The Inheritance

by Rochelle Alers

  “Thank you again for a wonderful evening.”

  St. John lowered his head and brushed a kiss over her cheek. “Thank for you being a most delightful dining partner.” Turning on his heel, he walked off the porch.

  She watched the taillights of the sports car as St. John drove off the property, the gates closing automatically. Despite feeling the lingering effects the potent drink, she loathed going inside. Folding her body down to a rocker, Hannah scrolled through her cell’s directory for Tonya’s number, sending her a text message.

  Hannah: Do you still plan to come down?

  She placed the phone on the chair’s cushioned seat and closed her eyes. St. John said he didn’t date but she’d been taught whenever a man invited a woman out, it translated into that. But then she had to ask herself if her inviting him to Sunday dinner was also a date. Hannah opened her eyes, sighing. She’d always had a problem overanalyzing any situation. She just couldn’t see things as black or white but had to delve deeper to find shades of gray. Her inner voice told her a man and woman with romantic notions courted. A man and a woman who were friends would occasionally get together for an event or congregate with mutual friends.

  Hannah didn’t need to lie on her therapist’s couch to know what she was undergoing emotionally. Her plan to turn DuPont House into an inn was on hold, pending the approval of a license. Although she hadn’t spent more than two consecutive months in her city of birth since becoming Mrs. Robert Lowell, this was the first time she felt that she’d truly come home, which added to her ambivalence about whether she wanted to continue to live in New York if the licenses were denied.

  And she did not want to consider St. John’s offer for her to join the faculty at Barden College. When it came to teaching, her adage was: Been there, done that. Teaching college-level courses meant ongoing lectures, exams, and grading papers.

  As a military wife she’d traveled with Robert whenever he was reassigned to another naval base, but her nomad existence ended once their son was accepted into the Air Force Academy. An empty nester at forty, she passed the New York Bar on her first attempt, moving to New York after Robert resigned his commission to accept a position with the Department of Defense. He rented an apartment in D.C., commuting to New York every other weekend. Eight years later everything changed when he returned to New York complaining of chest pain. Once the pain escalated, Hannah called for medical assistance. During the ambulance ride to the hospital, he bared his soul to her about his many infidelities, including sharing the D.C. apartment with a woman. She’d been too numb to react as her marriage vows—in sickness and in health—held her captive until Robert was released from the hospital after an eight-day stay.

  Robert resigned his position at the Pentagon and to the outside world they presented the perfect couple; yet behind closed doors they slept in separate beds. Two years later he collapsed during a walk along Battery Park. Death was instantaneous. Hannah arranged for his body to be flown to Baton Rouge, where he was buried in his family plot with full military honors. After the reading of Robert’s will, Hannah realized he’d kept his promise to ensure she would be financially independent for the rest of her life, and Wyatt would be the recipient of the flag draping his casket.

  The ring tone for a text message shattered her musings. Tonya had answered her text.

  Tonya: We’ll be there in two weeks

  Hannah: Wonderful! Drive safely

  Tonya: Thanks!

  Her friends were scheduled to arrive mid-June and now she could commit to tango lessons with St. John. If she was going to learn ballroom dancing, then she needed to look the part. Humming a nameless tune, she walked in the house and closed the door. She hadn’t taken more than half a dozen steps when she heard a soft mewling. Glancing down, she found Smokey huddled under the table in the entryway.

  The kitten backed up when she attempted to reach for him. “What’s the matter, baby? You don’t like being home alone?” Hannah managed to pick up the kitten and cradle him to her chest. “Let’s see if you’ve eaten all your food.”

  Fifteen minutes later she climbed the staircase to her bedroom after Smokey retreated to his bed in the parlor.

  * * *

  Sprawled on a lounger in the sunroom, St. John rested his head on folded arms and stared at the steadily falling rain. When he’d gotten up earlier that morning, his intent had been to run a couple of miles before returning to the house to shower and eat breakfast, but the inclement weather had become a deterrent. Although he’d equipped a spare room with a treadmill, rowing machine, and elliptical bicycle, he still preferred running outdoors.

