Blue By You

by Rachel Gibson

  Blue raised the bunch of keys in her hand and pointed to a control panel at the edge of the driveway to her right. “My mama always said Lismore girls were fast.” The kind who got banged in the back of a Cadillac. She pushed a button on the small keypad with her thumb to open the front gates. She couldn’t see the double gates from where she stood, but a green button on the control panel lit, telling her the heavy iron gates were swinging open. “No disrespect, ma’am.”

  “Of course not, bless your heart.”

  Blue bit her lip to keep from smiling and pulled an old ladder-back chair beside Sudie. She sat and reached for her Purple Jesus. “Did my grandmother win your Crawfish Queen title?” She was born and raised in the South but had never entered a pageant, much to her mother’s and mamaw’s disappointment.

  “No. Martha Jane Morvant won that year. Your grandmother won Catfish Queen.” She rambled on about the difference between the Crawfish and Catfish pageants. She took a long drink, then added, “Martha Jane married a Yankee and moved to Ohio. The last time she came home to visit her momma, she had the most god-awful accent and was wearing white shoes in January. She forgot her raisings, and her family was naturally horrified.”

  “Naturally.” Blue took a drink of her watered-down Purple Jesus. “Bless her heart.”

  The corners of Sudie’s mouth slid up as she took another drink and left a deep red lip print on the family Rosemare. “You married, Miss Blue?”

  Sudie Pennington knew her name. She was more alarmed than surprised. Was it possible that the older woman knew about the summer of 1991? “Divorced.” That hot, sticky day after she’d just turned eighteen? “I married William Chatsworth. His people are from St. Tammany Parish, and we have a fifteen-year-old son.”

  “Does he live here with you?”

  “During the school year, but he spends the summers with his father at their lake house.” Billy loved living at Dahlia Hall as much as he loved the Chatsworth family lake house, but she worried that, someday, living in a cottage at a historical tourist attraction might wear thin on Billy. If that happened, she’d have to give thought to buying a house in the suburbs.

  “You must have gotten a nice settlement.”

  Born in the South or not, it was Blue’s experience that old ladies tended to say inappropriate things on purpose. The closer they got to death, the more inappropriate. But, “Yes. I was able to do some of the major renovations on the property after my divorce.”

  Miss Sudie smiled as the sound of tires on gravel reached their ears. “He’s here,” she said, as a pair of headlights cut through the dusky night, and a white truck with tinted windows rounded the side of the big house and continued toward the overseer’s cottage. A Pennington Construction truck.

  Blue stood without thinking. “You didn’t call a taxi?”

  “No.”

  The truck rolled to a stop, and the driver’s side door opened. A light illuminated the cab as one work boot, then the other, hit the gravel.

  Maybe it wasn’t him.

  “Kasper!” Miss Sudie said, all cheery as she rose from the rocking chair and set her tea on the ground.

  Maybe he wouldn’t recognize her. She’d been twenty-two years younger and about ten pounds lighter. There’d been so many females in his life, surely he wouldn’t remember one scrawny teenager from all those many years ago.

  “Grand-mère. What are you doing here?” He shut the truck door. His voice was older, deeper. More mature. Still smooth, and Blue felt a knot in her chest. An anxious little knot, when she had nothing to be anxious about. She didn’t care one bit about Kasper Pennington.

  “I hate that place you stuck me.”

  “I didn’t stick you in Sunny Crest Estates.” A beige ball cap covered his hair and cast a darker shadow across his face. He stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up at his grandmother. He was bigger, taller than she remembered, and the shadow from his hat slid to the crease of his lips. A tiny bit of anger pulled at the anxious knot in Blue’s stomach. Not a lot of anger. Not enough to fly down the steps and give him a throat chop but enough that it surprised her after all these years.

  “I thought you liked Sunny Crest Estates.”

  “No, boo. It’s not my home.”

  Boo. She wondered if Sudie knew that the old Cajun endearment had been taken over by Usher and the Kardashians and just about every teenager in the contiguous U.S.? Maybe Alaska and Hawaii, too.

  “It has bought air and cable, so you can watch all your shows.” He lifted a hand and dropped it to the side of his beige cargo pants. “You have friends there.”

  Sudie sniffed. “It smells like old folks.”

