Wildest Dreams

by Blake, Toni

  And Tina gasped.

  Yet Stephanie had wanted to move to a new topic as quickly as possible. “But he’s not in love with me. He has a dead wife he’s still mourning, and that’s fine, because the sex was great and I shouldn’t have let myself get emotionally involved. End of story.” She’d said it all in one breath, then continued with, “The upshot is that I have a new appreciation for sex, which I hope to put to good use from this point forward.”

  She didn’t mention that, at the moment, she feared she’d never want to sleep with anyone but Jake again. Great, he makes me love sex and ruins it for me all at once.

  Fortunately, Tina hadn’t pressed for more, and soon after eating breakfast, they’d both fallen asleep ’til the afternoon. After waking, Stephanie had called her mom, soon passing the phone to Tina. Neither let anything slip about the escort business, only saying that Tina had been living with a guy she’d met, now they’d broken up, and both sisters would be coming home in a couple of days.

  Stephanie e-mailed Curtis to alert him of her return as well. The letting-him-down-gently part would come later. She’d also e-mailed Melody to share her good news and thank her for all her help—hoping as she typed that Tina would somehow end up with the same happy ending Melody had. Meanwhile, Tina placed a call to one of the shelters where Jake had directed Raven, getting lucky on the first try. Raven had come to the phone and informed Tina she was entering a rehab program, and both girls vowed they’d keep in touch. “Even though we probably won’t,” Tina had said sadly after hanging up. “But she was a friend when I needed one, and I hope she gets better.”

  Last night, Stephanie had taken Tina out to dinner. Over glasses of Chardonnay, they’d both resolved not to dwell on the past any longer, but to look forward. “I think I want to try college,” Tina said. “And study retail. Is that stupid? To go to college just so I can get a job in the mall?”

  Stephanie had shaken her head. “You’ll have a leg up on everyone else working at the mall, and you can get a job in the meantime and start getting practical experience.”

  “And I’ll get a discount!”

  They’d both laughed, and Stephanie had actually managed to enjoy the meal—even if she wasn’t particularly looking forward to going home, or back to her job. It felt like returning to something meaningless, a world that was about nothing but money and glitz and expensive business suits that in the end boiled down to nothing real—and she also feared it was going to be hard leaving behind the city that held the man she loved. But she didn’t have a choice; Jake hadn’t given her one.

  Now Stephanie had just returned from another trip to Mrs. Lindman’s kitchen, explaining yet again to the old woman that she was very busy working in her room and just wanted to take back a muffin—or four. When she came in, balancing muffins and a couple of bananas, Tina announced, “I just got over a big hurdle.”

  “What’s that?” She let all the food collapse gently to the desk, then plopped on the foot of the bed where Tina still lay, wearing a pair of Stephanie’s pajamas.

  “I almost just did something awful. I almost called Russ. But I stopped myself. Because why would I chase a guy who doesn’t want me? There’s nothing to be gained, right?”

  Stephanie nodded. Precisely the reason she was going home. She might have ended up begging Jake for kisses and for sex, but she wasn’t going to beg him for love. “I’m glad you stayed strong,” she told her sister.

  “I guess I’ve made a lot of decisions out of fear,” Tina said. She shook her head softly. “But you wouldn’t know how that feels—always being so in control.”

  “I’m sorry about my tendency to be controlling,” Stephanie replied, although she’d already apologized for it many times over. “I’ve just always been that way—because I’m scared, too.”

  “Of what?”

  Stephanie sighed. “Of . . . everything. Life. Men. Sex. Failure in general. Isn’t everybody scared, at least a little? I just hide it better than you, that’s all.”

  Tina looked stunned. “I didn’t think you ever got scared, Steph.”

  “Surprise,” she said, trying for a smile but knowing she’d failed. She got up and walked across the room for a couple of muffins. “Heads-up,” she said to Tina, tossing one toward the bed.

  Tina laughed. “You really are different. I mean, you’ve loosened up, big time.”

