Sweet Surrender

by Jeanie Freeman-Harper

  The last domino in the row was the one destined to tip the entire lot. Evenings after the Pink Pelican closed, Alex Lejeune would steal a pint of Southern Comfort from the bar and sip it from a takeout bag while driving to his new home at Deville Place. Some nights he detoured to he drive by the Lejeune house at Winderlee, as if some magnetic force beyond his control drew him there. He began to see the van from Mai's shop parked in front, and his paranoia grew. “What the deuce, ol’ boy. They've let in the foreigner. Something’s going on behind my back!”

  Finally his paranoia got the better of him, and he parked down the street to watch. As the sun set, he saw Mai Quan leaving the house with none other than Adele. It was the first time he had seen his ex–wife since the divorce in 1996, and he barely recognized her. She smiled and walked with a bounce to her steps. Something had transformed the disturbed and melancholy woman he remembered. Only one thing can do that, he told himself… a man. Adele’s got herself a man and maybe the same one.

  “What do you think of that, Rider ? Talk to me. If you can't speak to me, why do you live in my truck? What are you, anyway...the Ghost of Christmas Past come early? The least you could do is rattle a chain. Look there man. They have their heads together, telling secrets and plotting against me. Did you see that?”

  Alex watched as Adele slid into the passenger side of the van, and Mai got behind the wheel. He followed closely for a few blocks, but when he saw Mai staring at his truck from her side mirror, he detoured, turned down a side street and drove parallel to the van, picking up on his view between shops. He was on the trail and feeling good, now that he was back in control. “We need a little music to liven things up, Rider. We’re about to foil the Devil’s plot.”

  The good thing about an eighties truck was the old fashioned cassette deck that reminded Alex of his teen years when he was happy and carefree. He found “The Eagles Greatest Hits” in the storage compartment, as if it had been left there just for him. He slid in the cassette, and heard the same song that had played on the night Adele stepped over the line. It was like a message from the past.

  “You can't hide your lyin' eyes, and your smile's a thin disguise.

  Thought by now you'd realize, there ain’t no way to hide your lyin' eyes.”

  What had he expected from a girl like Adele? He knew she had married him for the money and the Lejeune name. Even so, he thought he could make her love him. How he had tried in the beginning, but she had lied about wanting only him. The Eagles got it right.

  “It breaks her heart to think her love is only given to a man with hands as cold as ice.”

  The more gulps of Southern Comfort he took, the sharper became the image of his constant passenger Rider. Alex poured out his heart. “God help me, I married beneath me. I married a gator hunter's daughter straight off the bayou. All that woman had was looks, but I thought I couldn't live without her. I was her one way ticket out of the swamp, ol’ boy! That’s all I ever was.”

  “Every form of refuge has its price,” Don Henley crooned.

  What a high levy Adele had paid for the refuge she had found with the Lejeune family. Despite every advantage, she began to drink, and no one could say exactly why. Alex, on the other hand, had begun his decline the day he was born. There had been too many privileges from an indulgent father who substituted material things for love. Alex never saw that cause and effect.

  Now back in real time, he turned back on the main road, staying a safe distance from Mai’s van. As darkness enveloped him, he drifted over the center line, just as the local sheriff's deputy began tailing him. He had seen the same patrol car across the road from the Pink Pelican, waiting to catch him in a DUI. He slowed his speed and swung back into his lane. When he looked in the rear view mirror, the car had somehow disappeared. He sighed in relief and took up where he left off.

  “You see, Rider. You see how it was. Papa Lucien spent the family fortune keeping my unfaithful wife in the nut house and supporting his mistress. Two women...the downfall of the entire family! You can bet Mai has told Adele I'm in town. You can see they have their heads together.”

  He was feeling low. He had lost the most important thing of all—beyond the wife who had not been his for twenty years and more, beyond the the life insurance that went to his sister, beyond the sugar cane farm and the house and the land that belonged to Eva. He had lost the one thing he wanted. He wanted: Destiny.

