Tucked away on a high ridge overlooking the bayou stood a solitary house that Jenny had called home for nearly two decades. It had been built by Hank’s grandfather and passed down through his family, but it was in need of some aesthetic repair. The red brick was faded to a deep pink, the shingles dotting the roof were mismatched, and the porch was no longer level, but at least it was still standing, which was more than the neighbors could claim. Their homes had all been washed away by Hurricane Katrina, and what was left behind had eventually been devoured by nature. Just a few concrete slabs were still visible through the overgrowth, and a few wooden pillars that stood defiantly tall. It was a constant and chilling reminder of their vulnerability.
The house was the last thing Jenny noticed, though, as she guided Hank’s truck through the oak-lined canopy of their gravel driveway. The black sedan parked beside the shed, and the two men with their visible gun holsters, watching her from the edge of the front porch, stole her attention.
The cold metal of Hank’s nine-millimeter Glock under the driver’s seat should have been a calming reassurance, but Jenny wasn’t even sure she could remember how to use it. She was a proficient shot when her target was a piece of paper nailed to a tree—Hank had made sure of it before he brought her out to the country and left her on her own for two weeks at a time—but she’d never been tested under pressure, and her heart was racing at the thought of having to use it.
Her intentions, when she reached beneath the seat to get a grip on the gun, must have been obvious, because both men had their badges on display by the time the truck rolled to a stop, and one of them had his holster undone. She held her hands up to show them she was unarmed, hoping the tremor wasn’t visible through the windshield.
Never show fear.
She could hear the words in Hank’s voice and see the stony expression he’d worn on his face when he’d been trying to toughen her up all those years ago, but she couldn’t seem to convince her body to cooperate. She was scared. She was all alone in the middle of nowhere, at the mercy of two armed men who she hoped were in fact police officers, and she was supposed to be brave. But she wasn’t. She was a city girl in a country girl’s life, and no amount of target practice could change that.
The officers descended the stairs as she slid out of the truck and shut the door, her thoughts shifting to her son, praying he was still safe at college.
“Mrs. Fontaine?” The older officer spoke first. He was at least a couple of decades older than his partner, who looked uncomfortably out of place and far too young to be entrusted with a police badge or a gun. “Sorry to show up unannounced,” he said, his Cajun accent blending perfectly into the bayou around them. “I’m Detective Marcel and this is Detective Parker.” He gestured to the man behind him, who was still fidgeting with the strap of his holster, before turning back toward Jenny with a conspiratorial wink. “You’ll have to forgive my partner. He’s not from around here, and a woman with a gun makes him a little nervous.”
Jenny didn’t return his smile or offer him a response. Guns made her a little nervous, too. In anyone’s hands.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?” she said, leaning against the truck door and forcing herself to look them both in the eye when she spoke.
“We were hoping you might have some information about a friend of yours,” the older officer replied, halting his footsteps at the bottom of the stairs and resting his elbow on the post of the weathered and paint-chipped rail Hank had been meaning to touch up for the past two years. “We spent the morning chatting with your cousin. Nicholas Turner?”
Of course it was about Nick. If a police officer showed up at her door, it had to be about him. Her cousin had a rap sheet a mile long, and when she was young and dumb, Jenny had imprudently played the role of alibi provider on more than one occasion. Police officers would show up at her door with questions about where Nick had been the night a convenience store had been robbed or a car had been lifted from a lot. He was with me, having a few beers and watching TV. She thought she was unconquerable back then, but after life threw her a few curveballs, she realized she’d just been reckless and irresponsible. She hadn’t covered for him in years, not since moving to Calebasse.
“Whatever Nick’s done this time, I wasn’t a part of it,” she said. “I haven’t seen him in ages. Or spoken to him.”
“We didn’t come here to talk about Nick. We’re trying to find an old girlfriend of his. Rachel Tillman?”
The guilt was sudden and unforgiving. Just the mention of Rachel’s name did that to her. They’d become friends when she and Nick started dating a few years earlier, but when Nick stopped bringing her around, shortly before their son died, she and Rachel got out of the habit of calling each other. Jenny hadn’t spoken to her since the funeral, six months earlier. She’d been meaning to call her, but days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, and while she kept promising herself that tomorrow would be the day, tomorrow never came.
As far as she knew, Nick and Rachel hadn’t spoken to each other since the funeral, either. Nick certainly hadn’t been in contention for father of the year when Rachel found the boy dead in his crib one morning—SIDS according to the coroner’s report—but he was pretty shaken up by the whole ordeal, and Jenny felt a trace of guilt for not having called him, either.
“I haven’t talked to either one of them since their son’s funeral,” she said. “I guess it’s been about six months.”
“You’ll let us know if she contacts you?” With his arm outstretched and a card tucked between his fingers, the older officer took a few steps forward, waiting for Jenny to close the distance between them. She met him halfway and took the card.
“Is she okay?”
“Far as we know,” he replied. “But she’s considered armed and dangerous, so be careful if she shows up.”
“Armed and dangerous? I don’t think we’re talking about the same Rachel.”
