Color Blind

by Sobel, Sheila;

  No more secrets, no more lies.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I didn’t know what time it was when Kate and Detective Baptiste came back, but it didn’t matter. It was time to get it over with.

  “Hi,” I said quietly as I sat up and they sat down.

  “Are you feeling better? Do you feel up to doing this?” he asked.

  “I guess so. Do you want to take notes or should I write everything down, like they do on TV? Do you have a pen and pad?”

  Detective Baptiste pulled out a recorder, turned it on and set it on the hospital tray table. He read me my rights and asked if I understood them.

  Scared out of my mind, I nodded and said, “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning, take us through the events?”

  And, that’s exactly what I did. I talked for what seemed like hours. Once I started, I couldn’t shut up. I told them everything I could think of, starting with the sudden death of my father and how I never got to say goodbye. I told them that since his passing, I had become more and more obsessed with saying good-bye. I convinced myself that Dad’s spirit was as unsettled as mine. I thought I’d found the perfect solution in Marguerite and her spiritual cleansing ceremony. All I ever wanted was to find a final peace for both him and me. I told Detective Baptiste and Kate that I never intended to hurt Angel in any way. The only reason I took her with me was because I was afraid to go alone. The only reason I borrowed Kate’s car was to get to the swamp for the Voodoo ceremony. I didn’t put any blame on Angel or Marguerite or anyone else. Everything that had happened was my doing. I didn’t try to minimize it.

  By the time I reached the end, I was worn out and my head was throbbing. There wasn’t much left to say, except that I was terribly sorry for the turmoil I had caused. Before stopping completely, I added one last thing. I hoped they believed the experience had left an indelible impression on me, that I had learned from it. I was, without question, remorseful. I left out the part about being scared out of my mind that I might end up in juvie or, worse, prison.

  Detective Baptiste turned off the recorder, slipped it back into his pocket and stood.

  “Thank you, April. Get some rest.”

  He nodded at Kate and they both left the room. Thirty excruciatingly long minutes later, Kate returned alone.

  “Where’s Detective Baptiste?”

  “He went down the hall to speak with Simone. To see if she still wants to press charges.”

  “Are you going to press charges?” I asked in a tiny voice.

  I wanted to hear it from her, not Detective Baptiste.

  Kate looked long and hard at me before answering. I was so panicked, I stopped breathing.

  Finally, she answered, “No. I’m not pressing charges. After you’ve recovered from the virus and the concussion, you won’t be on court-mandated probation, but you will be on Kate-mandated probation. You will go to counseling. You will get a job. You will do community service at a facility of my choosing. You will either walk or take a trolley wherever you need to go. You will pay for your replacement phone and you will keep it turned on at all times. And, you’ll need to pay me back for the detail of my car. Understood?”

  I nodded vigorously. “Understood. When do I get to go home?”

  “Both you and Angel will get released after the doctor completes his workup, probably sometime tomorrow. I’ll bring clean clothes for you in the morning.”

  “Aunt Kate?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why aren’t you pressing charges?”

  Kate dragged the chair close to the bed and sat down. “When I found out you not only stole my car but took Angel with you, my mind was made up. I didn’t know what my legal options were, but if I could press charges, I definitely would. I was over the moon angry with you. I wanted to punish you. You know I never wanted children; your recklessness, your selfishness absolutely validated that decision. Last night, in the thick of the drama, I was really glad I never had kids of my own.”

  I slid lower in the bed, pulled the covers up under my chin.

  “After you hit your head and were brought to the hospital, I sat here, watching you all night, worried sick. What you did was horribly deceitful and, without question, quite stupid, but prison time seemed extreme to me. I decided not to press charges unless you lied to us and your account of yesterday’s events didn’t match up with what we had already learned from Angel. In that case, I was fully prepared to let you go to jail.”

  Flashing on a picture of me in an orange prison jumpsuit, I quickly filed the image away in the “don’t even go there” part of my brain.

