by Cassia Leo
As caretaker, Alex Whitman knew the house better than anyone. The conditions of his charge had brought him out once a week for the past twenty years, and he had done his job unfailingly. By the time Ana arrived, he had already winterized the house. He was excited to show her how he had covered the exterior faucets, turned off some of the valves, and other cold-weather details Ana had never worried about in New Orleans. His eyes widened and his hands took to the air animatedly as he proudly described the amount of care and caution he put into his job. He was thorough and passionate, and it was clear the old four-bedroom Victorian had been in good hands all these years, despite having no permanent mistress.
His enthusiasm was catching, if not strange. He was so excited about his job, Ana wondered what he did for fun. She smiled and made a mental note to assure her father their money had not gone to waste.
Alex was middle-aged; in his forties or fifties, Ana guessed. There was nothing remarkable about him, from his growing baldness to his nondescript nose, mouth, and chin. She would not have been able to pull him out of a crowd if they were back in New Orleans. The only thing that stood out to Ana were his eyes: they were a radiant blue and flashed with intensity when he talked, as if he channeled every drop of his emotion through them.
“I have overseer duties for yer father’s house and about ten o’er homes on the island. Summer folk. Ya know, they say coastal Maine is the new Cape Cod,” he told her, beaming. There was no end to the things he had to say about the island and the homes he looked after, but about his personal life he would only reveal that he lived alone.
“Actually it’s my house,” she corrected him. Of course they thought it was her father’s. His office paid the bills, and it wasn’t as if Ana had bothered to visit.
“Well, I reckon I stand corrected,” Alex apologized with a blush.
Though he was peculiar, Ana appreciated him, though she didn’t realize how much until after she had been on the island for a week. Her routine had become to venture into town daily, exploring before heading home with groceries. She noticed everyone took the time to wave at each other, or flash a welcoming smile to their fellow islanders. Many stopped to chitchat, and share stories about their children, or the weather. With dark clouds looming on the horizon, everyone’s thoughts turned to the timing of the first big storm. Ana felt as if she was watching one large, ongoing family reunion. Her heart ached for New Orleans, and her own people.
Initially, she tried to embrace her new home with enthusiasm, waving at the same people she saw waving at others. But they did not wave back, and most of them dropped their eyes, pretending not to see her overtures. No matter where she went—the grocery store, the library, restaurants—her reception was the same. The lack of returned smiles, and downturned eyes, left a sinking feeling in her stomach. She was unwelcome here.
When she told Alex about her experiences, a blush rose in his cheeks and his normal animation transformed to a nervous fidget. “Miss Deschanel—”
“Alex, you can call me Ana.” With a laugh, she added, “You might be my only friend here.”
“O’right, Ana then. Forgive me for just coming out and sayin’ it, but everyone knows who ya are.”
“What does that mean?” Her eyes narrowed. It was not possible anyone here knew anything about the reason she had left New Orleans. She had told no one.
“Your father, Miss,” Alex said with a guilty look. “It’s just, being locals and all and not having the money that yer family has… it sometimes rubs people the wrong way when outsiders see their town as a vacation home. It isn’t to say... I mean... that, you know, yer family has done nothing wrong, exactly... oh geez, listen to me...”
He kept rambling and stumbling over his own words to correct himself, but Ana got the general idea. Ana’s father was Augustus Deschanel, of the Deschanel Media Group, and there were very few people who didn’t know that name. He was a local legend in New Orleans for having started his media business on money he earned from a summer job, which was a remarkable accomplishment since he came from a family of millionaires who could have funded it without a second thought. Augustus wanted to do it alone, though, and the business turned into an international empire within ten years. I wanted to prove that the talent brings the money, and not the other way around, he was famous for saying. While the people of New Orleans were proud of Augustus for his humble start and work ethic, the rest of the world saw him as yet another money-hungry businessman. It never occurred to her the islanders might have a derogatory opinion of the distant family who owned the stately house on the bend of Heron Hollow Road.
As Alex showed her how to use the generator—Trust me, you’ll use it, he had said—he assured her he would talk to people and that things would get better. “They’re good folk,” he kept saying. “Truly they mean no harm.”
Ana thought then of Nicolas. Her father. Her students at Tulane. Of late nights in the Quarter, the singing of cicadas, and the sun’s fiery orange rise over the Mississippi River’s banks. The homesickness caused a sinking flutter in her chest as she realized all she had left behind.
How long am I going to do this? When will things be fixed? How will I even know when it is time to go back?
“As long as it takes,” she whispered, and waved at Alex as he drove away.
***
2- NICOLAS
It was difficult to startle Nicolas Deschanel; he was not easily unnerved. He had been through more craziness in thirty years than most see in an entire lifetime, and for the most part, remained calm no matter what storm brewed around him.
He lived alone at Ophélie, a stately old family plantation an hour’s drive along the river, west of New Orleans. There was not much left of it anymore. Predominantly, the Big House, a giant Greek Revival monster with columns running roof to base. Beyond the primary residence, most buildings had fallen into disrepair, including the old slave cabins overlooking the miles of oil fields and swampland which backed the property. He’d never lived anywhere else, unless you counted his random, extended disappearances over the years. Even his modest apartment on Chartes was only used as a convenient place to flop after a night of carousing along Bourbon Street.
