The office wasn’t as big as the one on the first floor, where most business was conducted over the years. Anyone in the family could, and had, used that one. It was large and inviting, with ceiling-to-floor windows, and welcoming tones of red and gold.
The heir’s office was sterile and Spartan. A single desk and chair, positioned neatly in the center of the long, narrow room that stretched from front to back of the house like a lookout in an old fort, was all the room contained now, or ever. Charles used to joke about livening up the place, with posters of rock icons or fast cars, but he no longer joked about such things.
Charles hadn’t known what to do with Cat when she came to see him. There was only one seat in the sparse room, and, of course, he gave it to her. He could take her to his bedroom, but the others were home, most of them anyway, and privacy would be nonexistent. Though he knew nothing would happen between them, she deserved that privacy; to be here without whispers and judgment.
Why was she here? He’d asked himself that as the seconds passed to minutes, as he watched her leaned back and right at home in her soft yellow sundress, gladiator sandal bobbing in the air as her leg bounced over her knee.
He could read her mind. Too bad he was so out of practice. It would require all his focus, when she deserved his full attention.
“Vacherie is a long drive,” he remarked. He’d started by leaning against the desk, but the proximity belied an intimacy that bordered on presumptuous. He then gave up and used the wall, instead. “If I’d known you wanted to see me, I would have come to you.”
Cat laughed. One finger traced mindless circles on her bare, but sun-kissed, lightly-freckled, knee. “How I wish I’d thought of that! You still owe me a ride in that fast car of yours, Huck.”
“Name the time. The place.” He hoped, fleetingly, that she might suggest they go now. At least then he could transfer his crazed heartbeat into the power of the gearshift and find his calm within his element. Here, the simplicity of the space left nothing except the two of them and his complete loss of cool.
“Some other time,” Cat replied. She looked around. “Love what you’ve done with the place.”
“It’s tradition,” he explained weakly. He wanted to smack himself. He had so much wittier… better… cleverer responses than that.
“Well,” she said with a burgeoning smile, “we can’t challenge that, can we?”
“Where’s Colin?” he asked finally, the closest he could come to the question he really wanted to ask.
Catherine uncrossed her legs and leaned forward over the desk. The gesture was startlingly less ladylike, but he liked it better. She was comfortable, though he’d done almost nothing to help her get there. “Look, I know things have been tense between the two of you since the Tulane stuff.”
The Tulane stuff. His indefinite expulsion. “I think he’s done with me.”
She smiled. “No, Huck. He loves you. We all do.”
All. “He’s right to be done.” Charles let the honesty flow out. He’d never had any desire to let anyone past the front door of his thoughts and feelings, but Cat did more than put him at ease. She soothed him. “I’d be done with me, too.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she said. The sharpness in her voice caused his head to whip up so fast a wave of nausea passed over. “The Charles I know would pick himself up off the floor of this very special office and find a way.”
Charles sputtered through a failed reply. He finally stopped trying. His jaw hung half-open, helpless.
“You’ll catch flies,” she teased, and he recovered himself.
“College wasn’t for me, anyway,” Charles said. He’d told himself this with every failed grade, every call from the dean. A way of rationalizing something and making it inevitable. But there was truth to the statement all along. He’d never use a degree for anything beyond wall decoration.
“It isn’t for everyone,” she agreed. “What will you do, then?”
“I’m not sure.” He flexed his hands, then shoved them in his pocket, driving them deep, an anchor of sorts to steady him. To keep his “other” mind from taking off in an embarrassing direction. He wondered if any woman had ever before sat in the heir’s chair as she did now. Then he stopped himself, as the thought of taking her in that chair, the soft thumps of the uneven legs keeping rhythm, produced a deeply inopportune throb.
“Have you thought about traveling?”
“Traveling?”
Cat swept her dainty arms across the room, likely imagining the whole world coming to life before her. “The world! Have you been outside New Orleans much?”
He hadn’t, not since his father died, which was a damn shame considering there was nothing to hold them back. But Irish Colleen had held tight to those things, those basic human needs that kept the world turning. She had no room in her life for wanderlust, or other whims. “Not really. But… I will. When I have a family.”
She nodded slowly. “For most, having a family makes it harder to travel. You’ll never have to worry about such things, I suppose.”
Charles had never been ashamed of his money, but the comment gave him pause. He wanted to insist he had other worries, ones she couldn’t even begin to understand, but that would make things so much worse. If she knew the things he’d done, she wouldn’t be sitting in his chair for long.
This brief reminder of who he was helped him become that man again. Brash, bold, unafraid to speak his mind. “Cat, why are you here? Without Colin, I mean.”
Cat’s golden hair fell over her shoulders as she stood and crossed the room, coming toward him. “It’s not the 1800s, Huck. I don’t need a chaperon to visit a man.”
“You know what I mean.” She was within reach now, and his hand traveled through the air and landed at the surface of her silken hair. He hesitated only a half second before he let her hair run through his fingers. He guided it behind her shoulders and out of the way.