  “Because I’m goofy enough to throw a muffin across the room?”

  Tina tilted her head. “Well . . . yeah, kind of. You wouldn’t have done that before.” She leaned slightly forward. “I don’t think you should come home with me.”

  Stephanie flinched. “What?” They’d booked their flight last night—they were flying to Chicago late this afternoon.

  “I think this place has been good for you,” Tina said. And when Stephanie only stared, Tina added, “I think that man was good for you. I think you need to get things resolved with him, Steph.”

  Stephanie steeled herself. “Things are as resolved as they’re going to get. We’ve both stated our feelings. And we’ve said goodbye,” she added softly. “I even gave him the scarf.” She’d told Tina about her crocheting project. “And it’s like you said. Why do I want to chase a man who doesn’t want me?”

  Tina didn’t hesitate. “Because you and I are different, Steph. I fall for every guy I meet. I even fell for Robert before it was over. You, on the other hand, save up your love and only spend it on special people. You shouldn’t let this go so easily.”

  She could have told Tina about the tears she’d shed since their breakup and how tempted she’d been to do exactly what Tina was suggesting—call him up, show up at Sophia’s, try again to make him love her—and how hard it had been to resist. He’d tempted her into places she’d never gone before, but now she had to go back to real life and leave Jake and his bayou behind. It was a private place for a private man who chose to be alone. So she simply said, “I have to let it go, Tina. I have to.”

  TO JAKE’S SURPRISE, the impossible had happened: The apartment was too quiet. There was no clicking of little dog claws, no Shondra blaring the TV or clunking dishes together or calling him a slob when she went around collecting laundry. He missed her, and he even missed the damn mutt, too.

  He lay in bed, trying to think of a reason to get up, and he realized that even after parting ways with Stephanie, Shondra had been providing that, giving him a reason. She’d been the one thing keeping him from slipping back over that edge into the no-man’s-land his life had been for the last two years.

  He should be happy this morning, he thought. Shondra was in a good place where she could build a normal life. And he and Tony were going to bring down Typhoeus—Becky’s killer had been found. Even in the midst of returning depression, he felt a deep satisfaction over that. Finding out who’d ended Becky’s life had been among the hundreds of things he’d chosen not to care about since her death, but now he knew he really had cared all along.

  So that gave him enough of a reason to get up, at least for today; he wanted to go to the cemetery. He’d never gone, not once since the funeral. He’d just been unable to let himself get that close to her again—life had been hard enough. But today there was a reason—there was justice, closure. Today he would go.

  After dragging himself up, getting showered and dressed, and forcing himself to eat a little of the cereal Shondra had bought, he walked outside to find an unusual chill in the air. Only October, too soon for it to be cold, but he went back and grabbed his old leather jacket from the closet. And he’d started to close the door when he caught sight of something on the shelf above the hangers—the winter scarf Stephanie had given him.

  Slowly, he reached up and pulled it down, let it unfold in his grasp. The loose stitches were uneven and the whole thing had a curve to it he didn’t think was supposed to be there. But hell—he tossed it around his neck anyway and walked back out the door.
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br />   Half an hour later, he strode up one of the picturesque aisles at Metairie Cemetery, where Becky’s parents had insisted on laying her to rest. Jake hadn’t argued because his family’s dead were buried out in Terrebonne, and Metairie’s cemetery was the nicest in the city. Now he moved past a row of tombs—miniature cathedrals and temples that lived up to the nickname used for all New Orleans cemeteries: Cities of the Dead. Angels and crosses and Jesus looked down from just above him, each vault topped with a tiny statue that made Jake think of hood ornaments as he walked by.

  He found Becky’s family tomb—her name had been added to a plaque attached to the front. A particularly pretty stone angel overlooked her resting place, and it gave him a weird sense of peace and made him sorry he hadn’t come before. What if people who died really were here, at their graves, in spirit somehow? What if she’d been waiting for him?

