The Legacy

by Shirley Jump

  Maybe he’d been orphaned as a small child, left to the wolves because of his disagreeable nature. Marjo chided herself. Surely he hadn’t been left to the wolves—

  He’d simply been raised to think like one.

  Either way, she would fight him if he went forward with his plan to sell the opera house. Restoring that building was the cornerstone of all she, and the committee, wanted to see happen in Indigo. If the opera house regained its former glory, it could help Indigo bring in some much-needed income and give the committee enough money, down the road, to buy it from Paul Clermont for a fair price, thereby ensuring its future.

  The opera house meant so much to this town, to its people. There was no way Marjo was going to let some outsider take that away from the bayou she loved.

  If it killed her, she was going to prove to Paul Clermont that the opera house was a worthy legacy, one that deserved his continued ownership.

  And if he wanted to pick up a paintbrush and attack the siding, well, she’d cheer him on. And if he didn’t, she’d come up with another plan.

  That frustrating and handsome but cocky Canadian wasn’t going to take away the one element that made Indigo special.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “HEY, MARJO! You home?” Her best friend, Cally, gave a quick rap on the screen door, then let herself in after giving Gabriel a quick hello. He returned the greeting, jammed the last couple bites of his sandwich into his mouth and clambered down the stairs, shouting to Marjo that he was going out.

  With Darcy, his girlfriend, Marjo supposed. She went to the door to call after her brother, to remind him to be home early, but he was already gone. Gabriel had met Darcy in high school, and found a kindred spirit in the girl who was much like him, only a bit more independent. Darcy lived on her own, held down a part-time job and was attending beauty school. In the year they’d been dating, she’d inspired Gabriel to want the same level of independence, regardless of whether he was ready for it. Marjo still had to remind him to eat, to turn off the stove. Despite what Darcy or Gabriel thought, she knew her brother wasn’t yet ready to make that leap.

  Marjo sighed and shook her head. Lately she felt she was losing that battle.

  Despite the hot October day, Cally looked cool and fresh. Maybe it was her blond hair or her easy, friendly manner, but she never seemed bothered by anything, especially not the heat. “I heard you had a showdown at the OK Opera House.” She mock-fired two pistols with her hands.

  Marjo laughed. “Word travels fast.”

  “Chérie, dis is de bayou,” she said, affecting her best Louisiana accent. “You can’t sneeze around here without half de town t’inkin’ you’re dyin’ of typhoid five minutes later.”

  Marjo laughed. “True.”

  “So tell me, is this hunk who owns the opera house as gorgeous as half the female population of Indigo made him sound?”

  “He’s not attractive at all.” Marjo turned her face away, busy pouring them each a glass of iced tea.

  “Liar.” She followed Marjo out of the kitchen and into the front room, where the tall multipaned mullion windows faced the porch and the picturesque view of the deep, lush and vibrant bayou.

  Marjo paused at the window for a moment. A hundred years ago her great-grandfather had built this little cottage. But when his son, her grandfather, had started Savoy Funeral Home, the Savoy families had moved into the spacious apartment upstairs, to be ready at a moment’s notice for a family in grief. Marjo and Gabriel’s father, Timothy, had been the second generation to run the funeral home, which had come to be known as a place that catered to traditional Cajun values and traditions.

  But when Timothy Savoy had brought his Atlanta-born bride to Indigo, Elaine had refused to use the funeral parlor as a home. She’d never spent a night there. The day they returned from their honeymoon, the newlywed Savoys had moved into the cottage.

  Timothy, smitten until the day he died, had indulged his wife, especially in her love for gardening. Every year, moonflowers wrapped their evening beauty around the porch posts, up a lantern pole installed when Marjo was three, and around virtually anything that stood still. Camellias of all colors burst brightly among shrubbery and indigenous plantings. For every season, there was a bloom—Violet Wood Sorrell for spring, Summer Snapdragons, Camellia Sasanqua for the fall. Elaine Savoy had carved out a pretty little oasis in this corner of the bayou. But despite her garden, Marjo’s mother had never been happy here.

