Whispers of the Bayou

by Mindy Starns Clark

With that, he headed back to the house as he pulled a phone from his pocket, leaving me there beside the water to contemplate the call I needed to make next.

  It was time to talk to AJ, to tell her that I had flown down here Saturday morning without even telling her. She was going to be concerned about me, of course, but she was also going to feel very betrayed. Last night, when I had been so furious with her, I had felt betrayed as well. But after reading all of the letters and having some time to digest them, my emotions regarding AJ were now in an entirely different place. I felt a lot of things toward her, a little angry, yes, but also embarrassed that she knew me even better than I knew myself. Most of all, I felt indebted. Indebted that she had given up her life for mine, that she had taken me in and loved me like a mother would have and never flinched in carrying out this obligation to her dead sister. How could I repay something like that? It took reading all of those letters before I began to see the full scope of what she’d done for me. In light of all that, this was not a call I wanted to make. It was simply too hard to face her right now with all of these thoughts and emotions rolling around in my mind.

  For at least ten minutes, I thought about what I might say, and then finally I dialed her office and was deeply relieved when her secretary said she was in a meeting and wouldn’t be out for at least an hour. I hated to be a big chicken, but I knew that gave me the perfect excuse for not dealing with all of this directly right now. I asked the secretary to tell her that I was in Louisiana and for her to call me back on my cell phone when she had time to talk. I hung up after that, ignoring my guilt, thinking that this way AJ could absorb that news first and then we could discuss it later.

  I was just standing up to go back to the house when I heard a woman’s voice calling to me from off to the right.

  “Yoo hoo!”

  Startled, I looked up the path to see Livvy marching my way, a great big tote bag hanging from her shoulder and a thick book tucked under one arm. She was followed by a young woman carrying a casserole.

  “Aaron said you were out here,” Livvy told me. “I’m glad I caught you. I’ve got some fun surprises.”

  I had so much to do that I wasn’t really in the mood for a visit, but Southern hospitality being what it was, I knew I needed to make her feel welcome even if I had to give her the bum’s rush to get her back out of there.

  “Hi, Livvy. How are you?”

  She gave me an air kiss and then nodded toward her companion.

  “Surprise number one. This is Sissy. She’s here to clean your house.”

  My eyes widened.

  “That was fast.”

  “It’s your lucky day. Sissy always does my place on Mondays, but Melanie’s home sick today with her allergies all flared up. Between the cleaning chemicals and the vacuum cleaner and the dusting, I think all that might make Melanie ever sicker. I was just about to send Sissy home when Aaron called and said you needed somebody. Voila, here we are.”

  I thanked them both, so relieved to have someone here so quickly that I didn’t even ask what it was going to cost me.

  “Sissy, you go on ahead and bring that casserole to Miss Deena and ask her where she keeps the cleaning supplies” Livvy directed.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As she walked away, Livvy opened the tote bag and showed me the contents. Inside was what looked like a framed canvas, carefully protected by a Mylar sleeve.

  “This is one of the paintings that got damaged. I really just need an opinion. Please let me know what you think it would take to have it restored, or if it’s even possible.”

  “Sure.”

  Next to the painting was something small and black that looked like an elongated flashlight.

  “I also threw in a portable UV light I borrowed from the museum. I thought it might be helpful. They need it back by tomorrow, though.”

  “Great.”

  “Finally,” she said, “the biggest surprise of all. I’ve only got a second and then I have to run, but I just couldn’t wait to show you.”

  “What?” I asked, relieved that she was about to be on her way.

  “You’re gonna be happy,” she said proudly, picking up the book.

  “What is it?”

  “I did a little research at the museum this morning, for your genealogical question.”

  “Oh?”

  “I found it, Miranda. I found Colline d’Or.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Over the roofs of the village

  Columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending,

  Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment…

  Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows;

  But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of the owners;

  There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance.

  Back at the house, once I made sure Sissy was off and rolling with the cleaning, I slipped away to my tiny downstairs bedroom, closed the door, and pulled out the book Livvy had brought me. According to her, the reason I hadn’t been able to find Colline d’Or on any map was because it no longer existed. All she’d had to do, she said, was go through some Cajun history books that featured older maps, and there she had finally found it: Once upon a time, Colline d’Or had been a village in the Piziquid Valley region of Nova Scotia.

  Livvy had marked the pertinent pages with Post-it Notes, so I flipped to them right away and devoured the information hungrily. The book had several paragraphs about the town, saying that Colline d’Or had been one of the last Acadian villages to have its citizens rounded up by British soldiers in the Grand Derangement. Unlike most other villages in Nova Scotia, however, not one of the citizens of Colline d’Or had attempted to escape into Quebec or other surrounding areas. Instead, a deeply religious group who cited the Christian principles of peace and nonresistance, they had gone voluntarily with the soldiers en masse and were eventually shipped off to an English prison camp. Many of these Acadians had died in transit or in the camp, but ten years later, those who were still alive made their way to Louisiana and settled there. The original town in Nova Scotia no longer existed, most of the homes and crops having been burned to the ground by the British.

