Dwelling Place

by Kathleen Y'Barbo

  “Let me see if I am hearing you correctly. You’re saying you want to nonsuit the case and lease the house to the Comeaux family?”

  “If nonsuit means we don’t go to court next month, that’s what I want.”

  “Will Sophie go for the lease idea?”

  Ezra shrugged. “Only one way to find out. We’re meeting tomorrow to work on the Founders’ Day thing. I’ll see what she says and let you know.”

  ❧

  October 14

  Sophie arranged the photo albums on the coffee table, then made a space for the tray of coffee and cookies. An arrangement of camellias from the front yard and two cloth napkins folded in the shape of a fan completed the tabletop setting.

  “Perfect.” She took two steps back and frowned. “Too perfect. He’ll think I’m an idiot.”

  Setting everything but the photo albums back on the tray, she returned to the kitchen. “If he wants coffee or something to eat, he can ask.” She placed the tray on the counter and reached for the apple cookie jar. “Wait—that’s not very nice. Maybe I can put the things on the kitchen table. Then he’ll know they’re there.”

  Sophie tossed the napkins onto the counter and groaned. “What’s wrong with me? I’m acting like this is some sort of date. We are just two people who happen to care about the same person and want to work together to honor that person.”

  Yeah, right. She set the cookie jar’s lid aside and began to pour the cookies back into it.

  The doorbell rang, and Sophie jumped. Cookies tumbled to the counter, and crumbs littered the tray and decorated the bottoms of the coffee cups. Great.

  Sophie snagged the dishrag and mopped the crumbs into the tray, then set it inside the oven. “Coming,” she called as the doorbell rang a second time.

  She paused at the mirror beside the door to check her hair, then froze. “What am I doing? I don’t even like this man.”

  But as she said the words, she knew they weren’t the complete truth. While she didn’t like his idea of how to handle the issue of the house, she found Ezra, well, interesting. The girls certainly liked him.

  If only he weren’t a marine. And trying to evict her.

  Ding-dong.

  Sophie reached to open the door, setting her smile in place as she turned the knob. “Hey,” she said. “Sorry about the delay. Come in.”

  Why hadn’t she noticed before what a lovely smile the man had?

  Ezra brushed past her to deposit a box on the table beside the albums. “Miss Emmeline sent a few things that might get us started.”

  He opened the lid to reveal a hodgepodge of papers and photographs. Topmost was a photograph of an older couple and a somewhat sullen-looking young man standing in front of the Riverside house. In the foreground was a red bicycle with high handlebars and a banana seat.

  Sophie picked up the picture and turned it over. “Robbie Junior’s thirteenth birthday.” She handed the photograph to Ezra. “Who is Robbie Junior?”

  “Me. That was my name before the Landrys adopted me. See, technically Nell and the reverend were my adoptive parents. Because she was so much older, I just took to calling her Granny Nell like the others she took in. I’d already had a mom and. . .” He tossed the picture back into the box and set the lid atop it. “Look—I’ve said too much. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

  Sophie rested her hand on his. “I understand.”

  Ezra jerked his hand away and rose, his face a mask of conflicting emotions. “You have no idea.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Of course I don’t. It was a stupid thing to say.”

  He paced to the door, then returned to join her on the sofa. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s just that, well, some memories are best left alone.”

  She thought of her near wedding. “I agree.”

  He looked surprised. “You do?”

  “Sure.” She pushed the box out of the way and reached for her notepad. “Maybe we ought to concentrate on something more pleasant, like what we would like to say about Nell.”

  Settling into the sofa cushions, Ezra smiled. “I like that idea.”

  Pen poised, Sophie looked to Ezra to begin dictating. He said nothing.

  “Ezra?” She pointed to the paper with her pen. “What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I ask you to tell me who Nell was?”

  “Car keys.”

  “What?”

  “The first thing that comes to mind is that it would be easier to show you who Nell was than to tell you. And for that I would need the car keys.”

