No, she wore this one more for the smile it gave her than any convenience or protection for her clothing. Made of little handkerchiefs sent by her grandson from his visits around the world, most of the squares had a verse from scripture to accompany the pretty picture and name of the location where Ezra purchased it.
Long after she laid the project aside, the girls had found the apron and insisted they complete it together. The lace and cotton concoction now sported twelve verses written in three different handwritings.
The leftover hankies were sprayed with a dab of perfume from the bottle on her dresser. One resided with each member of the little band of women at 421 Riverside Avenue. She’d shown the girls how to dab the cologne just so to make the scent last. She’d even made a note to herself to buy each of the Comeaux ladies their own bottle of their specially chosen scent next Christmas.
Amanda slid between her and the journal to rest her head on Nell’s chest. While Chloe was bold and fearless, this one was a cuddler.
Nell kissed the top of her head and patted down a dark curl. “Now, about this drawing of yours. The last time I saw a picture of a kitty this beautiful was in a museum over in New Orleans. Came all the way from Italy, it did, and was over a hundred years old to boot.” She winked at Amanda. “Almost as old as I am.”
“It’s a bunny, Miss Nell, and her name’s Hoppy.”
Funny how the girl quickly corrected the species of the animal but easily accepted the fact that Nell could be nearing the century mark. In truth, come winter she’d be seventy-six, but she was thankful the Lord had seen fit to keep her strong and fit. Well, except for that old flu bug. Still, nothing but a twinge now and then to remind her she was no longer in her prime.
She handed Amanda the journal. “Hoppy. Well now, that’s a fine name for a bunny. Would you mind writing it up there over his head?”
“Her head,” Amanda corrected. “Hoppy’s a girl. Want me to sign my name, too?”
“How did you guess?”
“Because you always ask me to sign my name after I draw you a picture.”
She touched the girl’s tiny nose. “Do I now?”
“Yes, only this time I forgot.”
Nell caught sight of Chloe just before the dear girl settled with a flop beside Amanda in her lap. Pain shot from her toenails to her teeth and back again, but Nell refused to react. She’d smart a bit before bedtime, but she’d never admit it to anyone.
Right now Nell preferred nothing more than to sit in the afternoon sun with her girls. She’d worry about her arthritis when she found the time.
Their mother looked as if she were about to scold them for being less than gentle with their guest. She gave Sophie a wink, then gathered the girls into her arms. “The only thing better than one baby in this old lap is two of them, especially on a fine spring day. I can’t recall when I’ve felt so blessed. If Ezra were here, my family would be complete.”
“Miss Nell,” Sophie said, “you’re the one doing the blessing.”
“Oh, pshaw. This old lady’s nothing but a bother.” She tickled Amanda’s tummy, then reached for Chloe to do the same. The girls giggled for a moment; then Chloe held her hands out toward the journal. “My turn.”
Sweet Amanda gave up the book to her sister without complaint. What a pleasant child. As a youngster, Ezra had been more like Chloe, daring and bold, some days overstepping the bounds of propriety and other days racing past them at high speed. On occasion, however, he’d showed his softer side.
Sadly she was probably the only person who’d ever seen it.
“See—I drew a picture, too.” Chloe turned the pages, and, sure enough, a pink elephant waited to be found a few weeks down the road.
“Oh, that is absolutely the most gorgeous elephant I’ve ever seen. Looks just like the one I saw in New Orleans once. Well,” she said slowly, “maybe not exactly.”
“ ’Cause it wasn’t pink?” Amanda asked.
“That’s right,” Nell said. “It was purple.” When the girls howled with laughter, she added a quick, “You don’t believe me?”
“No,” they said in unison.
“Well now, that’s a fine thing to say. Until I met you two, I’d never heard of a pink Christmas tree, but I believed you when you said they existed.”
She smiled at the memory of last Christmas’s surprise, an overlarge holiday gift with limbs and needles painted a shocking pink by one of her former boarders over at Latagnier Auto Works. If only she’d specified a smaller tree. Something that would have fit through the door without cracking the glass.
