Sunrise Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Three

by Vivian Vaughan

  Although the room was otherwise unlighted, the dozens of candles provided both an undulating light and a smoky haze. The air was heavy with the sweet odor of incense. Gabriel and Delta stood in the doorway unnoticed, until Gabriel interrupted the woman’s crooning by clearing his throat.

  The blue eyes that flew open startled Delta. Blue eyes full of life and joy—and something that spoke instantly of wisdom.

  “Gabriel,” the woman cried, rising immediately to hug him. “Me, I didn’t know you were comin’.” A frown, which reminded Delta of the way Brett’s brow creased between his eyes, etched her leathery face. “How could I have miss’ such a thing?” She circled his upper arms with long slender fingers and examined his face with candid approval. “You have not chang’, non, and yet you have. You are the same, yet, for truth, wiser.”

  “Let me introduce you. Madame Dupré this is—”

  Delta’s heart stopped on the name Dupré—the first proof she had encountered of Brett’s identity.

  “Me, I know this pichouette,” Crazy Mary interrupted Gabriel. Taking Delta’s hands, she spread them palm-up on her own hand and began to stroke them, all the while staring intently into Delta’s eyes. “Her name is Anne Bonny.”

  Foremost in Delta’s mind for hours—days, actually—had been one concern: Was Brett at his mother’s home? Now with Crazy Mary’s astonishing remark, even concern for Brett vanished.

  “No,” Delta managed to say. At the same time, however, her brain returned to a fear she had put aside the last few days—her own sanity. She wasn’t Anne Bonny. Yet, how in the world did this strange woman know to connect the two of them?

  Crazy Mary continued to stare deeply into Delta’s eyes, disconcerting her. She tried to look away, but found herself unable to. Finally she said, “Anne Bonny was my … ah, a distant ancestor.” Very distant, she thought, feeling her hands begin to tremble in Crazy Mary’s grasp.

  “Come, then, pichouette, we mus’ discuss how I could have made such an error.” Crazy Mary drew Delta inside the ring of candles. As if on second thought, she glanced at Gabriel, motioning him to follow them inside the circle of candles. “Sit yourself, Gabriel. You have help’ Anatole in his trouble, oui. You mus’ witness the truth.”

  Delta’s heart thrummed to a stop. Anatole Dupré. Now she knew the truth of it. Brett Reall was Anatole Dupré. Soon she would learn the rest, the final truth—his crime, his guilt or innocence. Yet, at the moment the question she most wanted answered was whether he was still alive … and free.

  “Is he here?” she managed to ask.

  Crazy Mary shook her head. “Non, he is on his way, for truth. Me, I was workin’ on that when you arrive’.” She frowned, shaking her head in obvious confusion. “I don’ understand. I have such difficulty contacting Anatole. I never experience’ such difficulty before.”

  Smoke from the candles began to sting Delta’s eyes. Her mouth felt parched, not from the smoke, she knew, but from fear.

  Hadn’t Ginny always told her that fear of the unknown was the worst kind of fear? The unknown. Brett’s unknown past. Panic welled inside her. She didn’t want to know the truth. She wanted to run from the house. To find him. To hold him. To love him.

  Crazy Mary squeezed her hands. “You are a troublesome young woman. You kept me from reachin’ my son.”

  “Me?”

  “Oui,” Crazy Mary studied Delta with a warm, congenial expression that belied her strange accusation. “You are not Anne Bonny, sure?”

  “Anne Bonny was a pirate who lived and died over a hundred years ago,” Delta told her.

  Crazy Mary’s eyes expanded to form two blue disks in her leathery face. “For truth! I knew I heard tha’ name before.” She frowned. “You say she is your kin?”

  Delta nodded. “She was my great-grandmother several times removed. My name is—”

  “Don’ tell me.” Crazy Mary held up both hands to ward off Delta’s words. “Me, I will discover your name. Already I know why you brought yourself here.”

  Delta stirred nervously. This conversation was becoming more bizarre by the minute. She began to wonder whether the “crazy” in Crazy Mary didn’t stand for demented instead of strange. “You know why I’m here?”

  “For truth. You love my son.”

  Tears rushed to Delta’s eyes at the simple truth of that statement. Whether it was a mother’s intuition or the result of psychic communication didn’t matter.

