Now she found herself embarrassed to see him. Total amnesia on his part seemed too much to hope for.
That he recognized her even through glass and the narrow gap in the curtains was not in doubt. A broad smile spread slowly across his face, and his eyes lit up with pleased surprise.
Seeing no help for it, Olivia parted the curtains and opened the door.
‘‘Hello, Lamar,’’ she said without enthusiasm.
‘‘Well, as I live and breathe, Olivia Chenier,’’ he said. His gaze ran over her. Knowing herself to be looking less than her best, Olivia’s expression soured as he glanced up to meet her eyes. ‘‘Still lookin’ babe-alicious as ever, I see.’’
For Olivia, his audaciousness had once been part of his charm. What she had liked best about him, though, besides his handsome looks, was the aura of the forbidden that had clung to him. Years ago, when she’d snuck out to be with him, she had felt that she was being very, very bad.
And, to the teenager she had been, that had been good.
‘‘Thanks for bringing the suitcases,’’ she said, stepping onto the wooden planks of the veranda and reaching down to pick them up. Even so early in the morning, it was hot out, although the humidity level was not as bad as it would be later. The distinctive sweet smell of LaAngelle Plantation, composed of magnolia and honeysuckle and roses and a hundred other plants and flowers, hit her nostrils, and she breathed it in deeply. In the yard below, a pair of drab brown peahens and a gloriously colored peacock scratched in the thick green carpet of grass for sustenance. The birds would delight Sara, who loved all animals, Olivia thought. She could hardly wait to show them, and everything else about her old home, to her daughter. Sara was going to love it here.
‘‘No problem.’’ Lamar’s gaze ran over Olivia again as his hands beat hers to the handles and he hoisted the bags in the teeth of her attempt to pick them up. ‘‘Nobody told me these belonged to you. I would have been here earlier if I’d known. Like the middle of last night.’’
A wide grin still split his face as he brushed past her to carry the bags inside. The grin spoke of remembered intimacy and a continued assumption of familiarity. Olivia didn’t like what it implied, but there was nothing wrong with her memory, either, and she realized that she had well and truly earned the expression on his face.
Lamar glanced back at her over his shoulder. ‘‘Where do you want me to put these?’’
‘‘Right there is fine,’’ Olivia said, following him back into the kitchen and pointedly leaving the door open behind her. Lamar set the suitcases down on the brick pavers near the table and turned to face her, thrusting his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.
‘‘You here for a visit?’’
Crossing her arms over her chest, Olivia nodded without speaking. She meant to do nothing to encourage him. Bad boys didn’t do it for her any longer. She had grown up and wised up.
‘‘Been a long time, hasn’t it?’’
‘‘Yep.’’
‘‘Planning to stay for a while?’’
‘‘A week, probably.’’
‘‘If you want to go out . . .’’
‘‘I doubt I’ll have time,’’ Olivia said pleasantly. ‘‘My daughter’s with me, and—’’
‘‘Got a daughter, do you? Left hubby at home?’’
‘‘I’m divorced.’’
That nugget of news seemed to amuse him. Cocking his head to one side and rocking back on his heels— Olivia wasn’t surprised to observe he wore cowboy boots—Lamar grinned at her again. ‘‘Everybody in town knew that rodeo rider you dumped me for was a bad bet. Except you, I guess.’’
‘‘I guess. And, anyway, I didn’t dump you. We were never—’’
‘‘Hello, Lamar.’’ The unexpected greeting made both of them glance around. Seth had entered the kitchen through the open French door, where he had paused for an instant, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the difference in the light. Taller, leaner, and less obviously handsome than Lamar, he was also, on this occasion, unshaven, bleary-eyed, and frowning. He still wore the navy sport coat, T-shirt, and khakis he’d had on the night before. Obviously he had spent the night out, and Olivia’s thoughts immediately flew to Mallory.
‘‘Mornin’, Seth.’’ The grin with which Lamar had teased her vanished from his face as if by magic. He stood straighter, his hands no longer in his pockets, his attitude respectful, as Seth continued across the kitchen. Although most of the younger generation of townsfolk did not address the Archers by honorifics such as Mister Seth and Miss Olivia like the older ones did, the inbred deference was there in Lamar’s demeanor. ‘‘I just came by to drop off some suitcases.’’