  Kate continued, “I’m not quite sure you fully appreciate how fortuitous it was that you needed to be hospitalized. It gave me time to evaluate the situation and consider my options. It would have been easiest for me if you had ended up in prison for a year or so. You would simply go away and I wouldn’t have to deal with you any longer. Whenever you got released, you would be of age and could go forth into the world, be on your own.”

  I shrunk at the thought, pulled the covers tighter.

  “But sometime during the middle of the night, I realized my decision shouldn’t be about what was easiest for me. My decision should be about what is best for you. Call me crazy, but I honestly don’t think you’re a bad person, just seriously misguided. More than anything, you need stability, structure, and guidance. You need to know someone cares about you. You need someone that won’t leave you. To the best of my ability, I’m going to try to do all of that for you. Understand me, though, you will be required to do your part. I am not in this alone. We are in this together.”

  I studied Kate’s face and saw the weariness. She seemed to have aged years in the days since my arrival. As more appropriate words failed me, I simply said, “Thank you.”

  The door opened and Detective Baptiste quietly asked Kate to join him in the hall. The nightmare really wasn’t over yet. I gripped the blanket and wondered if Simone would press charges. Who could blame her if she did? Reckless child endangerment, kidnapping? Whether it was a misdemeanor or a felony, those charges were much worse than either joyriding or grand theft auto. I was petrified at the prospect.

  I couldn’t hear what was being said outside my door. The longer Kate was gone, the more apprehensive I became. At long last, the door opened and Kate came in, followed by Detective Baptiste. I sat up and searched their faces, they both looked pretty grim. My heart stopped. This is it. I am going to prison for sure.

  Detective Baptiste came over and stood at the side of my bed. He looked at me for a long minute, took a deep breath, and said, “After careful consideration, Angel’s mother has decided against pressing charges. This case is now closed . . . You are one lucky young lady, Miss April. I recommend you don’t ever forget it.”

  He turned, nodded at Kate and they left the room.

  Oh, thank God! I’m not going to prison!

  I flopped back on the pillows, Ouch! My head still hurt. I’d been so terrified at the prospect of being incarcerated, I’d nearly forgotten about the concussion. I closed my eyes, said a little prayer of thanks to the universe for saving my butt, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  When I awoke, it was morning again. The sun’s golden rays streamed through the blinds and cast a halo around Kate, who was sitting patiently in the corner of my room.

  “I brought your clothes. You’re being released this morning,” she said.

  “Have you been here all night?”

  “No. I came back about an hour ago. There was no point in staying the night, you were out of the woods.” She pointed to the neatly folded clothes on the tray table. “Why don’t you get dressed, so we can get out of here?”

  “What about Angel? Is she all right? Is she going home, too?”

  “Yes, Angel is going home today.”

  “Can I see her before we leave? I want to—no, I need to apologize to her and her mother.”

  “You get dressed, I’ll go ask.
You realize, they may not want to see you.”

  After Kate left, the nurse came in with a bag of prescriptions and instructions for me to take home.

  Kate returned a few minutes later and shook her head. “Let’s go home.” Before pulling out of the parking garage, Kate turned towards me. “Breakfast or sleep?”

  “Breakfast.”

  “Restaurant or home cooked?”

  “Home cooked. You’re a pretty good chef, you know.”

  “So I’m told.”

  I watched Kate smile for the first time in days. I, too, smiled for the first time in days. We drove back to the house through the Quarter. I soaked up the sun, not at all bothered by the humidity. It was a Technicolor day; the sky an exceptional shade of blue, the pink and purple bougainvillea vibrant against the deep green of their vines. Everything felt fresh and new to me, as if I were seeing the city for the first time. Today, I had a much better understanding of what it meant when someone said you never fully appreciate something until you lose it.