  His first reaction when he’d been informed that his aunt Monique had willed him the house was to put it on the market, because he felt it was too big for one person. The classical Southern vernacular farmhouse was designed on the scale of a smaller version of a grand plantation mansion.

  Once he moved in, St. John discovered he liked having enough space for a library-office, gym and spa, and a sunroom off the rear of the house where he could relax or entertain regardless of the weather. There were also enough guest bedrooms to put up his sister and her family whenever they came to visit. He’d also bought a piano to replace the one that had been in his family for three generations.

  St. John had made it a practice to host two events at his home for department staff and faculty: Christmas and an end of the year gathering. Picking up his cell phone, he tapped the music app and Earth, Wind & Fire’s classic hit “That’s the Way of the World” filled the space. He’d refined the app to determine where music could be heard in any of the hidden speakers installed throughout the house. He closed his eyes and crossed bare feet at the ankles, humming to the song by a band that topped his list of favorites. His cell vibrated and St. John opened his eyes. He sat up straight. Hannah had sent him a text message.

  Hannah: Do you wanna dance and hold my hand?

  A slow smile softened his features. She’d sent him the lyrics of Bobby Freeman’s rock and roll oldie from the 1950s.

  St. John: Do you want to dance?

  Hannah: Yes. I bought several outfits and dancing shoes

  St. John: Nice! I’ll pick you up at your place around 3:30 tomorrow

  Hannah: I’ll be ready

  St. John: See you tomorrow

  Hannah: OK

  This would be the first year since he’d taken ballroom dancing lessons that he would have the partner of his choice. Over the years he had selected a partner arbitrarily from a number of unaccompanied women. Once he was paired with a woman, he couldn’t request another partner for the duration of the course.

  St. John had just settled down to enjoy the tunes in the extensive playlist spanning decades when the doorbell chimed throughout the house. Swinging his legs over the lounger, he walked on bare feet to answer the door. It was Sunday and he wasn’t expecting anyone. The only person who usually rang his bell was his elderly neighbor who lived across the street; she claimed she had to check on him because he lived alone. He’d wanted to tell Mrs. Chambers he needed to check on her and her husband because both were quickly approaching ninety. However, he did make it a practice to put out their trash and garbage for pickup, mow their lawn whenever the grass grew too high, and do their grocery shopping when necessary. Although they no longer drove, both were still in relatively good health for their age. Their grandchildren had tried unsuccessfully to convince them to sell their home and relocate to Metairie, where they’d made arrangements for them to them to live in a facility for independent living.

  Peering through one of the front door’s sidelights, he saw a familiar figure. Opening the door, he came face-to-face with Gage Toussaint. “Come on in.”

  Gage exchanged a rough embrace with St. John. “Sorry about coming by without calling.”

  St. John stared at his cousin. At forty-five, Gage was in his prime. Tall and slender, the divorced father of a nineteen-year-old college dropout, Gage occasionally helped out in Chez Toussaints when he wasn’t s
itting in with a local jazz band as their trumpeter. However, it was the blending of his African, Creole, and Cajun ancestry that drew women to him, while making him one of New Orleans’s most eligible bachelors.

  St. John patted Gage’s broad back in a white tee. “What are you doing up so early? I thought musicians don’t get out of bed until late afternoon.”

  Gage ran a hand over cropped straight black hair with flecks of gray. “I promised Eustace I’d help him cater a birthday party in Lakeview.”

  “Do want something to eat or drink?”

  “Nah. I’m good. I’m not going to stay long. I just came by to see if you’re all right. You told me you were coming by the club Friday night, and when I didn’t see or hear from you I thought something had happened.”

  St. John met the younger man’s gray-green eyes. “I’d planned to stop by, but after dinner I decided to make it an early night.”