Having reached the counter and stopped, Seth looked pointedly at the bags sitting on the floor at Lamar’s feet. Then he reached into his back pocket and withdrew his wallet. ‘‘How much do we owe you?’’
Olivia hadn’t considered that they owed Lamar money for fetching the bags. Of course, payment was in order: He hadn’t done it for free. Remembering the scant state of her own funds, she was suddenly glad that Seth had appeared.
‘‘Ten dollars should about catch it.’’
Seth opened his wallet and extracted a bill, which he held out to Lamar. ‘‘Thanks,’’ he said. It was obvious dismissal.
‘‘Anytime.’’ Lamar accepted the money and his fate with good grace. He turned to leave, casting a humorous glance and a crooked smile at Olivia where Seth couldn’t see. ‘‘Good to see you, Olivia.’’
‘‘You, too, Lamar.’’
With a wave for both her and Seth, Lamar exited, closing the door behind him. Seth looked at her then, his eyebrows lifting questioningly.
‘‘Entertaining already?’’ he asked, heading toward the coffeemaker. The rich, heady aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the air. Just the smell of it went a long way toward banishing Olivia’s headache.
‘‘Not at all. I just happened to be in the kitchen making coffee when Lamar dropped off the suitcases.’’ She fought hard to keep her voice from sounding defensive.
‘‘I’m sure you’ll be glad to get your clothes.’’ As he opened the cabinet where the cups were kept, his gaze ran dispassionately over her pink bathrobe and bare feet.
Although there was nothing pointed about either his words or tone, Olivia had warred with Seth often enough in the past to know when he was verbally jabbing at her.
She gritted her teeth, but decided to take the high road. ‘‘Yes, I will,’’ she agreed sweetly.
Pouring coffee into a cup, he leaned one hip against the counter to drink it and looked at her consideringly over the cup’s rim.
‘‘If you’re interested, it looks like Big John’s going to pull through. They said he’s stable this morning.’’
That got to her, as it was undoubtedly meant to do. Still standing beside the table, with one hand resting on its scarred surface, she met his gaze with sparks in her eyes. ‘‘What do you mean, if I’m interested? Of course I’m interested. I know it was my fault that he collapsed, but I couldn’t help it! How was I to know he would react to seeing me that way? And he’s my grandfather— at least, I always thought of him as my grandfather—just like he’s yours.’’
Seth made a derisive sound and swallowed some more coffee. ‘‘If you hadn’t stayed away for nine years, having you pop up like that might not have been such a shock to him. To everyone.’’
Olivia’s hands clenched by her sides at the unfairness of that. ‘‘Aunt Callie invited Sara and me to come for a visit. She knew we were coming. Ask her. If you and Big John weren’t so gall-darned bullheaded, she probably would have told you we were coming in advance, instead of planning to spring it on you when it was too late for you to object. Anyway, for years now you—you all—have known where I live. You could have come to see me anytime. Nobody did. All I got was an occasional card from Aunt Callie.’’ Certainly she had expected them—Seth, to be specific—to come after her when she’d run off with Newall. Blissfu
lly in love with her new husband, she had been relieved at first when no one had. Only after Sara was born and her marriage went bad and she was left to pick up the pieces of her life did she realize how much their just letting her go had hurt.
But then, what had she expected, really? She had never truly been an Archer, after all. Not by blood, and with this bunch blood was all that mattered. You were either kin, or you weren’t.
‘‘You were married. There wasn’t much point.’’ Seth took another swallow of coffee. ‘‘What God hath joined, let no man put asunder.’’
Olivia discovered that she hated him just as much as she always had.
‘‘Oh, shut up,’’ she said, glaring at him. Grabbing a suitcase with each hand, she stalked from the kitchen.
It infuriated her to realize that he was smiling a little as the door swung shut behind her.