“I’m pretty sure we are. From Bienville, Mississippi? Used to date your cousin, Nick Turner? Lost her son last year?”
“Why would you think she’s armed and dangerous? Did she do something?”
“She shot someone,” he said. “And then ran.”
“Shot someone? Are you sure it was her?”
She couldn’t make sense of his words. Rachel was one of the most passive people she’d ever met, a stark contrast to the man who’d gotten her pregnant and left her to fend for herself. The one time they’d tried to take her out for target practice, she wouldn’t even take the gun from Hank’s hand to shoot at a tree. There was no way she would point a gun at a person. “I really can’t imagine Rachel doing something like that. I don’t think she’s even fired a gun before.”
“Well, she has now.” He pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and fished through it with a nicotine-stained finger, easing out the last one before tucking it into the corner of his mouth and crushing the empty pack. “She shot a pregnant lady,” he said. “Her boss.”
“What? Is she okay?”
“It’s not lookin’ good.” He cupped his hand around the Bic to shelter it from the wind before lighting the cigarette, then took a heavy drag and blew out a plume of smoke. “But I guess we’ll see.”
Jenny was trying to read the card in her hand, but too many questions were running through her mind to concentrate. Where? When? Why? How? No matter how she turned it, she couldn’t come up with a scenario involving Rachel, her boss, and a gun. They had to be mistaken.
“Thanks for your time, Mrs. Fontaine.” She’d almost forgotten the men were standing beside her until they started for their car. The older officer with the nicotine-stained fingers turned back and winked at her, pointing at the card in her hand with his cigarette. “Make sure you call me if she contacts you.”
“I will,” Jenny mumbled.
It was a reactive response. She didn’t know what she’d do if Rachel showed up, though she doubted she’d ever find out.
When the dust finally settl
ed behind the black sedan after it made its way down the gravel lane, she hurried into the house to get the television turned on. Rachel’s flawless complexion and auburn curls filled the screen as her image flashed across the local evening news. Jenny reached for the remote, but the segment was over by the time she got it turned up. The internet connection in Calebasse was always vengeful in its unwillingness to load, and her laptop offered little more than a spinning hourglass icon. From the few words that made it to the screen, though, she could almost believe what the officers had told her:
Doctor fighting for life after shooting …
Secretary wanted for questioning …
Police not releasing details …
She sank down into Hank’s old leather recliner, the same one she’d been hounding him to park on the curb for the past three years, and pulled out her cell phone. Prudence and curiosity were battling each other in her mind, one nudging her to call her husband, and the other to call her cousin.
In the end, neither answered, and she was left to endure the night with the danger of an unbridled imagination. Who would Rachel turn to now? Who did she have on her side? Jenny wasn’t so naive as to think that she couldn’t have ended up like Rachel—always falling for the wrong guy, unable to care for a son she couldn’t keep alive, never able to make ends meet. But for Jenny, it always came down to one question: Who would she be if not for Hank?
PART II
CHAPTER EIGHT
maria
THE AIR WASN’T RIGHT. IT WAS the smell. It wasn’t unpleasant; in fact, it was vaguely familiar and quite comforting. But it was not right. And the room was too dark. Maria could almost feel her pupils dilating, searching for light, but inky blackness was all that trickled in.
“Will?”
Her whispered word bounced off a wall that was far too close, a wall that shouldn’t have been there, and echoed back to her ears. It wasn’t until she reached for her husband, though, whose presence was replaced by scratchy, rough-threaded sheets, that Maria was certain she was not in her home.
The nightstand beside her was piled high with a haphazard array of papers that spilled to the floor when her hands fumbled for the lamp, and when the room was illuminated with the yellow glow of soft light, Maria was breathless. She slipped out from beneath the pink comforter she hadn’t seen in more than twenty years, the crumpling of papers under her feet shattering the silence, as visions of her childhood flooded through her eyes.
She was dreaming. She was home in Alabama, under her parents’ roof, and as much as she wanted to surrender to the moment and absorb the beauty surrounding her, she was scared. Her pulse quickened as the smell and feel of dirt and blood invaded her memory, and her eyes scanned the room for signs of Sylvia and Beth, fearful that they would return with their enigmatic warnings. She was met instead with a corkboard full of memories that hung from the wall.
Pictures, ribbons, and magazine clippings three rows thick flooded her mind with long-forgotten images, and as she crept closer, her eyes trained on one particular photo that was tacked to the middle of the board, she was overwhelmed with sorrow. It was her mother and her, their arms wrapped around each other, tennis rackets dangling from their hands, and laughter floating through the air around them. They were oblivious to how it would all end. She gripped the photo between her fingers before pulling out the strategically placed thumbtack, and she watched the other papers drift to the floor and land carelessly around her feet.
Behind her, below the only window in the room, sat a familiar desk, brown and aged, with her name still carved into one of its legs. The wood beneath her fingers was smooth as she ran her hand across its surface, and though she could picture the contents of each drawer, she dared not open them. Instead, her eyes landed on a white teddy bear perched atop the desk, holding a satin heart with the words I Love You stitched across it. It was the one Marc had given her for Valentine’s Day her senior year of high school, the one she threw out with a cache of love letters and photos when her heart was first broken all those years ago. She could still taste the bitterness of it.
