The Beach Trees

by Karen White

“Are we safe?” Johnny’s voice cracked from his dry mouth.

  I didn’t know how to answer that, unsure that I could believe I’d ever be safe again.

  Johnny’s words woke his mother, and she sat up, blinking, trying to recall where she was. Her eyes fluttered to her husband. “Is he...?”

  “He’s all right for now. The bleeding’s stopped and he was awake about twenty minutes ago asking for water. But we need to get him to a hospital as soon as possible.”

  They both stood in the tub, looking and waiting for me to open the door. I hesitated only a moment. Turning the knob, I pulled the door toward me and found myself standing under a predawn sky under what had once been a roof.

  Dim gray light touched the remaining walls, the trees outside, and my outstretched hands, the amount of darkness and light equal. Ray Von had a name for this: entre chien et loup—the light in which one couldn’t distinguish between a dog or a wolf.

  The light gradually brightened as I stood there, realizing how lucky we were. The roof was gone from most of the house, the only part remaining over the bathroom and hall closet, clinging in places like fingers of Spanish moss. Turning around, I said, “Lacy, stay with Wes. Johnny, come with me to find help.” I continued down the stairs and found my shoe where it had fallen, yet the couch that had sat in the living room had been blown through the window and now held court, right side up with all of its cushions intact, in the middle of the front yard as if it had always been there.

  I saw the oak tree, its limbs stripped bare, a white streak on its side where the bark had been stripped away. Lacy’s car rested on its roof beside it, twisted beams, a dead cat, and tree limbs scattered around it. But it had survived. We had all survived. We’d never be the same again, but we had survived.

  The sun broke over the horizon, illuminating a clear blue sky, an odd sky devoid of clouds or birds. We walked down the steps and outside to a ruined world. River Song still stood, battered and worn, but she was still standing. What was left of her white siding gleamed in the sunlight like a beacon of hope. A wind chime jangled and I admired its tenacity.

  “Look up,” I told Johnny, and he did, his mouth open. “Remember that, all right? When everything you’re about to see is too much, look up and see that the sky is clear and know that everything is going to be all right.”

  I took his hand and led him carefully down to the debris-strewn beach, beginning to run toward the sound of wailing sirens, watching as the sun rose again on a new day over land and air that had been wiped clean. And only once did I stop to wonder what Wes had been doing under the oak tree before I realized that it didn’t matter. That nothing mattered except that we had survived the storm.

  CHAPTER 30

  To him that waits all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light.

  —COVENTRY PATMORE

  Julie

  Once we’d boarded the plane back to New Orleans, I gave in to exhaustion and fell asleep on Trey’s shoulder. I dreamed I was at River Song again, but this time I was standing on the pier, looking at the house from afar. There were people all over the lawn and they were celebrating something, but I couldn’t tell what. The house sat proudly on new pilings; the old oak, surrounded by a shoofly, glowed resplendent with green leaves, its arms casting cool shade on the people beneath on the sandy grass.

  Chelsea stood on the front steps, beckoning me. I followed her through the front door, but I was no longer in Biloxi but was instead standing by myself in the foyer of the house on First Street. The cloying smell of perfume filled my nostrils, taking over all of my senses.

  Then I heard the chanting of the doomed Pascagoula tribe as they marched into the river, past the carved Katrina tree of the swimming dolphins, and I opened my eyes just in time to hear the pilot announce our descent into New Orleans.

  I pressed my forehead against the window, watching as the tall buildings in the distance grew larger, the odd feeling of coming home settling temporarily in my heart, as if I were trying it on like a new coat.

  Closing my eyes again, I tried to conjure Chelsea, but all I could see was the dead oak trees reborn as marlins and pelicans and dolphins, their smiling eyes watching me, waiting for me to understand. As the plane touched down on the tarmac, I was still wondering what they were trying to tell me.

  It was almost midnight by the time Trey parked his truck in front of the house on First Street. Kathy Wolf met us on the front steps, wringing her hands, her forehead creased with worry. We ran up the steps to meet her.