  Sophie checked her watch. “I have two hours before the girls get home. Will this take long?”

  Ezra grinned, and her heart did that goofy flip-flop again. This time not even the reminder that he was not a man in whom she should take an interest worked. Lord, please help me to stop this silliness.

  And yet when she looked at Ezra, she imagined a man with a past he didn’t like and a future yet to be lived. A man whom her girls adored and she had somehow developed an attraction to. It was silly but true. She was glad she would never have to worry about whether her feelings were reciprocated. They wouldn’t be.

  “I think I can give you the two-hour tour.”

  Sophie grabbed her purse and followed Ezra toward the door. Without warning he stopped, and she slammed into his chest. Stunned, she couldn’t quite feature what had happened. Then she looked up into dark eyes, felt strong arms holding her, and gasped.

  Twenty-six

  “Oh. . .I’m. . .sorry.”

  She took a step backward and collided with the wall, dislodging a picture of the girls. Ezra caught it before it hit the ground and set it on the table.

  “No, I’m sorry, Sophie,” Ezra said. He shook his head. “I just thought I should warn you to wear shoes you don’t mind getting dirty. We’re going to do some walking, a lot of it around the bayou.”

  She looked down at her leather shoes and frowned. “Give me a second, and I’ll change.”

  Somehow she made her way back to her room without crashing into anything. Once inside the safe confines, she sank onto her bed and covered her face with her hands.

  “He thinks I’m an idiot,” she whispered.

  After composing herself and taking a quick peek in the bathroom mirror, she slipped on walking shoes and headed for the door. Sophie found Ezra staring at the picture she’d knocked from the wall. He looked upset again.

  “Something wrong?”

  Ezra set the picture on the table and turned his attention to Sophie. “Just looking at the girls. They’re very pretty.”

  “They are.”

  “I don’t know how much you find out about birth parents these days, but I wonder if they are originally from Latagnier. Something about them looks familiar. Maybe I know the mom or dad.”

  He opened the door for Sophie, then followed her outside.

  “I have the birth parents’ names, but I didn’t think to look at where they were born,” she said as she fitted the key into the lock. “I was just happy to get them, you know?”

  “Yes.” He helped her into the car, then jogged around to get into the driver’s seat and crank the engine. “All right, Sophie, I’m going to take you on a tour.”

  Silence fell between them as Ezra guided the car onto Main Street, then turned at the old highway at the edge of Latagnier. In a matter of minutes, the city fell away, and the lush bayou country beckoned. The chilly October temperatures had turned the green countryside into a forest of burnt oranges and browns.

  Ezra drove with his window slightly cracked, allowing the scent of freshly plowed cane fields to permeate the car. “Louisiana is a different sort of place, Sophie. There’s something here that you just can’t find anywhere else.”

  She leaned against the door and felt the handle jab into her arm. “What’s that?”

  He looked at her before he spoke, fixing his gaze on her for a moment longer than felt comfortable to her. “Family, I guess, and history
, several centuries of both. But then you know the story of the Acadians, and I’m sure you know how we Cajuns are about family.”

  “Yes, I do.” She smiled. “But only from textbooks. I don’t know what that kind of family lineage is like. All I have is my great-aunt Alta who lives in Tulsa.”

  He slowed to turn left, then gave her an incredulous look. “So you’ve never experienced the fun of having more than thirty relatives all trying to eat from the same turkey at Thanksgiving? Never spent Christmas Eve with seventy-three of your closest relatives?”

  She shook her head and suppressed a giggle.

  “Poor girl. You haven’t lived.”

  If only he knew how his words hit the mark. Somehow her pitiful efforts to make the holidays joyous and festive with just the three of them in attendance seemed a bit sad.

  He must have sensed her change of mood, for he pulled the car to the side of the road at a rest stop near the bayou and shifted into Park. “Hey, I put my big foot in my mouth, didn’t I?”

