Midnight Bayou

by Нора Робертс

  He courted her. It seemed a particularly appealing southern word to Declan, bringing images of moonlight and porch swings, tart lemonade and country dances.

  Throughout March, two things occupied his mind, his time and his plans. Lena and the house.

  He celebrated the clear results of his neurological tests by taking the day off to antique. Spring had jump-started the flowers and had pedestrians strolling in shirtsleeves. The carriage horses the tourists loved prancing with bright clip– clops of hooves on pavement.

  Summer would drop her heavy hand soon enough, and turn the air to molasses. The thought of it reminded him he had to have the air-conditioning upgraded, and maybe reconsider installing paddle fans in some of the rooms.

  He bought with his usual surrender to impulse, brightening the day of several shopkeepers before he stopped in a place called, simply, Yesterday.

  It was a hodgepodge of statuary, lamps, vintage accessories and jewelry, with three curtained booths on the side where patrons could buy a tarot card reading.

  It was the ring that caught his eye first. The blood-red ruby and ice-white diamond formed two halves of an interlocking heart on a platinum band.

  The minute he held it in his hand, he knew he wanted it for Lena. Maybe it was foolish to buy an engagement ring at this point in their relationship. And it was reckless to snatch at something before he'd looked at other options.

  But this was the one he wanted to put on her finger. And he decided if a man could buy a house on a whim, he could sure as hell buy a ring.

  "I'll take it.”

  "It's beautiful," said the shopkeeper.

  "She's a lucky woman.”

  "I'm working on convincing her of that.”

  "I have some lovely earrings that would complement this. Is ruby her birthstone?" the clerk asked as she showed him a pair of earrings with a dangle of ruby hearts and diamonds.

  "I don't know." But he'd gotten her birthday from Odette to make sure he didn't miss it. "July?”

  "Then it is. Lucky guess.”

  "No kidding." It gave him a little tingle as he looked back at the ring. Some things were meant, he told himself. He lifted one of the earrings. He could already see them on her-just as he imagined the clerk could see Impulse Buyer stamped on his forehead.

  He leaned on the counter and began to pit Yankee bargaining skills against southern horse-trading.

  He figured they'd come to fair terms when her smile was still in place but much less brilliant.

  "Will that be all for you today?”

  "Yeah, I've got to get going. I'm already-was He broke off when he glanced at his watch and saw it had stopped at twelve again.

  "You know, I could use a watch-a pocket watch. Mine's been acting up, and I'm doing a lot of carpentry right now. Probably smashed this one a few times on the job.”

  "I've got some wonderful old pocket watches and chains. They're so much more imaginative than the new ones.”

  She led him over to another display cabinet, pulled out a drawer and set it on the counter.

  "Watches like this tell more than time," she began. "They tell a story. This one-was "No." The edges of his vision dimmed like smoke. The chatter of voices from other customers faded into a hum. Part of him remained aware enough to know he was sliding away from himself. Even as he tried to stop it, to pull back, he watched his own hand reach out, pick up a gold watch and its loop of chain.

  The voice of the shopkeeper hovered around the rim of his consciousness. It was another voice that stabbed through, clear as a bell. Female, young, excited.

  For my husband, for his birthday. He broke his. I want to give him something special. This one is so handsome. Can you engrave it?

  And he already knew what he would find, exactly what he would find, before he turned the watch over to read the back.

  To Lucian from his Abby.

  To mark our time together.

  April 4, 1899

  "Mr. Fitzgerald? Mr. Fitzgerald, are you all right? Would you like some water? You're awfully pale.”

  "What?”

  "Can I get you some water? Would you like to sit down?”

  "No." He closed his hand tightly over the watch, but the sensation was already fading. "No, thanks. I'm okay. I'll take this, too.”

  More than a little shaken, he headed to Remy's office. He thought some time in the sensible business district, in the rational atmosphere of law, might help settle him down.

  More, he wanted a few minutes with a friend who might think he was crazy, but would love him anyway.

  "If you'd told me you were coming by," Remy began as he closed his office door, "I'd've scooted some stuff around so we could maybe have lunch.”