In counterpoint to its current owner, the plantation was old, and lonely. Nicolas Deschanel was exactly the opposite of old and lonely. Or, at least, that’s what he’d want you to believe.
He was loud, foul-mouthed, and obnoxious, spending most of his time surrounding himself with others like him. He loved the French Quarter, and still spent many nights enjoying its debauchery and enticements. Slender of build, but he could drink as much as someone double his size. Though fair of face, the first thing people noticed when they met the Deschanel heir was his overwhelming personality. At thirty years of age, Nicolas was still, always, the life of the party.
He was unmarried, and never planned to be otherwise. It did not take more than a few nights—a few weeks at most—before he would tire of a girl. Not seeing a need to confine himself to a set type, he had sampled a broad variety of ladies: sexy, smart, dimwitted, adventurous, boring. There always came a point where Nicolas realized the specific charms of the specific girl were no longer so specific or charming.
When Nicolas was not out socializing, partying, or womanizing, he appreciated the quiet and seclusion of Ophélie, not to mention Condoleezza’s talent in the kitchen. Nic’s now deceased father had favored the daughters born with the maid over his true successor, and so breaking with tradition had willed the estate to them. Thwarting her father’s wishes, Adrienne righted that wrong, content to live with her husband, Oz, in the Garden District. She said she didn’t want the same upbringing for her own children, but Nicolas didn’t see what was so bad about it, really.
Then again, he hadn’t had to experience the wrath of Cordelia Deschanel day in and day out. Cordelia, who was his mother but not the mother of Adrienne and her three older sisters. His mother could be mercilessly cruel to anyone she thought minimized her importance in the household. To Nico
las, she had been loving, but she had been a nightmare for the four girls. The father they all shared more than compensated for the lack of maternal nurturing by having ostracized Nicolas, while placing his daughters on pedestals.
All but Adrienne were gone now; a part of his past that seemed almost unreal. His mother, father, and three half-sisters perished in a car accident, heading for a family vacation Nicolas had not been invited to. Adrienne escaped, but disappeared entirely, along with her memory. When they found her several years later, living a new life with a family in the bayou, she was no longer the same person. Rebuilding her life had not been simple.
If Nicolas had to pinpoint it, this was probably where things began to change in his friendship with Oz. Oz had loved Adrienne forever. Oz still loved Adrienne, and now was finally sharing his life with her and their two children as he always wanted, but it had not been easy. Although there was still love between Oz and Nicolas, there was also a darkness—the kind that comes with sharing a tragedy–that might never go away. Oz was the brother Nicolas never had. But, Oz and Adrienne’s relationship had always been a point of contention, because each man saw Adrienne through very different eyes.
There would always be invisible walls in his friendship with Oz, but there was one person with whom he shared everything; someone who, no matter what happened, loved him without judgment, or darkness: his cousin Anasofiya.
No one but Ana knew, or understood, what it was to have everything money could buy, and still be empty inside. Nicolas had never really been a part of his family. He was only a baby when his father decided to rut with the maid and have four daughters with her instead of his wife, Cordelia. His father’s bitterness toward Nicolas’ mother flowed the only way it could when it brimmed over, and that was toward him. Likely Charles had not realized how unkind he was to his only son, or how unfair. Someone more sensitive than Nicolas might have taken that bitterness and turned it on the four sisters, blaming them, using the same rotten sort of deflection he had learned from his father. But instead, he was indifferent. Nicolas and his sisters were always divided by the ugliness that festered between Charles and Cordelia, and while he cared for them, he didn’t care enough to be a part of them.
Ana and Nicolas had been born a few months apart. When Ana’s mother died giving birth, Ana was taken into the same nursery as Nicolas, and they shared nearly everything—from their toys to their solitude—from that point forward. They had even shared their friendship with Oz. As they grew older, Ana and Oz grew apart when an attempt at dating soured, and Nicolas grew to love Ana even more when she was solely his. In many ways, Ana was the reason Nicolas never wanted to marry. She was the one person who knew him—truly knew him, not the person he projected to the world—and he didn’t want there to be anyone else in the world who had that insight.
Now she was gone, and he did not know for how long, or even exactly why. He supported her stated reasons for going only because he knew her quiet anguish... felt the build-up and subsequent boil-over. They could speak without speaking, so no words were necessary. Nevertheless, he said out loud that he supported her, as her father had, though they both knew Augustus Deschanel was clueless. He didn’t know who Ana was, what burned inside of her, and what haunted her private thoughts. Nicolas’ only regret was his insecurity prevented him from offering to go with her. Ana was the one person he could not handle rejection from.
Yet... something was bothering Nicolas. At first he chalked it up to his sadness at her leaving, but it started to develop into a worse feeling: doubt. Doubt she was being completely honest with him about her reason for leaving. Maybe he was the real reason. He’d never really given thought to what their friendship would mean as they grew older and started settling down into their permanent lives. Was it possible she felt trapped? That his friendship was somehow stifling her, or keeping her from growing into the person she wanted to be?