  Sophie tried to make light of the statement by looking down at his feet. “Oh, I don’t know. That doesn’t seem possible.”

  “Look—I don’t know anything about you, and you probably don’t know a whole lot about me. Outside of this stuff about the house, I think, well. . .” Ezra studied the steering wheel, then watched the taillights of the eighteen-wheeler as it screamed past. “I think you’re someone I would have liked to get to know.”

  “Me, too,” she said softly. Then she giggled. “I sound like Amanda.”

  Ezra swiveled to face her. “Just so you know, I really have taken a liking to your girls. Maybe it’s because my grandmother cared for them so much, but they feel like family.” He met her stare, and a nerve in his cheek twitched.

  “I know they’ve been happy to know you. I think your coming here when you did was God’s way of helping the girls get over Miss Nell’s death. Until you came, they didn’t talk about her the way they do now. In fact, they didn’t talk about her at all.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” His attention darted to Sophie. “Now I sound like Amanda.” They shared a laugh as Ezra pulled back onto the road. “We’re almost there.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “First the Latagnier School and then a walk down Bayou Nouvelle to the old Trahan place. Are you game?”

  “Definitely.”

  A few minutes later, Ezra turned off the main road onto a narrow dirt lane bound by a cane field to the right and thick trees on the left. Up ahead the road made a sharp turn to the left, and just beyond that, a white frame house came into view. The vintage was new according to bayou standards, probably 1970s.

  As they passed, Ezra gestured to the one-story home. “My best friend lived there. He was a Lamont. Kin to the Breaux family through marriage, so we were distant cousins. They built this place when the old homestead was leveled in Camille.” He shrugged. “Sorry, I sound like Miss Emmeline.”

  Sophie smiled. “Don’t apologize. I like it.”

  “You do? Well now,” he said as he glanced over at her and grinned, “I’ll have to throw in more history. It pleases the lady.”

  “Yes,” she said softly, “it does. Say, what’s that?”

  Ezra pointed toward the horizon where a ramshackle cabin stood in a clearing. “That is Latagnier’s first school. Back then it sat on the property of Joe Trahan, kin to Miss Emmeline. Nowadays it’s owned by the city of Latagnier. Someday it will be a museum or something; leastwise that’s what the talk was a few years ago.”

  He pulled the car to a stop and turned off the engine. “Ready?”

  “Sure,” she said as she climbed out of the car.

  They walked across the clearing and up to the structure. Made of cypress wood, it was designed in the old Acadian way with a center stair going up from the outside and a porch that ran the length of the front. Sophie could imagine turn-of-the-century children playing in the clearing and racing to desks when the teacher rang the bell.

  “This is where my grandmother went to school.” He ran his fingers over the rail and smiled. “Whoever built this meant for it to last.”

  Sophie tried to keep her attention on the building, but she found it wandering to her guide. When he caught her looking, she pretended interest in the window behind him. “Why is it boarded up?”

  “Hurricane proofing, I guess.” He paused to test the structural integrity of the porch, then gestured toward the door. “Want to go inside?”

  “Can we?”

  He nodded. “Stick close to me. With these windows boarded up, it could be dark in there.”

  Only one board stood between them and entry to the building, and Ezra made short work of it. Sophie watched as he lifted the lumber over his head and tossed it into the yard as if it were a child’s toy.

  Pushing on the door didn’t work, so he gave it a sharp kick. The ancient wood swung open on loud hinges, and the musty scent of sawdust and many years of disuse billowed out.

  “I’ll go first. Give me your hand.”

  Sophie slipped her hand in his and took a deep breath, which she instantly regretted. She began to cough, sputtering like a fool in front of the man whose hand she held.

  Ezra reached into his pocket and handed her a handkerchief. “Here, put this over your mouth so the dust won’t bother you.” When he saw her reluctance, he grinned. “It’s clean. I promise.”