  "I didn't expect to head over this way today.”

  "Been shopping again." Remy nodded at the bag Declan carried. "Boy, aren't you having anything sent down from Boston?”

  "As a matter of fact, I've got some stuff coming down next week. Books mostly," Declan said as he wandered the office. His gaze skimmed over the law books, the fat files, the memos. All of it, the debris of the lawyer, seemed very distant to him now.

  "A few pieces I had in my study up there that should work in the library.”

  He picked up a brass paperweight, set it down. Slipped a hand into his pocket, jiggled change.

  "You going to tell me what's on your mind, or just pace until you dig a trench in my carpet?" With his suit jacket draped over the back of his chair, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled up, Remy kicked back in his chair and began to swish a bright green Slinky from palm to palm. "You're wearing me out.”

  "I've told you some of the things t've been happening.”

  "Got a firsthand account of them myself when I dropped in on Saturday. I'd still feel better if you told me that piano music we heard was from some radio you forgot to turn off.”

  "I guess I'll have to get a piano for the ladies' parlor, since that seems to be the spot. I like to play anyway, when I remember to sit down at one.”

  Remy shifted the Slinky to vertical, let the colorful spiral drip into itself. "So, you came by to tell me you're in the market for a piano?”

  "I bought a watch today.”

  "And you want to show it off? Want me to call in my assistant, some of the law clerks?”

  "It was Lucian Manet's watch.”

  "No shit?" The Slinky, sloshed into a whole, was tossed aside. "How do you know? Where'd you get ahold of it?”

  "Little shop in the Quarter." He drew out the box, set it on Remy's desk. "Take a look at it."

  Obliging, Remy took off the lid. "Elegant, if you want something you're going to have to dig out whenever you want to know what time it is. Heavy," he added when he picked it up.

  "You don't … feel anything from it?”

  "Feel anything?”

  "Look on the back, Remy.”

  "Names and dates are right," Remy concluded. "Hell of a stroke of luck, you stumbling on this.”

  "Luck? I don't think so. I go into a shop, buy Lena a ring, then-was "Whoa, whoa, whoa, just back up there a minute. A ring?”

  "I told you I was going to marry her." Declan shrugged. "I found the ring. It doesn't hurt to have it ahead of schedule. But that's not the point.”

  "Pretty damn big point, if you ask me. She know you're up to this?”

  "I told her how I felt, what I wanted. I'm letting her stew on it awhile. Can we get back to the watch?”

  "Et la! You always were mule-headed. Go ahead.”

  "I walk into that shop, decide I need a watch because mine's acting up. I decide I need a pocket watch even though I've never used one, never thought about using one. Then, I see that one, and I know. I know it was his, I know she bought it for him for his birthday. I know what it says on the back before I read it. Exactly what it says. Because I heard it in my head.”

  "I don't know what to think about that." Remy raked his fingers through his hair. "Isn't there something about how some people touch an object and get ima
ges from it? Its history or whatever?”

  "It's called psychometry. I've been doing a lot of reading up on paranormal science in my spare time," Declan explained when Remy frowned at him. "But I've never had anything like that happen before. Lena's got a theory. That this is a reincarnation deal.”

  Remy pursed his lips, set the watch back in its box. "I guess I'd be more inclined to put some stock in that rather than the psycho whatever.”

  "If it is, then the house, now this watch, are triggering past-life memories. Pretty weird.”

  "The whole thing's been weird since the get-go, cher.”

  "Here's the kicker. If I accept that I was Lucian, then I know Lena was Abigail. What I don't know is if I'm supposed to bring her into the house, to make things right from before. Or if I'm supposed to keep her away from it, and resolve the cycle that way.”

  In the Vieux Carre, where Lena prepared to leave her apartment for the bar and the afternoon shift, she opened the door and stepped into another cycle. An old one.

  "Baby!" Lilibeth Simone threw open her arms.

