She almost felt as if she could actually see the scene taking place before her. At the same time, she was experiencing it as the little girl she had once been. That little girl had felt safe, sleepy, comforted by the warmth of her mother’s presence.
She also had been dreading the moment when her mother would turn and go out of the room, because she was scared to death to be left alone in the dark.
CHAPTER 7
YOU CAN SLEEP IN HERE, SARA, AND YOUR mama can have the room next door,’’ Martha said. To Olivia, her voice sounded like it was coming from a distance. In reality, she was standing just inside the door, not four feet away, with Chloe beside her.
Olivia could feel the warmth of her daughter’s fingers in hers, and the weight of her small body as she pressed close against her side. For Sara’s sake, Olivia fought to overcome the sudden sense of disorientation that assailed her.
The vision, and the emotions that went with it, had seemed so real.
It was an old memory brought on by entering her childhood bedroom again, coupled probably with her upset over Big John, and nothing more, she told herself. The strength of the feelings that had accompanied it was disquieting, but that was likely because she had so few memories of her mother.
I’m here. She could almost hear the voice in her head. Which was ridiculous, of course. Making a great effort, she pulled herself together and focused on the present, and her daughter.
‘‘If Sara doesn’t mind sharing her bed with me, I think we’ll both sleep in here, for tonight, at least,’’ Olivia said, smiling at Martha. If her voice was a little thin and her smile a little forced, no one seemed to notice.
‘‘I don’t mind.’’ Sara’s free right hand was busy twisting a fold of Olivia’s skirt, but she actually spoke without maternal prompting. From that, and the eagerness in her voice, Olivia knew how enormous her relief must be at not being left to sleep alone in these unfamiliar surroundings.
Martha nodded. ‘‘That’s fine, then. Chloe’s bedroom is next to Mr. Seth’s, in the east wing. My room’s across the hall from theirs, next to Miss Callie’s. If you need anything, just come along and get me. I’m a real light sleeper.’’
Olivia’s disorienting sense of having stepped back in time was fading. ‘‘We will.’’
‘‘I’ll scare you two up somethin’ to sleep in, then, and we’ll see about gettin’ your things picked up from the bus dee-poe. Maybe, if I can get Lamar on the phone, he can run them out first thing in the morning.’’
‘‘Thank you, Martha.’’ Olivia glanced at Chloe, who was still staring at Sara. Sara, of course, instead of meeting that critical gaze head-on, was steadfastly regarding the patterned Oriental carpet. ‘‘Good night, Chloe.’’
‘‘Good night,’’ Chloe said with reasonable civility, and turned away as Martha grasped her hand. The two of them headed toward the opposite end of the house. When they were gone, Olivia looked down at Sara, who still stood pressed against her side, one hand in hers, one hand wrapped in her skirt, her gaze on the ground.
‘‘You okay, pumpkin-eater?’’ she asked, dropping her daughter’s hand to wrap her arms around her shoulders and give her a gentle hug.
Sara nodded, and hugged her back.
‘‘I’m glad you’re going to sleep with me tonight,’’ she said, as Olivia released her.
‘‘You better not hog all the covers.’’ Olivia’s reply was deliberately light.
That made Sara smile. ‘‘I won’t. It’s too hot.’’
She moved away from Olivia’s side into the center of the room, and slowly revolved as she looked around.
‘‘What do you think?’’ Olivia asked, smiling.
‘‘This place is awesome,’’ Sara said. ‘‘It’s like a mansion.’’
Compared to their low-rent, two-bedroom apartment, Olivia guessed it was. ‘‘Told you.’’
‘‘I thought you might be just making it up.’’
‘‘Me lie to you? Never,’’ Olivia said. Sara giggled. Olivia heard the sound with relief.
‘‘See this bed?’’ Olivia continued, crossing to it and throwing herself down on her back, arms spread wide.
Sara nodded.
‘‘This is the bed I used to sleep in when I was a little girl. It had a yellow bedspread then with big cabbage roses on it, and lots of lace around the pillows. And there were lots of pillows.’’
‘‘And you had a big doll with yellow hair and a pink dress named Victoria Elizabeth.’’ Sara walked over to stand beside the bed, smiling down at her mother. She had heard the stories many times, and knew all the details almost as well as Olivia did.