  “Jesus.” He pulled the hat from his head and ran his fingers through hair still as black as sin.

  “I want to go home.”

  He folded the hat in half and stuck it in his back pocket. Then his gaze returned to his grandmother. The light from the porch touched his nose and lips and the five o’clock shadow darkening his cheeks and strong jaw. The brows above his eyes were the same black slashes that she recalled. “It’s still a construction zone, Grand-mère.”

  Blue stood in the darker porch shadow, and, apparently, he really didn’t recognize her. Praise God.

  “It’s my home, boo.”

  Kasper sighed and looked up toward the heavens as if he’d receive help from above. He swore softly and scrubbed his face with his hands.

  It was best that he did not recognize her, less embarrassing that way. Best that he not recall the day they’d spent in a three-hundred-year-old oak tree. Really, why should he remember? He hadn’t been the virgin.

  He dropped his chin, and his gaze lowered. Within the soft orange glow of the setting sun, his dark eyes looked into Blue’s. Eyes like rich chocolate that had once made her melt like a Hershey’s bar. But she was older now. Wiser. Impervious to smooth talk and smoother hands than she’d been that hot summer so long ago. Even if he had recognized her, there would be no melting of any kind.

  “That’s where I want to die,” Sudie continued.

  “You’re not going to die.” He sighed and looked at his grandmother. “You’re too stubborn to die.” One corner of his mouth kicked up a little, and his dark eyes settled on her. “Hello, Blue.”

  Nope. No melting. Not even a little bit.

  Chapter Two

  1991

  Barbecues were as much a part of the Louisiana fabric as Mardi Gras, voodoo, and jazz funerals. Steaming aromatic clouds from crawdad pots floated across backyard fences and mixed with smells of ribs, spicy boudin, and sweet jasmine.

  In tightly packed districts around New Orleans, neighbors opened the doors to their brightly painted Creole cottages and shotgun houses and had street barbecues. Each backyard chef attempted to outcook his neighbor while fired up with secret family recipes and fueled on beer.

  Warm sunshine and humidity hung over Memorial weekend of 1991, and just after noon, Blue Butler escaped the small family brunch at Dahlia Hall and hopped into her mother’s Chevy Cavalier. She wore a long floral skirt and sleeveless denim shirt, but by the time she reached her friend Carolee’s house in Orleans Parish, she’d tied the denim shirt in a knot just above her navel, and the long skirt lay on the seat beside her. A pair of worn, cutoff jeans shorts hugged her butt. She and Carolee had just seen Thelma and Louise at a theater in the Triangle, and she was feeling like a rebel. She tore the ponytail holder and ribbon from her hair and shook her head.

  Carolee’s street was blocked off and crowded with long tables laden with barbecue and crawdads. Pitchers of cold beer flowed from kegs, and jazz poured from houses painted the colors of sno-balls sold on Plum Street. Blue found her friend standing in front of a table weighted with food. She stood shoulder to shoulder with her neighbors, sucking heads and pinching tails. Presenting a whole different picture than the person who’d just graduated with Blue from an all-girls prep school in the Garden District. Since the first day she’d met Carolee in kindergarten, the two had become
fast friends and bonded over the injustice of conservative school uniforms.

  Blue joined her friend in line, reached for a spicy crustacean, and ate like a native. The two gorged until their mouths were on fire, then dodged into a neighbor’s backyard, where the kegs of Budweiser were kept on ice. They drank beer out of sight of Carolee’s parents and found a piece of shade across from boiling crawdad pots. They talked about graduation, and Carolee’s heading to UCLA in the fall. Blue had wanted to apply to UCLA, but her mother and grandmother had pitched a fit. Toussaint women had always pledged Kappa Alpha Theta at Tulane.

  She and Carolee talked about a road trip this summer, like Thelma and Louise, but without the cops and Grand-Canyon-style ending, of course. Carolee talked about hooking up with some stranger on the road, and both she and Blue didn’t think either would mind losing her virginity to someone who looked like Brad Pitt.

  Or Robert Downey, Jr. Except for the drug-addict part, she’d loved him in Less Than Zero. Dark hair and eyes and sultry smile. With her hair like Jamie Gertz’s, it was just natural that she’d have a crush on Robert.