  “For truth,” she whispered, feeling a tear roll down her cheek and lodge at the corner of her mouth. She touched it with the tip of her tongue and tasted the salt. That much at least was reality.

  “Don’ be sad, pichouette. Anatole, he loves you, oui. He will arrive soon now.”

  Delta pressed her lips between her teeth, too frightened, too confused to utter a sound. Crazy Mary began crooning beside her. “Your name is … I almost have it. Oui. It is … Me, I can almost see it.”

  Delta scarcely dared breathe.

  “Your name is …” the strange woman’s words drifted off. “It is somethin’ about this country—Levee? Jetty? Swamp?”

  Delta’s confusion turned to distress.

  “Delta.” Crazy Mary opened her wide blue eyes, a self-satisfied expression lighting her face. “Your name, it is Delta, oui?”

  Whether it was the incense, the smoke from the candles, or the bizarre events transpiring in the room, Delta felt as though she had left the real world behind. “Delta Jarrett,” she supplied.

  Crazy Mary’s eyebrows shot up. “Me, I could have discover’ it for myself. Ah, well, it will save time.”

  Gabriel, obviously unmoved by the preceding demonstration, spoke up. “You say that Delta, she interfered with your attempts to reach Anatole?”

  Delta heard the name slip effortlessly from Gabriel’s lips. Anatole. Would Brett ever be Anatole to her?

  “Oui.” Crazy Mary explained. “Ever since Trainor got on his high horse about the Voodoos, I tell you, I know somethin’ mus’ be done about the man. I start’ tryin’ to contact Anatole several months ago. But I kept gettin’ interference.”

  “Interference?” Delta asked.

  “Pirates. A man and a woman. Just when I was close to making contact with Anatole, the pirates would flit through my brain. Now I understan’, it was your kin.”

  Delta failed to see what was apparently so clear to Crazy Mary, but she admitted, “They’ve been interfering with my life, too.”

  “How’s tha’?” Crazy Mary demanded.

  “I’ve dreamed about them for months. Strange dreams about Anne Bonny and Calico Jack.” She hoped the woman wouldn’t ask for details. How could she discuss the substance of the dreams with Gabriel present? Or for that matter, with Brett’s mother? Again she felt a blush spread across her cheeks. Had Brett’s mother dreamed the same dreams?

  “Tha’ explains it, sure.” Crazy Mary was nodding energetically, an act that set the little bells around her neck to jingling. “I did not dream of the pirates, but they flitted in and out of my brain. Tha’ explains everythin’.”

  “Not to me,” Gabriel admitted.

  “Nor to me,” Delta added.

  “You have heard of soulmates, oui?”

  A lump formed in Delta’s throat. She nodded.

  “You mean two people whose souls belong together?” Gabriel questioned.

  “Oui. Me, I interrupted their search—Anatole’s and Delta’s souls searchin’ for each other. The pirates were tryin’ to keep me out of the way.”

  Suddenly Delta recalled Brett telling her that under any other circumstances he wouldn’t have believed her nightmares. She wouldn’t have believed them either, except they had been happening to her. Now, she felt the same doubts about Crazy Mary’s extraordinary explanation. Souls searching for each other? And other souls running interference, as it were.

  But she had dreamed those dreams. And she had been mysteriously attracted to Brett, and he to her. Soulmates. Regardless of how bizarre the concept, it fit
exactly the way she felt about Brett.

  “There’s more to the dreams, though,” Delta told Crazy Mary. “They weren’t pleasant. They were about death. That’s why I left the boat to find Brett … ah—”

  “Me, I know who you mean,” the strange woman assured her.

  “For some time now, I’ve believed that my dreams were a warning—no, a plea, that my ancestors were prompting me to help someone who was in danger. Soon after I met Brett I decided he was the person they wanted me to help.”

  “Tha’ is not uncommon, non,” Crazy Mary commented.

  Although Delta felt it was uncommon to the extreme, she didn’t say as much. “For months my dreams were the same, the same scene between the pirates. Then I met Brett and the dreams began to change.”

  “You are right. Your ancestors used the dreams to guide you, certainement.”

  “One part of the nightmare always remained the same, though,” Delta revealed. “All except two dreams ended with a child crying.”