Dear Alonzo had gone all out, as was his nature. He fetched the biggest Christmas tree he could find to the paint shop where his men made short order of turning it into the exact color of the twins’ bedroom wall.
Somehow she’d managed to get the tree inside and covered with ribbons and bows before the girls came home from school. What a treat it was to see their faces. She thought of them every time she looked at the crack she’d made in the stained glass over the door.
If one looked carefully, traces of the pink wood chips were still left on the front lawn after the tree had been trimmed down to size.
Well, no matter. The Lord never made her perfect or a carpenter. She was thankful He was both.
“So,” Nell said, “if Christmas trees can be pink, why can’t elephants be purple?”
A fit of giggles later, the girls were quizzing Nell about the elephants and the range of colors of the animals she saw. Amanda ran in for construction paper while Chloe got the markers. In short order they began to crank out elephants in all sorts of sizes and colors.
“What was the name of the place where you saw it, Miss Nell?” Amanda asked.
“Oh, dear, that was so long ago. Honestly I don’t remember.” She paused. “You know who would remember though?”
Chloe looked up from her attempt at writing her last name in cursive handwriting. “Who?”
“My grandson, Ezra. I know I’ve told him that story many times. He probably knows the details better than I.”
“Who’s Ezra?” Amanda asked.
Nell looked past the twins to Sophie, who now toiled over a patch of weeds in the easternmost corner of her garden. “Someone very special,” Nell said. “Special like your mama.” She returned her attention to the precious little ones. “I want you girls to promise me something. Can you do that?”
When they finished nodding, she continued. “I’m going to leave this book here with you. I want you to fill it with pretty pictures.”
Again they nodded.
“That’s wonderful. Now when it’s finished—that is, when all the pages are decorated nice and pretty—I want you to keep it safe until my grandson comes, and then I want you to give it to my grandson as a gift from the three of us. The only thing I ask is that you don’t take out anything I’ve already put in and you don’t color over the pages I’ve written on. Can you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they said in unison.
Contentment. Nothing but the Lord and little children could offer it. Leastwise, it seemed so the older she got.
Sophie looked up to swipe at her forehead with the back of her hand. Their gazes met, and Nell offered her a smile. “How about I go fetch us some iced tea in those fancy glasses I keep in the top cabinet? I bet I’ve got some fresh cookies in the apple jar, too.”
Her neighbor shook her head. “Please don’t go to any trouble, Miss Nell. You’re just getting over the flu. Why don’t I run in and grab us a snack so you don’t have to get up?”
“That pesky flu bug is last week’s news, young lady. I’m fit as a fiddle.” She looked down at the girls. “Unless I forget, I’ll fetch my bottle of perfume, too.”
“I’ll go get my handkerchief, Miss Nell. I keep it under my pillow,” Chloe said.
Amanda scrambled up to follow her sister inside. “Me, too,” she called.
“Miss Nell, I don’t think I have ever seen two girls as excited about handkerchiefs
before.” Sophie chuckled before going back to her weeding.
“Well, in my day, handkerchiefs were essential. I’m pleased they’ve taken to my custom of spraying a bit of fragrance—”
“To make it last,” Sophie said along with Nell. “Miss Nell, will I embarrass you too much if I tell you once again what a blessing you are to us? Why, if it weren’t for you, the girls and I wouldn’t have a decent roof over our heads. Come to think of it, there probably would be no ‘girls and I.’ ”
“Oh, honey, I’m the blessed one. Now let me go get the tea and those cookies before my old mind forgets what I promised to do.”
Both hands gripping the rails, Nell rose. Ignoring the black spots dancing before her eyes, she dusted off the seat of her double-knit slacks and waited for the silly vertigo to ease up. While the flu bug had bitten her hard, the lingering symptoms were proving even more troublesome.
