I had the distinct impression that events were underway, events that I knew nothing of, horrible events that I could not prevent.
Jonatan…danger…
Shivering at the thought, I forced myself to nod a few times at Mr. Trufant’s detailed descriptions of sterns, bows and the latest anchor designs. What fools we all were! Of everyone in our household, it appeared that I was the only one who cared that Jonatan faced the world alone for the first time in his life.
And to think that my brother had only the grasping Memphis Overstreet to depend upon. How would she ever care for him properly? My cheeks burned as I imagined the mockery he would endure, the utter disapproval he would experience when Memphis fully realized our secret. The girl had no care for her own reputation, apparently.
Every day I expected that the pretentious Anne Overstreet would beat down our doors, but nobody came to Seven Sisters. From the Overstreets we had heard nothing.
Or at least I had heard nothing.
I wondered what it could all mean, and I was sure there was more going on here than met the eye. I rubbed my temple with my sweaty hand, hoping to stave off another severe headache. I had been getting so many of those lately that I had quite abandoned my work on the compendium in hopes of avoiding the blinding dizzy spells. At times, they made me pure sick to my stomach. Mama’s solutions were always the same, smelling salts or liver oil. Neither of these would help, so I kept my malady to myself. And now if Mr. Trufant did not quickly shut up, I might faint in front of our small gathering. My eyes swam, so I closed them briefly hoping I could still my stomach. Mr. Trufant did not seem to notice. His voice banged around my head, sending shock waves throughout my body.
Please, God. Let this end.
Once again, my prayers went unanswered. “Lafonda,” Mama whispered into my ear, “you look positively green. Why don’t you go lie down, dear? I am sure Mr. Trufant would be more than happy to allow you to leave, as long as you promise to dine with us all tonight.”
“What?” I asked through squinted eyes. Why would she mention food at a time like this? My head throbbed. “What did you say?”
“Come now, dear. Please excuse us, husband. Mr. Trufant, my apologies. Lafonda and I must…” I did not hear the rest of Mama’s speech, for I had fainted.
When I awoke, I was in my bed, my maid Lettie was removing my shoes and Mama was fanning me with her Woolsey fan, a great big monstrosity of silk and ivory that normally I would not be allowed to even look at, much less enjoy.
“What happened?” I asked in a whisper, feeling discomposed and somewhat embarrassed.
Mama had my hand in hers. “You fainted straight away, and Mr. Trufant caught you. How quickly he moved to save you.”
“Save me?”
“It was a sight to see, Lafonda. Bart Trufant was your rescuer tonight. You must thank him, dear.”
I heard the words but couldn’t understand her. Why would he rescue me? Had I truly fainted? That couldn’t be right. I had a strong constitution—nothing like these weepy Alabama belles. I did not faint. Never had. Now I was fainting in front of Mr. Trufant.
“Thank you,” I grumbled as I tried to push myself up off the bed.
“No, dear. You must rest. See? Even your father agrees. Tell her, Nobel. Tell her she must rest now.”
Papa’s shadow fell on me as he followed Mama’s command. Dressed in black, as always, he did not hug me or hold me as he might have before. But before what? What had I ever done to deserve the distance between us? “Yes, Lafonda, you must rest now. Listen to your Mama. She knows what’s best for you.” My mind argued with him, railed against Mama for her controlling ways, but my mouth would not comply.
Then Mr. Trufant came to stand beside me. I felt very uncomfortable having a man who wasn’t my father or Jonatan in my room, but I couldn’t verbalize my feelings. He smiled down at me but thankfully did not touch me. My headache returned with sudden viciousness, and I whimpered in pain. Twisting in the bed, unable to control my own body, I cried out loudly this time. “Mama!”
“Nobel! Do something!”
Mr. Trufant said, “No, Mr. Delarosa. You stay with your daughter—I will go fetch the doctor.” My father thanked him politely but left with him anyway. As the two men exited the room, they talked in hushed tones.
“The light, Mama. The light hurts my eyes, my head!” I cried, hot tears sliding down my face.