  I had come way too close to losing my freedom.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Kate had chosen her car well; a Mini was exactly the right kind of car for zipping through the narrow French Quarter streets. She found a small space near the house and slipped the car right in. The house looked warm and inviting in the early morning sunlight. Kate unlocked the front door and we went inside. She left her keys and handbag on the beautiful marble-topped antique hall table and headed for the kitchen. I left the prescriptions on the table and followed.

  “Please sit, I’ll serve,” she said, as she reached for a skillet hanging from the wrought iron pot rack.

  “No, not this time, I’d like to help. What can I do?” I replied.

  Kate arched an eyebrow in surprise. “Why don’t you set the table?”

  I took a small ceramic pot of fresh rosemary from the kitchen windowsill and centered it on the table. I tried to ignore the empty space where the antique mirror had hung over the sideboard, as I got out linen napkins and silver napkin rings from the drawer. I grabbed the jar of homemade strawberry jam and Kate’s signature fleur-de-lis butter pats from the refrigerator and added them to my tablescape. I poured half-and-half into a delicate bone china pitcher, added matching coffee cups to the table, and got out the sugar bowl. I poured two glasses of orange juice.

  I was admiring my handiwork when Kate said, “Breakfast is served.” She slid the fluffy Denver omelets next to the perfectly crisped bacon and nicely browned toast and handed the plate to me.

  Kate was right. There is something visceral about the food prep and the table prep and the satisfaction of a good meal. I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe life did have a rewind button after all—sort of, anyway.

  “Bleat.”

  “BG! Oh my God! What are we going to do with BG? What’ll happen to her?”

  “Dunno, not really sure yet. I haven’t had much time to think about BG. I might try making goat cheese, if she’s able to produce milk. Or we might give her to a woman that I read about. She recently crowd-funded a local goat landscaping business and already has some city park contracts. She’s hoping to expand the business. Until I work out a plan, BG will stay here with us.”

  I grew quiet and thought about the impending loss of my new four-legged friend.

  “You know, April, goats are herd animals. BG is probably lonely for goat companionship . . . As much as I hate to admit it, it was an incredibly brave thing you did, not leaving BG behind to be sacrificed. She’s pretty adorable. Believe it or not, it would have been perfectly legal for them to sacrifice her as part of their religious freedom.”

  “No way! Legal?”

  “No matter how repugnant we find animal sacrifice to be, the right to do it was upheld at the Supreme Court level. There was an article in the paper a few years ago about a case in Florida. It addressed this very issue.”

  “Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right, in my opinion, anyway. I wish I could have saved all of the chickens, too, but . . . well, you know, we were being chased and all,” I said, avoiding Kate’s gaze. “Aunt Kate?”

  “Yes?”

  “What did you and Detective Baptiste talk about outside my room at the hospital?”

  “We talked about you specifically and teenagers in general. He’s a cop and a father; he’s had more than his fair share of encounters with teenaged foolhardiness. Some of the kids he told me about, well, let’s just say they don’t have the advantages that you do. You have opportunities ahead of you that they’ll never have. Detective Baptiste offered to help in any way that he could to see that you get those opportunities. He also offered to let you sit in a jail cell for a few hours or maybe even overnight, to help you understand exactly what you avoided this time.”

  “Yikes! You didn’t agree to that did you?”

  “I did think about it. But no, I declined his generous offer.”

  “Um, did he say anything about Miles? Do you think I’ll ever see him again?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, April. You have some serious relationship repair that needs to be done with Miles and Angel and Simone. If they can be repaired at all.”

  “Uh, Aunt Kate, I’m not feeling well. I think I need some aspirin and some of that anti-itch stuff.”

  “I’ll clean up the kitchen. You get into bed. The doctor said it would be a few more days before you fully recovered.” Kate stacked the dishes, carried them to the sink. “F-Y-I, I’ve got both the afternoon and evening shifts today. I won’t be back for dinner.”

  “You’re leaving me alone?”

