Bayou Blue

by Raquel Byrnes

  Alarm jangled through my already frayed nerves. “Like hurricane-ugly? With downed power lines and blackouts?”

  “I’ve noticed you and the dark aren’t exactly on friendly terms. Something happen?”

  “No,” I answered too quickly, and then sighed heavily. “Yes.”

  “You don’t have to…”

  “It’s not that terrible, really.” I tried to sound like I didn’t have sweaty palms. “I got lost as a child.”

  “In the dark?” Jake cocked an eyebrow. “Were you outside?”

  “Yeah, my family was camping; it was just me and Raymond then. Randy wasn’t born yet. I think I must have been around four or five years old. We were at a big group camp for one of my father’s causes, and I wandered off. I meant to get more marshmallows and somehow got turned around.”

  “You got lost in the woods at night? For how long?”

  “Overnight, actually.” I hugged myself. “I realized I was lost when I couldn’t see the campfire anymore, and panicked. I ran and stumbled down a ravine. The fall knocked me out and when I came to it was to a snorting or grunting. I think it was a raccoon or a skunk, but as a child…” My voice trailed off as I remembered the overwhelming fear that squeezed my chest. “It was pitch black, and I was so cold. It felt like I was going to shiver my eyeballs right out of my head, but the pain…the pain in my arm is what sent me screaming.”

  “Ma chèr,” Jake intoned. “I’m so sorry.”

  My hand found the spot in my arm that still ached in the rain, the healed-over break.

  “I kept passing out and waking up to cry. After hours of lying in the dark, I was so exhausted I didn’t have the strength to brush the bugs from my shirt anymore.”

  A shudder rocked me and I clasped my arms together trying to hide it from Jake.

  “How did they find you?” Jake’s hand entwined with mine, squeezed softly. “Who found you?”

  “Search dogs followed my scent and they found me by dawn the next morning, but I was terrified of the dark for years.” I smiled sheepishly. “I still don’t like it.”

  “I know.” A shadow crossed his face and I leaned forward.

  “That was a long time ago, Jake.”

  He didn’t answer, looked out the window instead, and I wondered what he was thinking. Did he find me cowardly? Had I shared too much with him, too soon? We pulled to a stop in front of the Lightning Bug, and I knew what made him frown.

  Sitting on the porch, piled neatly under the overhang, were all of my bags.

  “Qu'est ce que c'est?” Jake growled as he pulled to a stop and turned the car off. “What is this?”

  I knew what this was. This was Citrine’s line in the sand. I’d just crossed it, apparently. The pain in my side kept me from getting out of the car before him, and I walked through the wet wind to join him on the porch.

  Citrine stood at her door, the screen closed in front of her clearly upset features. “She can’t stay here anymore, Jake.”

  “Ce n'est pas juste, Citrine,” Jake said over the wind and jangling chimes. “This isn’t right and you know it.” Jake slipped into French whenever he was upset.

  It was hard for me to understand what they were saying to each other.

  Citrine took a step out of her doorway and crossed her arms. “My daughter sleeps not ten feet from where that man attacked her, Jacob.” Her voice broke.

  I understood. I understood the fear completely. “Jake, it’s all right—”

  “Non ce n'est pas,” he interrupted. “It’s not all right, Riley.”

  “I know but…”

  He spoke low to Citrine and the anger in his voice made me pause even if I couldn’t understand what he was saying. “Je ne ferais jamais cela à vous.”

  “No you wouldn’t ever do this,” Citrine said through a trembling lip. “But not all of us are so noble, Jacob. Not all of us are so brave.” She pointed to me. “She was right the first night when she told me that trouble follows her.”

  Citrine and Jake stood facing off on the porch in the rain and wind, their faces set with the hurt and regret of years of unexpressed pain.

  I didn’t know what to do. A cold wind chattered my teeth and I bit my tongue between them.

  Jake’s hand went to the rail, his voice tired. “Vous voulez me faire du mal, pas Riley.”

  Citrine wiped her eyes with her hands. “I don’t want to hurt you.” Her gaze caught mine, full of anguish. “This is not jealousy or…or loss. I just don’t want to do this. I don’t want her here anymore.”

  I didn’t want to be the cause of this. Hissing back the pain in my side, I pulled on Jake’s arm. “It’s OK, Jake, she’s right. Michelle could have been hurt, too. Everyone in the house could have been hurt because of me.”

  He looked at me with sorrow.

  The rain whipped onto us as we stood on the porch and Jake wiped my face with the back of his hand before turning back to Citrine. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You know why.” She looked back at the house, her hair now matted to her face with rain and tears.

  I looked at the window and my stomach fell.

  Hands on the glass, face pulled into a broken sob, Michelle watched us.

  “Citrine…” Jake murmured and I wished I could sink into the mud.

  I shouldn’t be seeing this. I shouldn’t be here at all.

  “Vous choisissez.” Citrine jutted out her chin, her lip pulled into a trembling frown. “Choose what you want, Jacob.”

  “Citrine I—”

  “Choose, Jake,” She snapped, and fear ran across her features.

  He stepped back, put his arm around me, his head shaking slowly. “Je l'aime.”

  My heart stopped and the crushed look on Citrine’s beautiful face told me I’d heard right.

  I love her.

  23

  I shivered in my drenched clothes as I watched Jake load my bags through the rear view mirror. I struggled to control the emotions rumbling in my chest. My heart both soared to hear what he felt, and broke over what it was costing him.

  I don’t know what to do, Lord. I don’t understand…

  When Jake slipped into his seat, he gripped the wheel without looking at me.

