By the time she dressed, put a pot of coffee on, and joined him, there were three boats, and one was from Lake Patrol. Nola strolled down to the water, trying not to hurry, but her heart pounded a rumba beat. Maybe this is something about Delphina, she thought. Maybe.
Johnny held out his left arm in open invitation when she arrived so Nola walked into his embrace. He stood with his arm draped around her shoulders, displaying their relationship and his possession to the gathered men. “What happened?” she asked.
A tall, lean man with a Stetson tipped back on his head spoke. “The Witch of Caddo is dead. I found her body floating beneath some cypress trees early this morning when I went out to fish. Don’t know if she got caught in the storm last night or what but she’s sure enough dead.”
Nola shivered, impressed with Odile’s power. She had called it, exactly. Johnny tightened his arm around her. “Cher, this is Dwight Johnson, a neighbor living on the lake, too. Dwight, this is ma cherie amour, Nola Delaney. The Broussards, they were her grandparents, and she’s come home to Caddo.”
Dwight nodded. “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Nola.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry it’s under such tragic circumstances.”
Johnny leaned closer and whispered low. “You’d better go back to the house. He’s got Delphina’s body in his boat and it’s not a pretty sight. Gators have been at her, maybe gar, too. I’ll be up when they finish.”
Karma’s such a bitch. “Okay. I’ve got plans to make for tonight, Jean Batiste.”
He grinned. “Oui, cher, I think you do.”
****
A full-bellied moon rose over Caddo in a clear sky where a thousand stars sparkled. A few wisps of clouds blew across the moon. A slight breeze rippled the lake waters. In the silver light, Johnny stripped naked and came to the porch steps. The white candles Nola had placed and lit brightened the night with their steady flame.
“Come and be cleansed,” she said. They were the words Odile had taught her. “Come shed any darkness and any wicked influence.”
“I come,” Johnny replied.
Nola nodded and held open the screen door so he could pass into the house. She followed behind. In the bathroom, the claw-foot tub held water. Rose petals and lavender blossoms floated on the surface. Before she drew the bath, Nola had blessed the tub with sea salt and holy water she brought from church in town. Now she sprinkled dry herbs over the water, a little sage, and some other ones Odile didn’t name. More candles flickered, placed all over the room.
Johnny stepped into the tub and stood as Nola poured water from the lake over him. Then she made the sign of the cross on his forehead with blessed olive oil, then anointed his wrists with the same. “You were born from water,” she said. “You came out of the womb in water and now the same shall cleanse you, body and soul.”
Then he sat down, lay prone in the oversized tub, and slipped beneath the water. Nola watched with more than a little trepidation as he remained under for a full minute. Johnny rose, sputtering and dripping with a brilliant smile. “Now what?” he asked.
“You stay for thirteen minutes,” Nola replied. “I’ll time it.”
“Then what?”
“You can’t make love to me, not even masturbate, for twenty-four hours,” she told him. “Or drink alcohol or indulge in any decadence.”
“That’s a shame,” he said.
She smiled at him. “But we’ll have the rest of our lives for that.”
When he finished, she brought a brand new, clean white bath towel and dried him. Then he held her tight in his arms, all he could do for now.
One day passed and then seven. Johnny didn’t shift. A week became two, then doubled into a month but he didn’t become a gator. By the end of summer when autumn colors delivered their brilliant hues to the wildness surrounding the lake and the migratory birds took wing for warmer places, they were certain he would never again turn from man into alligator.
“I love the fall,” Nola said. They sat on her porch overlooking Caddo despite the cooler temperatures. “I’m glad I stayed.”
“Me, too, cher,” Johnny said. “These old houses, though, are meant for summer and it gets colder than a witch’s tit by December. I’ve stayed because when I shifted, I needed water as a gator, but now that’s over we don’t have to stay in the winter.”
Glad he said ‘we’, not ‘me’, Nola said. “Then what would we do?”
He reached for her hand and held it close. “I used to go to Shreveport in the winter,” he said. “I took my art along. My aunt, she has a house and I would stay there. She goes to Florida in the cold months. For five years, I’ve told her no when she asks if I’m coming but this year I told her ‘maybe’. What do you think? Do you want to go? If not, we can stay here but we’ll be cold.”
The Nola who first came to Caddo Lake would have said no. She’d been to Shreveport and its sister city across the Red River many times. It wasn’t as big as the sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex but she would have been too afraid. But that Nola no longer existed. “If you’re going, then so am I,” she said.
His eyes sparkled. “Oui, I thought you would. But there’s just one thing. My aunt, she’s a religious lady, you know. And she would never allow me to bring a woman under her roof and into bed unless we were married. I told her about you and she asked if we were getting married and I told her we are. I just hadn’t got around to asking yet. So, cher, would you marry me?”
Nola’s heart expanded, so full of joy she thought she couldn’t contain it all. Her fingers tightened around his but she kept her voice light. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said. “But yes, I’d love to marry you.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “So we have a date set with the priest at Holy Trinity in Shreveport, the day before my show opens at a little gallery on Texas Street. I love you, Nola, more than I have words to say or ways to show you, but I’d like to try.”
His simple words touched her deep within. “I can deal with that,” she said. “I love you, too, Jean Batiste.”
“Then so it begins, the rest of our lives together.”
“That works for me,” Nola said.
In her own happy ending, together they’d found a new beginning.
Life had flavor now, a rich Cajun taste, and plenty of heat.
No woman could want anything more—and she didn’t.
Nola kissed her Johnny, his mouth hot and sweet on hers, savoring the taste all the more because she knew it would last a lifetime.
The End
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Other Books by Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy:
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Johnny Gator Page 6