By the time she was halfway up the stairs, Olivia could have kicked herself. She had responded to Seth exactly as she would have when she was a teenager and he was the older, wiser pseudocousin who thought he had the right to tell her what to do. In fact, she had said those same words to him so many times over the years that that was probably why they had risen so automatically to her lips.
The next time he baited her, she vowed, she would ignore him. If he hadn’t matured in nine years, she had.
Sara was still sleeping when Olivia entered the bedroom, and she realized that it was still very early. Sara slept like the dead most of the time, so Olivia did not fear waking her as she unpacked clothes for the two of them to wear that day. Stowing the suitcases under the bed—she would unpack later—and leaving Sara’s outfit for the day on the foot of the bed, she left the bedroom for the bathroom. She took a shower, washed her hair and blew it dry, put on makeup, and pulled on a pair of cut-off jeans, a lime-green T-shirt, and Keds before returning to check on Sara again. A glance at the alarm clock by the bed told her that it was eight fifteen. Sara still slept.
Stymied, Olivia headed back downstairs. Faint sounds from the kitchen told her that someone was there— perhaps Seth still, or maybe Martha. She certainly didn’t want to encounter Seth again so soon, and didn’t feel much like talking to anyone else, either. Trying to ignore the fact that her head still ached, and temper had cheated her out of her much-needed morning coffee, she went out the front door into the enveloping warmth of the day. Just in time to keep it from banging shut behind her, she caught the screen door and eased it closed. No need to alert whoever was in the kitchen to her presence.
For a moment Olivia stood beneath the shelter of the veranda, looking past the fluted columns and hanging ferns at the sun-drenched grounds. Not so much as a blade of grass seemed to have changed in nine years. Once a vast sugar plantation that had been reduced over time to forty acres of scrub woods and swamp and five acres of lawn, LaAngelle Plantation stretched out around her as far as the eye could see on three sides. On the fourth, past the bluff, she could see part of the lake, glimmering silver in the morning light. Deliberately she made herself look at it. It was no more or less than a body of water, with nothing inherently sinister or evil about it. Certainly no voices called to her from it. Any ghosts from the night before were either the product of her imagination, or had been burned away by the rising sun.
Crossing the veranda, Olivia headed down the wide stone steps, running a hand lightly over the hard surface of the wrought-iron rail. She stopped for a moment on the flagstone path that led to the driveway, glancing around, uncertain of where she wished to go. Birds chattered and called. Insects droned. In the distance she could just faintly hear the sound of some sort of farm machinery, like a tractor. The pair of giant magnolias that were the centerpiece of the lawn were as magnificent as she remembered them, with white waxy blossoms the size of dinner plates bursting through glossy green foliage. The sweet olive and jasmine near the gazebo were in bloom, as was the rose garden. Tendrils of pale yellow honeysuckle vine twined with the deeper yellow forsythia bushes that formed a hedge around the property. Closer at hand, crimson amaryllis was massed in glorious profusion in front of the neatly clipped thicket of dark green boxwoods that circled the house. The air was redolent with the scent of flowers; just breathing in was a pleasure.
Although the grounds were beautiful, the reminders of last night’s party were not, and they were everywhere. The Christmas lights were turned off, but they still hung from the eaves of the house and gazebo and clung to the bushes and trees. Festive the night before, this morning they made the property look unkempt, like a just-wakened woman who had gone to bed without washing off her makeup. At the far end of the lawn, a quartet of workmen labored. Two of them, toting black plastic garbage bags, were engaged in picking up trash, while the other two wielded rakes. Plastic cups and forks, napkins, the remnants of balloons, and other odds and ends littered the ground near Olivia’s feet, and she assumed it was as bad everywhere.
As she looked around, a peacock strolled into view from around the side of the house.
Leaving the path, Olivia walked across the grass toward the bird, watching with a smile as it lowered its head and grabbed something in its beak. As the object disappeared down a feathered throat to the accompaniment of enthusiastic head bobs, Olivia realized to her dismay that the peacock had just swallowed a cigarette butt with as much avidity as if it had been a bit of leftover cracker. With no obvious ill effects, the bird then continued on his dignified way. Behind him came the two peahens Olivia had seen earlier, still pecking busily at the grass, and a second peacock, strutting with his head up and his tail fully extended.