  Sluggish with shock, Lena was unable to move back before they wrapped around her like chains. Trapped, she was assaulted with impressions. Too much perfume that didn't quite cover the smell of stale smoke, the bony form honed down by years of hard living. Sticky layers of hairspray over curls dyed black as pitch.

  And through it all seeped her own dark dread.

  "I went downstairs first, and that handsome young man behind the bar said you were still up here. Why, I'm so glad to catch you!" The voice was a bright bubble that bounced and jerked in the air. "Let me just look at you! I swear, I swear you just get prettier every time I see you. Sweetie pie, I just have to sit down a minute and catch my breath. I'm just so excited to see you, I can hardly stand it.”

  She talked too fast, Lena noted, walked too fast on the spiked backless heels she'd paired with hot-pink and skin-tight capris. Those were warnings that she'd taken a hit of her current drug of choice very recently.

  "Look what you've done with this place!" Lilibeth dropped into a chair and dumped a floral suitcase beside her. She clapped her hands like a child so the plastic bracelets on her bony wrists banged together. "Why, I just love it. Suits you, baby. It sure does suit you.”

  She'd been pretty once, Lena thought as she studied her mother. She'd seen pictures. But all that prettiness had been carved down, diamond-hard, to canny.

  At forty-four, Lilibeth's face showed all the wear from too much liquor, too many pills and far too many men.

  Deliberately, Lena left the door open and remained standing just inside it. The sound of traffic, the scent of the bakery across the street, kept her grounded. "What do you want?”

  "Why, to see you, of course." Lilibeth let out a trill of laughter that scraped over Lena's brain like nails on a blackboard. "What a thing to ask. I got such a yen to see you, baby. I said to myself, My Lena's busy, but we've just got to have a little time together. So I got myself on a bus, and here I am. You just have to sit on down here, honey, and tell me everything you've been up to.”

  Disgust rolled through her, and Lena clung to it. Better disgust than the despair that crept along just under it. "I have work.”

  "Oh now, you can take a little while for your own mama. After all, you own the place. I'm just so proud of my baby, all grown up and running your own business.

  "Doing so well for yourself, too," she continued as she looked around the room.

  Lena caught the look, and the cunning in it. It tightened her chest, and stiffened her spine. "I told you the last time it was the last time. You won't get any money from me again.”

  "Why do you want to hurt my feelings like that?" Lilibeth widened her eyes as they filled with tears. "I just want to spend a few days with my little girl.”

  "I'm not a little girl," Lena said dully. "Yours in particular.”

  "Don't be mean, honey, after I've come all this way just to see you again. I know I haven't been a good mama to you, darling, but I'm going to make it up.”

  She jumped up, pressing a hand to her heart. The nail on the pinkie of her right hand was very long, slightly curved.

  Coke nail, Lena realized without shock or regret. Now she knew Lilibeth's current drug of choice.

  "I made some mistakes, I know I did, honey." Lilibeth's voice rang with apology, with regret. "You gotta understand, I was just so young when you came along.”

  "You've used that one up.”

  Lilibeth dug into her shiny red purse, pulled out a tattered tissue. "Why you wanna be so hard on your mama, baby girl? Why you wanna hurt my heart?”

  "You don't have a heart. And you're not my mama.”

  "Carried you inside me for nine months, didn't I?" Sorrow became temper as if a switch had been flicked. Lilibeth's voice rose, shrilled. "Nine months of being sick and fat and stuck back that damn bayou. Lay there in pain for hours giving birth to you.”

  "And left me within a week. An alley cat spends more time with its litter than you did with me.”

  "I was sixteen.”

  It was that, the sad fact of it, that had caused Lena to make room, time and time again, in her heart. Until her heart had simply calcified from the blows. "You haven't been sixteen in quite a while. Neither have I. I'm not going to waste time arguing about it. I have to work, and you have to go.”

  "But, baby." Panicked, Lilibeth shifted, back to the teary, choked voice. "You've got to give me a chance to make things right. I'm going to get me a job. I can work for you awhile, won't that be fun? I'll just stay here with you for a couple weeks till I find a place of my own. We'll have such a fine time. Just like girlfriends.”

