by Sharon Sala
Justin chuckled. “I like him, you know.”
Laurel thought back to the short time they’d all spent together, and how easily Justin and Robert had bonded.
“He asked me my intentions,” Justin said.
Laurel gasped. “He didn’t!”
“Yeah, actually, he did,” Justin said. “I told him they were fairly honorable, but that I’d never really had a chance of getting away.”
“You didn’t!”
He laughed. “No, I didn’t. I kept our dream-time rendezvous to myself. Besides, who’d believe me?”
“I would,” she said softly.
“Yeah, but you’re special that way,” Justin said.
Laurel smiled, then rolled over onto her belly.
“Please be careful,” she said. “I’ve waited so long for someone like you that I couldn’t bear to lose you.”
She almost said the word “again” and wondered where that had come from.
“You’re not going to lose me,” Justin said.
Then he frowned. He’d almost added the word “again” and wondered why.
“Still reading that diary?” he asked.
She frowned. “Yes. There’s something I want to tell you when I see you, but it’s nothing that can’t wait.”
“Okay. Sleep tight, my love. I wish I was there to hold you.”
“No more than I do,” Laurel said. “Stay safe. I love you.”
“Love you, too,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
The click in her ear was distinct, and, she thought, the loneliest sound.
A few minutes later, she had dried her hair, slipped on a fresh nightgown and was back at the diary. With only three pages left to go, she knew she couldn’t sleep tonight without knowing how Chantelle had ended her solitary conversation.
I have done the unforgivable. My husband is furious. By taking down the whipping post in his absence, I have defied him and his ways in front of the slaves. He has been shouting at me for hours, proclaiming that what I’ve done will lessen his power over them and cause an uprising. But I don’t care. His behavior has solidified a feeling I’ve had for some time now. I came to this country to be a bride. Instead, I became exactly the kind of chattel that my husband covets. I may be white and educated, but I am his slave as certainly as the blacks who work his land.
I can’t bear to live this lie any longer. Tonight I am telling him that I am leaving. I’m taking the children and going home to Mama and Papa. I will not have them grow up thinking their mother is some mindless, spineless female whose only skill is being ridiculed for a gift that has been in her family as long as can be remembered.
I will tell him. God help me. I greatly fear his wrath.
Laurel laid down the diary with a frown. This confirmed the legend that had come with the place, that the first woman of Mimosa Grove had run away from her man. Yet it was a contradiction, too, because, according to that same legend, she had left with another man, leaving her children behind. They lived, grew up, married, bore children and, according to Marie, were buried in the cemetery outside Bayou Jean. Yet according to the diary, Chantelle had planned to take them with her.
Still frowning, she pulled back the covers and turned out the lights. Outside, the occasional shaft of lightning still lit up the sky, and the belch and grumble of thunder still rattled the windowpanes. She went to the window and pushed the curtains aside, watching the darkness and waiting for the next bolt of lightning to illuminate what she already saw in her mind’s eye.
Even without opening the window, she could hear the rush and rumble in the distance that was the river in flood. She thought about the grove, and of the big cat that hadn’t been seen since Trigger DeLane’s death.
Manville and two of his boys had come back the next day after the police and the coroners had allowed them on the property and tracked the cat until they’d lost its trail. For two nights afterward, they’d combed the grove, but with no results.
On the third day, a panther had been sighted about five miles downriver. The farmer on whose land it was hunting had killed it outright with a blast from both barrels of his shotgun. People said it was the same one that had killed the man at Mimosa Grove. Laurel liked to think it was so. It was part of that night. Part of a time she didn’t want to relive. And if the panther, too, was dead, then the ordeal would be over.
As she stood, lost in thought and wondering if Justin was as restless as she, a bolt of lightning suddenly snaked out of the sky, striking so close to the house that she was momentarily blinded. She staggered backward, then stumbled over a chair and slid down to the floor. In a panic that something on the property had been hit, she scrambled back to her feet and ran to the window, worried about what had been struck.
But the darkness was blinding and the rain still fell, and since nothing was on fire, whatever it was would have to wait until morning. She went to bed with a prayer of thanksgiving that it had missed the house.
Then she started to dream.
“You bitch! You ungrateful, foreign bitch! I will not be humiliated like this. You will not leave me, nor will you take my children.”
“They’re my children, too!” Chantelle cried, and then fell backward against the fireplace when he struck her with his fist.
As blood poured into the inside of her mouth, Chantelle knew she’d made a horrible mistake by telling him of her plan. She should have waited for him to take one of his trips, then slipped away with the children on her own. Now it was too late. Before she could get up, he fell upon her and began beating her in earnest.
Chantelle began screaming, begging for help and, at the same time, praying her children would not witness her debasement.
“Stop! Stop! For the love of God, you are killing me!” she cried.
“It is what you deserve!” he shouted. “If you will not be my wife, then no other man shall know you, either!”
He continued to pummel her with his fists until she could barely see from one eye. Her nose was surely broken, because she could no longer draw air through one nostril. And just when she thought it was over, he was gone—lifted from her body and flung through the air like a rag doll.