  Across the yard, she watched Carolee’s neighbor stirring steaming crawdad pots as she listened to her friend go on and on about all the places they would go if they actually could get away. The neighbor shifted to the left and parted the rising steam. Through the gossamer cloud, Blue’s eyes met and were held by a searing dark gaze from beneath two even darker slashes of brows. He was tall, and his black hair was short in a military buzz cut. He looked slightly familiar, but she didn’t know where she would have met him.

  She’d gone to an all-girls school, and she doubted he’d ever sat in the pews of St. Phillips. Just a guess, but his gaze was too direct for him to be a regular churchgoer. Too male. Too worldly. Too knowing to belong to any boy she’d ever met before. Maybe because he was a man, not a boy, and he looked at her like a man looked at a woman, not a girl.

  She turned toward Carolee, and said, “Don’t look now, but there is a man standing behind the crawdad pot. Big. Dark hair. Do you know him?”

  Of course, her friend immediately looked across the yard like Blue had told her not to do. “The hot guy in the white T-shirt?”

  “Geez, I said don’t look.”

  “How can I see who you’re talking about if I don’t look?”

  She had a point, but still … “Yeah.”

  Carolee smiled and returned her attention to Blue. “That must be Wally’s friend, Kasper something.”

  Blue’s lips parted. She’d only heard the name once. Kasper Pennington. The name fit the dark, broody French-Acadian, and she was a little shocked to see him in person.

  The Toussaints and Penningtons had always hated each other. Blue wasn’t sure of the exact year when the feud had started, she figured some time around the turn of the century. The nineteenth century, but she did know the fiery war had had something to do with a strip of disputed land between the two properties. There had also been whispers of a Pennington, a compromising situation, and a marriage refusal. It seemed so silly now, but at the time it had been deadly business. “Stay away for those morally corrupt, sugar-mouthed, Pennington boys,” her mother and grandmother had warned her. She looked back across the yard at a living, breathing symbol of her family’s two-century-old feud. He lifted one cocky brow, and she turned back to her friend. “How do you know him?”

  Carolee shrugged. “I don’t. I just know he’s friends with my neighbor, Wally Doclar.” She pointed her cup at the man stirring the pot next to Kasper. “Wally’s in the Marines, and he and Kasper are on leave from Camp Lejeune. That’s all I know, really. I only know that because I heard my dad say something to my mom about how he was going to outcook Wally and his friend Kasper this year.” She grabbed Blue’s free hand. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?” Blue asked as beer sloshed over the top of her red Solo cup.

  “You have to meet Wally. He’s hysterical.”

  “No. No, I don’t want to meet anyone.” Blue shook her head as Carolee pulled her across the grass. Too late; she stood in front of Carolee’s neighbor and Kasper Pennington.

  “Wally this is my friend, Blue Butler.”

  “It’s a pleasure.” Wally was on the short side. Not much taller than Blue. He had red hair, and his cheeks were flushed from the boiling water. He was kind of cute, she supposed. But nothing like the big man standing next to him. “Are you from around here?”

  Before Blue could answer, a deeper, smooth voice answered for her. “She’s a Toussaint from St. James Parish.”

  Blue turned and met his gaze so direct, she felt pinned by it. Pinned like a bug in a science project, and she looked away from his inspection. “That’s right.”

  “Ah,” Wally said knowingly, and wrapped his arm around Carolee. “Did you go to that snotty girl’s school with fancy pants, here?”

  “I’m not a fancy pants,” Carolee answered through a laugh and wrapped her arms around Wally’s waist. “My parents aren’t rich.”

  Soft jazz and voices from the street carried to the backyard, while Carolee and Wally argued about money and fancy-pants schools and Carolee’s dog, Pepper. Blue smiled at them and brushed a long, dark curl behind her ear. Carolee had always been more comfortable around people.

  “Your mama let you out to slum, princess?”

  While the cottages and slim houses in Carolee’s neighborhood weren’t exactly the mansions of the Garden District or plantations of River Road, they were hardly the slums. Blue turned her head, and her gaze landed on a broad, muscular chest covered in a white T-shirt. Her eyes rose past a thick neck, square jaw, and full lips to the dark eyes looking down at her. She swallowed hard. Lord have mercy. From across the yard, he’d been a good-looking guy. Up close, he made her want to smooth her hair and check her makeup. She’d dated a few times in her life. When her school held dances, they’d invited boys from Holy Cross or St. Augs.