What was happening? What did this mean? I could barely put two thoughts together, never mind a coherent sentence. It all started when I saw the woman who warned me about Jonatan. She warned me that he was in danger. What if we were cursed? Yes, we were all cursed! We must be!
“Lettie! Hurry up! Close the windows! I know it’s hot, but we have to keep as much light out as possible. Can’t you see it hurts her?” I heard Mama clucking her tongue at Lettie, who ran around the room pulling the curtains closed. With the darkness came a little reprieve from the pain. I gasped at how quickly the pain had come upon me. I’d never experienced anything like this, not even a headache or the tremors, as Mama had sometimes. I whimpered with pain as Mama patted my neck with cool linen cloths and had Lettie fan me.
A wave of sickness hit me, and I vomited off the side of my bed. Suddenly a whirlwind of activity happened in my room. Mama and Lettie declared I was too hot and managed to undress me down to my undergarments.
“Mama, where is Jonatan? I think we’re cursed, Mama! I saw the crying woman…and now I’m cursed.”
I heard Mama gasp as she squeezed my hand. She asked me something, but I couldn’t understand her words—they were like a foreign language to me. My mind felt cluttered, uncomfortable, and twinges of pain shot through my head and down my neck.
Please, Mama! Please, please be quiet!
She couldn’t hear me, but I continued to beg silently for peace. Immediately she fell on her knees, made the sign of the cross and began pleading for my soul, her soul. All of our souls. As her voice droned on, the pain was replaced with numbness, and for a few seconds I couldn’t see at all. Suddenly the sound of my mother’s panicked prayers faded in a blinding white light. People were moving just beyond my sight, two people. I didn’t know who they were, but I felt as if I should.
“Hello?” I called to them as I approached. Yes, I was walking now. Where was I? I could see perfectly; the pain had vanished with the bursting of the light around me. I wasn’t in Seven Sisters now…I’d left the grandeur of the big house behind me. It had never been my home anyway, not really. I’d been to so many places, Decatur, Jacksonville. But never could I forget the warm beaches of my true home, my long-lost Spain. Perhaps I was dreaming now. If that was true, then I could go there, home to Spain. Some people said if you tried really hard, you could travel in your dreams. I never had, although I had tried many times. But here I was now, in the garden, the rose garden. The place I loved so much.
And this I loved the most about Seven Sisters. Not the many gray statues or the copper sundial in the herb garden. Not the wandering maze or Mama’s beloved ladies’ parlor where she held court continually with the local gentry. It was here that I belonged.
I breathed in the cleansing scent of the floral blooms around me. Whoever established this delightful rose garden had included all the varieties of the roses of Mobile and even more. Yes, I smiled to see the bright yellow petals of the Bonningham rose. Ah, the sweet petite Bourbons trailed up the lattice. I resisted the urge to pluck one. The Wandering English was a bushy rose with slender stems, perfect for cutting and displaying. But as with most roses, I couldn’t bear to cut them, unless of course I had need of one for my book. Would I never complete The Delarosa Compendium of Flowers and Plants now that I had died?
Jonatan hated that name. He begged me to call it The Delarosa Flower Book, but he had no say-so in the naming of my life’s work. But maybe, if he came home, I would change my mind. Yes, Jonatan! Come home! Perhaps now, if he ever came home, he would finish it. But I knew he couldn’t do such a thing without me
. Jonatan could write only his own name and maybe a few simplistic phrases such as “Yours truly” and “Best wishes.” He would certainly never master the Latin names of the blooms we studied and recorded.
“Jonatan!” I called, hoping that by some miracle my brother might appear. How warm it felt, how pleasant, yet my heart longed for my brother. “Jonatan!” I called again, and then I heard the stirring behind me.
I realized immediately that this figure was not Jonatan. It was a man—and a woman. A familiar woman. Was that Christine? Was I seeing ghosts? Was I now a ghost too? I gasped and stepped back on the brick, nearly tripping over the hem of my nightgown.
“Who are you?”
“You have to go back, Lafonda. Go back to your room.”
