“And then you tried to kiss her.” Tom seemed to be mulling it over. “You thought that was a good time to make your move?”
“I wasn’t thinking anything, obviously.” Gideon hated the sharpness in his voice. It still rankled. He shifted a stack of papers and waited for Tom’s verdict.
“Well, I’m no expert on women, but I do like to think I understand people. There could be a lot of different explanations. She was clearly struggling and maybe she reacted more from those emotions than anything to do with you. Also, she’s dating Blue. I reckon that might have some bearing on whether she’s running around kissing other men.”
“She looked afraid.” He hated to say the words. Closing his eyes, he could see her expression so clearly. Her tear-streaked face, the dirt smudge on her cheek, her red and puffy eyes were all as clear as a picture to him.
“Okay,” Tom said. But he clearly didn’t think Gideon had gotten it right. “So, that’s why you decided to invite her to dinner? She’s afraid of you and that’s your next step?”
He knew what Tom was doing. He wanted Gideon to say it, to put words to his hopes. But people who did that were tempting fate. They were asking to be disappointed. “I don’t have a master plan, here. I just don’t want her to be afraid of me.”
“That’s all?” Tom sounded smug.
“Yes, sir.”
“Because you’ve always cared what people thought about you before.”
Gideon sighed.
“Okay, don’t get huffy about it. Here I thought we were trying to get her to dump Blue and take up with you, but instead we’re just going to make sure she’s comfortable. I’ll be sure to tell Bix and Ruby about the change of plans.”
He sat up straight. “You didn’t say anything to them, did you?” Bix was one of the most out-spoken men he knew and not always in a good way. Ruby was only a little less so. The two of them on a romantic mission was asking for trouble.
“Gideon, I didn’t have to. Bix may be blind, but he can still see what’s right in front of him,” Tom said. “Anyway, let’s say seven. You pick them up. And relax. It’ll be fun.”
“You know, I don’t think this such a good idea―”
“Nope. Too late. See you at seven. And remember you’re going to be contributing to the conversation,” Tom said and hung up.
Gideon put the phone back in his pocket and stared at the piles of papers in front of him. A month ago he thought he was starting to crack under some unnamed stress, acting out of character and yearning for change. Apparently, the few days he’d found to spend fishing with Bix and Tom hadn’t been enough because he’d just signed up for what could be the world’s most awkward double date.
***
Henry re-read the last paragraph. A simple search of Gideon’s full, original name had brought up old news articles, and it was a story of unbelievable brutality and loss.
She sat back, staring at the screen, unable to tear her eyes from the picture of a young Gideon. His hair was much lighter, but his eyes were the same dark blue. He laughed into the camera, arms wrapped around his mother’s neck. She was blond but with the same angled brows that made Gideon seem serious even when he was smiling. His father stood behind them, one hand on his wife’s shoulder. He looked much younger than his twenty eight years but maybe it was his wide smile that showed off familiar dimples. In his arms he held a baby with soft dark curls and a serious expression.
Five year old is the sole survivor in triple homicide. Robbery is the suspected motive. Victims Theresa Hardy and Timothy Hardy were found deceased in their home by relatives. Gideon Hardy and Katie Rose Hardy were discovered the next day by fishermen on the banks of Red River. Katie Rose was declared deceased at the scene. Autopsies pending.
Henry stood up and stared out at the red dirt and tufts of grass behind the Plantation. Her eyes burned and her chest felt so tight she had trouble taking a breath. Gideon said he was wary of people trying to fix him. She’d assumed he meant his past as a convicted murderer. There was much, much more to his story.
Taking a shaky breath, she sat back down at the computer. This was her Pandora’s box. Once opened, the knowledge inside could never be forgotten. The moment she’d typed in his name, there was no turning back.
She flipped to the next article. Duane Banner was convicted and sentenced to thirty years for the murder of the young Hardy family. Mark Daniels was convicted and sentenced to ten years for accessory. Henry frowned. Ten years seemed like a very light sentence for accessory. Ten years. Mark Daniels would be out now, maybe even living somewhere in the area.