  “What’s wrong?” Trey asked.

  “Everything’s all right now. She told me not to call you, or I would have—”

  “What happened?” he asked, cutting her off.

  “She was in a car wreck. She’s okay—just a little shaken up, and she has a bad scrape on her forehead from the air bag.”

  “She was driving?” I asked. “What did she hit?”

  “Just a mailbox, thank goodness,” Kathy said. “No other vehicle was involved. But her car had to be towed.” She shook her head in agitation. “She took the car keys from my purse. It never occurred to me that I needed to hide them.”

  Trey made to move past her, but Kathy stopped him. “She’s resting now, Trey. The doctor gave me something to give her so she could have a full night’s sleep.”

  “Did she tell you where she was going?” I asked, my mind reeling with all the questions that stacked up in my mind like storm debris.

  Kathy pursed her lips. “She wanted to see Wes. She said she had to show him something. I told her that it was too late, that because of the holiday visiting hours were limited and I would take her tomorrow. She left while I was in the laundry room and couldn’t hear her.”

  Trey and I looked at each other, the same question in our minds.

  “Kathy, any idea what she wanted to show Wes?” I let my overnight bag, packed just in case I’d needed to stay overnight in Massachusetts, slip to the porch floor.

  She shook her head. “Like I said, she sort of sneaked out, so I have no idea what she might have brought to show him.”

  “Do you know where they towed her car?” Trey asked.

  Kathy nodded. “Yes. They took it to the dealership out on Airline Highway. It’s not totaled, but it will take them a couple of weeks to fix it.”

  “Do you happen to have a spare set of keys?” Trey asked. “I want to look inside the car and trunk.”

  “Actually,” Kathy said, “Billy Crandall at the dealership was nice enough to box up everything and drop it off. It’s in the utility room.”

  I was nearly out of breath chasing Trey up the stairs to the second floor and to the end of the hall. He threw open the door and flipped on the light, illuminating a small room with a large washer and dryer, a drying rack, a set of cherry cabinets over the appliances, and a large folding table up against the opposite wall. Sitting on top of the washing machine was a cardboard box, its ends folded in on themselves.

  With one firm pull, he opened the box. Scattered inside were the usual personal items found in a car: a box of Kleenex, a road map of Louisiana, a rosary, a pair of slip-on tennis shoes—for times when Aimee needed to get out of tight heels, I supposed. But propped up against the inside of the box so it wouldn’t get damaged was a loosely wrapped package of the same size and shape as Caroline Guidry’s portrait.

  Trey pulled out the package and unwrapped it, revealing Caroline Guidry’s blue cat’s eyes and the alligator brooch with the pointed tail and ruby eyes.

  My gaze met Trey’s. “I guess Aimee was my anonymous buyer.” I shook my head. “But why was she taking this to show Wes?”

  He looked back at the portrait, a crease between his brows. He was silent for a moment. “For the same reason Monica did. To confront him. Because they’d both discovered something that convinced them that he knew something about Caroline’s disappearance. And maybe more.”

  I stared hard at the portrait, my though
ts churning. “That picture of Monica wearing the gold band and pin—that’s what made her go see Wes. Aimee was acting odd when I spoke to her at Walker’s, and that was right after she’d seen the photograph.” I leaned toward Trey, lowering my voice. “Aimee knows that the only thing missing from the murder scene was her mother’s wedding ring. That’s why they thought it was a robbery.”

  Trey shook his head slowly. “It’s not robbery if that was the only thing missing.” His eyes met mine. “That’s personal.” A tic had started in his jaw.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That Monica found out something terrible, something she couldn’t live with. Something she must have confronted Wes about. And she didn’t confide in me. She just left without any explanation. As if she couldn’t trust me with the knowledge.”

  I thought of the Monica I’d known, the woman for whom truth and fairness ruled everything she did. The woman who was loyal and trusting to a fault. I shook my head. “No, Trey. It wasn’t because she didn’t trust you. She did what she did to protect you. And Aimee, too. Whatever it was she’d discovered she knew would hurt you and Aimee in a personal way. The only way she could protect you and preserve her integrity was to leave.”