She moaned. Someone was pulling her up, begging her to run. Begging her not to look back. But she did.
It was Joshua.
He stood between her and her husband like a dark and avenging angel. His hands were still curled into the fists that had knocked her husband from her body. The breadth of his shoulders and the long, strong length of his legs had proved too much for her husband to fight.
“Please, Missus,” he begged. “If you don’t run, we both dead.”
Then she did something outrageous. Something she would never have imagined herself capable of doing. She thought of the beating he had suffered, then grabbed him by the hand and begged him to go with her.
“Come with me,” she said. “He’ll kill you if you don’t.”
Joshua looked down at their hands, at the fingers that were entwined, and was so shocked that she’d touched him in this way that he couldn’t speak. She kept talking and talking, but he was still staring at the contrast of light and dark. Then he shuddered and made himself look up—right into her pale blue eyes and a face that was so battered, and knew he had to tell her no.
“No, Missus… no. I can’t leave my woman… and what about my baby girl?”
“I’ll find a way,” she said. “All I need is to get word to my father. He’ll buy you away. He’ll pay for you all. Then you’ll be free, just like me.”
Joshua looked down once again at her hand, absently thinking how tiny it looked against the size of his own. And he knew that in another time, and in different lives, he would have loved this woman who’d dared to live true to herself.
He shuddered once, then moved his hand away.
“You run now.”
Then Chantelle’s face crumpled.
“My babies. I can’t leave my babies behind
with this man.”
Joshua’s wife stepped out from behind a curtain. She’d been an unwilling witness to it all, even the shocking interchange between her husband and the master’s wife. As she looked down upon her unconscious master, she started to cry.
“Oh, Joshua… Joshua… what you gone and done to the massuh? He won’t just whip you again. He’ll kill you fo’ shore.”
And in that moment, LeDeux moaned.
Joshua grabbed Chantelle and turned her toward the door.
“You run, Missus. It’s still dark. He can’t see you. Run toward the river. I got a boat hid out down there, and I’ll take you to someplace safe.” Then he turned to his wife, and as he did, she began to cry. “Listen to me, woman, and you listen good. You been the best woman a man could have. We got us a pretty baby girl that we love, just like Missus here loves her babies. But we got us some trouble, too. If I don’t get her out, he gonna kill her for shore. Then he gonna kill us both for knowin’ she dead. You understand?”
Her dark eyes widened with fear as she nodded her head.
“You get back to the cabin. You lay down with our baby and you sleep like you never slept before. And when he wakes you up and asks where I gone… you start wailin’ and cryin’ like your heart done broke. You carry on so loud and long that he’ll know for shore you don’t know nothin’ about what’s been done.”
“But my babies,” Chantelle moaned. “I’d rather die than leave my babies.”
Joshua’s woman stared as if she’d seen a ghost. Suddenly it dawned on her that this woman was just like her, that she would do anything to protect her children.
“Missus… you get my Joshua to safety, and I swear on my life that me and mine will look after your children and their children and their children after, for as long as we all lives.”
Chantelle hesitated again, until she saw her husband beginning to stir. And at that moment, her decision was made.
She looked up at Joshua, unaware that all her hopes and her trust were there on her face for him to see.
“You’ll be waiting for me?”
“Yes, Missus, iffen I have to, I wait forever until you come.”
***
Laurel woke up. Sunlight was shining through her bedroom windows. She rolled over on her back, then sat up. But she didn’t move, and at that moment, wouldn’t have been able to speak.
She already knew what had happened to Chantelle when she’d made a run for the river. Someone had caught her. Someone had hit her in the middle of her back with something that had dealt her a deadly blow, and if she had to offer a guess, she would say it had been the man to whom she’d been wed.
Then she thought of Joshua’s wife, and suddenly she understood the depth of her promise. She didn’t have to ask to know that Marie LeFleur was a descendant of that woman, just as Laurel was a descendant of Chantelle. History had kept repeating itself, looping from generation to generation upon the promises that three people had made to one another.
And then there was Justin. She wouldn’t tell him, because it served no purpose he would ever understand, but she knew, as surely as she knew her own name, that in another lifetime his name had been Joshua, and he’d given a promise to a woman that he was still trying to keep.
But what of Joshua? Had he made it to the river? And if he did, how long did he wait? Did he witness Chantelle’s untimely death, or did he, too, fall prey to the fury of a rejected husband who valued pride above those he’d promised to love?
As she sat staring out the window, Marie knocked on her door.
“Laurel… honey? You awake?”
The knob turned, then Marie pushed the door inward and came in carrying breakfast on a tray.
Laurel got out of bed, took the tray from her and set it aside, then put her arms around Marie and tried not to cry.
Marie frowned but held tight to Laurel, sensing she was in some distress.
“That was a bad storm last night,” she said. “Did you have some bad dreams? Here now… you get yourself back in bed and have some of my hot biscuits and jam.”
“Not unless you sit with me,” Laurel said.
