Mimosa Grove

by Sharon Sala

  “Oh, my, what a shame,” Laurel said, thinking of all the life and years this tree had survived and stood witness to, only to be felled by a simple act of nature.

  She leaned over carefully and stared down into the hole where the roots had been, squinting slightly as her eyes adjusted from bright sunlight to the darker qualities of shade.

  The hole was deep. Far deeper than a grave. And there were all sorts of underground denizens that had been uprooted with the tree. Earthworms roiled together in small, muddy clumps as if disoriented by the weightlessness and light. Rocks of various sizes and shapes had been partially revealed, like shy strippers showing only bits of their skin. Something in the roots caught her eye, and she moved a bit closer to see, only to be startled moments later when she saw it was a small black snake.

  Still a city girl at heart and unable to tell good snakes from bad, she stepped back to give it a wide berth, and as she did, tripped on an exposed root from another tree and fell backward onto the ground.

  It was the unexpected motion that startled her, more than the impact of the fall. And she was already laughing at herself when she started to rise. Then she froze.

  Being prone rather than upright had drastically changed her view of the fallen tree—and what lay tangled within it. They were unmistakably bones, caught within the spidery, weblike network of roots, then washed clean from the downpour after the tree had fallen. She was wondering if they were animal or human when she saw the small skull and somehow she knew. For the first time in centuries, Chantelle LeDeux, or what was left of her, lay exposed to the bright light of day.

  She moaned softly, filled with regret, then rocked back on her heels, and as she did, she saw a second skull. It was larger than the first, and with a crack that ran from the eye socket to the top of the head. These people had not died a natural death.

  “Oh, God… oh, God,” she whispered, then pushed herself upward and took a couple of steps back. Taking a slow breath and making herself calm down, she retraced her steps to the edge of the hole and then knelt. If she stretched just the least bit forward, she would be able to reach the second skull. Without thinking of what might happen, she leaned forward, and time stood still.

  ***

  Joshua was scared. As scared as he’d ever been in his life. The night sounds on the river were frightening, but not as frightening as facing his angry master would be. He’d been whipped near to death just for breaking a dish. He didn’t want to think what would happen for knocking the man out and helping his wife get away.

  So he sat and he waited, praying for the sound of her voice, waiting for the touch of her hand to give him courage to do what must be done.

  Morning dawned, and still he sat huddled down in the canoe, afraid to stay, needing to run, but he’d given her a promise he wasn’t willing to break.

  As he sat, he thought he heard dogs, and the sound made him sick. They weren’t just the barks of dogs in the woods. If they were hounds, they belonged to the massuh and were most likely on his trail.

  He stared up at the riverbank, willing Chantelle LeDeux to appear, but all he saw were the trees beginning to be defined by color, as well as shape, as the light continued to spread.

  Mist was rising from the water now as the warmth of the sun kissed the surface. He stared downriver, wondering how far he would be able to get before they shot him on sight. He thought of his woman, and then his baby girl, and knew he would never see them again. Something had happened. Something bad, or Chantelle would have come. It took him a few moments to realize that when he’d thought of her then, he’d thought of her by name. It was the first time he’d let the familiarity into his head.

  With one last look toward the banks above, he reached down into the canoe for the paddle, and as he did, color in the river caught his eye. He swallowed a moan.

  A flash of yellow, then a shadow of pure white. Chantelle had been wearing a yellow dress when he’d last seen her. Dear God, he didn’t want to be right.

  He looked again, and as he did, huge tears filled his eyes.

  “Poor baby… poor tiny little thing… I shoulda killed him where he lay.”

  He shifted his weight so that he was balanced on both feet, then bent over and lifted her half-submerged body from the stream.

  Her face was swollen, both from the beating and from being in the water all night, and something, probably a big catfish, had eaten the small finger from her right hand.

  He pulled her across his lap, then tried to straighten her dress and fix her hair.

  “So, little missy, you done tried to keep your word to me, didn’t you? You came, jus’ like you said you would.”

  Then he closed his eyes and lifted his face to the morning.

  ***

  Upriver, the hunters froze, stunned by the high, keening sound of animal pain and the roar that followed.

  “God have mercy,” one of the man muttered. “What was that?”

  But it was LeDeux, bandaged and bloody and at the head of the pack, who turned his head toward the sound like a wolf suddenly scenting prey.

  “It’s him,” he said. “And when we get him, don’t forget that he’s mine.”

  The men nodded, none willing to look at their friend who’d been so shamed. They all believed his story and were incensed on his behalf. None of them wanted to think one of their women might turn to a Nigra’s bed. It was different when a man took one of the women. It meant nothing and, to most, was simply a way of strengthening the seed of his chattel. But for a woman to take a black was a sin most foul. They empathized with LeDeux in many ways and yet secretly wondered what had been lacking in him that would have caused his own woman to do such a deed.

  “Let’s go,” LeDeux said, and unleashed the dogs.