‘‘That’s right.’’
‘‘And you painted your hair yellow once, so you would look like the doll. And—and your aunt Callie tried and tried to wash it out, but it wouldn’t come out, and you ended up having to get all your hair cut off.’’ Sara’s smile turned into a grin, and she flopped down on her stomach beside her mother. ‘‘I can’t believe you would do something that stupid.’’
‘‘It wasn’t one of my better moments, I admit.’’
‘‘And a nutria came down the chimney once, and when you woke up it was sitting on your pillow staring at you. You screamed so loud that you woke up everybody in the house, and they came running in, and the nutria was running all over the room and when Seth tried to shoo it out it bit him and he had to get rabies shots.’’
‘‘Yup.’’
‘‘It was all true,’’ Sara said, enchanted. ‘‘There really was a doll, and a nutria, and—’’
A rap on the door caused Olivia to sit up, feeling slightly foolish about being caught in her abandoned posture on the bed. Beside her, Sara sat up, too, and scooted off the bed as though scared she had done something wrong. Martha stood in the open doorway, her gaze moving over them indulgently.
‘‘I’ve brought both you girls nightgowns,’’ she said, indicating with a gesture the articles of clothing draped over her right forearm. ‘‘And robes. And toothbrushes.’’
‘‘Oh, Martha, you’re wonderful.’’ Olivia stood up and moved across the room to take the items from her. ‘‘Thanks.’’
Martha smiled first at her, then at Sara. ‘‘It’s good to have you home, Miss Olivia. And you, too, Miss Sara.’’ Martha left, and Olivia closed the door. Turning back to her daughter, she found Sara standing beside the bed, wide-eyed.
‘‘She called me Miss Sara.’’
‘‘That’s just the way things are done around here. Don’t let it go to your head.’’
Sara wrinkled her nose. ‘‘I won’t.’’
‘‘Good. I’d hate to see your head get swelled up so much that it would just pop like a balloon. Your brains would go all over the walls and—’’
‘‘That’s gross!’’
‘‘I know.’’ Olivia chuckled at the expression on her child’s face. She had been trying to cheer her up, and apparently she’d succeeded.
Moments later, nightclothes and toothbrushes in hand, Olivia and Sara went along to the bathroom across the hall to wash up and brush their teeth. It was too late for anything more, and to quiet her conscience Olivia told herself that missing her nightly bath wouldn’t hurt Sara this once. After they were clean, and clad in borrowed nightgowns—Sara’s was pink, but otherwise almost identical to the sleeveless blue one Chloe had worn, while the ownership of Olivia’s knee-length green nylon number was murkier—they padded back to the bedroom, closed the door, turned out the light, and got into bed.
Olivia meant to wait until Sara went to sleep, then get up, go to the kitchen, and, if there was no news, call around until she found the hospital where Big John had been taken. She was certain that it would be in Baton Rouge, and that being the case there were only so many possibilities.
‘‘Say your prayers,’’ she instructed Sara, as she did every night. Lying close beside her daughter, with the tiny white lights that still twinkled outside penetrating the curtains so that, while the room was dark, it was
not so dark that she could not see, Olivia listened to her daughter’s murmured prayer.
‘‘Now I lay me . . .’’
She had said that same prayer, in that same room, as a child. In the gloom, it was easy to imagine that time had flown backward again, that her mother lay beside her listening to her prayer, and for a moment the illusion was so real that it sent a chill down her spine. Talk about déjà vu . . .
‘‘Are you sad about that old man, Mom?’’ Sara asked, having apparently finished her prayers while Olivia had not been attending. Again Olivia forced herself back to the present.
‘‘I’m worried about him,’’ Olivia said. ‘‘I’m hoping he’ll be all right.’’
‘‘Should I say a God-bless for him, too?’’
‘‘That would be nice.’’
‘‘God bless that old man,’’ Sara said, and Olivia had to smile.
For a moment Sara was silent. Then she said, ‘‘That girl—Chloe—is really mean, isn’t she? And she doesn’t like us.’’
‘‘She doesn’t know us. Once she does, she’ll love us, especially you. I mean, what’s not to love?’’
