Bayou, Whispers from the Past: A Novel

by Lauren Faulkenberry

  Bayou, Whispers

  from the Past

  a novel

  Lauren Faulkenberry

  Published by Velvet Morning Press

  Copyright © 2016 by Lauren Faulkenberry

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Ellen Meyer and Vicki Lesage

  Author photo by Cathy Faulkenberry

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For my grandmothers, Jean and Lula Mae

  Chapter 1

  December had brought a treacherous heat wave to my part of Louisiana, but it didn’t stop me from stringing two boxes of Christmas lights across the front porch. Standing on the top rung of the ladder, I reached to the corner of the ceiling and stapled the strand to the beadboard. It had been almost five months since I’d moved all of my belongings here, but I still couldn’t break the habit of calling this house Vergie’s. She’d left it to me, but this little Victorian would always be my grandmother’s.

  Lately, though, I’d begun to think of it as the house my mother grew up in. The kitchen she’d had breakfast in, the clawfoot tub she’d used for baths. I was starting to see my mother everywhere in this house, even though I could barely remember her face.

  I hadn’t thought about her this much in fifteen years, when she first left my father and me. But being back in Bayou Sabine stirred up my fragmented memories, like shards of a broken vase that were being pieced together to form its original shape.

  The more I tried to push the thoughts of her away in the daytime, the more they haunted me as I slept. Now I woke in the night, drawing panicked breaths and clutching the sheets in my fists. My nightmares always startled Jack awake as well, but he just wrapped his big arms around me and pulled me against his chest, sliding his fingers up and down my back. The thrumming of his heart against my cheek soothed me back into sleep—but only for a little while.

  Sometimes I called her name in my sleep. Not Mom, but Martine.

  Last night was no different. I’d dreamt I was back at Vergie’s funeral, standing in the pouring rain while the church seemed to split open and fill the sky with the sound of hymns being sung. The air around me vibrated with a dirge that started somewhere far off in the distance. In the flashes of lightning I saw a long line of people, walking in pairs, carrying umbrellas the way they did at the funerals in Old Saint Louis Number 1. I couldn’t see the faces of the people marching by, brushing past, knocking their shoulders against mine. It was as if they didn’t see me standing there, soaked to the bone. The crowd separated, passing me on either side, but still I couldn’t tell who these people were. Their faces were blurred, like photographs taken with the wrong aperture.

  My heart banged so hard against my ribs it hurt. My breath caught in my throat as I tried to call out for my friend Kate. She’d taken me to this funeral—she had to be there, and she could take me away—but there was only the crowd shoving against me. I started to topple in the wet grass, my heels sinking into the lawn, and still I cried out for Kate.

  Lightning crashed, close this time, and I scrambled to my feet. When I stood, the crowd was gone, and I could barely see in the heavy rain. But there was a hand on my shoulder, and when I spun around I saw her. It was my mother. I was sure of it. She wore huge black sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat. Her long hair was curly and dark, just like mine. Nothing about her face was familiar, but I knew it was her. As I opened my mouth to speak, my heart still pounding in my ears, she shoved me as hard as she could. I staggered backwards, falling from an impossible height, and awoke when I crashed to the earth.

  Jack had pulled me closer, slid his fingers in my hair as he whispered in my ear. I loved that this town had brought me to him, but I hated it for dredging up so much of my mother and the parts of her I’d let myself forget.

  Some people are better forgotten, but sometimes they hold fast to you with claws and teeth and refuse to let you leave them behind.

  ~~~~

  Since the summer, Jack and I had finished our renovations on Vergie’s house and had flipped another little Craftsman in the country. I figured if he and I could survive two renovations together, we could handle having our families over for Christmas.

  Well, I hadn’t actually suggested to him yet that we invite my father to come down from Raleigh. I had to find the right moment to announce that part of the plan.

  My father was still frustrated with me for leaving suddenly back in July, when I decided to stay here with Jack and start my own house-flipping business. In the ten years I’d worked for my father, he’d made a habit of freezing me out when I made him mad. But this past summer, I told him I was finished taking orders from him and was ready to take charge of my own projects.

  Our relationship had rapidly decayed in the last year, so I figured the best thing for us was to have some time apart. Having eight hundred miles between us didn’t hurt, either.

  He’d been suspicious of Jack from the first time I mentioned he was helping me repair Vergie’s house, and he was annoyed when I moved here from North Carolina to stay with him. My father had given up on telling me what to do when it came to men, but he quietly seethed and never asked about him, like he figured Jack would just go away, like all the others did. My father once accused me of taking in broken men and trying to fix them, and he seemed to think Jack was just another of those men. I was hoping to convince him otherwise for the sake of whatever bits of our relationship we might salvage.