  ***

  Joshua heard them coming before he saw them. He glanced down at Chantelle’s body, where he’d laid it out upon the ground, then picked up the club he’d made of a piece of deadfall and waited for fate to catch up.

  Yesterday, when he’d gotten out of his sweet woman’s bed, he’d had no thought of dying on the morrow, but yet it had come, and he would not leave Chantelle behind just to try to outrun it.

  Suddenly the dogs came out of the trees and were upon him, snarling and snipping at his arms and his legs as he swung the club, trying to keep them back. But when one of them got past him and bit at Chantelle’s leg, he lost control.

  It didn’t matter that she was far past the pain, or that she was immune to the indignity of her condition. He turned his back on his two-legged enemies to fight the animals from her. Wielding the club now with more anger than fear, he brained all but one of the hounds, leaving their bodies on the ground and the last one crippled and waiting to die.

  His breath was coming in short grunts and gasps, and he kept seeing blood spots before his eyes. It took a bit to realize that it was the blood from the dogs that had splattered his face. He swiped at his eyes as he turned and saw the butt of LeDeux’s rifle coming toward him, then threw up his arm and tried to duck.

  But it was too little and too late.

  The blow shattered his skull. He went down like a felled giant, with the upper half of his body lying across Chantelle. It seemed that even in death, he was trying to shelter her.

  The hunters said nothing, instead watching LeDeux’s face as he dismounted from his horse. He took a shovel from the saddle, then turned to the men with a look of such malevolence that they all shrank back in fear.

  His voice was shaking with rage, and there was a drop of spittle at the corners of his lips. To a man, they believed him to have the look of a mad dog, and none wanted to be bitten.

  “Get out!” he said, his voice trembling in fury. “Leave me and never voice a word of this to another. If you do, I swear to you, on my children’s lives, that you will never know another day without fear. I will bum your homes to the ground while you sleep, and if you think to escape, I will be sitting outside with my rifle to pick you off as you run screaming from the f
lames.”

  They paled. One turned and threw up his breakfast. Another mounted his horse and rode away without speaking.

  LeDeux waited until they were gone, then walked to the nearest mimosa tree and started to dig.

  Within weeks, word had been spread—by LeDeux himself—that his wife had become homesick and gone to Paris for a visit. By the time six months had passed, he was claiming that she’d written him a letter, saying she was never coming back.

  He’d played the part of the bereft husband to the hilt, raised his children, spoiled his grandchildren, and died with the stains of her blood and Joshua’s on his soul.

  ***

  Laurel moved her hand, then fell backward on the ground, for a moment too shocked to move. Ever so slowly, she began to understand what Chantelle had been trying to tell her. She just wanted to be found. Her spirit had needed the truth to be revealed before it could be set free.

  Laurel crawled to her feet and, without a backward glance at the hole, started toward the house. Soon she was jogging, then in an all-out run.

  She was running to get help, just as Chantelle had begged her to do.

  ***

  Marie was filling a vase with fresh flowers when she heard Laurel shouting. She dropped a stem of pink crepe myrtle into the sink and reached for the gun. She was on the porch before it dawned on her that the gun was still in that bag. Laurel was coming out of the grove, waving her arms as she ran. Without thinking of her own safety, Marie ran off the porch and started toward her, intent on protecting her, if necessary with her life.

  They met halfway between the grove and the house as Laurel fell into Marie’s outstretched arms.

  “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Is it the cat? I brought the gun!”

  Laurel was still in shock and shaking, but when she saw the fierceness of Marie’s expression, she almost managed a smile.

  “No, Mamárie…. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s not the cat.”

  “Then talk to me, girl. What in blazes you mean, comin’ outta the grove, shouting and scarin’ me half to death?”

  “Oh, Mamárie… I found her.” Then she started to cry.

  Marie grabbed Laurel’s hand. “Honey… you not makin’ any sense. Who did you find?”

  “Chantelle LeDeux.”

  Marie’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open in shock. She looked past Laurel toward the grove, as if expecting to see a specter come floating out of the trees.

  “God have mercy,” Marie muttered. “You saw her ghost?”

  Laurel knew she wasn’t making sense, but the emotional impact of what she’d seen was heartbreaking.

  “No… no, not her ghost,” Laurel said. “I found her… or what’s left of her. The storm… last night… the lightning… it hit a very old, very large tree. It split in two and fell, roots and all, ripped right out of the ground.”

  Then she took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to put the horror of Chantelle’s and Joshua’s deaths from her head. There was no one to bring to justice. There was no one left alive to blame. But now they could finally be put to rest. She took Marie’s hand, then impulsively pulled it to her cheek and laid her face against the small, work-worn palm.

  “There were two skeletons all tangled up in the roots. One was Chantelle’s. The other belonged to a slave named Joshua. He was married to a woman who was your ancestor.”

  Marie staggered as if she’d been slapped.

  “Oh, Lord, oh, Lord… what we gonna do?”

