The Gates of Evangeline

by Hester Young

  “No,” Andre says softly. “My mother wouldn’t do that. She promised.”

  “Promised what?” Noah counters, his gun still leveled at Andre. “Promised not to contact me? To leave me and my grandparents alone? To never tell me who I am? Believe me, I’d be a whole lot happier if she’d kept her promise.”

  “But she said . . . she said you were here to landscape the garden.” There is something profoundly sad about Andre’s desire to believe Hettie, even now.

  “Our mother is a liar.”

  I wince at the words “our mother.” So does Andre.

  “Jesus,” he says. “Oh, Jesus. You even look like him a little.” He seems to have forgotten about the weapon in his hand, but Noah, I see, has not. “So . . . Maddie and Jack, they raised you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you were happy?”

  “Sure. They couldn’t have loved me more.”

  The man who held a gun to my head seconds earlier begins to cry. Big, ugly, choking sobs. “I thought she chose me,” he says. “I thought she sent you away because she loved me more.” He sinks down to his knees, still weeping. “Look at my life. Look. She knew what she was doing. She knew you were the lucky one.”

  That’s all the reunion that Noah will get. Andre stares at the revolver in his hand and makes his decision. He knows that it’s over. He will leave on his own terms. I look away, hand covering my mouth. Even though I know what’s coming, my body recoils at the sound of the gunshot. There’s a thud, and then silence.

  Noah hustles me out of the cottage, shielding my eyes with one hand. I’m grateful to him. I don’t need to see the particular horrors of what I know to be true.

  Andre Deveau is dead.

  33.

  On a chill Wednesday in early March, I park my Prius in the lot outside my grandmother’s assisted-living facility and prepare myself for our reunion. It hasn’t been so long since I left—scarcely more than two months—but I feel unexpectedly emotional about my return. Part of it is grief, moving through the spaces that Keegan once occupied, but a larger part of it is gratitude. I’m grateful that my grandmother is here, that I have someone to come back to.

  “We goin’ inside or what?” In the passenger seat, Noah is starting to fidget.

  “Yeah, let’s go.”

  The lights and tacky holiday decorations are long gone, but otherwise it’s all pretty close to what I left: bare trees, a slate-gray sky, bone-chilling wind. Spring, though, isn’t so far off. A recent thaw has left the ground a soggy mess, turned mounds of snow to mud. Noah discovers this the hard way when he tries to cut across a strip of mulch and sinks two inches into the ground.

  “Damn it.” He stares down at his soiled boots. “I’m gonna ruin your gramma’s carpet. Helluva first impression.”

  I smile. “You’re nervous.”

  “Yeah,” he admits, “kinda.”

  “After everything you’ve been through the last few weeks, you’re worried what my little grandmother thinks?” I punch his arm playfully.

  He isn’t feeling lighthearted. “You haven’t told her yet,” he says. “You were in a lotta danger, and you didn’t even tell her. I just hope she doesn’t blame me.”

  I roll my eyes but don’t reply. We’ve had variations on this conversation throughout the drive up. I don’t think an eighty-seven-year-old woman needs to know about her only grandchild prowling around at night for the bones of murdered people, or chasing sexual predators into remote swamp regions, or getting held at gunpoint. Noah disagrees.

  “Don’t keep secrets, Charlie,” he urges me. “Not from your family.”

  I can understand where he’s coming from. His life, after all, has been built upon secrets. He’s watched members of his family collapse under their weight.

  • • •

  LESS THAN A WEEK AGO, Noah and I went to Hettie’s funeral. Her passing was a peaceful one, preceded by days of unconsciousness. Unlike the private burial Brigitte had arranged for Andre a few days earlier, Hettie’s service was widely attended. Amidst the many prominent guests who filed into the church that morning, Noah and I were an unremarkable pair. Noah sat in the back looking uncomfortable in his suit while the priest waxed poetic about Hettie’s many philanthropic contributions, her admirable devotion to her family. No one would’ve guessed that the broad-shouldered man with big, callused hands was her son.