Henry searched the name plus LaFayette and murder. When the article came up, the first thing she noticed was Gideon’s name was now Becket. And then all the pieces fell into place and she sucked in a breath. Fifteen year old Gideon Becket will be tried as an adult in the LaFayette murder of Mark Daniels, who was recently paroled after serving a ten year sentence for the murder of ―
She bolted from her chair and paced the tiny office. Her breaths were coming sharp and fast. He’d never offered to explain. He could have. Anybody would understand a young kid exacting revenge. Old enough to know better. That’s what he’d said the day they met. He’d offered no excuses.
Henry put her hands to her cheeks and was surprised to feel them wet with tears. She didn’t know why she was crying. Maybe for the little boy who lost everyone he loved and was dumped in the river like a piece of trash. Maybe for the teen who was so consumed with rage he killed in revenge. Maybe for the man she knew today who carried the weight of that tragedy in one hand and his guilt in the other.
At the Zydeco Festival he’d asked her why she never asked him any questions about it. Henry closed her eyes, remembering what she’d said. I’ve spent my whole life knowing more than I wanted about everyone around me. There was evil everywhere. Secrets and lies, brokenness and wounded people. She had never wanted to know more. She’d never set out to discover another person’s secrets.
She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes. How ridiculous she must have seemed, crying over being Kimberly Gray’s daughter. She wondered what he’d been thinking as he held her and she sobbed at the unfairness of it all.
****
Gideon toweled off his hair and stared into the mirror. He’d told himself all day that his nerves would settle down before supper time. That had been a lie. He went into the kitchen and grabbed his phone from the counter.
“You’re calling to see if I need anything, right? You’re definitely not calling to cancel,” Tom said as he picked up.
“I’ll bring Bix and Ruby, but I’m not staying.”
“Sorry, can’t hear you over the sound of the water boiling. I’m hanging up now. We can talk when you get here,” Tom said.
“I’m just not a social person. I never have been. You know that.”
“You’ve sat through plenty of suppers before. And I really am hanging up now.”
Gideon started to speak but there was a click and Tom was gone. He let out a growl and put the phone back on the counter. He still wasn’t staying. He didn’t want Henry to be afraid of him, but now that he was minutes from seeing her, he was convinced this wasn’t the way to do it. His nerves were frayed at just the thought of sitting across a table and making small talk. Forcing them both into a situation where they were uncomfortable was a terrible idea and would probably make everything worse. Add in one nosy old couple and Tom, and it just might be a recipe for alienating Henry for good.
***
Henry parked in front of the little white house next to St. Augustine’s parish. She was early and she didn’t even know how it happened.
Father Tom was lucky to live and work right on the Cane River Creole National Historic Park. She walked up the little path, inhaling the scent of late summer and Cajun spices. Her toes were feeling a little bit pinched in the new strappy sandals she’d chosen and she was glad there wouldn’t be much standing around. Kimberly always said to wear them around with a pair of socks for a
few hours, just to make them comfortable, but as usual she hadn’t thought of her advice until it was too late.
Henry smoothed down the skirt of her summer dress and hoped it wasn’t too fancy for a cook out. Or too casual. It had been so long since she’d been to a crawfish boil that she hadn’t been able to decide whether to wear jeans and a T-shirt or something more for a garden party. She never spent much time on picking outfits but after half an hour, she’d finally been so irritated with her own indecision that she closed her eyes and grabbed the first thing she touched. It was a little less formal than she was used to, but the little tulips on the pale green fabric seemed cheerful and carefree, something she desperately wanted to be herself.
The weather was perfect for an early September cook out and she’d decided to let her hair down this once. Although she’d been meaning to get to a salon, she never found the time and the blond now looked like highlights, overtaken by her natural dark brown color. She brushed the waves back from her face, glad not to feel the pinch of the perpetual ponytail.
