Hannah turned down the street leading to DuPont House. She tapped the remote device attached to the visor, activating the electronic gate surrounding the property. Despite the lateness of the hour there were dog walkers, joggers, and those just taking in the night air. She maneuvered onto the winding path to the rear of the house where a nineteenth-century carriage house had been converted into a garage with enough room for four automobiles. She parked the Mercedes next to Paige’s late-model Lincoln. Within seconds of cutting off the engine, Hannah did what she’d wanted to do before leaving the hotel. She took off her shoes.
Tiptoeing on bare feet, she made her way to the back door. Lifting the door handle, she punched in the code, deactivating the security system, and pushed open the door leading into the mud/laundry room. Grimacing with every step, she limped up the back staircase to her bedroom and into the bathroom, filling the tub with warm water and two handfuls of lavender bath salts. Hannah realized she wasn’t as much out of shape as she was out of condition. Walking on concrete in running shoes or kitten heels could not compare to dancing for hours in stilettos.
She meticulously removed her makeup with a cleanser specially blended for her skin type, and then applied a moisturizer to her bare face. Twenty minutes in the bathtub worked a minor miracle for her aching legs and feet. She lay in bed and willed her mind blank until she fell asleep.
* * *
Hannah woke at dawn with the intent to do something she hadn’t done since her firing: walk. Clad in a sports bra, yoga tights, an oversized T-shirt, and running shoes and with her cell phone tucked into her waistband, she set out on a walking tour of the Garden District.
Establishing a measured, unhurried pace, while hoping to ease the lingering tightness in her calves, she became a tourist, slowing to glance at the home used in the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Hannah continued on St. Charles Avenue, smiling when spying Mardi Gras beads hanging from a tree. The colorful beads were a constant reminder of how many years it had been since she’d taken part in the annual celebration that turned the entire city of New Orleans into party central.
“Hannah! Hannah DuPont!”
She stopped when she heard a woman’s voice calling her from across the street. “Letitia Parker,” Hannah whispered.
She’d recognized the voice and the face, but not her body. Letitia had always had a problem with her weight, topping the scales at two hundred even before entering high school. Hannah motioned for Letitia to stay where she was, glancing up and down the avenue for oncoming traffic.
Letitia watched Hannah as she jogged across the avenue, a warm smile tilting the corners of her mouth. Resting her hands at her waist, she angled her head. “Well, well, well. Look at you, Hannah DuPont. You haven’t changed a bit. Please tell me you found the fountain of youth, because I’d be willing to give up a kidney just for a sip.”
Hannah hugged Letitia, and then held her at arm’s length. “No, Miss Nashville Songbird, look at you. You’re the gorgeous one.” Her gaze lingered on stylishly cut raven-black hair, lightly feathered with gray, before moving down to a pair of robin’s-egg blue eyes that appeared even lighter in her sun-browned complexion.
An attractive blush glowed under Letitia’s tan. “Thank you.” She lowered her eyes. “I’ve sacrificed a lot to get to this stage. It’s taken me more than a year to lose ninety pounds and keep it off. I walk every day around the same time, rain or shine.”
Hannah gave her a sidelong glance at they continued in an easterly direction along St. Charles Avenue. “When did you come back?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Letitia replied, looping arms with Hannah.
“I came back two days ago for my high school’s reunion.”
“I’ve got you beat by seven months.”
“You’re living here now?”
Letitia nodded. As a retired singer, and a divorcée with an adult son and daughter and four grandchildren, she’d sold her Nashville home to return to her childhood home. She’d been a grade ahead of Hannah when they were enrolled at McGehee. Once she graduated and moved away to attend college, she returned to New Orleans several times a year. Her parents told her Hannah had come back to Louisiana to bury her husband, and Letitia had stopped at DuPont House to offer her condolences.
“I moved back to take care of my parents because my brother and his wife are moving to Florida to be close to their grandchildren.”
“What about your grandchildren?”