All iridescent greens and blues, he was a beautiful sight on a beautiful morning.
LaAngelle Plantation was just the same as it had always been, Olivia thought, as she rounded the side of the house and headed toward the backyard: a place that belonged more to the past than to the present. But on this morning, with the perfume of flowers in the air and her rebellious teenage years a wry memory, that seemed like a good thing rather than a bad one.
A movement of some sort on the very edge of her peripheral vision drew her attention, and Olivia glanced toward the house. A huge white Persian cat was walking delicately along the rail of the upper gallery, its tail waving plumelike through the air. One false step would send it plunging about twenty feet to the ground, but it kept on its way as serenely as if it walked on solid earth. Only at the last minute did Olivia see its goal: Chloe, still wearing her blue nightgown, her blond hair in two ponytails caught up by elastic bands at either ear, leaning over the railing at the far end of the upstairs gallery, something cupped in her hands. As Olivia watched, the child let go.
The object plummeted downward, glittering brilliantly in the sun as it fell, and landed in the sweet bush below with no more than a faint disturbance to the leaves.
Chloe straightened and saw Olivia at the same moment that Olivia glanced up at her again. Olivia was too surprised to call to the child, or even to wave, and Chloe did not speak, either. Shooting Olivia a baleful glance, Chloe snatched up the cat that had by now almost reached her, disappeared into the shadowy depths of the gallery and from there, presumably, into the house.
Curiosity piqued, Olivia moved to the sweet bush and peered in and beneath it. The delicate vanillalike aroma that gave the bush its name wafted around her. Its fragile white flowers and umbrella-shaped foliage concealed an inner hollow that, Olivia remembered from her own childhood, was an ideal hideaway. Stooping, pushing aside the fragrant canopy, and keeping a wary eye out for the bees and wasps that liked to drink from the blossoms, she ducked beneath the leaves and looked around. Almost instantly she spotted it: a bracelet. It dangled from a branch just a few inches off the ground.
That was what Chloe had dropped from the gallery. Olivia’s earlier perception of an object that glittered like fire in the sun resolved itself into this sparkling piece of jewelry. Disentangling the bracelet carefully, Olivia ducked out into the sunlight again, prize in hand. Straightening, she looked at it as it lay
across her palm.
It was a watch, not a bracelet. A delicate woman’s watch, with a braceletlike band made of linked diamonds, and a face encrusted with them. The numerals were indicated by tiny rubies. Olivia turned it over in her hand, wondering where Chloe had found something so obviously expensive, and why on earth she had chosen to drop it into a bush.
Made of platinum or white gold, the casing of the watch face felt cool and smooth beneath Olivia’s fingers as she smoothed them over its hexagon shape.
There was engraving on the back in delicate script. Olivia had to hold the watch closer to her eyes and tilt it into the sun so that she could read what was written there: Mallory Hodges.
CHAPTER 13
FROWNING, OLIVIA TUCKED THE WATCH INTO the front pocket of her cutoffs and continued on her way, pondering what to do. Obviously the watch had to be returned to its owner, but her every instinct shrank from describing the circumstances that had led her to discover it. Whether Chloe was difficult or not—and from every indication that was the only word to describe her—the child was just a child, after all, and was having a rough time.
Perhaps she could simply say that she had found it on the lawn?
Olivia walked along the pea-gravel path that led to the garçonnière, the small, two-story frame lodge at the edge of the property that had once housed the single, young adult males of the family, and, more recently, was used as a guest house. She paused at the perennial garden, stepping through the trellised archway that served as a garden gate, and spent a moment admiring the beauty within. The white bells of the yucca that had been trained to grow over the arch and around the fence served as a perfect frame for the profusion of colorful flowers that bloomed with abandon around the garden’s centerpiece, a five-foot-tall marble angel that looked as if it had been lifted, at some time in the distant past, from one of New Orleans’ raised cemeteries, or cities of the dead.
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