  Crazy Mary tensed beside her. “Oui, a warning for Anatole.”

  “The pirates had a baby,” Delta explained. “Calico Jack hanged without learning about the baby. In my dreams, Anne Bonny was hanged holding her infant daughter in her arms.”

  Crazy Mary hung her head, staring toward the flickering candle flames. “The pirates are not restin’ easy,” she said at last. “They never had a chance to grieve, non.”

  “The baby lived,” Delta said. “She’s considered the matriarch of the Jarrett family. Our impetuous nature is supposed to have come from her, our blue eyes from Calico Jack.”

  “Outside space and time,” Crazy Mary explained, “things we don’ resolve on this earth sometimes become intermingled. Tha’ is what happened here. It is connect’ to our present problem, sure. How much did Anatole—Brett, as you know him—tell you about his difficulty?”

  “Only that he’s wanted for murder, that he’s innocent, but that he can’t prove his innocence. He said he didn’t want me to know the details because … because the crime was so heinous I might believe him guilty and he … he didn’t want that.”

  Crazy Mary was nodding her head, listening, Delta supposed, although she had trouble deciding when the strange woman sitting beside her was operating in the present or off in a trance.

  Finally Crazy Mary spoke. “It is time you know the truth. All of it. The truth I have kept lock’ in my heart all these years.”

  Delta caught Gabriel’s startled expression across the room. Neither of them said a word.

  “Anatole, he is right,” Crazy Mary said. “He is innocent, but he wouldn’t have been allow’ to prove it. Nicole, his wife, she was murdered at their home down the bayou. Olivia,” Crazy Mary paused, and when she continued, her voice cracked with emotion, “their tiny daughter, Olivia, she was murdered, too.”

  Delta’s stomach churned in violent rejection of Crazy Mary’s words. “Brett’s daughter?” No wonder he hadn’t wanted her to know.

  “How could he have been accused of such a thing?” Delta questioned. “Why couldn’t he prove his innocence?”

  “Him, he was set up, for truth,” Crazy Mary stated unequivocally. “Nicole was a whore. From the beginning she was no accoun’. She was never a wife to Anatole, or mother to Olivia, non. She took herself aroun’ the bayou with any man who would go with her. It was like she had to sleep with ever’ man in Louisiana, not once but over and over. And she wanted Anatole to know about each and ever’ one of them, sure.”

  “Why did he put up with it?”

  Gabriel answered. “When you know him better, Delta, you’ll understand. Me, I always wonder’ why he married her in the first place.”

  “She was like that before they married?”

  “Oui,” Gabriel hissed.

  “Nicole, she had a way of exciting men,” Crazy Mary explained, “of makin’ each man feel like a man. Afterwards, I tell you, she was just as good at tearin’ him down.”

  The room reeled in Delta’s fear-blurred vision. Brett’s daughter murdered? And him accused of the crime? With difficulty she brought herself back to the present, to the solution rather than the crime. “Why couldn’t Brett prove his innocence?”

  “The setup was plan’ perfect, oui. And executed perfect,” Crazy Mary explained. “Anatole was off trappin’. He had sold his load of muskrat pelts and was returnin’ home. Ever’one at Greer’s Landin’ heard him say he was on his way home. Ever’one heard him say he expect’ to fin’ an empty house. Ever’one knew what he meant. Nicole, she never stayed home nights. Come sundown she would take herself off to a fais-do-do or to a rendezvous with some new man.”

  “But you said she was murdered at home,” Delta objected.

  “She was. It was the perfect setup. Accordin’ to say-so spread aroun’ the bayou, she stayed home tha’ night to welcome Anatole from his month-long trappin’ trip.”

  Delta’s brain whirred with Crazy Mary’s story. She’d thought the worst thing that could happen would be to discover that Brett was Anatole Dupré. Now that fear had been realized, and it was worse than any nightmare.

  “The story told ’round the bayou was tha’ Anatole, he caught his wife with another man,” Gabriel added in a monotone. “No man in the bayou would have blamed him for the killin’, except for …”

  “Except for Olivia,” Crazy Mary completed. “The perfect setup, sure.”

  “But who could believe Brett killed his own child?” Delta questioned. “Why couldn’t he have searched the bayou for the murderer? It must have been someone who knew her, who knew where they lived.”

