throat to keep control.
“Just look at the two of you,” Flora murmured, releasing us to brush her eyes with the back of her hands. Of course, Ava�
�s cheeks were streaked with tears, but she was smiling beneath them.
Flora grabbed us each by a hand and pulled us to the table closest to the kitchen. “Now, y’all sit right here. I’ll have to be in and out, but it’s usually quiet this early.”
Indeed, there were only three other customers, an older gentleman sipping coffee at the bar and two women in running attire at a table, drinking smoothies.
“I’ll get you some coffee, and y’all think about what you want,” she said, sliding green paper menus toward us. “Be right back.”
Flora disappeared, and I looked up at my sister. Ava’s lashes were wet, but she looked happier than I’d seen her in a long time.
“She’s still the same,” she said, her voice hoarse with emotion. “She still loves us.”
I nodded. That was pretty much all I could do. I passed my eye over the menu, hoping the distraction would help restore my breath. Flora still loved us. She’d called us her babies. Knowing that was one thing. Feeling it was something entirely different. It reminded me of innocence.
When had I last felt innocent?
Flora bustled out with our coffees. “Gimme back those menus,” she said, grabbing the leaflets from us. “I know what y’all like. What was I thinking?”
This made me grin, and ten minutes later, she emerged from the kitchen bearing two large plates each bearing an egg and cheese croissant, a side of bacon, and a small bowl of mixed berries.
“This looks amazing,” Ava sang, her eyes wide.
“Well, dig in,” Flora said, her guarded smile of pride one I well recognized.
I lifted the croissant to my mouth. One bite had me moaning. The dish was new, but the flavors were unmistakably Flora’s.
“Oh. My. God. Flora.” I shook my head in awe, leaned over, and kissed her on the cheek.
“Oh, lamb,” she sighed, patting mine in return. Then she set me back from her and tapped on the table. “Now, I can’t stand the suspense anymore. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
So I did. I told her about finishing school — in less than four years. About opening the firm in New Orleans, how I’d started it solo and turned it into a business with a healthy staff of ten people. Then I glossed over our arrival in Lafayette by saying it was time to expand. I didn’t want to lie to Flora, but I wanted to spare Ava any embarrassment or pain.
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