Judson Villare—grandson of Doc Villare who delivered her and saw her through the ailments of childhood—was a good Christian man and a fine cardiologist, even if he did start out his career as her paperboy, but she had to wonder if he’d misread her file. The dear fellow seemed to think her ticker was on the blink.
Of course she’d tell no one about this. They’d just make a fuss.
No sense in raising a ruckus about something that couldn’t be helped. What with Sophie being a nurse and all, well, it just seemed the sweet girl worried too much about her anyway. Far too much to think of her own self. No, she was the one who needed someone to worry after her. A husband, perhaps.
Nell paused a second to smile at the thought of Sophie’s little family with a man added to it. Oh, I like that idea.
She chuckled as she made her way to the gate with care, then walked around to open her back door when the pesky pain hit her again. It subsided as quickly as it arrived, then returned with full force.
Nell slid inside on legs she could barely feel. The screen door slammed. The pain worsened.
Reaching for the cabinet where she kept her pills, Nell gasped. Her hand landed on the Bible sitting on the counter.
“This, too, shall pass,” she managed as she cradled the precious book to her aching chest. “And if it doesn’t, I’ll just call Judson. He’ll know what to do. I don’t have time to feel bad.”
But this time it didn’t pass. Instead the pain burned white hot, until the brilliant light and soft, insistent voice chased it away.
Five
March 9
Sophie Comeaux hid her tears behind Nell Landry’s white cotton handkerchief. Holding the soft fabric to her nose, she closed her eyes and inhaled the faint scent of perfume that even the washing machine had failed to remove. Without looking, she knew an image of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore waited in a fold of the fabric.
She opened her eyes and smiled, remembering the woman instead of mourning the loss as she stepped out of the little church into the bright afternoon light. Blinking to adjust to the change from the dark interior of the church, she ran smack into a wall covered in the navy fabric of a marine’s dress uniform.
“Excuse me, miss,” he said softly, almost absently, as if he’d been the cause of the collision.
The voice rumbled through her mind and set it racing. She peered up into a pair of coffee-colored eyes fringed with thick lashes, soft eyes set in a hard face.
A soldier’s face.
The thought shook free a loose memory, and for a moment the world froze. An icy film, tiny cracks in a frosty glass, began to appear as slowly, painfully, a memory unfolded.
Then Nell’s words came to her. “Remember it’s in His hands.” Sophie managed a weak smile as the memory fell away and a warmth flooded her heart.
“You dropped this,” the marine said, although his square jaw barely moved.
Sophie jammed her mind into the present and merely shivered, rather than allow the violent trembling to overtake her. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled and pressed past him to stumble toward her car.
“Ma’am?”
Standing tall and stiff, the soldier wore his rank with an air of loss. From his blue black hair to the shine on his medals, he looked as if he’d not intended to be where he stood. It made no sense; yet it made perfect sense.
Sophie looked down at the object in the marine’s hand. Nell’s handkerchief. Somehow it must have fallen. Pure white with only a smudge of mascara, the fabric stood in stark contrast to the deep tan of his fingers and the crisp navy of his uniform.
“Here.” He thrust the lace-trimmed cloth toward her, his gaze set on the handkerchief rather than on her. “My grandmother used to carry these,” he said softly. “Always smelled like perfume.”
“To make it last,” she whispered.
“Yes.” Their gazes met and locked. “Here,” he repeated.
“I, um, thank you,” she stammered. Sophie reached for the precious memory of Nell resting in the marine’s palm, and their fingers touched. For a split second an arc of electricity stung her, and she snatched the cloth back.
“Excuse me,” she said as she tucked the handkerchief in her purse and fumbled for the keys to give her fingers something to do and her mind something to think about. By the time she found them and let herself inside the car, the marine had gone.
“Strange,” she said under her breath as she eased the car into traffic and headed home. “He seemed so familiar.”
Six
September 7
“Sophie, are you sitting down?”
