Flourish: The Story of Anne Fontaine (A La Famille Lagniappe)

by Sarah M. Cradit

  Nicolas. Her brother.

  Memories from the prior hour were flashing through Anne's head like a motion picture on fast forward. Their “chance” meeting in the bar. The insinuating way he placed his hands on her outer thigh as he leaned in to whisper in her ear, when speaking out loud would have sufficed. His luring of her into the expensive car, teasing her, nearly….taking her. Her brother.

  There was no chance in their meeting. This was some kind of sick game, planned long before she sat down in the bar to gather her thoughts and courage. How could such a sick jerk be related to Adrienne? To her?

  Was Adrienne in on it?

  Spots floated before Anne’s eyes and that familiar sparkling heat rose first from her belly and then up through her chest, neck, and face. She was losing control. It was happening again.

  Anne clawed at the door, now frantic. Nicolas stared at her with a mixture of bafflement and burgeoning fear. “Stop the car,” he commanded the driver, first barely above a whisper. “Stop the fucking car!” he bellowed a second time, his hoarse voice betraying his distress.

  The town car screeched to a dusty halt. Anne nearly fell out of the vehicle, gripping the door handle as she slid onto the gravel surface. Her breaths were so rapid, and jagged, she feared her heart might actually explode. Nicolas was standing a few feet away, and she vaguely saw him signal the driver to leave. She gasped as she rose to her knees, crawling, no direction in mind except away from her deceitful brother.

  The car crunched down the driveway. Anne swallowed a fresh scream of panic as she realized her escape was gone.

  Nicolas said nothing. He seemed content to watch her flailing around in the sharp rocks, oblivious to her increasing agony. She hated him in that moment, more than she had ever hated anyone or anything in all her life. He had toyed with her…mocked her…and intended to humiliate her beyond comprehension.

  Anne rose to her feet, unconcerned about the blood trickling down her legs, or dust clouding her eyes. The balled fists at her side opened into quavering, stretched palms, as she raised her bloody arms skyward.

  A low, raw animalistic roar rose through Anne’s tiny body in a shuddering ripple, and when it at last escaped her lips, it seemed as if the entire world trembled.

  7- Nicolas

  Nicolas watched Jane go from having a semi-interesting breakdown, to becoming a druid priestess. He was deeply regretting not abandoning this exercise at Lafitte's.

  He first heard, not saw, the leaves from the massive oak trees shimmy and shudder, bending to a wind that was nonexistent. They swayed inward the way they would in a summer storm, closing Nicolas and Jane off from the sunlight that had moments ago been beating down on them.

  “Would you stop screaming!” Nicolas demanded, not yet connecting the sudden shade of the trees with her cries. He only knew he could not hear his own thoughts over her thick, guttural moans, and there was too much around him to process.

  The trees suddenly stopped, seeming to actually fuse together into a dark green umbrella, closing them off from the world. Nicolas turned at the sound of more moving foliage to see the crepe myrtle branches twining outward and around the base of the oak trees, weaving a thick shell that blocked escape.

  This time, when he looked at Jane, what he saw caused him to stumble right into one of the leaf traps. Jane’s entire body shook with power, her hair blowing out in all directions, eyes glowing like flaming balls of cobalt. There was no doubt now that she was somehow doing this…somehow controlling the plant life.

  Nicolas had grown up in a family of witches and warlocks, but he had never seen anything like this. Abstract curiosity momentarily muted his confusion.

  Jane's roar rose higher until the pitch was so sharp Nicolas could hardly hear it with his ears; it became more of a visceral physical sensation. He cringed, covering his face as glass exploded out of the large bay windows flanking the left and right of Ophélie, arcing up and outward into a spray of shards.

  Nicolas wanted to reach out and try shaking some sense into Jane, but he was afraid to touch her. She was emanating a bright silvery light, and his surprisingly practical mind feared she would go supernova, taking him in flames along with her.

  A sizeable shadow slowly began moving over the top of the house. He followed the dark hulking mass as the faded gray roof tiles were replaced by shrubs of green, red, and yellow. The parterre garden. It was uprooting itself, crawling up and over the house.

  Nicolas' shock at this was supplanted by the sensation of something thin and sharp gripping his ankles, slicing into them. He looked down to see a vine twining and slithering up his shoe, around his ankle, and up his pant leg. Startled, he jerked his foot back, as drops of blood trickled down into the gravel.

  “Jane, enough!” he hollered, as he danced through the gravel, his quick pulling to and fro but actually doing little to stave off the attack. The vines had multiplied now and were suffocating his ribs, moving quickly toward his neck. “Stop!”