  He looked around, glad to see no one nearby. He’d never talked to a tomb in his life and he generally thought it was silly when people did. But he felt the urge to speak and didn’t squelch it. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here before,” he said, low. “But it hurt too much, and I’ve . . . been in a bad way, Beck. You’d hate me like this, the way I’ve been,” he said, realizing it just now. Shondra wasn’t the only one who liked him better when he was happy.

  “Anyway, the man who was responsible for your death—he’s gonna go to prison. And he won’t get out. Because if he ever comes up for parole, I’ll be there to remind people what he did, what he took from me. From you.”

  The man who was responsible for your death. Damn, maybe talking out loud made him pay more attention or something. Had he just admitted—to her, to himself—that perhaps someone else truly was to blame, not just him?

  He took a deep breath, glanced up at a strangely blank sky of white, and felt a sharp breeze cut through him, making him pull Stephanie’s scarf up around his neck. “There’s more,” he said. “More I need to tell you.”

  “Jake? Is that you?”

  He cringed, then turned to find Becky’s mother walking toward him. Peter, Paul, and Mary—the one time he comes here . . . “Yeah,” he said. “Hi.”

  She wore a severely elegant black coat with a shiny brooch on the collar. Every dyed brown hair lay in place as if unaware it was a windy day, her red lipstick cut a grim line across her face, and she didn’t look any happier to see him than he was to see her. She’d never approved of him, only tolerated him, and they hadn’t seen each other since Becky’s funeral—neither had picked up a phone or driven to see each other over the two years they’d been suffering the same loss. He’d figured Becky’s family held him responsible, too, and that thought reminded him . . . “I have some news.”

  “News?”

  “We’ve found the guy who ordered the hit,” he said, going on to give her the rough details, mainly that there would eventually be a trial and the guy would be put away for a long time, at the very least.

  When he was done, she drew in her breath and splayed diamond-clad fingers across her chest. “Well, praise God for that much. I hope it will let her rest in peace.”

  “Me too.”

  It was then that she bent to place a bouquet of plastic flowers in one of the vases affixed to the vault. Surprised, he spoke before thinking. “Becky loved fresh-cut flowers—she hated plastic ones, even silk ones.”

  The woman glared at him in shock and he realized how rude he’d been.

  “Mon Dieu, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to say that.”

  She looked at him a moment longer before turning her gaze back on the tomb. “The plastic ones are the only ones that hold up to the weather. At least until someone steals them. It’s silly to bring anything else.”

  But Becky would rather have real flowers for a day than fake flowers for a year. “You’re right,” he lied instead, wishing like hell he’d thought to stop on the way and bring a fresh bouquet.

  “I’ll go and leave you to yourself,” she said then.

  “You don’t have to,” he replied, feeling bad.

  “I come all the time. I can come back another day.” Translation: You don’t come all the time. You might never come again.

  But he would. And he’d bring fresh flowers the next time.

  He watched as the woman walked away, her well-coiffed hair still showing no signs of the swirling wind.

  When she was gone, he looked back to the tomb, old memories suddenly overflowing. He’d forgotten until just now how insanely Becky loved flowers—flowers of any kind, so long as they were real. Her grandmother had grown an English perennial garden and taught Becky all about flowers, and she’d filled their little house with them—everything from carnations to tulips to roses cut from the bushes she’d planted in the side yard. She’d said flowers were God’s most beautiful example of life, living.

  Damn.

  Flowers.

  In the dreams.

  It hit him like a tidal wave. Every dream he could remember had flowers in it.

  Whether they were real or a pattern in a piece of lingerie or in the words to a song, weren’t there always flowers?

  “Am I losin’ my mind?” he asked out loud, peering at the tomb. Then he shook his head. “But why would a part of you be in my dreams about . . . ?” He couldn’t even say it. Another woman.

  “That’s the other thing I need to tell you, Beck. There’s . . . a woman. I care for her. Too much.” He swallowed, hard. “I wish I didn’t, keep tellin’ myself I don’t. Because I always thought there’d only be you. Forever.” He stopped, sighed, stuffed his hands in his pockets because they were getting cold. “But she’s still in my head, all the time. And I don’t know . . .”