Her eyes followed the gesture with a curious grin. “I know how it is to be lonely.”
Charles smirked. “I’m never lonely.”
“No, you’re never alone,” she said. “And there’s a difference.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, I know Colin is your rock. He’s mine, too. I get it. I do. But you must know he’s never going to cheer you on when you make mistakes, and sometimes, he’ll run and hide, like he’s doing now, to teach you a lesson.”
“Is that what he’s doing? Teaching me a lesson?”
She shrugged. He couldn’t stop staring at her collarbone, which was just the slightest shade of peach from the summer sun. “Maybe that’s what he thinks he’s doing. Why did I come? I don’t know. I asked myself that on the whole drive over.” She laughed. “I can’t speak for Colin, and I won’t try. He’ll come around, but in the meantime, you need to know you’re not a bad man, Charles.”
His mouth was so dry that when he swallowed he nearly choked. “You don’t know me, Cat.”
She pressed her hands, fingers splayed to his chest. On one finger, he saw the little ruby Colin had given her for their one-year. “I do know you, Huck. I know you’re a good man. I see you. I see through to the real you.”
“The real me.” The words felt imperceptible, no more than a whisper.
“Sounds like a bunch of bologna, I know, but I’ve always been a good judge of character.”
“And how are you so sure I’m that man?”
Her fingers moved ever so slightly against his chest and a gasp traveled up from the spot, caught in the back of his throat. “I just am. And I’m never wrong.”
“You came all the way out here to tell me that?”
“I did.”
“Because you see me.”
“I see you.”
“And?”
Cat’s hand fell away. “And I suspect no one ever has before. I thought to myself, my friend is hurting and maybe I can help him. I know what it’s like to be the outcast.”
“You?�
� He stopped his laugh before it was fully formed. She was serious.
“Everyone in my family has become something great. Doctors. Lawyers. That was never the life for me. I’ve always wanted to be a poet, and while I’ll get that business degree, I’ll never be anything but a poet. You’d think I murdered the president or something, though. My family can’t see past that failure to see that I’m happy.”
Charles didn’t think happy women showed up alone to see overly available men, but he kept this to himself. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, and when he saw her face, quickly added, “Your parents. Who cares if you want to write poetry? We have enough fucking doctors and lawyers. And you can tell Colin I said so.”
Cat laughed at this. “I will. I’m meeting him in an hour, and I’ll tell him you said so.”
Charles reached forward and grabbed her hand. “I wouldn’t. Tell him you talked to me, I mean.”
She withdrew her hand. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
* * *
Charles watched her as she descended the wide porch and then navigated through the gravel, toward her small car. He waved and waited until her car was turned around and headed the almost half-mile down the driveway and back toward River Road.
“What was Catherine Connelly doing here?” Colleen asked, appearing behind him. “And alone?”
“Beats the shit out of me.”
“She was here quite a while.”
Charles spun and glared at her. “And what the fuck do you know about it?”
“I’m the one who answered the door.”
“Oh.” Charles scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, hey, Colleen,” he called to her as she walked away. “About the Evangeline stuff…”
She brightened. “You have info now?”
Charles shook his head. “I just wanted you to know I handled it.”
Colleen stepped closer again, eyes narrowing. “What does that mean, you handled it?”
“It means, you can say thank you, Charles, and not fucking concern yourself about it anymore.”
“Charles…” Her tone was warning.
“Hey,” he said, “we both know you wouldn’t have come to me, of all people, if you just wanted to talk to these assholes. Right? Right.” He patted her head. “So, it’s done. You can stop worrying, wipe that pretend shocked look off your face, and that’s that.”
Seven
Sleeping Dogs and All That
Maureen didn’t think things could get any worse, but that was before she began waking at night to the cries of a baby. Deep, soul-cutting screams, not of anything so simple as hunger or discomfort, but of sheer agony. The despair of what would never be.
It didn’t matter anymore, what was real and what was her imagination. What was the difference, when she had no control over either? Whether she was actually hearing the cries of her perpetually unborn child each night, or her imagination was finding unique methods of punishment, the result was the same.
She wasn’t sleeping at all anymore, not that she’d ever slept well in this decrepit relic so far from the rest of the living. At least their old mansion in the Garden District was ensconced in the outside world, only a streetcar ride away from where things really happened. Here, they were a half-mile from even a road, and on that road were miles and miles of sugarcane and nothingness. The river raged on the other side, relentless and forbidding.
Being bedridden for weeks hadn’t helped matters. The man Maureen’s mother had sought out to “fix the problem” had finished the job, but left her bleeding and in physical torment, to the point her mother commented she might never have children if she didn’t heal soon. Irish Colleen wouldn’t allow her oldest daughters to use their healing powers on her, and if there was ever a sign her mother didn’t love her, this was it. Colleen and Evangeline could have taken away every last drop of her pain, and they were begging for the chance to do so. But Irish Colleen held her ground, for reasons she didn’t feel it prudent to share with anyone, and instead tended to Maureen’s bedside herself, as if she had any idea how to heal her through the horrors she’d been through.