  “A rejected suitor with wounded pride,” Gabriel said. “So the story was told. My cousins, and Anatole’s kin, they have look’ for the murderer for ten years.”

  Crazy Mary squared her shoulders. “The murderer, he wasn’t from the bayou, non. Nicole wasn’t from the bayou, either,” she told Delta. “She was sister to our gov’nor, William Trainor.”

  “Dear God,” Delta whispered on breath that seem crushed from her lungs. “No wonder he’s still after Brett.”

  “The gov’nor, he is still after Anatole,” Crazy Mary said, “because he murder’ his own sister and niece. He cannot afford for Anatole to return an’ draw attention to the case. Tha’ is the reason he wants to run me out of the bayou. A few months ago I decide’ the time had come for the truth. We cannot allow such a man to escape punishment any longer, sure.”

  Delta sat stunned. “What about Brett?” she asked. “The odds against him proving his innocence after ten years will be insurmountable.”

  “It was Trainor, certainement?” Gabriel questioned in a voice that revealed his surprise to be as great as Delta’s.

  “Certainement,” Crazy Mary declared, then added, “But I have no proof that would hold up in court.”

  “Trainor, does he know you suspect him?”

  “He wonders, sure. He has always wonder’ what I know. Lately he has become more frighten’. According to say-so, he will run for United States President next time. If tha’ is true, I tell you, he cannot afford to leave anyone aroun’ to link him to the crime.”

  Delta’s brain flew to a new worry. “He will kill you.”

  Crazy Mary laughed at that. “Non, pichouette. Trainor, he claims not to believe in my powers, but he won’ take a chance. The Anglais, they are as frighten’ of the otherworld as bayou folk. With good reason.” She finished with an oath.

  Anglais? Delta flinched at the term, though she knew Crazy Mary had not intended it as a slight. Like Gabriel’s family, Crazy Mary’s contempt for those they termed “English” was obvious. But for some reason she didn’t seem to include Delta in that group. Perhaps, like Delta, Crazy Mary considered it inconsequential under the present circumstances. At worst, it was another hurdle she and Brett would have to cross, after they crossed those looming ahead.

  Brett’s daughter had been murdered! The pain of it brought tears to Delta’s eyes. “How old was Olivia?”

  “Thr
ee years,” Crazy Mary told her. “Nicole, she had no interest in the child, so I kept Olivia when Anatole went into the swamps to set his traps. Me, I should have been suspicious tha’ day. Nicole never came for the child. It was always Anatole who pick’ her up. But tha’ day Nicole came early. I should have been suspicious. I hated to allow tha’ bébé to go with her own mother. But I did, sure. I had no choice. Nicole she said she had a message from her brother, the governor. That she wanted Olivia to see her uncle. I even gave Nicole a pot of filé gumbo for their dinner.”

  “You knew,” Gabriel breathed. “Yet you never told Anatole.”

  “I never tol’ a soul,” Crazy Mary said. “If I had, Anatole, he would be the next one to die. If he knew Trainor was at tha’ house, he would have charge’ the man like an angry bull alligator. And he would have been killed.”

  “My dreams make more sense,” Delta said. “In the last one …” She clasped her arms, warding off not the premonition now, but the stark ugly truth of the matter. “My last dream was of a grave.” Her eyes found Gabriel’s. “That’s when I awakened on the boat and convinced you to bring me here. I dreamed of a grave, a child’s grave, near the bayou, and of a woman kneeling over the grave crying. And when I awoke I realized the woman in the dreams … was myself.”

  Gabriel stared at Delta, wide-eyed and solemn. Crazy Mary reached for Delta’s hands. She began rubbing them like before.

  “Don’ worry, pichouette. Tha’ grave in your dream did not belong to your own bébé.”

  Delta felt her face flame at the suggestion. “No,” she managed, shaking her head. But recalling the dream, her fear returned. “I thought it belonged to Brett.”

  Crazy Mary gripped Delta’s hands more tightly. Then she turned to Gabriel. “You left guards aroun’ the place, oui?”

  “Oui.”

  Crazy Mary rose, pulling Delta to her feet. “Come, both of you. I will show you the bébé in your dreams.”