  The real star of Hettie’s funeral, as it turned out, was Andre. His name, uttered in hushed tones, was on the lips of almost everyone present, although whether his death constituted a tragedy or a family disgrace was debated. Despite his sisters’ attempts to keep the circumstances of his death a secret, a few tantalizing details had inevitably leaked. Tabloids jumped all over the story: DEVEAU CEO DEAD IN GAY SUICIDE PACT. Gossip columnists chronicled Andre’s long, forbidden affair with Jules Sicard—more handsome than ever in the photographs—and speculated that, ultimately, the star-crossed lovers had chosen to die together rather than face a world that would not accept them. There was no mention of Noah or me, just that Andre’s body “was discovered by two employees of the estate.” Sean Lauchlin’s name was also conspicuously absent, though there was a tangential reference to the remains recently discovered on Deveau property.

  In the end, I suppose, Andre got his way. The family secrets he fought so hard to conceal remain buried.

  In her death, Hettie acknowledged her youngest child in a way she never had while living. If Noah preferred to sever all his painful ties to the Deveau clan, Hettie had other plans. According to her legal documents, Noah will inherit a quarter of the family fortune. What a hardworking Texas landscaper will do with that kind of wealth is anyone’s guess; he’s too shell-shocked right now to really process such a life-altering change in finances. For the present, he seems more concerned with the fate of Evangeline, which, as per Hettie’s promise, has been gifted to the Louisiana Historical Association. Knowing that his work on the estate has served its intended purpose—that, despite her other lies, on this Hettie spoke true—seems to bring Noah a measure of comfort nothing else can provide.

  Naturally, Sydney and Brigitte have not received any of this news with enthusiasm. Though I’m sure the twins would’ve liked to attribute the upsetting contents of their mother’s will to an unsound mind, the documents had been drawn up more than a year ago, before Hettie’s cancer diagnosis. In these pages, Hettie never identified Noah as her own, but she did write of her abiding fondness for “the son of my much beloved friend Sean Lauchlin.” Neither Sydney nor Brigitte knew quite what to make of that until I gave them a copy of Sean’s letter. As far as I know, they never did piece together their brother’s paternity, but I think the revelation of Hettie’s infidelity, coupled with the official identification of Sean Lauchlin’s body, led both sisters to suspect their father’s involvement in his murder. That suits Noah just fine, as it keeps them from asking any inconvenient questions about the past. Murderers are not good for the family brand.

  It’s been easier for me. Nobody apart from Detective Minot knows the extent of my involvement. The only real consequence for me was a jubilant call from my editor, received just hours after news of Andre’s death hit the media. “Finish the book!” Isaac exclaimed, breathless. “I don’t care if it’s a piece of shit, just finish it. You’re sitting on a gold mine.”

  I told Noah about the conversation later, having already decided to abandon the project. To my surprise, he asked to read my manuscript. He studied it intensely for hours and then, when he was done, turned to me with sad, dark eyes that made me want to crawl under a rock.

  “I didn’t know a lotta that stuff,” he said quietly. “You’ve learned all about ’em, haven’t you?”

  “I’ll throw it away,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  But he shook his head, suddenly adamant. “If it’s not you writin’ it, it’ll be someone else. At least you kn
ew some of ’em. At least you care. Write an end for it. Just . . . leave me out of the story, would you?”

  So I’ve continued, for his sake, with a book I can no longer be objective about. I’ve tried to use some of our travel time to write, to cobble together a narrative we can all live with. All my old notions of journalism—truth, accuracy, accountability—now seem so foolishly black and white when the facts in this case hurt no one so much as the innocent. Instead, I build off the official story, spin a more sensitive version of the gay suicide pact. Although my feelings about Andre are complicated following our final encounter, I try to make him a sympathetic figure. I include stories from Danelle Martin and Kyle Komen, Andre’s first boyfriend. I write about how Neville convinced Andre to pretend he was with a prostitute on the night of Gabriel’s disappearance. I paint a sad little portrait of homophobia and self-loathing in one of the South’s oldest, finest families, but I sidestep Sean Lauchlin. I leave the fate of Gabriel Deveau unresolved.