‘‘Oh, Mom.’’ Sara giggled sleepily.
‘‘Hush, now.’’ Olivia kissed her daughter’s cheek as Sara snuggled close.
‘‘Tell me a story about when you were growing up,’’ Sara begged, as she did every night. Usually Olivia complied. But tonight, the memories were too close, too real. So real it was almost eerie . . . Anyway, she was tired and worried and knew that Sara had to be exhausted, too.
‘‘It’s too late, pumpkin. Go to sleep.’’
‘‘But, Mom . . .’’
‘‘Go to sleep.’’
Olivia firmly quelled all of Sara’s additional attempts to chat with firm repetitions of ‘‘Go to sleep.’’
Finally the sound of her daughter’s breathing told Olivia that Sara had done just that.
Sliding carefully out of bed, she felt for the robe Martha had left her and pulled it on. Then, for no real reason except that it had always been her habit before she went to sleep in this room, she crossed to the long windows that were really more like French doors and made sure they were locked tight. Finally she turned on the small lamp by the bed so that if Sara awoke she wouldn’t be in the dark, and left the room, quietly closing the bedroom door behind her. Then she headed downstairs. The anxiety over Big John that she had suppressed for Sara’s sake surged into life, making her feel almost queasy.
She was terribly afraid that Big John would die. And if he did, it would be all her fault.
She should have stayed away.
CHAPTER 8
THERE WERE TWO WOMEN IN THE KITCHEN when Olivia entered, both dressed in black uniforms with white aprons tied around their waists. Olivia knew neither of them, although one was the woman who had spoken to Martha in the hall earlier. Both had their backs to her, and both were busily engaged in wiping down the white laminate countertops with rectangular yellow sponges. Tupperware containers, some stacked atop each other, were lined up on one long counter. Their tightly closed lids could not quite contain the spicy smell of boudin and gumbo, and Olivia surmised that the help were taking leftovers home.
The kitchen itself was unchanged from Olivia’s memory of it. Remodeled in the fifties with only an occasional change of appliances thereafter, it was huge, some forty feet long by twenty feet wide. At one time in the house’s history, it had been three smallish rooms. Now it boasted oak-paneled walls that had been painted a soft cream, custom-built cherry cabinets that lined three walls to the ceiling, a massive Sub-Zero refrigerator, and a commercial-looking stainless-steel stove that was an obviously recent addition. A long, well-scrubbed and scarred oak trestle table in the center of the room provided seating for up to twelve. Above it hung a century-old wrought-iron chandelier that had been converted to electricity just before Olivia left home. The far wall was a bank of multipaned, floor-to-ceiling windows, which included two French doors that opened onto the lower of the two galleries that surrounded the house. At the moment, cream-colored drapes with a green ivy pattern were closed over the windows, keeping the darkness out. The kitchen itself was brightly lit by antique brass-and-copper lamps, original to the house, that had been converted from oil at some point, and the chandelier over the table, which was agleam.
As Olivia came through the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the hall, both women looked around.
‘‘Hi,’’ Olivia said uncertainly, realizing that, despite her overwhelming sense of having come home, in reality the kitchen help were more certain of their place in the house than she. ‘‘Has there been any news about Mr. Archer?’’
Both women shook their heads.
‘‘Not that we’ve heard,’’ said the woman from the hall.
‘‘You’re Olivia Chenier, aren’t you?’’ The one Olivia hadn’t seen before looked her over appraisingly. If appearances were anything to judge by, she was the older of the two. She was around thirty, with obviously dyed dark red hair, blunt features, and a pear-shaped figure that the apron tied tightly around her waist only emphasized.
‘‘Yes. Well, Olivia Morrison now,’’ Olivia said, tightening the belt of the knee-length pink chenille bathrobe that Martha had provided. Her legs and feet were bare. While she was decently covered, and the only alternative garment she could have chosen was the limp sundress she had worn earlier, she felt hideously self-conscious under the other women’s avid stares.
‘‘I’m Amy McGee, Amy Fry, that was. You probably don’t remember me, but I used to see you around a lot when you were growing up. I live in town. You ran off and married some rodeo rider, didn’t you? Lord, when it happened that was all anybody talked about for months. Hot hot, is what we all said.’’ The woman shook her hand suggestively.
