Elysian Fields
Page 31
The fact we were headed into Lakeview didn’t hit me until the car nosed onto Marconi Drive and sped north through City Park. “Where in the world are we going?”
She grinned and didn’t answer, turning left on Harrison and driving toward the Seventeenth Street Canal, whose levee breach had been the major culprit in the post-Katrina flooding of New Orleans.
The only place of interest in this neighborhood—and when she turned right on Bellaire Drive I knew it’s where we were headed—was my childhood home. I’d grown up with Gerry only a few blocks from the levee breach. After the flood, I’d had his ruined house gutted and the interior reframed, but nothing more. I couldn’t bear to do it.
“Euge, I don’t want to go to Gerry’s house. I really, really don’t.” Especially on Thanksgiving. It still hurt too much. Eventually, maybe my good memories would outweigh the horrific sights I’d seen here after Katrina, but not yet. If I closed my eyes, I could still smell the mold, visualize the jumble of Gerry’s belongings, feel the squish of inky sludge beneath my feet as I walked through.
Half the houses in Lakeview had been torn down after the Katrina flooding had left them unfixable, and empty lots took their places. Others had been rebuilt, higher and stronger. Quite a few, like Gerry’s house, were gutted and ready to be filled in like outlined photos in a coloring book. Empty shells.
Eugenie pulled in the driveway to the house on Bellaire— two stories with a balcony on the front of the second floor. All the original doors and windows had been blown out by floodwater, and the new panes still had stickers on them. The spray-painted X from the National Guard units searching house-to- house for bodies had long since disappeared thanks to new siding.
“Why are we here?” Was this some warped attempt to make me thankful that I had not one but two uninhabitable houses? Because it wasn’t working. I had my heart set on self- pity with snacks. “This is a bad idea.”
“You got your key?” She opened her car door, and had to walk around and open mine since my right arm was immobilized and my left was full of food. I struggled out, and she gave me a little shove toward the house. “I need to get something out of the trunk. Go on and let yourself in.”
“What is wrong with you? Did you spike your coffee this morning?” I glared at her a moment while she rummaged in her trunk. “Oh, good grief. Fine.”
Laying the tote bag with my cake carefully on the hood of the car, I forced myself toward the new front door that looked exactly like the one I’d come and gone from every day between ages seven and twenty-one. I should’ve gotten its replacement in a different color or style.
As I turned my key in the stiff new deadbolt, I heard her trunk lid slam, then her car door. By the time I turned around, she’d cranked the car and was backing out of the drive.
“Hey!” I hobbled back into the small front yard and watched her taillights disappear up Bellaire Drive. The bag with the andouille and doberge cake sat on the sidewalk.
Well, crap. Looked like I’d be spending Thanksgiving alone in a house full of ghosts and no TV. On the bright side, I had the cake and Rand had never been here, so he might have a harder time finding me.
I grabbed the bag and returned to the front door. The entry foyer hadn’t been tiled yet, and the staircase stretching upstairs was unfinished wood. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, waiting for the assault of mold or mildew, but I only smelled the clean, tart scent of freshly cut wood, sheetrock . . . and coffee. Definitely coffee.
Hanging a right off the foyer, I followed the scent down the short hallway into what had been Gerry’s family room. I clutched the wall with my good hand to keep from falling over in shock. Where the sludge-filled carpet had been, a thick rug covered the plywood subflooring, its dark jewel tones setting off the heavy leather sofa and chairs around it. Candles burned on coffee and end tables. A fire burned low in the fireplace, which had a new mantel.
“Welcome home, DJ.”
I whirled to find Alex behind me, holding two glasses of wine. “How . . . when . . . Eugenie?”
He smiled, and I realized it seemed like a lifetime since I’d seen that sexy crease that formed beside his mouth. “She was in on it. I’ve been working here this week—working and thinking.”
I set the bag on the counter in the kitchen that stretched just off the living room, noting the roughed-in countertops holding a microwave and mini- fridge and a bunch of bags from Rouse’s that smelled like turkey and stuffing. I ran my fingers along the plywood serving as makeshift counters, and blinked away tears. Alex had seen into my heart and knew what I needed more than I did myself.
I thought I needed cake. He knew I needed a home.
“Hey, no crying on a construction site.” Alex came in the kitchen and handed me the wine glass. “Did you see your new back doors?”
More tears threatened when I turned to see the French doors that opened onto the raised deck in back, where before there had been an old sliding glass contraption that wouldn’t lock. I’d tried to get Gerry to replace it for years. “How did you know?”
“Jake told me you mentioned it once. He’s been here helping me all week.” I must have looked shocked, because Alex shrugged. “He’s going to be okay, DJ. He’ll come over by transport a few days a week to take enforcer runs, but he’s going to stay in Barataria with Lafitte’s people for a while. The enforcers have okayed it, and I think it’s best.”
I watched a squirrel race across the backyard, the big, reinforced levee wall rising behind it. If Alex thought he’d get an argument from me, he was wrong. “Jean knows how to help him. I’m glad he’s staying there.”
“Do you mean that?” Dark brown eyes bored into mine. “No regrets?”
I smiled and watched the squirrel make another trip. “Sure, I have regrets. I regret he ever got turned garou. I regret I made things worse instead of helping him.” I turned to face Alex, because he needed to hear this once and for all. “I do not regret choosing you, even if you decide my life is too chaotic and screwed up.”
Because God knows it was.
He took the glass from me, and set it on the counter alongside his. I closed my eyes as his arms wrapped around me, pulling me close. I didn’t even care that my shoulder felt like a blowtorch had been set against it.
He rested his chin on top of my head. “We’ll figure it out.”
Sounded good to me. “Any ideas on how we do that? Because I have a few ways we could start.”
“Are you flirting with me?” He brushed a soft whisper of a kiss across my lips, and I winced as a mental ping zapped through my head from my non-husband.
“I am flirting,” I said, flipping up every mental barricade I knew how to construct. We would not be having a metaphysical threesome. “Is it working?”
It was.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Suzanne Johnson writes urban fantasy from Auburn, Alabama, on top of a career in educational publishing that has thus far spanned five states and six universities (including both Alabama and Auburn, which makes her bilingual). She grew up in Winfield, Alabama, halfway between the Bear Bryant Museum and Elvis’s birthplace, but was also a longtime resident of New Orleans, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football, cheap Mardi Gras trinkets, and fried gator on a stick. You can find Suzanne online at www.suzanne-johnson.com or on Twitter at @Suzanne_Johnson.