  • • •

  WHATEVER ANXIETIES Noah may have nursed about my grandmother prove unfounded within half an hour of our showing up at her door. She’s been expecting him, but my briefing over the phone was short on details. At first, she’s skeptical. She inspects Noah for signs of unworthiness, tests his manners, studies his body language, questions him closely and evaluates his answers. Unlike Eric, who was always a little terrified of my grandmother, Noah is unfazed. He met Carmen as a teenager, after all, and had to earn the approval of two brothers, a handful of male cousins, and an overprotective Catholic father who didn’t trust white guys. He can handle Grandma, and he does. Before I even know what’s happened, she’s been Officially Charmed, reduced to coquettish smiles and other mystifying forms of elderly flirtation.

  “Well, Charlotte,” she beams, “I can see why you extended your trip. What nice scenery they have in Louisiana.”

  In no time, she is plying him with pound cake, giggling at his stupid but good-natured jokes, tasking him with the repair of her broken dishwasher. The woman who was always civil yet cool to my ex-husband can’t get enough of the man she refers to as my “cowboy friend.” She dismisses his plans to stay in a hotel, insisting she has room for us both on her pull-out couch. If Noah is relieved and pleased by the warm welcome, I’m a little alarmed by it. Where is Grandma’s New England reserve? Who is this bright-eyed old gal inhabiting my grandmother’s body?

  “I’m just happy to see you,” she says when I ask about it. “And to see you like this.” She looks over at the kitchen, where Noah is tinkering with her dishwasher. “I was afraid you were running away from the world down there and instead—well, it looks like you’ve found it again.”

  In the end, I can only be happy for her blessing, which matters, I sense, very deeply to Noah. With Andre and Hettie gone, he’s lost the only family he might’ve ever hoped to claim as his own. And he wants family. He wants some old lady fussing over him, insisting he have another slice of cake. I suppose if he were really desperate, Sydney and Brigitte are living relations, but in addition to being unbearable, they still don’t know the true origin and fate of their missing brother.

  “They can handle thinkin’ Neville was a killer and Hettie was unfaithful,” he told me before we left Evangeline. “But knowin’ their baby brother turned out a gardener? I don’t think so.” His real fear, of course, was that they would expose him to the press in a play for publicity. “I’m Noah Palmer,” he said. “I don’t want people breathin’ down my neck, callin’ me Gabriel.”

  I don’t blame him for disavowing his awful sisters but can’t help feeling guilty that he’s traded in his ex-wife’s huge and exuberant extended family for just my grandmother and me. Can we really be enough? As the afternoon wears on and it’s clear their little love fest will only deepen, I come to a decision. Noah is right. Grandma deserves more than the sanitized-for-her-protection story I’ve been feeding her about my time in Chicory. In her eighty-seven years, she has lost her husband, son, and great-grandson. For years, she lived with her own spooky premonitions. The woman can handle the darker sides of life.

  After dinner, I sit her down and tell her the whole story, more or less, while Noah listens and interjects. I’ve had ample time to fill him in on my side of things, but it still gets to him, my visions of Jonah, Didi, and Clifford. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in what I’ve seen—it’s that he believes too much. If I told him there was a child ghost standing by his side, I have the feeling he would shoot ten feet into the air like an old Looney Tunes character. Grandma, for her part, shows little reaction beyond the occasional headshake, pursed lips, and widening eyes. It’s reassuring. Displays of raw emotion are not in her nature.

  When I get to the part about searching the sugar mill at night, it’s Noah who gets edgy, jiggling his leg and gripping the bottom of his chair.

  “I can’t believe you found my father,” he murmurs. “And he was there with you. He was lookin’ through that window watchin’ you.” He shakes his head, spooked.

  I can’t deny the face I saw at the precise moment Detective Minot located the piece of Sean Lauchlin’s jawbone, but I’m not ready to concede any ghostly sightings. “I might’ve imagined it,” I say. “I thought it was you.”

  “No,” Noah says definitely. “That was my father. He knew you were gonna find him. He knew you’d put it all together and tell me what happened. That he didn’t bail on me.”