  It was that simple question that began to calm Laurel’s senses, because she knew exactly what needed to be done.

  “We’re going to call Harper and tell him to bring his coroner and his crime-scene people, and they’re going to collect the remains of the two murder victims. Then, when the authorities are finally done with all the fuss and hoorah they feel they have to make over two-hundred-year-old bones, we’re going to have us a couple of funerals and bury Chantelle… and Joshua… right up in the family plot in Bayou Jean, where they should have been buried all along.”

  Now Marie was the one whose eyes filled with tears. She took Laurel’s hand as if she were a little girl who was about to learn a hard lesson and started to explain.

  “Laurel, honey… you might not want to go buryin’ the bones of some slave in the family plot. Times have changed some across the country, but there’s a whole lot of the old ways that still hold down in the South.”

  Laurel’s chin jutted, her eyes suddenly glittering with far more than tears.

  “I not only intend to bury that man in the family plot, I’m going to bury him next to Chantelle herself.”

  Marie gasped. “Oh, no, that wouldn’t be right. She should be laid out beside the man who was her husband.”

  “Not that son of a bitch… not in my lifetime,” she muttered.

  “Why on earth not?” Marie asked.

  “Because he’s the man who killed her. He killed them both. Now, quit worrying, pick up that gun and come with me. It’s way past time to right a terrible wrong.”

  ***

  It was a cool day in September when the medical examiner finally released the remains. Laurel had an undertaker waiting. The caskets she’d chosen were the finest Bayou Jean’s funeral parlor had to offer. The burial sites she’d had opened were the ones next to her grandmother, Marcella, and her husband, Etienne. The way she figured it, Chantelle would be happier in paradise if her earthly remains were as far away from Jean Charles LeDeux as they could be.

  The day was gray and overcast as Justin drove her and Marie to the cemetery in Marcella’s old Chrysler. The ride was quiet—each of the three lost in their own private thoughts. Although Laurel had told them everything she’d seen and what she knew to be true, neither of them could truly appreciate what she had experienced. They had not been in her head, or known the depths of Chantelle’s pain and despair, or felt the strength of a slave—a man with no last name who’d made the ultimate sacrifice for a woman he admired.

  ***

  As they arrived at the cemetery, a fine mist began to fall. It seemed a fitting tribute for lost souls—a washing away of the wrongs as they reached a final resting place that would make everything right.

  Later, as they stood hand in hand beneath the wide shelter of the black umbrella that Justin was holding over their heads, Laurel felt as if she were being released—as if she’d finally been pardoned from some internal prison.

  At Laurel’s request, the local Catholic priest had administered last rites before the caskets had been closed, and he was now reading what Laurel guessed were meant to be comforting verses from the Bible, only she’d let the sound of his voice fade into the background of her mind so that she could hear what really mattered on this day. It was hardly more than a whisper—others, if they’d heard it, would have thought it to be the sound of water dripping from the large waxy leaves of the nearby magnolias. But she knew better.

  It wasn’t rain. It wasn’t even the sound of the wind that was beginning to rise, whipping the hems of their skirts against their legs and blowing mist against their faces. She leaned against Justin as she looked down at the ground, absently noting the grass and mud on the toes of her shoes, while taking comfort from his strength and the warmth of his embrace.

  Then, in the middle of the priest’s last words, there was a lull in the wind and then an absence of sound.

  Laurel looked up just as the sun broke through the clouds. A long yellow-white beam of sunshine was shining through the break, like a beacon showing the way home.

  A breath caught in the back of Laurel’s throat, and she remembered again the moment of Chantelle’s death, when she’d tried so hard to go toward the light and instead had become earthbound.

  But that had been an eternity of yesterdays, and this was today, and the priest had said all the right words and blessed their earthly remains.

  Safe journey, Laurel thought.

  Blessed be your life were the words that came straight back into he
r head.

  And then she heard the priest say “amen” and she echoed it with one of her own. It was over.

  Other Books by Sharon Sala

  A Thousand Lies

  A Field of Poppies

  The Perfect Lie

  Remember Me

  Sweet Baby

  The Chosen

  Butterfly

  Missing

  Reunion

  Snowfall

  Bloodlines

  Dark Water

  Out of the Dark

  The Whippoorwill Trilogy

  Whippoorwill

  The Amen Trail

  The Hen House

  About the Author

  Sharon Sala is a long-time member of the Romance Writers of America, as well as a member of Oklahoma RWA. In 2014, she published her one-hundredth novel. A fan favorite, Sala is an eight-time RITA finalist, winner of the Janet Dailey Award, four-time Career Achievement winner from RT Magazine, five-time winner of the National Reader’s Choice Award, and five-time winner of the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence, as well as Bookseller’s Best Award. In 2011 she was named RWA’s recipient of the Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award. Her novels have been on the top of major bestseller lists including the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly. Sala also writes under the name Dinah McCall.