  Tears were streaking down the girl’s dirty face as she finally turned her attention toward a besieged Nicolas. The vines were now squeezing his neck, and he was rapidly losing air. “Please,” he gasped.

  Something startled her, and she closed her mouth. Her hair dropped slowly down, and her hands returned to rest at her side. The obvious horror on her face would have been a relief to Nicolas had he been conscious to see it.

  He awoke moments later to Jane tearing the vines from him in desperate, tugging motions. She was sobbing, mumbling unintelligible apologies under her breath.

  “What the fuck, Jane,” Nicolas croaked. His throat was on fire; head pounding. He was beyond the point of feeling ashamed for his fear. The assault had been a terror he would remember for many years.

  “Anne,” she said through blubbering gasps. “My name is Anne.”

  “I don’t give a single fuck what your name is. You just attacked me with my own plants, you crazy bitch!”

  But all of Anne’s ferocity from the botany storm had completely vanished, and she was now simply a scared little girl. Nicolas watched in further amazement as the vines snaked back to their original spots, and the live oaks bent back to their standing position. The parterre was nowhere to be seen, presumably back into its proper ornate pattern behind the house.

  It was as if none of it had ever happened.

  8- Anne

  Anne had been angry, but not meant for any of this to happen. That was the problem. It was why she had come here to begin with, to understand not only what it was, but how to control it. If she couldn’t learn to stop her emotions from taking the lead, she would kill someone again. She couldn’t live with that, not even if that person was a conning slime ball like Nicolas.

  Nicolas was reaching for his phone, presumably to call for a rescue from her craziness. Anne reached out to stop him, and he jumped, looking at her arm with horror that burned her heart. He thinks I’m a freak of nature.

  “I know you,” she began, searching for the right words. “Nicolas, I know you. I know who you are.”

  His eyes widened, but he did not seem surprised so much as annoyed. “Good for you. You want a fucking gold star? You get slightly more credit than all the other drooling idiots who didn’t do their research.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never researched you–“

  “I have to say, that shit with the trees was different. That’s a first for me. Most want Adrienne’s money bad enough to kill me with a plant, but you’re the first bitch actually capable of it.”

  Anne hadn’t a single clue what he was going on about, but her mind caught on the remark about Adrienne’s money. “Adrienne’s money? No, I don’t want that. I just want to talk to her.”

  Nicolas' laugh was a dark, acerbic one. The color was starting to return to his face, and he seemed more and more like the man she met in the bar again. “Right. Talk to her. Anne, or whatever the hell name you plan to try on next, I’m going to go against my better judgment and offer you money
to go away!”

  Anne shook her head. “I don’t want your money either! I just want to talk to my sister!”

  Nicolas laughed again. He stood, dusting off his expensive jeans, and started toward the house. “It’s charming that you would stick to your story with such spirited passion, but the jig is up. So, follow me in and I’ll write you a check. Then I can try to forget this crazy shit ever happened. First, I need another damn drink.”

  Anne could think of nothing in response, so she followed him into Ophélie.

  9- Nicolas

  Once Nicolas was safely inside the doors of his home, he released the deep breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

  On the bright side, he was no longer thinking of fucking her.

  When she entered behind him, looking annoyingly timid in contrast to the pagan scene outside, it occurred to him that his gun was upstairs. Even if it was in his hand, though, he didn’t know it would make much of a difference. He’d never fired it before.

  Nicolas moved into the study and went straight for the bar, first pouring himself a neat Hennessy as promised. He filled a second shot glass, and nodded at her in offering. Anne shook her head at first, but then stepped forward and took it.

  “So, ten thousand seem fair, all things considered?” he asked, gesturing toward the purple marks around his neck that would not be going away anytime soon.

  “I said I didn’t want your money,” Anne replied, after a deep swallow. This time, she didn’t flinch.

  Nicolas smiled thinly. “Twenty then.”

  “Nicolas,” Anne said evenly, in a voice far more calm than her pale face, “I’m here because my story is true. Adrienne is my sister. Which I guess makes you my brother.”

  “Look–“

  “Stop!” she cried, and as she did the potted palm in the corner groaned.

  Shit, not this again.

  Nicolas put his hands up in surrender. The palm relaxed, and Anne continued. “I don’t know what the other idiots came here saying, but my story is true. Adrienne is my sister because Charles Deschanel is my father. Was my father.”