I stared at the man with the beautiful face—it was he who spoke to me. His dark hair fell around his shoulders, and he had lovely blue eyes. Dark blue like the summer sky. “Who are you?” I asked again, panic swelling up within me. The mere idea of returning to my room, to my bed of pain, filled me with anxiety. “I do not want to go anywhere. I want to stay here in my garden.”
“Please.” His voice sounded tender and caring, as if he knew everything about me and sought only the best for me. “You have to go back.”
I drew my hands back and pulled away from him. He could not ask me to do such a thing. He just couldn’t! “You can’t be in my garden.”
Then the petite woman stepped forward and whispered a plea. “If you don’t go back, Jonatan can’t return home.”
“Jonatan…” I said as my heart fell. “You know my brother?”
The woman drew close to me, and I didn’t back away. I was curious and did not feel threatened. She had a kind face encircled with loose curly brown hair, but it was her vivid green eyes that captured me. She touched my arm with gentle, cool fingers.
“Please, Lafonda. You have to go back. Everything depends on you.”
And then I was gone.
Chapter Four—Henri
My wife paced the floor while I stared into the empty space where two people had just vanished before my eyes. I knew that dream catching—dream walking, whatever—was a real thing, but to have it happen in front of me was beyond disconcerting. But at least it wasn’t my wife who had vanished in the arms of another man. As if he read my mind, Ashland grimaced and rubbed his head with both hands. He popped up off the couch with a fake smile on his face, showing all his white teeth.
“You want a bottle of water?” he asked in his most gracious voice.
“How about a real drink?”
“After your earlier confession about drinking and carousing up and down Bourbon Street, I’m going to have to close the bar, my friend. Your wife would kill me if I started you drinking. There’s no one in the world who scares me more than Detra Anne Dowd…Devecheaux. Except maybe my own wife.”
Ashland continued, “She’s got some spirit, always has. You should have seen her on the cheerleading squad. Back in the day, before she went blonde, she had long, dark brown hair. Now that was pretty hair. She was ‘eye candy,’ that’s what the other guys on the football team called her, but she wouldn’t give them the time of day. She was too good for them. And for me too, I guess.”
I now knew what Carrie Jo was talking about. Ashland was acting strange. It was as if he had feelings for Detra Ann that he swore before he never had.
“I guess,” I repeated, eager to change the subject. Glancing once at the back of my wife’s head, I decided to follow him into the kitchen, and I instantly fell in love with the remodeled room. I had a soft spot for all things culinary, and I openly admired their contractor’s beautiful craftsmanship. It was hard to take an old home like this and make it warm, but he’d managed it without losing any important component of the house.
Ashland reached for two bottles of water from his stainless steel refrigerator and handed me one. “I bet she’s a wildcat in bed, Henri. Isn’t she? Tell me…we’re just two friends talking here.” We cracked the tops, and I tossed back some water so I wouldn’t have to knock him out. Yes, Carrie Jo had it right. Whatever she’d done had changed things. This was not the Ashland I knew.
“How do I answer that? You know she doesn’t like it when I talk about her behind her back. She is a lie detector, Ashland, as you well know.”
“Yeah, I know. And mine’s a dreamer. I can’t even have a dream about another woman or she loses it. It’s not like I can control my dreams.”
“Are you sure you are feeling okay? You seem…a bit off.”
Ashland said in a serious voice, “To tell you the truth, I’ve never felt better. I mean, even when I was training, I’ve never felt better than right now. It’s like whatever I went through with that brain stuff gave me a new lease on life. I want to live and live it to the fullest! I hope Carrie Jo understands that. I want to travel and see the world…I want to experience life!”
And it was just his luck that his wife walked into the kitchen as he said that. “See the world, huh?”
“Just talking, honey.” He gave her a catlike smile, and she frowned at him.
“When did you start calling me honey?”
“What?”
Unwilling to get caught in their argument, I pressed Carrie Jo on what had just happened. I didn’t see Austin anywhere. Maybe he was with Detra Ann. The way folks were acting around here, I wanted to go check on her, but I had to know the details first.