  Perhaps if her mother had put down roots in the community instead of in the ground, Marjo thought, she might have smiled more and cried less.

  Marjo turned away from the window and took a seat in Grandmother Savoy’s rocking chair, one of a thousand family pieces that made up the cottage’s decor. Cally sank into the embroidered armchair beside her.

  “So what did this guy do that was so bad?” Cally asked.

  “Tried to put the opera house on the market as if it was a painting that didn’t fit with his new sofa.”

  “And that’s a bad thing because…?” Cally asked. “I mean, wouldn’t a new buyer keep it running?”

  “Not necessarily,” Marjo said. “Remember Dewey’s Country Store, that little mom-and-pop place in New Iberia? Some developer came in and snatched that up. Thought he could turn a frog into a mink coat.”

  “I remember that. I don’t know anyone who shops at that fancy deli. Next they’ll be bringing in some uppity coffee shop to try to convince us a six-dollar cup of coffee is a good idea.”

  “Exactly,” Marjo said. “Which is why I don’t want Paul Clermont selling the opera house. We’ve raised a good chunk of the money we need to finish the restoration and get it opened again. But we’re a long way from being able to buy it. None of the Valois heirs before him stood in our way. They were happy to see the space being used instead of going to waste. But now that Sophie’s moved the antique shop into Maude’s cottage, the opera house is just sitting there, not bringing in income—or anything else.”

  “Yeah, but the new location has really helped business for Past Perfect,” Cally said. “Sophie’s on cloud nine, even if she is being pulled in three directions at once, between commuting to Houston, the shop and her pregnancy.”

  “Not to mention keeping her new husband happy,” Marjo added. “Despite all those commitments, she’s been a big bonus to the restoration and the CajunFest committees. Her fund-raising experience helped us bring in some outside support for the festival. But then she got so busy, she needed to find some way to cut back. I told her the committee would be fine, that she should just see to her new family.”

  “You don’t have to take the whole thing on your shoulders, Marjo,” Cally chided. “And before you argue with me, you and I both know that’s what you tend to do.”

  “I’ve got the committee.”

  Cally’s pursed lips said she disagreed, but she didn’t say anything further.

  “Either way, Paul Clermont can’t just sell the opera house to become some office building or boutique.” Marjo rocked back in the chair. “I can’t let the opera house disappear, Cally. It may not be part of my family, but it’s a part of Indigo. And we need to preserve our history.”

  There were days when it seemed Indigo, and its past, was all Marjo had left of her family. Tante Julia lived in a nursing home in New Iberia. Marjo had a bachelor uncle who had moved to Lafayette, but in Indigo, there were no Savoys besides her and Gabriel. But it was more than that. After her parents had died, the people of Indigo had become her family, wrapping their sheltering arms around young Marjo. They’d been there whenever she needed them to help her raise Gabriel and continue the family funeral home business. They’d helped her get used to the adult shoes thrust on her at a young age.

  “Maybe it’s time to move forward, Marjo, instead of looking back.” Cally’s voice was soft, tinged with care. Marjo knew her friend meant more than just the opera house. The past year had been one of standing still for Marjo, when she knew she should be moving forward. It had seemed
so much easier to embrace the status quo than add another element into an already precariously balanced life.

  “Sometimes keeping the past around reminds you of what’s important,” Marjo countered, running a palm along the arm of the rocker. “My mother loved that opera house.”

  “She did? I never knew that. Did she sing?”

  “No, but she loved music. She was from the city, born into a monied family, and she always missed that life. Whenever she went to a performance at the opera house—back then, there was the occasional musical by a local church, things like that—she felt like she had stepped back in time. For just a moment she could return to her old life and leave the bayou behind. She loved my father, but she hated Indigo.”

  “Why didn’t they ever move? Was it because the family business was here?”

  “Partly,” Marjo said. “But mainly because my mother couldn’t go back to what she had left. The minute she married a Cajun, her family cut her off—financially, physically and emotionally. It’s funny that a hundred and fifty or so years after Alexandre and Amelie, a family would still sever blood ties because their daughter had married a man they found unsuitable.”