  Had he come here to ask Becky for permission?

  And were dreams of Stephanie and flowers her way of giving it?

  Was she there in the dreams, too, telling him it was okay to need someone new?

  “You are losin’ it,” he told himself. “Unless . . .” He looked up at the stone angel, then to the stark empty sky. “Are you tryin’ to tell me somethin’, Beck?”

  He lowered his gaze, shook his head, and let out a sigh, feeling like an idiot to be standing here trying to read signs into dreams, trying to converse with a slab of concrete.

  When he caught sight of something white in the air around him, he looked about, confused for a few seconds, trying to figure out what it was—it looked like tiny bits of fluffy confetti floating down.

  And then he realized. Snow. It was snow.

  A chill that had nothing to do with the weather ran up his spine.

  He’d never been farther north than the Louisiana border and he’d only seen snow one other time in his life—it had fallen on the December day he and Becky had married almost five years ago.

  And it was falling again now, on a brisk October day.

  And he might well be losing his mind—he might be bending the facts to believe what he wanted to believe, that his dead wife was sending him messages from the grave. But as the snow fell from the New Orleans sky and the wind stopped blowing and the world suddenly felt almost at peace for Jake for the first time in two years . . . he believed.

  AS JAKE DROVE back to the Quarter, other words he’d spoken came back to him—words he’d said to Tina the other night. Just let Stephanie help you and things will work out like they should. Didn’t that apply to his life as well? And hadn’t he known that for a while now?

  As he turned up his street and approached his building, he saw a good parking spot—but he drove past it. He kept heading northeast—toward Esplanade.

  What if she was gone already? What if she’d already packed her bags and taken her sister home to Chicago? Merde. He pressed down on the gas pedal.

  A minute later, he barreled into the parking lot at LaRue House and spotted a familiar-looking car—thank God, she was still here! Killing the ignition, he walked
briskly along the winding pathway until he was rapping on her door.

  When it opened, Tina stood on the other side. “Jake,” she said.

  “I need to see Stephanie.” His heart pounded against his rib cage.

  “She went to find you.”

  “What?”

  Tina nodded, as if to assure him he’d heard correctly. “She left a little while ago, walking to your place.” Behind Tina, he noticed packed suitcases lined up at the foot of the bed. Damn it, she was just about to leave.

  “Thanks,” he said, then headed back toward the truck.

  Two minutes later, he parked outside his building and rushed into the courtyard. She’d never been to his apartment before—only knew the location from when they’d taxied here for the truck the other night. The courtyard and interior verandas were empty and quiet but for the hum of a washer coming from the laundry room.

  He walked over to find Mrs. LaFourche standing guard over the washing machines. “Taken,” she said when he leaned inside.

  “Any chance you’ve seen a pretty woman wanderin’ around here lookin’ for me?”

  She tilted her head, narrowed her eyes. “Jake, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Yeah, I seen her. Pointed her to your apartment, but she knocked and didn’t get no answer, so she left.”

  Damn. “Thank you,” he said quietly, then wandered back out to the street.

  Where would she have gone? Not back to the LaRue, or he’d have passed her while he was driving. He thought next of the bayou house, but her rental car had still been at the B and B five minutes earlier.

  As he glanced in the other direction, a new thought struck him. Chez Sophia. It was the only other place.

  He took off in a sprint, realizing that somewhere along the way the sun had come out, the wind had died, and it was turning into a pretty day. He was starting to sweat, so he shrugged out of the jacket and scarf, gripping them in his fist as he ran.

  When he reached Sophia’s, all was quiet, but the front door was unlocked.

  He heard people working inside—the clink of bottles, the sound of a chair scooting on the floor somewhere, and low music playing—but no one was in sight. He didn’t bother seeking anyone out, just walked on through like he figured Stephanie might have done in the same situation.