On the far wall of the room, beyond the overstuffed corkboard and the sheets of paper littering the floor, stood three doors. She knew what once lay beyond them, but she was wary of venturing through them now. What world would they lead her to tonight? Would it be the one with Sylvia’s skeletal fingers pointing her toward death? Or would this be the kind of dream her husband spoke of, where friends and family gathered together with memories of better days?
The handle to door one was like ice beneath her fingers, but it opened with ease and bought her entrance to a place she had long forgotten. A red hair dryer, a pink crimping iron, and makeup in every shade of blue floated across the bathroom counter, and when her eyes drifted up to the toothpaste-riddled mirror, they landed on a girl who shouldn’t have been there.
Her skin was like porcelain and her eyes were wide and searching. Her hair, radiant and black, gleamed under the warm glow of the artificial lights, and Maria couldn’t resist the feel of her skin. From her face to her body, Maria examined every curve and bend like a lover’s first touch. It wasn’t until she reached the tautness of the muscle-lined stomach, muscles that had never been stretched by a growing baby, that she was thrust back into reality.
Blaise.
Every fear she held for her unborn son magnified as her hands searched her belly for signs of him. The photo, warm and moist from the sweat of her palm, drifted to the counter as she reached for the handle of the sink. The water was colder than she anticipated, shivers gripping her body as it struck her face and trickled down her neck, soaking the front of her shirt. The girl in the mirror stood resolute, staring back at Maria as water dripped from her flawless skin, confusion etched onto her face. They both drew deep breaths into their lungs as Maria turned away from her. It was just a dream. Blaise would be there when she woke up.
She forced herself through door number two, apprehension warning her to return to her son but anticipation prodding her to see who might be waiting beyond her room. It opened to a familiar hallway where wall-mounted portraits from a lifetime ago tracked her movements with pervasive eyes. To her left, moonlight glinted off the surface of the kitchen counter just beyond the den, and to her right, the door to her parents’ bedroom beckoned her.
She was powerless against it, the magnetism that pulled her to her mother, and when she pushed the door open, the dim light from the hallway spilled over the bed, illuminating two faceless shapes beneath a mound of covers. Her temples pounded in time with her pulse as stealthy steps carried her across the floor, and as she kneeled beside the bed, her mother’s breath brushed across her face. It was a cruel reminder of what she’d lost.
“Mom.”
The word floated between them, Maria at the mercy of her emotions as the soft features of her mother’s face shifted with every breath.
“Maria?” Her mother bolted to attention, her shock knocking Maria to the floor. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s me.”
The light that continued to filter in from the hallway spotlighted her mother’s confusion as her attention shifted from Maria to the nightstand. “What are you doing?” She squinted at the tiny numbers on the alarm clock. “It’s four thirty in the morning. You need to go back to bed.”
Maria sat in silence, barely breathing, and crouched beside her mother’s bed, waiting for more. Waiting for the moment the woman before her would recognize the gift they’d been given, the moment clarity would reach her and they would embrace and laugh and cry—the moment she’d longed for since her mother’s death.
“Come on,” her mother finally said, gathering her robe from the chair beside her bed and stepping past Maria. “Let’s not wake Dad up.”
In a dazed silence, Maria followed her back through the hallway of roaming eyes and to the room where it all began, where drifts of crumpled papers and photos littered the floor.
“What happened in here?” Her mot
her shook out the pink comforter that had been discarded on the floor, and Maria watched as it billowed in the air and settled in a cloudy heap atop the bed. She stacked the books in a precarious pile on the nightstand before gathering the papers and photos into a pile on the floor. “Look at this mess,” she said. “What have you been doing in here?”
“I just…” Maria scanned the room before glancing down and noticing the photo she was still clutching in her hand. “There was so much stuff in here that I’d forgotten about,” she said, holding it up between them. “I found this picture on that corkboard over there. Isn’t it great? I wish I could take it back with me.”
Her mother took the photo from her hand and with barely a glance tossed it onto the nightstand, as if the memory was meaningless to her. “Take it back with you where?”
“Home,” Maria mumbled.
“You are home.” She pulled the covers back to the freshly made bed and motioned for Maria to climb in. “What’s going on with you, sweetie? I’ve never seen you like this.”
Maria eased onto the edge of the bed, studying the lines and angles of her mother’s face, determined to burn them into her memory. Had she ever been this young? She could remember only the face her mother wore after years of cancer had ravaged her body. She could still see the frail arms that had clutched her children until the agonizing and bitter end, and as she took her mother’s hand she noticed that the wrinkles that had once adorned them were conspicuously absent.
“You haven’t even asked about Charlotte and Emily,” Maria said. “Don’t you want to hear about them?”
“Maybe you can tell me about them tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“It’s four o’clock in the morning, Maria. We both need to get some sleep.”
“But we won’t be here tomorrow,” Maria said, desperate that her mother not waste this precious gift they’d been given. “Why haven’t you asked me about them?”
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