He was a Deschanel, heir to one of the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful families in New Orleans. A family of telepaths, telekinetics, healers, and seers. But Nicolas’s power started and ended with his occupation of the family seat, Ophélie; he would never see the future, or read someone’s mind. He was benign, and that never bothered him until now, when he wanted nothing more than to see into Ana’s thoughts.
Nicolas shrugged off the worries, as he often did whenever something unpleasant dared to cross his mind, but they would plague him from time to time. To make matters worse, Oz was acting strange—strange for Oz, anyway—and had blown off every invitation Nicolas had extended. He claimed he had “family stuff” going on, but Nicolas was beginning to wonder if he’d done something to piss him off. It wouldn’t be the first time. But Nicolas could not recall a single obnoxious thing he had done to Oz, in recent times anyway. He hadn’t even blessed him with one of his famous practical jokes, or poked fun at what Nicolas called his “unfailing hero complex.” He thought about simply asking what was wrong, but in Nicolas Deschanel’s experience, What’s wrong? never led to anything good.
Although he would never admit it, with the only two people he had ever cared for acting distant and strange, for the first time Nicolas was lonely.
***
3- ANA
Ana had many talents, but cooking was not one of them. This fact had nothing to do with her privileged upbringing. When it came to most things, she was surprisingly self-sufficient and she enjoyed figuring challenges out on her own. But a relationship with the kitchen was not meant to be. She had no culinary vision, and attempts to make anything interesting typically resulted in a call to the fire department. Most of the items in her pantry involved complex instructions such as “Just add water,” or “Microwave for ninety-seconds.”
Ana realized it was better to admit defeat than starve, so she decided to brave the lack of hospitality from the locals and try takeout. Alex recommended Jack’s, which he said was the best burger joint in the state of Maine. And better custard than anything on the mainland, either. He said that about most things on Summer Island, but it had to be an improvement from what she was eating at home.
Androscoggin Avenue, the island’s main street, started at the north end of the island and broke off into two roads about a half-mile from the South Shore: Chickadee Lane to the west, and Heron Hollow Road—where Ana lived—to the east. If the weather was warmer and the skies not so dark, Ana would have enjoyed the walk into town, but instead she fired up her father’s old car.
The weathered ’76 station was the first indication she’d left the residential area and entered town. Past that was Flanders Grocery, and then further down on the right side were all the official buildings: post office, library, police, and city hall. The rest of the “town” consisted of two unnecessary stoplights and a series of bars, shops, and empty buildings along the mile-long Androscoggin Avenue. In the center of a roundabout stood a large Civil War-era fort. No one could say what the name had been or what glories it had seen, but the wood was rotting and putting the deterioration on such crude display only called attention to the strange marriage of the town’s pride with its unwillingness to spend on basic maintenance
“Mayor Cairne’s been askin’ for money from Portland but e’er since we broke free they ain’t fixin’ to give us a dime,” Alex had complained to her. “Anyhow, drive the strip nearly all the way to Edgewaters’ at the South Shore, and just ‘fore the road turns into a private drive you’ll see Jack’s. It’s small, but the red, white, and blue stripes are hard to miss.”
Ana was surprised to see so many people there. Jack’s was no bigger than a shack, with two windows—one for ordering, one for pick-up—and as Alex had said, the building was painted in large patriotic stripes. The parking lot was small and half the spots had erupted cement, rendering them useless. With the crowd gathered, she had to park down the road.
Walking up to the window, Ana counted ten people in front of her. Do I have anything better to do? With a small sigh, she slid in line behind a tall, dark-haired gentleman.
&
nbsp; He turned around and she recognized him immediately. It was Jonathan St. Andrews. Doctor St. Andrews, as the islanders called him, otherwise known as the town veterinarian, and the unpleasant neighbor she’d been avoiding.
He looked at Ana, without any expression or indication of his thoughts, for what was an awkward ten seconds or so. Then, he turned back around without saying a word. She blinked and stared at his back, trying to process what had happened.
Ana’s natural instinct was to withdraw emotionally and go on as if nothing happened. She avoided conflict and awkwardness at all costs, and she didn’t want it here, in public, especially. But Ana was raised to be kind and hospitable, and the two weeks she had been on Summer Island had been anything but kind and hospitable. Jon’s childish behavior was at the pinnacle of this inexcusable rudeness, and it could not be borne. Emboldened, she tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hi,” she greeted, her voice unsteady, “I believe we are neighbors.”
Giving a response that sounded more like a grunt than actual words, he continued to face forward.
The blood rushed to her face, and her toes curled in silent anger. Not even in New Orleans had she met someone who was so openly ill-mannered without cause.
Ana took a deep breath and stepped in front of him. He couldn’t hide his shock at her boldness, but he quickly recovered himself, and tried to push past her again. “Ana Deschanel,” she said. Thrusting her hand forward, she dared him to respond.
His eyes darted to the left and right for a moment. Realizing there was no avoiding the exchange, he reluctantly took her hand and mumbled, “Jon St. Andrews,” before quickly dropping it again as though she carried the plague.