  “You never saw your grandparents?”

  Marjo shrugged. “I don’t think they even know Gabriel and I exist, assuming they’re still alive.”

  “And you haven’t wanted to contact them?”

  Marjo glanced out the window at the bayou she loved so much. “My family is here.”

  Cally reached over and gave Marjo’s hand a quick squeeze. “And look at the bonuses you get—we’re just as dysfunctional as some real families.”

  Marjo laughed. “Anyway, that’s why all this is so important to me. And for a lot of people in Indigo, restoring the opera house is like a sign of hope, I guess. It’s a way for the town to grow and prosper, yet still preserve our links to the past.”

  Cally nodded, sipping at her iced tea. “You have a point. When Luc Carter came in and turned La Petite Maison into a successful bed-and-breakfast, he brought a little bit of hope to the bayou. Not to mention some very good-looking visitors.”

  Marjo laughed. “I think you’d be happier if the bed-and-breakfast only catered to Chippendales dancers.”

  “Hey, I’m all for supporting the performing arts.”

  Marjo sobered. “Well, I just want to support this community. I look around me and I see the Cajuns getting swept up into pop culture, trading their heritage and customs for cool jeans and fast food. We need to protect what we have left, for the future. For our kids.”

  “Speaking of that,” Cally said, “when are you going to find yourself a man and have a few of those? Babies, I mean.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” Marjo said quietly. Yet, even as she spoke, a little voice inside her reminded her that she was thirty-five and her clock wouldn’t be ticking forever. She turned and looked out the window. “I can’t start a family, not as long as Gabriel needs me. He’s not ready for life on his own, and I’m afraid that if I pushed him out too soon, he’d see it as me abandoning him.”

  Cally leaned forward and touched her friend’s hand, her palm soft against Marjo’s. “You need to have your life, too. Gabriel is nearly grown up.”

  “I will. Someday.”

  Cally bit her lip, but didn’t say anything. It was a familiar argument, particularly since Marjo had ended her engagement to Kerry Tidwell last year. Kerry had made it clear he didn’t want the package deal of Marjo and Gabriel.

  Marjo had decided then and there that until Gabriel was mature enough to live on his own, her love life could wait. Her younger brother was more important than any man who might come along with a ring.

  Despite her best intentions, though, the pain of Kerry’s betrayal still stung. All along, she’d thought he’d loved Gabriel. Until she realized he’d been talking to group homes and assisted-living communities, and planned to ship Gabriel off as soon as Marjo had said “I do.”

  Cally kept trying to convince Marjo to let Gabriel go out on his own more, to loosen the proverbial apron strings. But no one knew Gabriel like his sister did. He wouldn’t make it on his own. He was too fragile, too gentle, to survive the world out there.

  And if that meant she needed to put her own goals on hold for a while, so be it.

  Marjo rose and crossed to the ivy plant that hung in the window. She plucked a few dead leaves from the neglected greenery. “Right now, all I’m worried about is getting Paul Clermont to go back to wherever he came from and leave me and the opera house alone.”

  “Well,” Cally said, turning her glass, watching the ice dance, “maybe you should try another tactic. Like, get to know him better.”

  “Get to know him better?” Marjo spun around. “Yeah, I’ll try that—with a twelve-gauge in my hands.”

  “Hey!” Cally put her hands up. “I’m a lawyer, remember? Don’t be plotting a felony in front of me.”

  Marjo laughed. “I wouldn’t really do that. It’s just that that man is like a nest of yellow jackets kicked up by some overeager teenager with a Weed-wacker. He drives me nuts.”

  Cally waved a finger at her. “Now, be nice, Marjo. You know the old saying—and you also know it wouldn’t be an old saying if it weren’t true. So if I were you, I’d try catching this fly with some honey. Add a little Savoy sweetener, get him to come around to your ideas about the opera house.”