  Lucien had said “Of course that shrimp boat will be yours when I'm gone...to whom else would I leave it but my only son?”

  “His only son. All the while he knew his illegitimate back alley secret waited in the wings like a vulture.”

  ***

  The rain came light and misty as darkness set in—just enough to bring oil up to form a slick road surface. He drove faster than he should, skidding around the curves, still on the van’s tail. He took another sip from the bottle. “Appears we’re all headed down to the canal to the boats, ol' boy Wait 'til you see Destiny—all thirty six feet, sleek and shiny and as easy to handle as a woman gone wrong.”

  He turned off his headlights and parked far enough away from the van to remain hidden under the cloak of darkness. He eased out of the truck and sneaked up to the pier. A beacon of light spilled out from the cabin of the boat where Adele was talking to a man. It was a Vietnamese man whose back was to him, but he knew it was the fishermen they called Jace. Although the couple did not touch, he could see by the expression on Jace’s face that he was enthralled with Adele.

  Doesn’t the idiot know he was dealing with a maniac?

  The rain stopped as Alex crouched where the boat was tied, and the couple’s voices drifted out across the still night air. He became the spectator in a darkened theater watching a melodrama. The first line of act one belonged to the female lead: “Why can't we just take the boat and leave? We can go anywhere you want. We can live on the boat. What's to hold us here? We can go as soon as Destiny is legally yours...as soon as Malcolm Bertrand tells Eva that Lucien left it to you…so there can be no messiness. Then you can take me away from here forever.”

  Alex could not see her face, but he visualized the intensity of the wide eyes and seductive smile. He had seen the look before. He inched closer to hear the rest of it.

  Jace knew his lines very well: “Our place is here. We can no longer sneak around like before. I ask that you, not some lawyer, tell our daughter who I am. I’ve hidden the truth all these years, because you and my mother asked me to. It was always about father and his reputation. That no longer matters now.”

  Alex’s stomach turned. He’s taken my wife and now he’s taking my boat and my place in the family. Papa loved him more than me all along.

  Alex emitted the loud wail of a wounded animal, then jerked his head toward the van where Mai Quan was parked. She was far enough away not to hear him or see him. Even so, he was forced to scamper from the pier when it became apparent that Adele was stepping off the boat.

  I can’t let her see me. Not like this. The time will come when something will tip, and they will all fall down. They will all know that it was me.

  He ran ahead through the darkness to the seclusion of his truck, and Rider. “Don't glare at me that way. I had to see for myself, ol' boy. Don’t blame me for whatever I do next.”

  Wet and shaken to his core, he spun away from the dock. The deputy pulled out from God-knows-where to begin following him all the way to the Deville Place parking lot. The lawman stopped and rolled down his window. “You didn’t have to run if you had nothing to hide. You drunk Mister?”

  “If not, I soon will be.”

  He dared not turn his face toward his persecutor on the off chance he might be recognized. Then, in one moment of sanity, he laughed aloud at his paranoia. The young upstart had probably been in diapers the year Alex left Vermilion Bay. Nobody but Father Renaud had recognized him so far. There was no connection to anybody, anywhere. He was a lost man with nowhere to go and nothing to lose.

  The deputy was n
ot going to let it go. “Quit stalking people, and stay away from Winderlee. In fact, stay off the roads. You need to go on in and sleep it off. Whatever your problem, things will look better come morning.”

  “...or worse.”

  “Either way, I'm telling you not to get back out tonight. I'll track you, give you a breathalyzer, and you can sober up in jail. Your choice.”

  “Self-righteous misfits like you follow me everywhere I go. Why can't you all just leave me alone?”

  “....because people like you are a menace to society, and misfits like us have to stop you.”

  “You don't even know who I am. Freaks are coming at me out of nowhere. I have Rider here in my truck, disappearing and showing up again...and lawmen behind me on the road and priests showing up at my work. For your information, I am still a Lejeune, even if I was disowned. I have every right to pass by that house...or enter that house... as I please. Some day soon everyone will know who I really am.”