A beat passed, Letitia dropping Hannah’s arm. “I’m trying to convince my son and daughter to move from Nashville to New Orleans. The house is much too big for three people. My daughter is seriously considering it, but my daughter-in-law is still balking. She feels if she moves in with her mother-in-law then she wouldn’t be woman of her own house. She’s been here enough to know that she will have her own apartment and I’ll babysit her kids whenever she and TJ need time for themselves.”
“There was a time when it was common for several generations to live together under one roof out of necessity.”
“You’re right,” Letitia said in agreement. “My daughter-in-law’s a stay-at-home mom even though her kids are in school. I tried to warn my son that she was a lazy heifer even before he married her because she’d complain about having to get up and go to work.”
“My heart bleeds for her,” Hannah drawled facetiously. “She’s blessed because most women, married or single, have to work nowadays just to make ends meet.”
“Tell me about it.” She paused. “Now that I think about it, maybe it could be a blessing in disguise if she decides not to come, because the last thing I want is to become her personal maid, especially when I have to look after Mama and Daddy. And I’m not the one to bite my tongue if she decides to show her behind.”
They continued walking together, each lost in her own thoughts, until they reached Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. As they turned to retrace their steps, Leticia asked Hannah, “How long are you staying?”
Hannah smiled. Everyone she ran into wanted to know how long she’d planned to stay. “I’ll be here until the end of the summer.”
Letitia’s eyes lit up like polished blue topaz. “If that’s the case, then we’ll have to get together for lunch.”
“What about your folks?”
“They’re okay because I just hired a live-in home health aide. Daddy’s showing signs of dementia, while Mama still has a problem walking after she fell and broke her hip.”
Hannah thought about her parents. Neither had lived long enough to experience a marked decline in health. Her mother died in her sleep at the age of seventy-two and her father from an aneurysm a year later. Lester had complained of ongoing headaches but refused to see a doctor no matter how much she pleaded with him.
She listened intently as Letitia told her about the highs and lows she’d experienced as a popular female country singer. Her husband/manager demanded she lose weight, and she went through periods wherein she existed solely on liquid diets. She gave up eating meat for a year and lost half her body weight, only to regain most of it when touring. She’d missed her children and offset the separation by overeating.
“My children saw the nanny more than me because Trent had me touring nonstop. I missed all my children’s milestones, and I knew something had to change. I finally took control of my life when I fired Trent as my manager, filed for a divorce, sold the monstrosity of a house, and went on a medically supervised diet and hired a personal trainer.”
“Good for you.”
“Thanks. I don’t regret that I had to rid myself of my children’s father in order to find myself. At first I was filled with guilt, but after a lot of therapy, I realized it was what I had to do to grow emotionally.”
Hannah stared straight ahead, wondering why women had to sacrifice so much in order to come into their own. Were they so involved or fixated in seeing to the needs or happiness of the men in their lives to the detriment of their own? She may have had an unfait
hful husband, but at no time during her marriage had she allowed Robert to control her; after their first explosive argument she sternly reminded him he wasn’t her superior officer, and they were equals in the marriage.
Their walk ended on Constance Street in front of the Branford-Parker House. “Walking tomorrow?” Letitia asked.
“Sure,” Hannah replied. “But I don’t walk in the rain.”
“No problem. I’ve always said I’m part duck,” Letitia joked.
“I’ll meet you here at six.”
“I’ll wait fifteen minutes, and if you don’t show up by that time, then I’ll know you’re not coming.”
Hannah waited until Letitia opened the cornstalk wrought-iron fence in front of her gingerbread-decorated late Victorian period house, and then headed home. Listening to Letitia talk about her ex reminded her that even though her marriage wasn’t perfect she hadn’t had to deal with Robert monitoring every phase of her life. He was assigned either to an aircraft carrier or submarine, which kept him away from home for months on end. The downside of his extended absences was her having to step into the dual role as mother and father for Wyatt. Whenever Robert came home on leave, Wyatt followed him as if he were the pied piper, hanging onto his every word about all things military, and from an early age it was apparent her son would follow his father with a career in the military.