  “Not that I would doubt the man had his share of bastards, but what makes you believe this is actually true?” Though Nicolas was still deeply skeptical of her intentions, it seemed clear that she would accept nothing less than a discussion of the matter.

  “Until he died, he sent monthly checks to my mother to pay for our expenses,” Anne replied. “Something I didn’t know about until just before she died. I never saw a dime of that money growing up, for what it’s worth, but I was happy to split it with my brother Jesse–“

  “Jesse, did you say?” Things were coming together for Nicolas, slowly. “Jesse Fontaine?”

  “Yes, my brother. Well, my other brother.” She took a deep breath before gesturing a dismissive wave and continuing, “I only took out enough to pay for this trip. I intend to give the rest away to charity.”

  “So you’re Anne Fontaine?” When Adrienne returned home, Nicolas had not listened to her story with the attention it probably deserved. He had been so grateful to have her home, safe, the rest didn’t matter.

  But some of it was coming back as he listened to Anne struggle to spit out the details of her story. When Adrienne was living in Abbeville, she had fallen in love with a Jesse Fontaine, whose mother, Angelique, had housed and cared for Adrienne. If there was another person in the home, as this Anne claimed, he could not recall. He only remembered that the situation ended with Jesse’s heart broken, and Angelique in a boiling rage over Adrienne’s defection of her son.

  This Deschanel bastard story was new. It would have been easy enough for Anne to research the story of the Fontaines and cleverly insert herself into it. Yet…

  She had Adrienne’s blue eyes. Giselle’s petite nose. Their father’s proud chin. And Nicolas’ full mouth.

  How had he not noticed this before?

  The revelation stole the breath from his chest. He was now quite certain he had fooled around with his sister.

  10- Anne

  Watching the expressions dance over his handsome face, Anne deduced Nicolas was slowly processing the reality of all that had happened. Hopefully he would come to the same conclusion she had out in the driveway.

  Though she was horrified (and trying desperately to push memories of the activities in the car from her mind), there was also an unusual calm in knowing she was in the presence of family. Her other family.

  “This isn’t how I intended to meet you,” Anne said, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

  Nicolas cleared his throat. “Indeed,” he replied, with a lift of one eyebrow. “I’d just as soon forget everything that happened up to this point, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “It’s certainly not a story I’ll be telling my grandchildren,” she agreed, and, to her surprise, they both laughed.

  “Anne,” Nicolas said thoughtfully, clearly still processing. “I see my father didn’t insist on giving you a fine French name, like our sisters.”

  The comment wasn’t meant to sting, but it did. Anne had been named for no one. When she once asked her mother if it had any special meaning, the older woman had replied, “Anne’s the kind of name that should keep ya out of trouble.”

  “Yours isn’t exactly French,” Anne pointed out.

  “Russian,” he conceded with a chuckle. “My mother thought it had a certain royal ring to it. I guess she missed the point in history where the tsars were overthrown.”

  Anne could only smile at him, wishing she had received a proper education so she knew what Nicolas was speaking of. “Your mother wasn’t the same as Adrienne’s, then?”

  “You might be the last person in New Orleans to come to that realization,” he said genially. “My father- our father- as I am sure you have deduced by now, loved the ladies. He was not in the habit of denying himself anything that he loved.”

  Despite the stinging nature of Nicolas’ comment, Anne warmed at his using the words our father. Minutes ago, she had tried to kill Nicolas in his own yard. Now, they were embarking on an uneasy friendship.

  “Tell me more about him,” Anne boldly demanded.

  “He was controlling and liked to fuck,” Nicolas said crudely. “Not much else to know.”

  Anne chided herself for blushing at his language. She was no prude, but her mother’s influence was still powerfully strong. “Those are generalizations. What was he like day to day?”

  Nicolas frowned, and went to pour himself another drink. “I wouldn’t know,” he finally offered, without turning.

  “He was your father,” Anne insisted.

  “He was your father too, and how well did that work out? He probably paid as much attention to you as he did me,” Nicolas replied. He turned and leaned up against the oak desk, sipping his cognac in what looked a lot like feigned nonchalance. “As you’ve probably gleaned, he was great at starting things. Not so great at finishing them.”

  "He must have done something right...” Anne gestured around at the lavish furnishings. Her words were a partially conscious plea for Nicolas to toss her one redeeming quality her father possessed.

  Nicolas' face softened, and he appeared thoughtful for a moment before finally deciding, "He taught me to be self-reliant. I knew I couldn't depend on him, so I learned to depend on myself."

  Anne did not know how to feel about this. Sadness, that her real father was a jerk? Relief she had not missed out on anything so great, after all?