  "No, you won't work for me, and no, you can't stay here. I made that mistake four years ago, and when I caught you turning tricks up here, you stole from me and took off again. I don't repeat myself.”

  "I was sick back then. I'm clean now, honey, I swear I am. You can't just turn me out." She held out her hands, palms up, in a gesture of pleading. "I'm flat broke. Billy, he took almost everything I had and ran off.”

  Lena could only assume Billy was the latest in the string of users, losers and abusers Lilibeth gravitated to. "You're high right now. Do you think I'm blind or just stupid?”

  "I'm not! I just took a little something because I was so nervous about seeing you. I knew you'd be mad at me." Tears spilled out, tracking bits of mascara down her cheeks. "You just have to give me a chance to make it up to you, Lena honey. I've changed.”

  "You've used that one up, too." Resigned, Lena walked to her purse, counted out fifty dollars. "Here." She stuffed it into Lilibeth's hand. "Take this, get on a bus and ride it as far away as this takes you. Don't come back here again. There's no place for you here.”

  "You can't be so mean to me, baby. You can't be so cold.”

  "Yes, I can." She picked up the suitcase, carried it over to the door and set it outside. "It's in the blood. Take the fifty. It's all you're going to get. And get out, or I swear to God, I'll throw you out.”

  Lilibeth marched to the door. The money had already disappeared into her purse. She stopped, gave Lena one last glittering look. "I never wanted you.”

  "Then we're even. I never wanted you, either." She shut the door in her mother's face. Then flipped the locks, sat down on the floor. And cried in absolute silence.

  She was certain she'd smoothed away the edges by the time she drove out to Manet Hall that evening. She'd nearly canceled the dinner plans she had with Declan, but that would have given her mother too much importance.

  That would have acknowledged the grief that had slashed its way into her heart despite the locks.

  She needed to put her mind to other things, and would never manage it if she stayed at home, brooding. She'd get through the night, hour by hour, and in the morning Lilibeth would be gone. From her life, and from her mind.

  The house looked different, she thought. Little changes that somehow made it seem more real. It was good to look at it, to
focus on it, and to contemplate that some things could change for the better. With the right vision.

  Over the years, she'd come to think of Manet Hall as a kind of dream place, burrowed in the past. More than that, she decided. Of the past.

  Now, with new unpainted boards checkerboarded with the old, peeling white, with some windows gleaming and others coated with dust, it was a work in progress.

  Declan was bringing it back to life.

  Though the front gardens were a bit straggled, a bit lost, there were flowers blooming. And he'd plopped a huge clay pot full of begonias on the gallery.

  He'd have planted them himself, she thought as she walked toward the door. He was a man who liked his hands in things. Especially when he considered them his.

  She wondered if he thought of her as one of his works in progress. Probably. She couldn't quite decide if the idea amused or irritated her.

  She strolled in. She figured that when two people had slept with each other a time or two, formalities were superfluous.

  She smelled the lilies first, the good, strong scent bringing the garden indoors. He'd bought a lovely old table, a couple of straight-back chairs and, she saw with a grin, an enormous ceramic cow for the foyer.

  Some would call it foolish, others charming, she supposed, but no one would call the entrance to the old hall sterile any longer.

  "Declan?" She wandered in and out of the parlor, noting the few new additions. She circled into the library and found herself crossing to the mantel and the heavy candlesticks standing on it.

  Why did her fingers tremble? she wondered as she reached out to touch. Why did those old tarnished candlesticks look so strangely familiar?

  There was nothing special about them, really. Expensive perhaps, but too ornate for her taste. And yet … her fingers brushed down each of them, lightly. And yet they looked right here, so right she could imagine the slim white tapers they were waiting to hold once more; she could smell the melting wax.

  Shivering, she stepped back and walked out of the room.

  She kept calling his name as she started up the stairs. When she reached the first landing, the hidden door in the wall opened. She and Declan choked back simultaneous screams.

  With a gasping laugh, she clutched at her heart and stared at him. He had cobwebs in his hair, dirt smeared on his cheek and hands. The flashlight he carried bobbled.