  ~~~~

  My hair was sticking to my forehead. I pulled a ponytail holder from the pocket of my jeans and tied my long hair back. It still frizzed in the humidity, but it was getting more accustomed to the bayou climate.

  Jack’s dog, Bella, was parked on the opposite end of the porch, eyeing me from the shade. Her mottled gray coat was dappled with sunlight, her front legs splayed out in front of her. She looked like she was melting into the floorboards. It was a little after five, but felt like noon in summer.

  When Jack’s truck came rumbling down the driveway, she raised one ear slightly, then resumed her log pose.

  I stapled more lights into place and climbed down the ladder to move it a few feet over. This was my first Christmas in Bayou Sabine and my first Christmas away from North Carolina. I was determined to make it feel like a proper holiday. My father had stopped decorating for Christmas after my mom left us. I was sixteen, and after that, any decorating was up to me. My mother had loved Christmas, right down to the plastic reindeer on the roof, and my dad had enjoyed it simply because she did. But now that she was gone, he didn’t want reminders
of her and the things she loved.

  Unfortunately, that included a lot of the things I loved.

  He’d tossed out the plastic Santas and elves, and stopped hanging lights around the door. For the first few years he vetoed the holiday altogether, refusing to even put up a tree. I was in college by then, so I decorated my dorm room and got my fix before I came home for winter break.

  This year was also my first Christmas with Jack. So I wanted everything to be as close to perfect as it could be. “Perfect” was a tall order, but I hoped for it regardless.

  Jack parked behind the house and strode up to the porch, his dark hair standing out in tufts. He was wearing the same jeans and navy blue T-shirt he’d left the house in the day before.

  I never tired of watching his slow, easy swagger, the way he fixed his eyes on me like there was nothing else in his field of vision. He moved with more grace than I’d expect from a man so tall and muscular.

  “Hey,” I said, stapling the next section of lights into place.

  He stopped at the ladder and slid his hand along my calf. “Hey yourself,” he said. “Are you getting in the spirit?”

  “I’m trying, but it’s hard when it’s eighty degrees outside.”

  I climbed down the ladder, pausing on the bottom rung so I could look him in the eye. As he pulled me close for a kiss, I tangled my fingers in his hair.

  When I finally let him go, he said, “I think you might have missed me.”

  “You have no idea.”

  He lifted me off the ladder and set me down in front of him, leaving his hands cinched around my hips. “Can’t believe you’re not sick of me yet,” he said. “That’s the damnedest thing.”

  I shrugged. “You keep this place interesting.”

  He laughed, swatting me on the behind. “I’m going to get cleaned up. Then I’m making you dinner.”

  Of the two of us, Jack was the better cook by far. I’d occasionally cook, but Jack, having been raised by spice-loving Cajuns, easily put my dishes to shame. He’d humor me and eat what I made, but most nights he offered to cook, saying it relaxed him after a long stint at the firehouse. Apparently all of the firefighters at his engine were excellent chefs, always trading recipes and preparing meals for each other during shifts.

  “No fires this time?” I asked.

  “Nope, just some training sessions. Hence the desperate need for the shower.”

  As he stepped inside, I called after him, “You want some company?”

  “When have I ever said no to that, cher?” He stripped his shirt off and tossed it at me.

  I draped the string of lights on the ladder and followed him into the house. He wrapped his arms around me, squeezing me against his bare chest. I laughed, squirming as he tickled my sides, but then his grip tightened. Nuzzling my ear, he said, “When’s Kate coming? Tomorrow?”

  “Yeah,” I said, giggling as he tickled my neck with his stubbly cheek.

  “Perfect. One more night to ourselves.”

  He scooped me up over his shoulder and headed for the bedroom.

  “Jack! Put me down!”

  He laughed, his feet thumping on the hardwood. “No, ma’am, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  ~~~~

  Later, I lay next to him, sliding my fingers through his hair. It was soft as a rabbit’s fur and nearly black in the dim light.

  “I’ve been thinking about Christmas,” I said.

  “Hmm,” he replied, his eyes closed.

  “How about we ask Josie and Buck over here for dinner?”

  “They usually do it at their place. Josie likes to go all out.”

  “I just thought it’d be nice to have them over here, after all the help they’ve been.”

  “She loves hosting,” he said. “Sometimes my cousin comes down, and she always asks the guys from the station that don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “We could have all of them here too,” I said. “And I was thinking of asking my dad to come out. It’d be nice if they all met each other.”

  He opened his eyes, his face still buried in the pillow. The dark blue of his eyes still startled me. “Your dad?”

  “I know,” I said, rolling onto my back. “But you two met under extremely stressful circumstances. I’m sure you’d get along in a normal situation.”

  His eyebrow arched. “Your dad hates me.”