“What happened when you went back?” I was dying of curiosity. Yeah, we were all different, thinking different, behaving different. This wasn’t us. Not at all. And we needed to be us, or there wouldn’t be an us. Carrie Jo was right, what we’d had was special. A unique set of friendships built on mutual respect and love. We had been a family. I couldn’t tell what we were now.
“We found Lafonda, and I think it was just in the nick of time. She wasn’t herself. In fact, I would say she was transitioning, or near death, however you want to put it. We asked her to go back because nothing would ever be right if she died at the wrong time. I think somehow she…”
Austin walked in, touched her arm and stared at her. I could have sworn those two were using ESP or something to communicate. Whatever he said to her with his mind calmed her down. She had apparently changed her mind about telling us the details, too.
“Ashland,” she said as she put her arms around his neck and hugged him with all her might. He held her, but he wasn’t his usual patient self. He was active, moving and ready to see the world. “I made a mess of things.”
“It’s going to be okay, hon. It will be.” His voice had an unusual detached tone to it. I tried to look the other way. I really did need to go check on my wife.
“Hon?” she asked, stepping back with her arms crossed.
“Baby? Does it matter?”
She looked at Austin, and you didn’t need ESP to know that she was convinced Ashland was a different man because of her dream walk.
In his rich deep voice, Austin said, “Let’s take a walk, Ashland.”
“I’m good.” Ashland bristled at the idea, and I thought that was strange considering Austin bankrolled his loan to retake Seven Sisters. Surely Ashland was too smart to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Austin put on a good-natured smile and said politely, “I see that you expanded the rose garden. Was that recent?”
“Yeah,” he answered in a casual voice. Carrie Jo raised her eyebrows at him, and he changed his tone. “I’ll be happy to show it to you. It’s getting a bit stuffy in here anyway.”
“Great,” Austin replied as they left us alone in the kitchen.
The silence grew and I said, “Carrie Jo, I agree. Ashland has changed. Seriously changed.”
“Tell me about it. I’m both sorry and happy to hear that someone else sees it. I hope he didn’t act like a complete ass in my absence. Beyond what I just saw.”
“Probably best not to ask about that. What happened during your dream walk?”
“It’s so weird. I heard Christine
weeping again, just like Lafonda did. I think she was trying to warn me off, but I couldn’t leave Lafonda alone. When we found Lafonda, she was walking around in the garden, like a shade, nearly dead. I could hear her mother screaming and crying in the house, so it’s possible that we found her just in the nick of time. We convinced her to return to her body, so her death must have just happened.” Carrie Jo shivered at the thought as she poured herself a glass of iced tea.
“Ashland isn’t the only one acting strange. Detra Ann has her moments too, and I can’t be sure it’s just the hormones. No pressure, but the sooner you guys figure out how to undo this…whatever it is, the better.”
“Yeah, you know, I’ve been thinking.” She sipped on her tea and stared off into the distance. “If it’s wrong to interact with the past like I did before, how can this be right? How can Austin be sure we aren’t upsetting the apple cart even worse?”
“That’s a great question. I wish Lenore was here to share her insight. She always knew what to do in situations like this. At least Lafonda listened to you.”
“I told her she had to go back. She didn’t want to do it. I touched her arm to comfort her. Austin said we would only have a few seconds to convince her to go back or it would be too late for her to return. He says that the soul’s tie to the body only lasts a short time. Well, when I touched her, I knew why she didn’t want to go back. Lafonda had been in a lot of pain. She had excruciating head pain and suddenly died, and that’s not in the historical record. The Lafonda Delarosa I read about lived to be an old woman, with a family. She didn’t stay at Seven Sisters long but moved to Georgia after she married a young man who worked for her father. This is all wrong.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m thinking it means that she suffered the same malady Ashland did. The medical times being what they were, she died from it. In Ashland’s place, Henri. I think because of what I did, interfering in Jonatan’s death, warning Lafonda…death missed Jonatan, and then it missed Ashland, and then it came for Lafonda.”
Return to Seven Sisters Page 15