“Don’t forget I was a nursemaid,” she pointed out as she wrung the bloody cloth in the basin.
“For a dying woman!” Maureen returned, and Irish Colleen had no argument, because it was true. Her only experience as a nursemaid was in tending to her future husband’s dying wife. And what skill was required to administer regular doses of Morphine, or dabbing at the poor woman’s cracked and drying skin with a damp cloth?
Colleen snuck in one day while she was sleeping. Maureen awoke to her sister’s hands hovering over her, and tears glistening in her eyes.
“What are you doing?” Maureen asked, though she knew.
“You shouldn’t have to suffer like this. Not when there’s another way.”
“We suffer because we were born.”
“Maybe,” Colleen said. “But I’ll be damned if these gifts were for nothing but pain.”
“Colleen! Don’t you dare go against my wishes!”
Irish Colleen’s small but booming presence in the door—Maureen, over the years, had wondered if her mother didn’t have a hint of magic in her, after all, for she always seemed to know precisely when someone was about to disobey her—was the line of separation between Maureen’s complete suffering, and even a small reprieve.
Small, because Colleen couldn’t fix the problem that would ail her long after her womb healed.
“You need to leave,” Madeline said, looking more forlorn than usual. “Find a way, Maureen. Any way you can. It will always be like this if you don’t. Mama can’t help herself.”
“Please, don’t listen to your sister,” their father warned. “She’d be with you, instead of me, if she had only found her patience. Your mother loves you, and she’s doing her best.”
“You don’t know, Daddy. You don’t know what it was like,” Madeline said and then disappeared in a fit of stubborn anger.
“Why, Maureen?” asked Peter, against the anguished wailing of an infant that was not gone and not forgotten.
* * *
Maureen knew of no one in their family who possessed an ability that could help her find a way to take away her own. She wouldn’t even know what to call that, or where to start. She suspected that it wasn’t an ability that could help her, anyway. What she needed was something deeper, more powerful. A bigger magic.
For years, she’d heard the rumors that Pansy and her mother, Winnifred—who had married into the Guidry family when she settled down with Pierce, and was rather unspectacular in her own right—had been dabbling in black magic. Winnifred Babin’s family were trappers from New Iberia, whose home purportedly ran up against the shack of Adelphe Baptiste, the most well-known and feared voodoo priestess in Iberia Parish. Adelphe’s husband, Anton, was a trapper, too, and would go out for runs with Winnifred’s father. One day, Anton’s foot slipped when balancing on a log, and he went careening into a dense corner of the swamp. Winnifred’s father was quick to respond and saved his life, for he’d landed in a bull’s den during mating season. Many of the trappers of New Iberia had stories to tell, and limbs and digits lost to the gators to go with them. But Adelphe had never forgotten what the Babin family had done for her, and the women grew closer after the incident.
Maureen loved gossip, of course, even if it did sound ridiculous. It was fun to whisper about and even spread yourself, especially when you’d come into something extra juicy, but everyone knew there was less truth than fluff in a good story. But even Colleen had talked about Pansy and Winnie’s late nights in Bayou St. John, and Colleen detested people who told tales.
Pansy stopped going for a bit when she married Placide, but she’s back at it now, and Pierce is beside himself. But he’ll never say a word to Winnie or his daughter. He doesn’t have it in him to say no.
Voodoo, Rory had whispered, because, of course Colleen hadn’t said these words to Maureen. She’d overheard her sister telling
Rory about it. Pillow talk, probably, a concept she knew about only from the whispers of her friends, because she’d never experienced it herself.
Don’t listen to rumors, Rory. Voodoo is a peaceful practice with very deep roots, but there are bad apples in every religion. Even ours.
Maureen was banking on the bad apples for what she needed.
Pansy was more than happy to meet with her. Her cousin suggested coffee at Morning Call, down at the French Market, but Maureen was impatient and didn’t want to waste any time. What they would hopefully do together was best done in private. Where no one could see her lose her mind when her ghosts belayed her. Instead, she asked to meet at their old house in the Garden District, which was on the market but not yet sold.
She guilt-tripped Augustus into letting her tag along with him into the city.
“How are you going to get back?” he asked. He stood before her, so much taller, almost towering over her, keys dangling at his side. She realized then how handsome her brother was. He was good-looking in an utterly unremarkable way, the kind of man who blends into a crowd until you have him alone, and can see how deep and enchanting his eyes are; how his mouth curves and his hair falls across his brow. He was better looking, even, than Charles, who all the girls did flips over and made fools of themselves for. She wondered what made one hardly noticed while the other couldn’t find a moment’s peace.
She realized also that she’d been alone with her brothers so few times in her life. Neither had taken much of an interest in her, and the feeling was mutual.
“I’ll call someone.”
Augustus’ stance was defiant. “Maureen, I’m not going to be responsible for you traipsing around New Orleans by yourself. Not after…”
The Seven Boxed Set Page 27