  “He doesn’t hate you. He hates that I moved in with a man he doesn’t know.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Please,” I said. “I really want you to spend some time together. You’re an important part of my life, Jack. And I’d like to mend things with my dad. He’s the only family I have.”

  He slipped his hand over my hip and leaned over to kiss my forehead.

  “OK,” he said. “I’ll tell them.”

  I ruffled his hair until he smiled.

  “But he’s not staying here,” he said.

  I frowned.

  “I don’t want your father plotting how to kill me every night when you and I retire to the same bedroom.”

  I laughed and swatted him with a pillow.

  “And I’m not sleeping on the couch with Bella,” he said.

  “Fair enough.”

  He sighed and pulled me close against his strong chest.

  ~~~~

  It was after lunch the next day when I heard Kate’s car coming down the gravel lane. A cloud of dust followed her little red Volkswagen as it curled along the meadow, and I stepped out on the porch to greet her.

  “Good grief,” she said, climbing out. “I thought the damn GPS was going to send me right into the ocean. It seems to think canals are roadways.” She pulled a suitcase out of the backseat and trudged through the grass in a pair of impossibly high wedges. Kate was my best friend and had been since college. We agreed on a lot of things, but fashion was not one of them. Kate was girly—she loved swishy skirts and lipstick, high heels and hairspray. I was perfectly happy as a tomboy in jeans and beat-up cowboy boots. She’d tried to make me appreciate fashion for the last ten years, but the most I could muster was some pale lipstick and a flat iron every now and then.

  “That can’t be the only bag you have,” I said, nodding toward the tiny suitcase.

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh please. This is overflow from the trunk.”

  She set the suitcase on the steps and hugged me, tighter than she had in a long time. “Look at this house!” she shrieked. “It’s adorable.”

  The old Victorian was the typical four-on-four style with a porch that stretched the entire length of the front. My bedroom, bathroom and the living room were in the front, with a hall straight down the middle and the kitchen and dining room in the back. The kitchen had a back door and walk-in pantry that had some of the loveliest woodwork in the whole house. The dining room had a built-in bookcase along one entire wall that made me want to turn it into a study. The upstairs had four big rooms and a small bathroom. We’d kept one as a guest bedroom. The others we were still figuring out: Jack liked having a room just for his things, and I liked having a room that was mine.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “As well as I can be, after that cheating jackass,” she said.

  I grabbed her bag. “Come in, and let me make you a drink. I’ll show you around when you get settled.” I knew she’d love seeing the house’s features and all the work we’d done, but I also knew what a long drive it was from Raleigh.

  In the kitchen, I introduced her to Jack.

  “Glad to have you with us,” he said, shaking her hand.

  “It’s good to meet you for real this time.”

  She’d met Jack briefly at Vergie’s funeral, before I’d even met him. She’d teased me the rest of that weekend about the handsome man in the pale gray suit. When I’d told Jack about that later, he’d laughed and said, “I only wear a suit about twice a year, but if you like it that much, I might find an excuse to wear it around the house.”

  ~~~~

  Kate a
nd I sat on the porch swing for a long time, drinking vodka tonics and watching the clouds drift across the sky. From the porch, we had a clear view of the lagoon at the edge of the cypresses. Kate had piled her honey-blond hair high up on her head and changed into a pair of jeans and a blouse.

  “Thanks for letting me stay with you,” she said after a while.

  “Of course. You needed to get away.”

  “Understatement of the year.” She held the glass against her face. She’d called me the week before and told me she’d found out that her fiancé, Benjamin, was cheating on her. They’d been going out a year and had set a date for May. Kate had discovered a strange cell phone in Benjamin’s coat pocket and had done enough investigating to learn he only used it for the woman he was seeing in secret.

  Kate had called me the day she’d confronted him. He denied everything, but he couldn’t make up enough lies to convince her she was wrong. Kate was a biologist, an observer of behavior patterns. It killed her to think she hadn’t been able to see his.

  I told her to come and stay as long as she wanted. She never took vacation days, so she had enough time accrued to carry her through the New Year. I knew she wouldn’t take more than a week though. She thought guests had an expiration date. I thought that rule didn’t apply to friends, and sometimes I managed to convince her of it.

  After we’d lost track of our refills, she said, “Why didn’t you tell me I was being stupid?”

  “Because you weren’t being stupid.”

  She grimaced, squeezing the lime into her drink. “A year was too soon to get engaged. I should have made him pay for the deposits on the vineyard and the cake.”

  “He’s the one who was stupid. Let’s get that straight.”

  She raised her glass. “Maybe I’ll still get the cake. Chocolate raspberry. The best I’ve ever had.”

  “Not all behaviors are predictable,” I said. “You know that.”