  Gage gave him a sidelong glance. “Who was she?”

  A slight frown furrowed St. John’s smooth forehead. “What are you talking about?”

  “Did you or did you not have dinner with a woman?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “If you were going to make it an early evening, then what she was offering had be way better than you sitting in a club listening to some of the best jazz to come out of Nawlins in a very long time.”

  “The lady in question is not what you think. We hadn’t seen each other since our twentieth high school reunion, so the dinner was nothing more than reconnecting.” Now that Hannah had agreed to be his dance partner, St. John knew word of them being seen together would generate gossip, but he couldn’t care less about what people said or thought about him.

  “If you say nothing’s going on, then I want you to meet the new female singer who just joined the band.”

  Placing both hands on his younger cousin’s shoulders, St. John steered him toward the door. “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t need you to find a woman for me?”

  Gage laughed. “Come on, kezen, we haven’t seen you with a woman since you broke up with Lorna.”

  “Cela ne signifie pas que je ne vois pas les femmes,” St. John replied in French. Most family members spoke French if only to remain fluent in the language, while a few, including himself, were fluent in Haitian Creole.

  “If you’ve been seeing women, then that means you’ve been holding out on us.”

  St. John shook his head. Once it had been made known he and Lorna were no longer together, many of his relatives embarked on a campaign to hook him up with a number of different women despite his protests.

  “You’ve seen me. I’m good, so now go help your big brother before he brings holy hell down on you for slackin’ off.”

  “I keep telling Eustace that he needs to ease up and let his kids run the restaurant, while he can concentrate on the catering end of the business.”

  “That’s like talking to a brick wall.”

  St. John knew Gage was right. Eustace, the father of three and grandfather of seven, refused to relinquish the day-today operation of the restaurant to his daughters. There had been a time when the restaurant was open for business six days a week for lunch and dinner, but Eustace changed the hours of operation from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. several years ago because catering orders accounted for more than half the restaurant’s revenue.

  “When are you coming by the club?” Gage asked as he made his way to the door.

  “Either next Friday or Saturday. That’s a promise,” St. John added when his cousin shot him a questioning look.

  “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  St. John watched Gage as he sprinted to his Audi SUV to avoid being soaked. The rain was now coming down in torrents. His cousin straddled two worlds: music and cooking. As a Julliard graduate, Gage had lived in Europe for a year, where he learned to cook French dishes, and only returned when his father passed away, and then divided his time cooking at Chez Toussaints and sitting in as horn player for a local band. His short-lived marriage resulted in divorce and a son who was the antithesis of what it meant to be a Toussaint.

  He closed the door and retreated to the sunroom. It was a rainy Sunday and his plans were stay indoors, listen to music, watch the basketball playoffs, and if he didn’t get enough sports, then an encore of an Atlanta Braves or a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game. The fridge was fully stocked and he still had containers of takeout from Chez Toussaints he could reheat within minutes. Although he lived alone, St. John wasn’t lonely. He’d had more than thirty years of sharing a roof with a woman who legally was his wife but never his lover.

  No, he didn’t need anyone’s assistance in finding a woman. He had one—even if she was only there for them to satisfy each other’s physical needs. He’d committed himself emotionally to one woman once in his life and swore it would never happen again.

  And he couldn’t even think of Hannah being anything but a friend and former classmate, even though he enjoyed her company. She was intelligent and feminine—a combination he’d found missing in some women with whom he’d interacted. They were either one or the other, but rarely both, and he now looked forward to having her as his dance partner.

  Chapter 9

  Hannah was shown into the office of the man whose family had begun monitoring investments for the DuPonts following the Great Depression. Margit’s insistence that Etienne free his slaves and employ only free people of color not only saved his fields from being burned to the ground during the Civil War but it also saved future generations from financial ruin. Unfortunately, Jean-Paul DuPont’s shipbuilding descendants did not fare as well, and at the end of the war they lost everything and were forced to align themselves with the anti-slavery DuPonts growing and processing sugar cane for European markets.