  So much for peace and nonresistance.

  I turned the page and found Colline d’Or on the map. Seeing it there was so real, so significant, that I could practically feel the tattoo on my head pulsating. Such a place existed after all, and from what Willy had told us, I felt sure it was the Nova Scotian village from which he and my grandmother—not to mention Lisa and I—had descended. Now if we could only learn what the myth of the angelus was, we might be able to piece this puzzle together.

  Feeling hopeful about this for the first time since Willy died, I closed the book and went in search of Lisa. She wasn’t home, so I put the book away for now and asked Deena if she was ready to take me through the house and answer my questions about it. I sure felt ready to see it, I thought bravely, even the now-open third floor that Aaron West’s efforts had revealed.

  Deena lowered the heat under a pot on the stove and took off her apron. She didn’t exactly seem enthusiastic, but at least she was willing. We started downstairs as she perfunctorily pointed out the parlor, the foyer, the dining room, and the living room. As we walked up the curving staircase together, I couldn’t help but wish I had a more effusive tour guide, as thus far mine was practically monosyllabic!

  The maid had already finished one of the front bedrooms and was partially done with the next. Between her cleaning efforts and Aaron having removed the boards from the doors and windows, already it was like a different place up here. I stepped into the clean, sunny room, the bed stripped and the wood furniture gleaming. I crossed all the way to the door, flinging it open to reveal the second floor balcony outside. Stepping onto it, I inhaled deeply as I looked out over the beautiful, sweeping lawn.

  “When you were a child, this was one of the guest rooms,” Deena said, following along behind.
“The whole left side of this floor was for guests. The right side was for your grandparents.”

  Moving back inside, I closed the door and walked into the room behind it. This one hadn’t been cleaned yet, so the furniture was still covered with sheets, but according to Deena, this was the guest sitting room. I tried to pull some tales from her of visiting dignitaries or colorful relatives, but it was like trying to get blood from a stone. She had no tales to tell, just simple facts that she was attempting to dispense as quickly as possible.

  When we finally reached the staircase that had now been revealed by the removal of the Sheetrock, I felt my pulse quicken. Leading the way to the top, I wasn’t surprised to hear Aaron clomping around above us in the small attic.

  “Your parents lived in the front bedroom here, the same room your daddy grew up in,” Deena said, continuing our tour.

  She opened the door to reveal a wide, lovely bedroom that had a triangular window at its front. I walked toward it and peeked out to see that we were jutting out over the second story balcony. It was gorgeous up here; no wonder he didn’t want to leave even after he got married.

  “When they were boys, your Uncle Holt lived in this room over here,” Deena said, leading me back into the hall and across it to a door on the left. “But when you lived here, this was the nanny’s quarters.”

  The room was oddly shaped, and judging by the furniture had served a combination bedroom and small sitting room.

  “Everybody shared the same bathroom,” Deena said as she led me through it to emerge back in the hallway under the attic stairs. “That just leaves these last two rooms, which your mama turned into a bedroom and a playroom.”

  She opened the door on the other side of the hall, revealing the playroom first. I stepped forward, disappointed that there were no toys or other momentoes present—just a wall of empty shelving, a child-sized table and chair set, and a brightly colored rug on the floor.

  “That’s the bedroom there?” I asked, gesturing toward the door.

  “Yep, that was it,” Deena replied.

  Something inside of me was nervous about moving on to the last room, but I wanted to proceed. Slowly, I turned the knob, pushing the door open to reveal the pale pink walls of a little girl’s bedroom. It was a little less sparse than the playroom had been, with two dolls sitting neatly atop the dresser and matching flowered bedspreads on each of the twin beds, white with pink and yellow roses.

  On the wall above each bed was a framed painting of varicolored roses and ivy. Over one bed, I realized the ivy formed letters, spelling out my name: Miranda. Over the other bed, they formed a different name.

  Cassandra.

  “Deena?” I asked, my voice sounding far away and strange. “Who is Cassandra?”

  “What?” she asked, stepping into the room beside me.

  I had trouble catching my breath, but I pointed to the wall and said, “There. That name. Who is Cassandra?”

  Swallowing hard, I looked at Deena’s confused face.

  “I don’t understand the question,” she told me. “Cassandra was your sister, of course. Your twin.”

  A roaring began between my ears.

  “I didn’t have a sister,” I said simply, shaking my head back and forth as chills began to race up and down my arms.

  “Of course you did. You were identical twins, for goodness’ sake. Miranda and Cassandra.”

  I felt myself slipping, sliding away from that place to somewhere else, somewhere different. Somewhere dark.

  “And what happened to Cassandra?” I asked, the words bouncing around in my brain like a pinball shot from a cage.

  “She died. That’s why your mother killed herself. You certainly knew that.”

  I opened my mouth, trying to answer. But before any words came out, my world went black and the ground rushed up to smack me in the face.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Fair was she and young; but, alas! before her extended,

  Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of life, with its pathway

  Marked by the graves of those who had sorrowed and suffered before her,

  Passions long extinguished, and hopes long dead and abandoned.