Sophie Comeaux let off the brake, allowing the minivan to move into the next available spot in front of Latagnier Elementary School. “It’s three thirty on a Monday afternoon, Bree. Of course I’m sitting. I’m in the van at the girls’ school. Why?”
“Well, you know how I was supposed to go by your house and turn off the sprinkler this morning?”
Her cell phone in one hand, she picked at a piece of lint decorating the knee of her scrubs with her other. “Bree Jackson, don’t tell me you’re just now turning it off. My yard must look like Lake Pontchartrain.”
“Hey, I forgot a file and had to run by the office before I went to court, so that threw me off. Besides, you’re the one who left for the hospital before you finished watering the lawn again. I’m just the good neighbor and best friend who takes care of her favorite nurse.”
“And your favorite nurse is very thankful to her favorite attorney and neighbor.” The bell sounded, signaling the end of the school day and the last minutes of silence in Sophie’s van. “So my yard doesn’t look like Lake Pontchartrain?”
“Actually it kind of does, but that’s not the point. Is there anything you meant to tell me? Maybe something important?”
The school’s doors blew open, and a wave of students burst forth. Somehow they all fell into orderly lines for bus riders and car riders. She recognized a few of the students as friends of Chloe and Amanda, but so far the girls had not emerged.
Strange, the twins were usually the first ones out the door.
“Soph, stick with me here. This is important.”
She shifted her attention from “mom mode” to “friend mode” for a moment. “What was that, Bree? You know I was only teasing about the yard. I guess I’ll have to spring for one of those timers. I hate to see Miss Nell’s trumpet vines drooping.”
“Forget the yard a minute, would you? It’s just that if you were planning something as big as this, one would think you would have called your best friend before you. . .”
The girls emerged into the afternoon sun and raced for the van. Chloe won, beating Amanda by a hairbreadth to take the front seat. With both chattering at once, it was hard to hear Bree.
“Hang on a sec. Let me get the girls settled.” She set the phone in her lap and turned to watch the girls slip into their seat belts.
“Slowly now,” she said. “One of you tell me what’s so exciting.”
Chloe sighed. “You tell it, Amanda.”
Amanda echoed her sister’s sigh. “Chloe and me—”
“Chloe and I,” Sophie corrected.
The younger twin nodded. “Chloe and I won this.” Amanda thrust a large brown envelope with the Latagnier Elementary logo toward Sophie.
“On account of we’re citizens of the month, we get free ice cream,” Chloe said. “Miss Robbins said she couldn’t pick between us so we both got to be it.”
Good thing the teacher’s not around at bedtime. She might change her mind.
“That’s wonderful, girls.” Sophie removed the contents of the envelope. Two certificates for free junior-sized cones at the Dip Cone landed atop a pair of official-looking documents proclaiming her daughters as model citizens of Latagnier Elementary. “Oh, we’ll have to frame these.”
“Helloo.” The muffled word came from her phone.
Bree.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Sophie said. “I’m going to have to call you back. Seems as though the girls have been named citizens of the month for September. Looks like a celebration is in order.”
“Where’s the party? Girl, you and I have to talk, and I mean like right now.”
“Sounds serious.” She cast a glance at the girls to be sure they’d settled properly into their seats, then returned her attention to Bree. “I’m about to pull out of the car line. How about you meet us at the Dip Cone in fifteen minutes?”
The mention of Latagnier’s favorite ice cream shop caused a squeal of delight and another round of conversation that lasted until the van began to move. After that, the girls were too busy waving to their friends and shouting through the open windows to speak to their boring mom.
Funny how nice it felt to be thought of as a boring mom. It certainly hadn’t always been that way. But then the girls were a precious blessing who came along when she least expected and most needed them. She was hard-pressed to remember her life before Chloe and Amanda came to live with her.
And before they all came to live under the same roof as Nell Landry.
The thought of Nell, so recently gone home to be with the Lord, sent a shaft of fresh pain coursing through her. Only her assurance that someday she would be reunited with the dear lady kept Sophie from feeling completely lost.
Dwelling Place Page 3