She quickened her pace, jogging down streets, arms swinging loosely at her sides, until she stopped at DuPont House. The action had increased her heart rate, eliciting a state of euphoria. Meeting Letitia and promising to join her on early morning walks was ideal for starting a new day.
Chapter 6
Leaning back in the executive chair, St. John propped his feet on the edge of the desk while speaking quietly into the telephone receiver. “Are you finished blowing out my eardrum?”
There was silence before Alicia Vernon’s exhalation of breath came through the earpiece. His sister calling to complain about his niece wasn’t how he wanted to end the morning, a morning that was to become his last at the college for the next twelve weeks. Over the past two weeks he’d spent hours in meetings reviewing résumés and discussing possible applicants to fill vacancies in several departments. All he wanted was to go home and kick back and not have to think about anything to do with Barden College until the fall semester.
“I’m sorry about that, St. John, but the girl’s working my last nerve. I ground Keisha, take away her cell phone, and she still defies me.”
“Have you ever thought that maybe it’s not her fault?”
“That’s not fair!”
“What’s not fair is you didn’t establish boundaries for Keisha when she was a child, and now that she’s a teenager and goes buck wild, you want to tighten the reins.” He paused. “Look, sis, I’m not trying to come down on you when you need my support, but I can’t help you with childrearing because I never had children. You and Kenny need to sit down with Keisha and let her know you’re responsible for her, not the other way around. Remember Mama used to tell us ‘her way or the highway?’ ”
“There’s no way I can forget, because it’s branded into my brain. You were away at college when I broke curfew for the third time and she locked me out the house. And that was before cell phones, so I couldn’t call any of my friends. That’s when I asked Miss Robinson to let me sleep in her spare room until the next day. She told me if she were my mother, she would’ve let me in and then took a switch off a bush and set fire to my behind. The next day the entire neighborhood knew what had happened. Miss Robinson didn’t like Mama, so she couldn’t wait to gossip about how she couldn’t control her fast-ass daughter.”
St. John chuckled, the sound rumbling in his chest. His sister, eight years his junior, had continually tested their parents’ patience. His mother had pleaded with Alicia, asking her why she couldn’t be more like her brother. Alicia’s flippant response was because she wasn’t perfect like her brother. What Alicia didn’t know was he wasn’t perfect. He just followed the rules. It was the reason he’d stayed married for so long. He’d taken an oath to love and protect Lorna in health as well as in good and bad times. Unfortunately, they had more bad times than good, and he hadn’t known how sick she’d been until the divorce proceedings. And no amount of pleading from him could convince her to seek counseling.
St. John shook his head as if to rid his mind of the disturbing memories of a marriage that probably shouldn’t have happened, when all of the signs were there beforehand that doomed it to fail. “Did it cure you of breaking curfew?”
“Hell, yeah!”
Lowering his feet, St. John stared out the window at a magnolia tree. Barden College with its on-campus housing was set on twenty-five acres of verdant landscaped gardens with ancient oak trees draped in Spanish moss and flowering magnolia, cherry and weeping willow trees. It had become New Orleans’s collegiate jewel in the crown in the University District.
“Today’s my last day here and I’m not lecturing this summer, so do you want to send her to New Orleans for the summer?”
“That won’t be necessary. I’m sending her to Tucson. Mama says she and Daddy will look after her for the summer.”
He wanted to ask his sister if sending her daughter to their octogenarian parents was the best decision for a teenage girl constantly challenging authority. At the age of forty-five, Daniel McNair had relocated from New Orleans to Tucson, Arizona, for health reasons. The elder McNair’s career with the New Orleans Police Department ended after he’d sustained a bullet wound to the chest during an armed robbery, resulting in the removal of a portion of his lung.