Father Tom must already be cooking. There was a little table set up with a red checked cloth and chairs. A plume of steam rose from somewhere just out of sight. Instead of knocking on the front door, she continued around the corner and spotted Father Tom seated in front of a bucket.
He looked up as she called out a greeting and he waved an ear of corn. “I lost track of time. Did you knock?” He stood, wiping his hands on a dishtowel.
She shook her head. “No, sir. Followed my nose.” She glanced around. “I’m early.”
“You’re right on time. Gideon went to pick up Bix and Ruby. They’ll be here in a bit. The mudbugs are in the bag, waiting for the corn and taters to get cookin’. Have some sweet tea. Or a Coke from the cooler. Or a beer from the fridge, if you’re more of a beer person.”
“Thank you,” she said and poured herself some tea. The cold, sweet liquid brought back a hundred childhood summer nights, when the neighbors would gather at one house or another and share the weekend catch or some later season corn.
“Do you like to cook?” he asked.
“Not really.” She smiled. “I’m still planning on taking part in the jambalaya feed. Gideon knows I can’t cook and he offered… or I asked... I’m not sure how it happened, now that I think about it. But anyway, I can’t really cook but I will try and participate.”
“Eating is participation, too.”
“I can definitely eat. I can shuck corn, too,” she said, setting her glass on the table. They worked in silence for a few moments. “And I can make a mean waffle. Just so you don’t think I’m entirely without culinary skills.”
“I’ve never been convinced that cooking is a skill. Sure, you can learn to follow a recipe, but there has to be something more. You have to enjoy the process.” He picked up another ear of corn and started stripping away the husk with quick, sure movements.
“Have you always loved cooking?”
He nodded. “Mamas around the country make sure their kids learn their reading and arithmetic. Mine, good Creole mama that she is, made sure I learned a few dishes, like gumbo and red rice. I took to the lessons so she taught me everything she knew. Blackened catfish, spoon bread, grillades, crawfish boulettes, sweet potato pone, chess pie, swamp chili, la reine cake.” He smiled. “When they come visit every now and then, we like to get busy in the kitchen. It gives us a chance to talk. Same as when I was a teenager. I loved the concentration that comes with the chopping, the way a person couldn’t walk away from a roux, the whole day process of simmering and tasting and adding spices. That sort of time and attention can’t be faked.” He dropped the corn in the bucket and reached for another. “Gideon, on the other hand, has always been preferential to the eating part.”
Henry smiled but said nothing. She wanted to know about Gideon as a teenager and hear about the parents that Father Tom was still close to, but it seemed like such a private topic for two people shucking corn for a country boil.
“Do you know what happened?” Father Tom asked.
She froze, her hand hovering over the bucket.
“The whole story. Not just what Gideon tells people,” he said.
She held the ear in her hand, feeling the rough leaves under her fingers. “He told me his name the other day and I―”
“His name? You mean, his birth name?” Father Tom’s brows had shot up.
“I didn’t ask him,” she said. “Or, maybe I did. I can’t remember how it happened.” He must think she was purposefully forgetful.
“This morning I did an internet search on him.” It was embarrassing to admit that she’d poked into the personal history of someone she knew. It wasn’t the type of person she was.
“Good. I’m glad. Gideon doesn’t think what happened to his family can possibly be any kind of excuse for what he did.” He held up a hand. “I’m not saying murder isn’t wrong. It is and he knows it. But it’s not the whole story. I think it’s impossible to understand him without knowing it all.”
She wanted to understand Gideon, more than she’d wanted to understand anyone before. “Would he mind us talking about him? I feel like I’m trespassing in some way.” Her voice sounded shy and uncertain in her ears.
“I see why he likes you.” Tom said. “And if it makes you feel better, we can talk about me. And in talking about me, we can talk about him.”
Laughing, she nodded. “When they get here, we’ll just be two people working on supper.”
Father Tom reached for the last ear of corn. “So, I came to live with Sally and Vince because my step daddy was perpetually underemployed and somehow he thought that was my fault. You’ve heard the saying ‘knock you into the middle of next week’. Well, he never succeeded but he sure liked to try.”