  My grandmother, who has been quietly absorbing everything from her high-backed wooden chair, seems to agree. “You went down there to find Gabriel Deveau, Charlotte, and you did,” she says when I’ve concluded my story. “Some things are meant to be.”

  Noah clears his throat. “I hope you’ll forgive me, ma’am, for not keepin’ a better eye on her. When I think of how things coulda turned out . . .”

  “A person could drive themself crazy thinking of how things might’ve turned out,” Grandma says. “And I’m certainly not one to talk about keeping an eye on Charlotte. I let her parents do the job, and quite frankly, they didn’t.”

  This is not the turn I expected this conversation to take. “That wasn’t your fault, Grandma,” I say. “My mother didn’t stick around long enough to do much damage, anyway.”

  She avoids my eyes, addresses Noah like I’m not there. “I love my son, but I know he wasn’t much better. He drank away her childhood, and I didn’t stop it. She was fourteen years old when I got her, almost all grown up. That’s fourteen years I didn’t keep an eye on her.”

  I’ve never heard my grandmother express guilt or regret over my upbringing before. Something about her unexpected humility makes me squirm.

  She stands slowly, still not looking at me, and places a veiny blue hand on Noah’s shoulder. “The fact that Charlie is sitting here in my living room instead of floating around some godforsaken swamp—well, I’ve got you to thank. So I’d say you’ve kept an eye on her. I’d say you’ve done just fine.”

  Neither Noah nor I know what to say. Her words feel like a kind of blessing, a sign that she approves not just of him but of us, and they make our relationship that much more official. My grandmother doesn’t give us time to ponder it too deeply, however.

  “Come on.” She opens the hall closet. “Let’s get you two some sheets and make up that sofa.”

  • • •

  I’M GROGGY, almost but not quite asleep, when I feel a hand on my shoulder, shaking me. Without opening my eyes, I assume it’s Noah. “You still awake?” I mumble. The couch is uncomfortable, but it’s not like Noah to wake up in the middle of the night; ordinarily, he could sleep through a marching band.

  “Mommy?”

  I bolt up in the foldaway bed.

  That little voice is unmistakable.

  And there he is. Keegan. Standing beside me with the same expectant, slightly impatient look he always wore when he woke me. His hair is tousled and he wears the Batman pajamas
Grandma bought him last Christmas. They were getting too snug, I remember, but he loved them, wouldn’t let me give them away.

  He reaches over and tugs on my hand. His touch is solid. Unbelievably solid. “Mommy,” he says again.

  He looks so familiar, so unchanged, I wonder if I’ve dreamed it all, the long and terrible autumn, this whole twisted, eventful winter. But no. Here I am in my grandmother’s house, Noah asleep face-first in the pillow beside me.

  “Hey, baby.” I can barely get the words out. “I’m so happy to see you.” I scoop him up into the bed with us. It’s already pretty crowded in the foldaway, but I make space for him anyway, curving my body to his. He snuggles against me. “Oh, sweetie.” I press my face to his hair and marvel at his curls, their shampoo scent, the way they tickle my nose. “I’ve missed you so much.” I’m choking up now, overwhelmed.

  “Don’t be sad.” He pats my head the same awkward way he used to pet dogs and cats.

  “I can’t help it. I really, really miss you, Kee.” He’s warm in my arms, and a little wriggly. Every inch the boy that I remember.

  “I’m right here, Mom.”

  “I know. But you’re going to leave again, aren’t you? You won’t stay with me. You just came to . . . what? Make me feel better for a little while?” I trace his precious little ears, his pointy chin.

  He shakes me off. “I came to tell you a secret.”

  “Yeah? What kind of secret?”

  Joy—sweet and unadulterated—lights up his face. “I have a little sister!”

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Eric and Melissa decided to have a baby, but I am. Surprised and maybe a little angry. It’s not fair. Why does he deserve another chance?

  “Congratulations,” I say with some difficulty. “That means you’re a big brother, huh? What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “What are you going to name her?”