“I spoke to Kenny before calling you, and we’re going to have a family meeting later tonight,” Alicia continued. “Kenny has always been hands off where it concerns childrearing because he spends so much time away from home whenever he goes undercover, but I’m certain that’s going to change. I just discovered who his sixteen-year-old princess has been hanging out with. The twenty-something weed-smelling piece of garbage had the audacity to ring my bell and ask if Keisha’s coming out. I told him to get off my property and if he ever came back he was going to catch a bullet straight between the eyes.”
St. John struggled not to laugh aloud at Alicia’s depiction of the boy going after her daughter. If what his sister told him was true, then it didn’t bode well for his niece’s supposed boyfriend. Her father was a federal agent assigned to the DEA’s Seattle Field Division office.
“Did he leave?”
“Is the cheetah the fastest land animal?” she said jokingly. “He took off so fast in his hoopty, he left skid marks on the street.”
This time St. John did laugh. Alicia had once worked for the FBI as an intelligence analyst. She resigned after an ultrasound indicated she was pregnant with twins. “Let me know one way or the other the outcome of your family meeting. And I’m still open if you want to send her to me. And how are the twins doing?” His sister had gone on about her daughter while neglecting to bring him up to date about his twelve-year-old twin nephews.
“They’re good. I’ve signed them up for sleepaway baseball camp again. I’ll give you an update after we have our family meeting.”
He smiled. “Thanks, sis. Love you.”
“Love you back, bro.”
Within minutes of ending the call, a ringtone from his cell garnered his attention. St. John glanced at the screen. He’d programmed an alert to call Hannah. The reunion had been filled with surprises. His intent was to reconnect with former friends, but when he left it was with countless emails from those wishing to stay in touch. Despite being a New Orleans native, St. John hadn’t cultivated a circle of close friends.
He hadn’t been among the more popular boys in high school. The jocks were afforded that honor. However, he was neither geek nor nerd, but there had to have been something about him because he’d been accepted and respected by most of his peers. Some of his classmates had approached him to run for senior class president, but he declined. Carryi
ng a full schedule, playing piano for the school’s jazz band, stepping in as interim editor for the school’s paper after the former editor transferred to another school, and as vice president of the French club, he had no time for school politics. He reached for the phone and scrolled through the directory and tapped Hannah’s number, counting off the number of rings until there was a break in the connection.
* * *
Hannah stared at birds splashing in the marble birdbath next to a flowering rose bush. It had been a little more than two weeks since she’d returned to New Orleans, and she’d come to enjoy her early morning walks with Letitia. She also liked having the house to herself, because it allowed her to go about her business without talking when she didn’t feel like talking. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her cousins, but since becoming a widow, she had come to appreciate her own company. A smile parted her lips. It had taken nearly fifty years for her to accept that Hannah Claire DuPont-Lowell was now quite comfortable in her own skin.
Pressing her head against the cushioned rocker, she closed her eyes. If she had reservations about attending the reunion unescorted for the second time, they had quickly vanished once dinner was over and the masquerade ball began. She’d forgotten who she’d danced with, and although she was familiar with the steps for the Electric Slide, she learned new ones when following those in line dances for the Cupid and Cha Cha Slide.
The reunion’s masquerade ball reminded her that it had been much too long since she had gone out dancing, and she chided herself for not cultivating a group of girlfriends who would occasionally go to a club or have a girlfriends’ vacation at an exotic destination. She thought of Nydia, Jasmine, and Tonya, wondering if they were actively looking for new positions or if they were serious about taking the summer off to come down to New Orleans.
Hannah opened her eyes, smiling. Not only would she become their tour guide for the city, but she’d also researched the possibility of them taking a seven-night, eight-day Mississippi River cruise. Exhaling an audible sigh, she had returned her attention to the book on her lap when her cell phone rang. Reaching into the pocket of the oversized man-tailored shirt, she took out the phone and glanced at the screen. The heat in her face had nothing to do with the sultry afternoon temperatures.
The Inheritance Page 6