  Trey placed the portrait on top of the washing machine, his eyes thoughtful. “My grandfather hasn’t recognized any of us in years, and has been pretty much unresponsive to any sort of conversation. I’m thinking Aimee just hoped to elicit some kind of response by showing him the portrait.” He paused for a moment. “I’m thinking she’s always known something. She hung that damned portrait in the hallway all those years even though she knew her husband hated it.”

  Softly, I said, “I guess she and Wes had their own ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy regarding unpleasant truths. She loved him, and didn’t want to lose him like she’d already lost Gary, and not after having nearly lost each other during Camille. But seeing the ring and the pin in Monica’s photograph was somehow proof that Wes was complicit in something. And maybe was responsible for Monica’s leaving. After all this time, Aimee was ready to know the truth.”

  I continued, “What if Wes had the ring and brooch? We can assume they were hidden together, because that’s how they were found. Remember how Aimee found him at River Song after his mother’s disappearance? What if he hid them then? Which would explain why Wes went to River Song to dig something up before Camille, realizing how serious the storm was and wanting to make sure his secret remained safe.”

  Softly, Trey said, “If he was so desperate to hide the pin, then I’d have to think that Caroline didn’t give it to him willingly. That he had it because she was unable to resist.”

  “But why take it at all?”

  His voice was hard when he answered. “Because it would have been identifiable. Wherever Caroline Guidry showed up, dead or alive, she would have been noticed or recognized because of that pin.”

  I thought for a moment, remembering Aimee’s recounting of the hurricane, almost feeling the bullet-sharp rain on my face. “Xavier must have taken the ring and pin when he found Wes. Aimee said that Xavier was holding something when he left them after bringing Wes upstairs during the storm. Something he said would make him safe.”

  Trey nodded. “Like insurance. And he hid them all of those years. Until Monica somehow found them, and knew what they were and what they meant to her family. Why they’d been hidden.”

  I could almost hear the puzzle pieces sliding into place—all of them except the part that would explain why. “Then she went to Wes to confront him, probably to get him to tell her the truth of what happened to his mother, and to convince him to tell Aimee and maybe even the police—because that’s the kind of person she was. She must have given him the ring and brooch or he took them from her.

  “But she took the portrait because it was hanging in the hallway outside his room, and was a sort of proof that the pin had belonged to Caroline and that she was most likely wearing it on the night she disappeared.”

  I thought of the gentle girl I’d known being forced to face the ugly fact that those she loved had been complicit in something as evil as murder. Of possible matricide. I touched Trey’s arm, not sure who needed the comfort more. “Being Monica, she held out hope that she was wrong. She found me, wishing for the chance of discovering that her great-grandmother really had left with the artist. That I would know something to validate Caroline’s presence in Abe’s life through my family history.”

  Trey’s eyes were dark as they regarded me. “Which you didn’t, but it was sort of a lucky break for Monica anyway, since it brought you together.”

  “One of her few,” I said. I looked at Trey, not seeing him but instead seeing a summer night in the garden and smelling the scent of fresh paint. I grabbed his arm. “Xavier said he was the one who went to move Wes after his stroke while Ray Von called for the ambulance. If Wes had the jewelry after his argument with Monica, Xavier could have taken back the ring and brooch then, and returned them to their hiding place.”

  It was Trey’s turn to follow me through the house as I ran down the stairs to the kitchen and out the back door. We stopped in front of the shed, the new paint glowing in the dusky light. “Aimee told me Monica loved to garden, and would hang out here with Xavier just like Beau does.”

  I slapped at a mosquito without looking, a newly honed instinct. “Nobody goes in this shed except for Xavier. When he painted it, he had to take everything out and find a new hiding place. And remember how he didn’t want you helping him?” I stood back to allow the faint light to illuminate the grass by the side of the shed. “He’s been digging at night—we heard him, remember? And so did Beau and I.”