“I’m so sorry,” Henry said. Lisette had never been very affectionate, but she’d never hurt her, not like that.
“I was eleven when I met Gideon. He was thirteen and he’d been through a lot of foster homes by then. We were both tough, angry kids who thought the world was out to get us, and figured we’d be better off if we got a few kicks in first,” he said. “People see us together and think that he’s been my personal mission. They think he’s the sinner and I’m the saint, that I somehow saved him from a life of crime.”
He paused, looking her straight in the eyes. “I knew what Gideon was going to do. I gave him money I’d saved, talked over which buses to take and how to find the guy. He never told anyone, so I didn’t pay for my part in the murder. But it’s as much my past, as it is his.”
Truth.
“Our foster parents were devastated. Crushed. The sons they’d accepted and loved betrayed them, saving up money and planning this crime for months, lying in the worst way.” He stared at his shoes. “They had a son that followed Gideon around. Gideon loved him, was real kind to him. Anyway, Austin was only five and couldn’t understand why his big brother, his buddy, was gone. Watching what happened to them after Gideon was arrested, it changed my life. I saw what sin does, how it rips apart a family and breaks hearts. It took Gideon’s crime to show me what I had.”
He said, “People look at us and think I saved him. But it’s really the other way around. Gideon saved me.”
She looked down at her hands and realized she hadn’t been working at all, the corn rested there, half-shucked.
“Of course, he can’t see it that way,” Tom went on. “He’s convinced that nothing good can ever come from what he did and that he’s doomed to wander through the world, paying for his crime.” He sighed. “He’s come a long way, but he’s still never accepted that he’s forgiven.”
“The night of the Zydeco Festival, he told me something. He said he could never date Alanna because she wanted to save him.”
“True, we all see what we want to see, and maybe Alanna only sees a man she can change.”
“But maybe he does need someone like her so he can move on and be happy.” She hated saying the words. “If he won’t listen to you, m
aybe he’d listen to her.”
He stood up and carried the corn to the pot of boiling water. He snapped the corn in pieces, tipped it into the water and reached for a large bowl of small red potatoes. “Or maybe Alanna doesn’t see that he’s unhappy. Maybe she just sees him as a brooding, dangerous killer who’ll only be tamed by her gentle, womanly touch.”
She let out a guffaw. “Dangerous?”
“So, you’re not afraid of him? Not even a little?”
“Not even a little,” she said.
He seemed to find that amusing.
“At least, I’m not afraid of him that way.” She watched him add a plate of cut sausages to the water. The seasoning filled the air with a familiar spice. She hadn’t realized how much she missed the low country boil suppers, cooked outside on a warm summer evening.
He turned from where he was spreading newspaper on the table. “So, you are afraid of him.”
“Of course not. Not that way.”
“In some other way?”
She didn’t know how to answer. “I barely know him.”
“You know him better than almost everybody.” He stirred the boiling water and poked at a potato. “But you don’t trust him.”
Henry was aware of the bright sunlight and the fact she was wearing a pretty sundress, standing in the middle of summer supper party, and yet was somehow entangled in a very honest conversation. You deserve to be able to tell the truth.
“I don’t think you should trust anyone who has nothing to lose.”
He unfolded another sheet of newspaper and reset the plates. His eyes were sad. “That’s very wise,” he said.
The sound of a car in the driveway made them both turn, and Henry ran a hand over her hair. She’d only met Bix and Ruby a few times, but if they were like Tom and Gideon, she didn’t know how she was going to get through this meal. It seemed as if none of them were capable of a simple conversation.
She’d thought that her life would be better with a little honesty, but now she felt as if she’d made a mistake. What she wouldn’t give for a few hours of mindless chatter. The alternative, sitting across from Gideon and letting go of all her pretty white lies, was asking for trouble.
Along the Cane River: Books 1-5 in the Inspirational Cane River Romance Series Page 48