Marie looked a bit taken aback, but when Laurel dragged the tray into the middle of the bed, then sat down, the old woman followed. Laurel buttered a biscuit half, then topped it with jam and handed it to Marie.
“For all you have done, for all the years you’ve done it.”
Marie smiled a bit self-consciously but took the bread and ate.
“Not bad, if I say so myself.”
Laurel fixed the other half for herself and, sitting cross-legged in the bed, shared her meal and her dreams.
It was hours after that when Laurel remembered the lightning strike, and immediately, she had to go see. She changed her shoes and then went to find Marie to tell her where she was going.
Marie frowned at the news. “What if that old painter still prowlin’ around in the trees?”
“They say it’s already dead,” Laurel said.
“There’s more than one cat in this state,” Marie argued.
Laurel frowned. “So… do we have a gun?”
“Your grandmama wouldn’t have slept a wink if she knew there was a weapon on this place.”
Something about the way she answered made Laurel suspicious.
“Okay… but do you have a gun she didn’t know about?”
Marie blinked; then she started to grin.
“I knew you was somethin’. First time I laid eyes on you, I knew you gonna be hard to match.”
“Well?”
“Can you shoot?” Marie asked.
“I’m not afraid of guns. I can certainly take aim, and I can pull a trigger. Have I ever shot one before? No.”
Marie shrugged. “Me, neither. But two old women livin’ alone out here in the bayou didn’t make sense without something to protect us. Wait here.”
Laurel grinned. The more she got to know this feisty little woman, the more she hoped to grow old just like her.
Marie came back with a shoe box and handed it to Laurel with a flourish.
“It’s in there,” she said. “Loaded an’ all. I had the man at the pawn shop load it when I first bought it, and since I haven’t had call to use it, it’s still full up.”
“How long ago was that?” Laurel asked as she untied the string around the box and lifted the lid.
“Um, nearly ten, no, eleven years, I guess.”
“Lord,” Laurel muttered, and then took out the gun.
It was a revolver, and she didn’t want to know how old it was before Marie had bothered to purchase it. But it was loaded, that much she could see. She picked it up gingerly, then let it hang between two fingers while she debated the best place to carry it on her.
“Here,” Marie said, and took a small canvas tote bag from the back of the kitchen door. “This is what I use when I pick apples to make pies. This bag holds just enough apples for two pies. I reckon it can hold one gun.”
“Okay,” Laurel said, and put the gun inside.
“Just sling it over your shoulder like a purse,” Marie said. “I don’t think the gun will go off… do you?”
Laurel grinned. “Don’t ask me. You’re the expert, remember?”
Laurel rolled her shoulder to test the weight of the bag, then traded it to the other side and rolled it again. Both times, the handles slid downward and she just caught the bag before it could fall.
Marie snorted beneath her breath and took the bag off Laurel’s shoulder before she started out the door. “We don’t neither one of us have sense enough to pound sand in a rat hole, and if you tripped and fell, likely you’d shoot yourself in the ass, so I’m thinking you just leave this here with me, go see about your lightning strike, and then get back here on the double.”
“I think you’re right,” Laurel said, and started out the door as Marie called after her, “You have any troubles, you just holler. I’ve got the gun.”
Laurel kept on walking without letting herself consid
er the consequences of that remark.
“In a shoe box. Eleven years. Lord have mercy,” she muttered, then laughed.
It felt so good to be outside after three days of rain that she began to jog. The ground was soft beneath her shoes, still spongy from the storm. Drowned flowers and downed limbs were lying everywhere, and she made a mental note to give Tula a call and have her grandson, Claude, come help her clean up the mess.
The closer she got to the trees, the louder the roar of the river became. When she was at the edge of the grove, she turned and looked back at the house, aligning the windows of her room with where she was standing, then turned around and closed her eyes. In her mind, she saw darkness and rain pouring against the windows—then the flash. It had been left of center of the view from her windows, which meant she needed to go a little bit west. It shouldn’t be hard to find, because, from the sound she’d heard, it had certainly struck something.
She opened her eyes and struck out in a westerly direction, but always looking inward toward the grove, looking for a blackened tree or one that had fallen, or maybe one that had split. She’d heard that lightning would travel through a tree and then come out through every root, ripping up the ground as if there had been an underground explosion. She was curious to know if that was an old wives’ tale or true.
A pair of white cockatoos flew past her head in a parallel race near the ground, while a raucous blue jay hopped about beneath a tree, feasting on worms that had been flooded out of their holes. On the outside, it made Mimosa Grove look like her own portion of paradise, but there had been snakes in paradise and a cougar in hers. She approached with caution.
Even then she almost didn’t see it. If a half-dozen birds and a small squirrel hadn’t erupted from the same spot and taken to the trees, she might have missed it. Curious as to what had caused them all to gather in one location, she shoved through a tangle of bushes and vines, then had to catch herself from falling into the hole.
She’d found the tree. It appeared to be one of the older ones. Lightning had split it right down the middle, and, weakened by the separation and age, it had toppled, taking centuries of dirt and the entire root system with it as it fell.