  Cameron Singleton rose to stand, greeting her with a friendly smile that lit up large, bright-blue eyes in a lean, perpetually tanned face with patrician features. There was a hint of gray in his cropped light-brown hair. He extended his hand. “It’s always so nice seeing you in person, Hannah. I hate this damn social media because it’s so impersonal. What happened to folks picking up the phone to talk instead of communicating with emails, tweets, and text messaging?”

  Smiling, she took his hand. “I did call you for this appointment,” she said, reminding him that she’d called him earlier that morning. Hannah wanted to agree with Cameron, but felt there were certain advances to using social media.

  “Yes, you did,” he said. “Please, let’s sit over at the table. I always feel disconnected whenever there’s a desk between me and my clients. But you’re different because I’ve always thought of you as a friend.”

  “And I you,” she countered. It wasn’t vanity that told Hannah the forty-something, never-married bachelor was interested in her. His flirting, although subtle, had not been lost on her. She sat on the chair he’d pulled out for her. “I’d like your advice about a business venture.”

  Cameron, sitting opposite Hannah, laced his fingers together. “Tell me about it.”

  She quickly outlined her plan to turn DuPont House into an inn if and when the license and permits were approved. “I have the capital for the necessary renovations, but I don’t want to liquidate some of my investment for salaries until we’re up and running.”

  “Have you thought about investors?” he asked.

  Hannah blinked once, her gaze meeting and fusing with the man who’d earned the reputation as a serial dater because he was never seen with the same woman for more a few months. “No, I haven’t,” she admitted.

  Cameron smoothed down the red silk tie, which was knotted with a precise Windsor knot on a spread-collar white shirt. “Investors are the way to go if you don’t want to exhaust all your assets. Do you know anyone willing to invest for a share in the business?”

  Hannah digested his query. Unfortunately, she couldn’t think of anyone who’d be willing to invest in DuPont House. She knew she could always ask her cousins, despite their protests
that they didn’t want to have anything to do with running an inn.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” she replied.

  “Don’t forget you can use your property as collateral if you decide to take out a loan.”

  She nodded. “I’ve thought of that. But that would be my last resort, even though I could write off the loan as a business expense.”

  “There you go. Meanwhile, I have no doubt you’ll get your permits approved. I know someone at the mayor’s office who can put your application at the top of the pile.”

  “I would really appreciate that, Cameron. Meanwhile I’m going to think about who I can approach as potential investors.” Reaching across the table, she extended her hand. “Thank you, as usual.”

  He shook the proffered hand. “That’s what I’m here for.” He glanced at his watch. “Will you join me for lunch?”

  Hannah rose to her feet. “I’m sorry, but I have something scheduled this afternoon.” Even though it wasn’t quite noon, and she didn’t have to meet St. John until three-thirty, but that was something she wasn’t going to reveal to the financial planner. “Do you mind if we have lunch at another time?”

  “Just let me know when and I’ll clear my calendar.”

  “I’m expecting friends to come in from out of town for a few weeks, but after they leave I’ll call you and we can set a date.”

  Her explanation appeared to please Cameron; his smile was wide enough to reveal flawless porcelain incisors and molars. “I’ll be expecting your call.”

  Hannah rode the elevator in the office building on Carondelet Street and walked to the lot where she’d parked LeAnn’s Ford Explorer. She’d promised her cousins she would occasionally drive their cars in their absence. Leaving the downtown business district, Hannah headed for Tremé. She’d decided to stop and see Daphne’s parents, because she still had time before her dance lesson with St. John.

  Her day had begun joining Letitia in their walk, and after returning to the house she saw to Smokey’s needs. The kitten, after rolling down the staircase in his first attempt, couldn’t stop crying and shaking; now he went up and down the stairs without a hint of fear. Then she’d called Cameron for an appointment to ask for his advice on converting the historic home from a personal residence to a business.