  “I’m not a princess.”

  His attention slid down her face and throat, then continued slowly over her breasts and bare belly. She felt his gaze in her stomach and the backs of her wrists. “You look like your grand-mère.”

  She’d been told that before, but for some reason, hearing it from Kasper Pennington made the tingles in her wrists spread to other parts. “Did you know my grandmother?”

  He shook his head and raised his gaze to her hair. “No. Never met her, but she used to yell at me when she’d catch me hauling away old boards from your property.” He returned his attention to her face. “You have her hair and eyes. Is that why they named you Blue?”

  She did have blue eyes, but she shook her head. “No. I’m named after relatives.” She curtsied and fired off the names written on her birth certificate, “Blue, Louretha, Dare, Toussaint, Butler,” she said.

  “That’s a lot of name.”

  She rose with a smile. “God forbid we don’t include a dead cousin and keep it all in the family.”

  He laughed and lifted a Solo cup to his mouth. “I suppose that’s fitting for a Toussaint,” he said, and took a drink.

  She watched his throat and his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. “What does that mean?”

  He lowered his beer. “Y’all have been known to marry your first cousins. Inbred as all hell.”

  Blue gasped as all those strange tingles pinged aimlessly through her body like a pinball machine. “That’s rich, coming from a Pennington. Everyone knows that the males in your family have a fondness for liquor and a taste for their brothers’ wives.” At least that’s what she’d always heard. “Not that I would know.”

  “Sure.”

  “Believe it or not, we have better things to do at Dahlia Hall than gossip about your family.”

  “Like marry your cousins and make big-headed babies?”

  Weren’t the Pennington men supposed to be sugar-mouthed? “That hasn’t happened in a hundred years!” Or so. It was kind of a touchy subject, and he was purposely antagonizing her. She didn’t know wh
at to do. She felt provoked even as she felt herself sucked into his dark eyes. It was bewildering as all heck. She smiled, and asked as sweet as a pecan praline, “Just how many sister-cousins are hanging on the Pennington family tree?”

  “That only happened once.” He chuckled, not in the least fazed. “And everyone always said Uncle Wade wasn’t right after the war on account of the bullet in his skull. His first wife died in childbirth, and Uncle Charles had died at Fort Delaware the year before. So it didn’t really count.”

  “Of course not.” She waved his explanation away with her hand. The war he referred to was, of course, the War Between the States. “What about Wilkie Pennington? He was rumored to have fathered three children with his sisters-in-law and some of his servants.”

  “And here I thought you didn’t gossip about my family.”

  Oh, that’s right. She took a drink, then folded her arms under her breasts. In the warnings she’d heard all of her life about the morally corrupt Pennington men, no one had ever mentioned that they were too big, too handsome, and too tempting. “I might have heard a thing or two over the years.”

  “Did you hear that Wilkie took care of all his children? His daughter, Ruby Gale, was the first black woman to earn a doctorate degree from Harvard.”

  She’d heard that. So maybe Wilkie hadn’t been a complete jerk. “That doesn’t make his cheating on his wife okay.”

  Kasper flashed a grin, then took a drink. “You obviously have never seen a portrait of his wife, Aunt Fredericka.”

  She swatted a bug from her face. “Does it matter?”

  “Hell yes! She looked like Brezhnev, but with bushier eyebrows and less hair.”

  A picture of the dour communist leader with the huge black brows popped into her head. She purposely grimaced. “I did wonder where you got that unibrow.”

  “I don’t have a unibrow.”

  “Bushy, like a caterpillar is crawling across your forehead.” Now it was her turn to flash a genuine smile as he scowled. “Like a buck moth caterpillar, and you know what to do about a buck moth. Kill it before it migrates to the rest of your face.” Blue might not know what to do with the strange feeling bouncing around in her stomach, but she did know a thing or two about a timely exit. “See ya around, Kasper Pennington.” She turned on her heels and headed toward the front of the house. She didn’t look back to see if he watched her. She didn’t have to. She felt his gaze between her shoulders.