  A voice of caution whispered in his ear, and he did not know if it was his own voice or Rider’s. You say too much. You give yourself away.

  The deputy snorted in derision. “A member of the Lejeune family? You don't expect me to believe that...a fine upstanding family like the Lejeunes and you a homeless deranged bum who just happened to drift into town?”

  Too enraged to speak, Alex tumbled out of his truck, beat on the hood of the patrol car with his fists, staggered inside his room, and peered out the window. No one was there. Suddenly the room seemed to spin, and he fell face-down across the bed fully clothed. The empty bottle fell from his hand. He clutched his aching head as if to dislodge the long ago scene that began to play in his mind one last time:

  Adele was dressed fit to kill, and he was almost willing to do the honors. Her explanation for leaving that night had been an unlikely one:“...to see an old friend who's feeling down.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  She turned on her way out and shrugged, brushing off his terror of her losing her :“....as long as it takes for my friend to feel better.” Then she gave him a little half smile and walked out the door.

  He waited, wanting to trust without reason to do so. At last, he drove through a night illuminated by an enormous full moon. He looked for her car, desperate to catch her, shaking for fear of what he might do. The radio was tuned to a country station, and he turned it full volume:

  “I know she’s been here lately. I can still smell her perfume. She gets crazy on a full moon.”

  He drove past the Pink Pelican, Lovers' Lane, and the Bayside Inn, and her car was nowhere. So he came to accept her lie, because he got tired of looking for the truth. He went home, fixed himself a strong one and waited.

  Now it all came around again, and he knew who “an old friend” had been. They had, no doubt, like tonight, rendezvoused on the boat that had been his future, promised to him by his father. Just that day, the paperwork that would leave it to this interloper into his life, was locked safe and secure in Malcolm Bertrand’s office. The truth had sucker punched him in the gut. Eva’s father was Jacques Quan, a.k.a. Jace, son of Lucien and Mai. Even as Eva, in most respects, resembled Adele, there was a different blood involved. The finishing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fell into place.

  One last truth tunneled its way through his liquor-soaked brain: Eva was as much a Lejeune as he! That fact gave her rights second only to himself, and his rights had been taken from him. That she was not some outsider taking the lion's share of the family business was little comfort.

  That afternoon, Alex Lejeune went to the city library, got online and searched for the fix that would blow their comfy little world sky-high.

  13

  Jim Blackwood sat with Gabriel Martin in the same Austin cafe. This time he had a gin and tonic to take off the edge. He had worked too many cases in too short a time, and he always liked to settle things in the easiest possible way. His client, however, liked to do things the ethical way, and therein lay the conflict.

  “We got the ex where we want her, Gabe. She’s on the ropes. My man has pictures of some big dumb moocher entering and leaving her house. It’s obvious she has a live-in boyfriend. It won't look so good for her in court.”

  Gabe leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “Look, I don't want to win by dragging her through the mud. She’s Sam’s mother, after all.”

  The lawyer was ready for just such a reaction. “How do you think you’re going to win playing nice-nice? Being the boy’s mother gives her extra points. We have to take some of them away, if we’re to win the game.”

  “That’s not the whole picture. Sam should have a say all things being equal. Other than having the live in boyfriend, she hasn’t given me much ammunition. These days, no one seems to bat an eye at that arrangement any way. I just want her to either marry the man or move him out...if Sam continues to live with her. Otherwise, she can do as she pleases.”

  “What if your boy wants to be with you?”

  “Then I would consider myself the luckiest man in the world.”

  “Can you say you have a stable life in Louisiana? Can you show financial stability?”

  “I soon can.”

  “Still working for that Lejeune woman?”

  “Eva. Her name is Eva Marie,” Gabe murmured, and the sound of it was like a lovely and haunting melody. He suddenly realized he missed her.