  Marjo considered the idea. “You mean, get him to see why the opera house is so important?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t strike me as the sentimental type.”

  Cally gave her a grin. “Then use your feminine wiles. If there’s one thing that can turn a man from alligator to teddy bear, it’s a pretty woman with a smile.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  ONE MORE DAY, Paul figured, and he’d have that property listed. All he had to do was to find a Realtor who wasn’t afraid of Marjo Savoy.

  Given the limited population of Indigo, he’d probably have to go all the way to Lafayette or Baton Rouge to do that. Regardless of what that woman had said, he had no intentions of hanging on to the family money pit.

  He would divest himself of the property, just as he had divested himself of nearly everything else that held other people down—his marriage, his furniture, his house—and then be on his way back to Egypt or Africa or wherever World magazine chose to send him. Living, as he always had, the life of a nomad.

  He was thirty-seven, and that was exactly the life he’d always wanted.

  He’d learned, after watching his father work himself half to death in mining jobs that he hated, that life was far too short to spend it killing yourself to pay bills. Paul’s mother had stayed in Cape Breton, as rooted to the place as a hundred-year-old tree. Renault Clermont had left his family time and again, crossing Canada to search for work that would keep food on the table.

  If Paul had to choose one word to describe his childhood, it would be frenetic. His father gone for long periods of time, his mother retreating to her room. Only when the raucous Clermont relatives arrived, ushering in kitchen parties that lasted into the wee hours, was the house filled with laughter, drinking and fiddling.

  No matter that jobs were scarce and half the families were on pogey, collecting government assistance, the musical gatherings took place. Then the relatives would leave and all would fall deathly quiet, his mother unable to deal with the children, the reality of her life.

  In many ways, his childhood home seemed much like Indigo—insular, set in its ways. Paul wanted to experience his life, to live it, not to look back at seventy-two with regret.

  Renault Clermont was a good man, but he’d had the spirit sucked out of him by the daily grind of the mines. It had killed his dreams, dampened his zest for life and made him bitter.

  Paul refused to live like that. Today, or any day.

  He’d been driving on the River Road, which ran along the bayou, pausing from time to time to take pictures of the oddly barren yet also
lush landscape. It was as if death and life had gone to war here, then declared a truce.

  When he saw the sign for La Petite Maison, a two-hundred-year-old raised cottage that had been recently converted into a bed-and-breakfast, he decided to have a look. La Petite Maison, like many homes in Indigo, had been built from native cypress wood and was two stories with wraparound verandas.

  The sun was already too high in the sky to capture the nuances of the building. But maybe later, once the sun began its daily downward journey, he’d have time to take a few shots. He really wanted to find a way to capture the cozy, retreat-like setting of the little building.

  Cozy or not, it was, he suspected, the only lodging option he had in a town as small as Indigo.

  Paul parked the rental car in the designated area and strode over to the wide gallery porch. As soon as he walked through the front door, he noticed the stone floor, the brick walls and the friendly face behind a front desk.

  He had just handed his credit card over to Luc Carter, the B and B’s owner, when an old man, dressed in jeans and a red T-shirt, ambled over to him. “I’m Doc Landry,” he said. “Resident grouch.”

  Paul chuckled and introduced himself.

  “I hear you’re the Valois heir who tangled with Marjo today,” the old man said.

  Paul arched a brow. “Talk about news spreading like wildfire.”

  “Well, hell, boy, you got all the marks of front-page news. You’re an outsider and you caused a commotion. We haven’t had this much excitement in town since Skeeter Thibedaux hooked his big toe at the fishing derby. Won his weight class, too, Skeeter did.” He laughed again, then shook his finger at Paul. “That Marjo Savoy, she’s harder to handle than a twelve-foot gator during mating season. You better watch out.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Paul scrawled his name across the receipt, then filled out the register. Luc gave him a grin. Apparently he’d heard about the incident, too.

  “That’s what they all think,” Doc Landry said. “Marjo isn’t one of those women who take no for an answer. No sirree. She’s like a tick on a hound when she gets her mind wrapped around something.”