  “I have no choice but to leave you alone. But you have a choice as to how you handle it,” she replied.

  There wasn’t much I could say to that.

  Kate crossed the room and stuck out her hand. “Let’s start fresh, shall we?”

  I took her outstretched hand, gave it a firm shake. “Yes, let’s start this relationship over.”

  Totally depleted, I climbed the stairs to my room. I opened the door, looked into the sun-filled room, and was astounded to see that it had been “tossed.” The armoire was wide open and had been emptied of all things Voodoo. The scarf, the books, the Voodoo doll, the anointing oil, the incense, and the candles lay strewn across my bed. Dresser drawers had been rummaged, but not closed; my clothes spilled over the edges. My computer had been turned on, my browser history reviewed and displayed for all to see. Note to self: need a better password. Keep my browsing history cleared.

  The violation burned me; I wanted to confront Kate. At the top of the stairs I stopped to consider what it was I wanted to say. I was furious at the invasion of my privacy. I steamed towards the kitchen and was halfway there when it occurred to me that it was Detective Baptiste who had gone through my room. Or maybe he and Kate searched it when they were trying to piece together what had happened to me and to Kate’s car and where I might be found, along with Angel, who had been reported missing. Only yesterday Kate pointed out I’d lost the right to complain about pretty much anything in my life. I turned around, crept back up the stairs, went into my room, closed the door, and got busy.

  I straightened my clothes and pushed the drawers back into place. I couldn’t get into bed without moving everything. I piled the candles, incense, anointing oil, and scarf on the dresser. I relocated Marguerite’s books to the table by the chair, including the one I’d been reading a few nights ago, before my downward spiral into irrational behavior had started. Kate must have brought it back upstairs from the kitchen. I didn’t need to decide anything now about what to do with everything that Marguerite had given me. My head ached. All I wanted was a hot shower, some of Kate’s luscious lavender body powder, and more sleep.

  And sleep I did, for hours. Around half past five, I awoke disoriented, drenched in sweat, desperately thirsty and with a pounding headache. The evening air was still, hot, thick with humidity, but I would manage. I slipped into a pair of shorts and a fresh tee shirt, then went into the bathroo
m and was freaked out by my own reflection. The scratches and bites were swollen and angry looking; I was a sore sight for eyes. I turned off the light and padded downstairs to get something cold to drink and something to eat. This time, there was no note from Kate hanging on the refrigerator. Is this a sign that I’m home now, no longer just a visiting relative? Maybe, maybe not. I helped myself to some food and a cold bottle of water, put everything on a tray, carried it out to the front porch, settled into one of the rocking chairs and watched the tourists stroll by. Tonight, I felt no need to join them.

  “Bleat!”

  Should I take BG for a walk? Probably not, it might be against some Louisiana law. I’d spent enough time with law enforcement in the past few days to last me a lifetime. Thinking about our tiny goat, I had a hard time understanding how animal sacrifice could not only exist in the twenty-first century, but be legal as well. It all seemed so . . . so pagan.

  I watched a mule-drawn carriage, filled with laughing tourists swathed in colorful feather boas and gaudy strands of Mardi Gras beads, pass in front of the house. I flashed back to the carriage ride I’d had with Miles, remembered how delightful it had been. I hoped I hadn’t completely screwed everything up with him. I missed Miles and his running commentary on New Orleans and his humor and his intelligence and, of course, his handsome face. I wondered if I should call him. I didn’t have a cell phone any longer, but his number would be in my cloud account. Contacting him wouldn’t be the problem. The problem was that it was probably too soon. I wondered if his father had played my statement for Miles, so he could hear what had happened. I wondered if Detective Baptiste had played the tape for Simone and she hadn’t pressed charges because of my statement. I hoped that by now the tape had been played for everyone concerned. It would save me a lot of time, energy, and embarrassment trying to explain things.

  All I wanted at this point was to simply move on to the apology portion of my life.