  “Any chance of giving Sam a substitute mother? You haven’t even told her about your son, have you?”

  “Leave her out of this. It hasn’t gone that far. I haven’t told her about Sam, because I don’t want to complicate things before we’re on sound footing. Neither do I want to involve her in my problems. She has enough of her own. I figure she would either run from me or feel sorry for me and get tangled up in a nasty battle with a spiteful ex wife. Either way, it’s no good...not until I win.”

  “It would help your case if there was the prospect of a wife there in Vermilion Bay. Otherwise, you should decide to move back here. You need the hometown advantage.”

  Blackwood stood and laid his hand on Gabe’s shoulder. “Think about what I said. I’ll see you in court.”

  That night at his hotel, Gabe called to talk to Sam, but, as anticipated, he was turned away by gatekeeper Janet. “Not this time, Gabriel. I won't have you upsetting him. He’s better off with me, and if you don't drop this case before nine tomorrow, it will go badly for you. You can't win. God knows what is going on with you in that backwater bog. I will use anything I can. I won’t have my son taken around some Louisiana floozy either.”

  Gabe tried to stay calm, but he felt his blood pressure rise. “I want whatever will make Sam happy. Let him have his say.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He's too young.”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Janet...if he’s happy...if your boyfriend is an adequate step dad. The only question I have is how well do you know this guy, and how is he with Sam when you aren't around? Ever wonder about that?”

  “Are you questioning my judgment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, we can end this conversation right now. I’ll see you in court tomorrow!”

  Click, and she was gone from his life forever. Suddenly, any residual affection for his ex wife was dead, clearing way for his feelings for Eva Marie Lejeune. It was she and she alone who made him who he was meant to be. A longing to hear her voice washed over him. He reached for his cell phone but immediately laid it back down and turned off the light. He would wait until his thoughts were clear. He would wait until the issue facing him was resolved, and he could come to her whole and free and clear. He lay in the darkness intensely alert. He couldn’t shut out the image of her face.

  But what had he to offer her—she who could have the world at her feet. The best he could do was bring in the best crop of cane ever harvested at Winderlee. The second thing was to clear her beloved housekeeper Colette of the burning of the field. First he had a custody battle to win.
<
br />   14

  “Father, won't you lay down your burden for just one day. Take a vacation maybe? You know what the doctor said about stress.”

  Renaud saw the concern in Marcela Mouton’s faded eyes and simple peasant face, and his heart was touched by it. The day was fast approaching when death would take him from her. He had loved her as a man loves a woman but without the right to declare it or act upon it. They had lived in the rectory in purity and propriety, as man of the cloth and housekeeper. He was still a natural man.

  He dropped his hand to his side and turned from her. “There will be plenty of time to rest when they place me in the ground, and my time grows short.”

  He left her standing at the door as he headed for his afternoon walk—a regimen his doctor had ordered to strengthen the weakening heart. He was barely up to it. The parishioners had filed in all morning with their confessions. Now in the winter of his life, he knew the truth he could not speak: a priest was just a man without power to absolve anyone of anything.

  After several blocks, the air began to clear his head, and he could see his life clearly as it really was. He had to wonder what good he had actually done in fifty years of hearing the repetitive confessions of serial cheaters and liars and ordinary schoolboys wracked with guilt over “impure” thoughts. What was it all about? He had to make a difference by focusing on the one major challenge in his otherwise commonplace life—his quest for meaningful existence. If Alex Lejeune, in his vengeance, was plotting an atrocity, he had to be stopped.

  That night he dreamed of the fishing boats lined up in the canal for the procession, and as he raised his arm to give the blessing, there came a sudden deafening noise, a flash of light and screams from aboard Destiny. He awakened with a start to the image of a face with distorted features and an expression of sorrow. “Tell me who you are and why you have come! Then leave this world where you no longer belong.” Yet he knew. He knew of only one human being powerful enough to rise from the grave to touch his mind and heart.