  Sophie complied, and instantly she breathed easier. The handkerchief smelled like soap and Ezra’s aftershave. The combination was lovely. “Thank you.”

  “Ready?”

  When she nodded, he led her into a large room bathed in stripes of sunlight and shadows and filled with stacks of what looked like small wooden desks. Even through the handkerchief, the musty smell lingered. She blinked hard to adjust her eyes to the dimness. Slowly, items came into focus.

  “What was this room used for?”

  “It’s the old schoolroom. As many times as I’ve been in here, I never was able to imagine my grandmother in one of those desks.”

  “How many times have you been in here, Ezra?”

  “More than I ought to have, that’s for sure.” He ducked his head. “In my former life I wasn’t such a sterling character.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Well then, I won’t tell you I learned to chew tobacco back behind this building, and I loved to bring girls out here and scare them with ghost stories.”

  “So they would cuddle up to you, no doubt.”

  “No doubt.” He looked down with a broad grin. “For the record, I’ve given up both of those bad habits.”

  Something scurried across the floor, and Sophie screamed. She leaned into Ezra and felt his arm going around her.

  “It’s all right.” Ezra released his embrace to point to the windowsill. “It’s a squirrel.”

  Sophie gave him a sideways look as she waited for her heart to slow its frantic pace. “I have to say that was suspicious timing. Do you happen to have a squirrel on your payroll, Major Landry?”

  He chuckled. “No, but it’s beginning to sound like a good idea.”

  For a moment neither moved. Then Ezra cleared his throat. “Well, I guess that’s about all there is to see here. I just wanted to give you an idea of something from my grandmother’s past.”

  Ezra led her outside where she reluctantly released her grip and returned the handkerchief. The sunlight burned her eyes, and she blinked.

  “Now how about that walk I promised?” He pointed to a spot behind the cabin. “The bayou’s that way.”

  She fell into step beside Ezra. “The ground we’re walking on used to belong to my grandmother’s parents. They bought a sliver of the Breaux property just after the Depression and built a house on it.”

  “What happened to the house?”

  “It was sold after they died. Do you know that story?”

  When Sophie shook her head, Ezra gestured to a fallen log. “Let’s go sit for a minute, a
nd I’ll tell you how my grandmother came to be an orphan.”

  Twenty-seven

  “And so she stayed at the Buckner Home in Dallas until she was of age. That’s when she left with her brother—my dad—and came back to Latagnier to work at the church.”

  Ezra paused in his tale to gauge the mood of his guest. She seemed interested enough. Still, better not to overdo the family stuff. His mention of the holidays seemed to set her in a blue mood.

  They sat side by side on the log, near enough to nudge but far enough away to keep his attention focused on something—anything—but her.

  “You tell that story much better than Miss Emmeline.” Sophie seemed to be thinking hard about something. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “What happened to your father?”

  What to tell her? The truth or a carefully stated substitute?

  “He’s not a part of my life anymore. Miss Emmeline was right when she said he came home from the war a different man.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she touched his hand.

  “Sophie, I think we need to walk now.” He rose and grasped her hand. “Let me show you the Bayou Nouvelle.”

  She came along at his pace, which was nice of her considering he tended to walk briskly. Occasionally he would slow down only to have her pass him up. When they reached the bayou, she slipped her hand from his and picked her way down to the water.

  “There’s a family story that tells how a gator once pursued old Doc Villare, and one of the Breaux girls got chased up that tree over there.”

  Sophie giggled. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope. Hey, want to see Granddaddy’s church?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s that way. We can follow the path that runs along the bayou.”

  The sun warmed Ezra’s back as he walked alongside Sophie. Ah, Sophie. Now there was a problem in need of solving.

  Although he’d only known her a short while, he felt as if the Lord was urging him to include her in his future plans. The idea had scared him when it first came to him, and nothing scared Major Ezra Landry. Well, not the old Ezra. Something about Sophie and the girls had changed him.