‘‘Amy!’’ the other woman protested. She was younger, slimmer, prettier, with mouse-brown hair pulled back into a ponytail at her nape. With an apologetic look at Olivia, she added, ‘‘I’m Amy’s sister, Laura Fry. We own Sisters Catering. We did the cooking tonight, all except the desserts. They came from Patout’s Bakery in town.’’
‘‘The boudin smells wonderful, although I didn’t get a chance to eat any.’’ Glad to be rescued from a discussion of her past, Olivia walked across the cool, rough-textured brick pavers that tiled the kitchen floor. With her face scrubbed clean of any makeup and her hair brushed straight back and tucked behind her ears, she wondered how she stacked up to the Olivia they remembered. Not well, she guessed. ‘‘I just came down to use the phone. Is it still . . .?’’
She nodded toward the butler’s pantry, which was basically a walk-in food closet with a sink and a telephone at the far end of the kitchen. When she had lived here, there had been two telephones in the whole huge house: one in the butler’s pantry, for general use, and one in Big John’s office, in the west wing. Big John had never liked telephones, and saw no need to have more than two of the noisy contraptions in his house. To his mind, two was pushing it. The restriction had played havoc with her social life, and as a teenager she had been impatient with Big John’s autocratic decree. It had been hard to carry on a conversation with anyone, let alone boys, in the middle of the busy kitchen, where any chance passerby was free to listen in.
More than once she had driven into town to use the pay phone in the drugstore. Every time she had done it, the necessity made her mad.
‘‘In there,’’ Amy confirmed, jerking a thumb toward the butler’s pantry. Her eyes were alive with speculation as she watched Olivia cross the room. Olivia guessed she would be the subject of a great deal of gossip in town the following day, and shrank a little inside. Where once she wouldn’t have worried a jot about what anyone said of her, and indeed had enjoyed shocking everyone from her family to the local townsfolk, time and circumstances had changed her. Pride had well and truly presaged her fall, and she was stung by the knowledge that she would be the subject of probably unflattering gossip on the morrow.
&nb
sp; ‘‘Amy, it’s the middle of the night. What are you and Laura still doin’ here?’’ Martha sounded scandalized as she came through the swinging door with far more assurance than Olivia had shown. Of course, Martha the housekeeper belonged now in a way that Olivia the not-quite-family-member did not. Martha looked as wide awake as ever, while she herself had passed beyond the point of exhaustion long since, and was sure it showed.
‘‘We’re just finishing up now,’’ Amy said, gathering both sponges and tossing them into the top rack of the dishwasher. ‘‘We didn’t want to leave the kitchen a mess.’’ With a flourish she shut the door and turned on the machine.
‘‘I hope Mr. Archer is okay.’’ Laura was softer in manner than her sister. As she spoke, she picked up her purse, an inexpensive-looking tan vinyl bag, from the counter, and slung it over her shoulder.
‘‘So do I.’’ Martha sighed. ‘‘I don’t guess there’s been any word?’’
‘‘Nobody’s told us anything,’’ Amy said.
‘‘I was just going to start calling the hospitals in Baton Rouge.’’ Olivia stuck her head out of the butler’s pantry. The telephone receiver was already in her hand.
‘‘Oh, Miss Olivia, are you up, too?’’ Martha’s gaze found her, and she shook her head. ‘‘The day you’ve had, you should be sleepin’ like the dead.’’
‘‘I couldn’t go to sleep without finding out how Big John is.’’ Olivia’s fingers tightened around the receiver. Once no one would have questioned her concern, or her right to it. It hurt to be treated like a guest, she discovered. Nine years away had changed nothing as far as her own feelings were concerned: To her, LaAngelle Plantation was still home, and the Archers family.
‘‘No, prob’ly not,’’ Martha conceded. ‘‘You go on and call, then. I’d try St. Elizabeth’s first, if it was me. That’s where Miss Belinda had her gallbladder out last year. Amy, did you two get your check?’’
As Amy answered, Olivia ducked back into the butler’s pantry and dialed Baton Rouge information.
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