  I got down on my hands and knees and began feeling the earth, searching for a bump or mound of grassless dirt.

  “Over here,” Trey said, indicating something with the toe of his shoe. I stood and walked to the back corner of the shed. A small hole gaped in the dark earth, a pile of dirt next to it.

  We both knelt before the empty hole. “Do you know where Xavier lives?” I asked.

  He stood and held out his arm to pull me up. “We don’t need to know. I don’t think he dug it up to hide it again.”

  For the third time, Trey and I walked through the grand house and up the stairs, our steps slower this time, as if we both realized that understanding what Monica had wanted to keep hidden to protect those she loved would never bring her back.

  The door to Aimee’s room was open, her bed unmade and empty. I stilled a growing panic, something I imagined I’d always feel when not finding somebody in the place I expected them to be. I stepped back into the hallway, Trey behind me. “Miss Aimee?” I called, looking down the hallway and noticing that the attic door was ajar.

  We walked quickly to it and pulled it open. Xavier sat on the step, a shaft of twilight from the window behind him creating a halo around his head. His ruined face shone wet. “She knows,” he said, his voice so soft that I had to lean forward to hear. “All these years I tried to protect her. But today she told me that it was time she knew the truth.”

  Trey stepped from behind me. Gently, he asked, “What did you tell her?”

  “Nobody else should have to see what I saw.” He put his head in his hands. “I lied. I lied when I said I didn’t see anything that night her mama was killed. I didn’t stay in the Guidrys’ kitchen like I said. I saw Mrs. Guidry. . . . She tried to kiss Mrs. Mercier, but not in the kind of way a woman kisses her friend, you know?”

  He looked up and I sat down next to him, putting my hand on his shoulder. I watched Trey, wondering if he could smell it, too: the suddenly strong and overpowering scent of perfume, of Shalimar.

  Xavier continued. “Mrs. Mercier slapped her, hard. I knew it was hard ’cause I could see the red handprint on her face. And then Mrs. Mercier left. I followed her to her house, and I was hiding under the bed like I told Miss Aimee, and I didn’t lie—I didn’t see anything. But I heard somebody come in, and somebody stopping by the
side of the bed, but I swear I didn’t see who killed her. It was too dark. But . . .” He let out a deep, shuddering breath.

  “But what, Xavier?” Trey prompted.

  His gaze traveled from me to Trey. “I heard something hit the floor and it rolled under the bed.”

  “The wedding ring,” I said, pinpricks of static electricity beginning to creep up my arms, the scent of perfume so strong my throat convulsed.

  “I wasn’t sure, but I put it in my pocket, then waited until I was alone and then I left. I was so scared of being caught that I didn’t look at the bed when I crawled out from under it and didn’t stop running until I got back home. I didn’t know that Mrs. Mercier was dead until the next day, when the police came to the Guidrys’ house. I didn’t want to get in trouble with the police, so I gave the ring to Mr. Guidry so he could talk to them. I was so scared, thinking the police would think I’d done it, since I was there. Instead, Mr. Guidry sent me away to school like my mama wanted, and because I was his blood kin. I thought it was because he was trying to protect me.”

  “No,” I whispered. “It was because he thought you knew something and was trying to buy your silence.”

  Trey looked at me with a question, but the thoughts whirling around in my head wouldn’t settle long enough for me to have an answer.

  He nodded. “Until that night at the ball. Mr. and Mrs. Guidry came home early with Wes in his car. I guess he’d already dropped off Miss Lacy, because she wasn’t with them. They were shouting at each other. I was in the kitchen waiting until everyone came home to lock up the house. Usually everybody’s been drinking, so somebody has to remember to do it.

  “Mrs. Guidry was telling her husband that she was leaving him, and was going to tell everybody the truth about how it was his fault that she liked women the way that she did. And Wes was begging her not to leave, that it would kill Gary if his mother left, but she didn’t even seem to hear him. It was like she was out of her mind. And then she ran out of the house, and I went to the garden to see.