  When I opened my eyes, I knew two things: I wasn’t in the pink bedroom anymore, and I had a terrible headache.

  Blinking, I looked around to orient myself and realized that somehow I had somehow gone down one level and to the front bedroom, the one that had been cleaned. Blinking again, I realized that I was being stared at by Aaron and the maid. Before any of us could speak, Deena came into the room with an ice pack that she promptly laid on my forehead.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, distinct creases lining the sides of her mouth in a frown.

  I took a deep breath, let it out, and said that I thought so but I wasn’t sure.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  I glanced at the other two who were still hovering at the foot of the bed. Sensing my embarrassment, Deena shooed them both away.

  “What happened? You were just standing there, talking, and then all of a sudden, boom, you were down on the floor. Now you got a big ol’ egg on your head.”

  Opening my eyes again, I focused on her face, wondering how to explain.

  “I guess I fainted from the emotional shock of the moment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I exhaled slowly, not wanting to give this woman a detailed history of my psychological makeup. Still, I didn’t want to lie.

  “It’s hard to explain,” I said. “But I’m sure you can imagine how it felt to be reminded of Cassandra.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ll be okay, I’m sure. I just need to get my bearings. Did Aaron carry me down here?”

  She nodded, wringing her hands.

  “Yeah, he was gonna take you all the way down to your room, but it was hard to maneuver the first flight of stairs, so he didn’t want to risk a second time. You’re just so tall, he was afraid he might drop you. We put you in here instead.”

  “Thanks.”

  She clasped and unclasped her fingers.

  “You should probably drink something,” she added. “I have some apple juice in the kitchen. That might be good for you.”

  She was hovering so nervously that I agreed yes, that would be perfect. After she was gone, I laid there on that old bed and stared at the ceiling, thinking how an entire world can flip upside down in a single moment. Had I been through an earthquake or transported to another town via tornado, I don’t think I could have felt any more disoriented than I did at that moment.

  I had a sister. A twin. An identical twin.

  Her name was Cassandra, and we shared a bedroom and a playroom and a nanny and a whole family.

  I called her Cass.

  She was my constant companion.

  One by one, things began to click into place, little clues and hints that somehow I had known this all along.

  Was that why I had insisted on naming my child Tess, because it sounded much the same? Tess, Cass. No wonder so many people had been confused about the name since we got here.

  How could AJ never, ever have told me?

  The ice bag began to slip, so I reached up and moved it back into place, finally understanding why she had warned me about coming here. How else could you safely tell someone news that was this big?

  How else could you tell someone that truly half of who they were had been cut out of their life in an instant and then erased from their mind?

  Holding the ice bag, I rolled onto my side and drew up my knees, a deep overwhelming sadness piercing my heart. I didn’t remember Cassandra, not yet, but even so I missed her, not to mention that I selfishly missed that other part of who I was. Tears filled my eyes and slid sideways down my face as I thought of yesterday’s memory at the mirror in the hall. How many times as a child and a teenager had I stood at a mirror and looked at myself and felt somehow a little less lonely, a little less alone? I wasn’t some pathetic egotist who found pleasure i
n looking at herself. I was a girl who was trying to bring back someone she forgot she had lost.

  I wanted to know more. I wanted to know how she died. I wanted to hear everything, down to the most seemingly insignificant detail. I wanted to learn how life could end for one of us and not the other.

  Somehow, still overcome with the shock of the sudden revelation, I must have simply shut down or either drifted off to sleep. I came back to awareness with a start when Deena returned, a tray in her hands, my nostrils filling with the smell of soup. Chicken soup.

  I sat up, startled, realizing that something had changed, that the lighting in the room was different than it had been before I closed my eyes.

  “What time is it?” I asked. Rubbing my face, I felt frightened, as if I had just been not in sleep but in some altered state, some other reality.

  “Almost four. You been sleeping for hours. I was getting worried so I just called my doctor and he told me the symptoms to watch for, in case you got a concussion.” She went on to list them—headache, abnormal sleepiness, dizziness, confusion, lack of feeling or emotion, anxiety, blurred vision, and vomiting—concluding with the suggestion that she take me to the hospital.

  “No,” I said, assessing my state. “Except for the long nap, I don’t have any other symptoms. I’m fine, I’m sure.”

  I didn’t add that I was feeling a weird combination of confusion, a lack of emotion, and anxiety—but I felt sure that had nothing to do with a concussion and everything to do with the revelation that had come just prior to it.

  “Well, at least you ought to eat something,” Deena said, placing the tray she was holding on to my lap, a simple arrangement of soup, spoon, crackers, and juice. Though I wasn’t hungry, I took a bite of the soup to be polite. “I also got a surprise for you.”

  “It seems to be my day for surprises,” I replied, pulling away the cracker I’d been about to bite into.

  “You’ll never guess who just showed up at the back door.”

  “Who?”

  She walked to the banister and leaned over the side, calling down for whoever it was to come on up.