  “I’m sorry, Riley,” he murmured. “That was not how I wanted…” His voice trailed off.

  He started the car and pulled away from the house. Listening to the gravel and rain beating on the car, I left him alone to his thoughts, not knowing what to say.

  We drove in silence, as we had on my first day back here, and I wondered at how different things were after only days.

  The trees, bowing to the building wind, arched towards the ground as their branches whipped the leaves off in the gusts.

  Jake turned the heater on and his hand found mine, holding it between us on the seat.

  I tried to make sense of what was happening. To understand that this man was tearing his life apart, moving away from what he knew, for me. The thought overwhelmed me with awe and worry.

  He drove us through the storm, rain whipping in sheets against the car, to the sheriff’s station.

  “I need to make a call,” he said quietly. His smile was sad, tired. “You should come in, get dried off.”

  “OK.”

  I followed him and stood wet and dripping in front of a wall heater, watching him through his office window as he talked to someone on the phone.

  He rubbed his eyes, and I knew he was fighting a headache. When he came back out, he had an olive green blanket which he draped over my shoulders.

  “Verona’s coming.”

  A phone rang at the front counter and he turned to go, but I caught him by the sleeve. “Jake.” My voice cracked and I struggled to get my words out. “I’m—”

  Jake stepped over, wrapped his strong arms around me, pulling me close. “Don’t say anything. Just…let things be for now, OK?”

  I nodded, rested my forehead against his chest, and sighed deeply. We stood in front of the heater, quiet a
nd still, the storm raging outside and in.

  An hour later, the bell over the front door jingled, and I heard Verona’s muttered complaints about the weather. She lifted the counter and sauntered back into the station, her hands on her hips. Spotting me, she shook her head and clicked her tongue. Just seeing her put a smile, however faint, on my face.

  “Heard you got yourself booted from the Lightning Bug, Red.”

  “She’s not the only one,” Jake said quietly.

  Verona snapped her gum and nodded slowly. “’Bout time.”

  ****

  Jake stayed at the station to deal with some fender-benders and a collapsed roof that caused an accident on the main road while he was at the hospital with me.

  Toughie showed up to fill Jake in on what happened with Kale’s statements and his meeting with the State police handling Dauby’s murder.

  Jake, his face tense, hugged me, pecked me on the forehead, and saw us off.

  It took a while in the storm, but Verona and I finally got to her house. Under the impression she lived over the café, I was surprised when we pulled up to a mission-style home in the opposite part of town. Dark-stained timber under a deep green shingled roof, the home was beautiful.

  “You like it?” Verona asked and pulled her truck into the garage. “My daddy and I restored this place ourselves. Took us almost four years.”

  “It’s gorgeous, Verona,” I said.

  She helped get my bags, and I followed her in through the kitchen door. She set my bags on the table and rubbed her hands together like she was warming them up.

  I stood rooted to the one spot and looked at her.

  Verona studied me with her dark eyes, sighed, and pulled a kettle off the stove. Walking to the sink to fill it, she turned to me. “You want to tell me what happened?”

  I sat at Verona’s table and wondered why I seemed to always be spilling my guts to her over steaming mugs of coffee. I told her about the scene at Citrine’s, about what Jake said, and she listened quietly with a look of concern on her face.

  “And what do you say, Red?”

  I pushed my mug to her, let my gaze run over the copper gelatin molds hanging on her kitchen walls, and bit my lip. “I don’t like what I’m doing to his life, Verona,” I whispered through fresh tears. “I feel like I’m tearing it apart.”

  “Well, you are, but that’s good.” She stood up, stretched, and wandered over to the fridge. “He’s spent so long beating himself up over his brother’s death, hiding out in that station and underneath that uniform that he forgot who he was. Jake forgot how to live.”

  “But I’ve gone and ruined—”

  “Wasn’t anything to ruin,” she interrupted shaking a soda can at me. “You don’t see the change in him, but I do. He was practically a ghost, Riley.”

  “I’ve brought nothing but drama and discord since I came here.” I spread my hands on the table, sniffling. “I want him to be happy. I’m not seeing that. All I see is wreckage.”

  Verona leaned against the wall and folded her arms. “You brought him back to life. The way he looks at you. And he smiles now, really smiles.”

  “He’ll resent me, Verona.”

  She sat back down at the table, her dark eyes boring into mine. “Do you think a man like Jake, a good man, a gorgeous man like him; you don’t think there’s been interest?”

  I shrugged.

  Jake was more than handsome, he was magnetic. I’d felt it. Of course, other women would want him. “Yeah, Jake is…well, he’s Jake.” I smiled a little just picturing his face, the feel of his arms around me.

  “Women in this parish, they got eyes. They see he’s a catch and yet he just…” She shrugged. “He chose you, Red. He wants you. Don’t take that lightly, he isn’t.”

  “But…” I had no words. Only worry and hope and nerves.

  Verona put her hand on mine, looked at me with an honest smile. “What you do with all that is up to you. But know this, if he said he loves you, he means it.”

  I forced myself to nod, to agree with what she was saying, but inside I didn’t know. Inside I worried that I wouldn’t be able to make up for what he was giving up, that what we had wouldn’t be enough.

  24

  I dreamt of small animals scratching in the night, sobbing children, and cold wind that howled through dark, gnarled branches. A jarring crash ripped me from sleep and I sat up with my heart racing. I glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner of the room. It was past nine in the morning. I ran my hand along my bruised ribs. They were sore, but much better.

  Verona’s angry yelling pulled me out of my room and downstairs.

  The cold hit me first, the wind rushing in from outside through a hole in the picture window over her couch. Crumbled pieces littered the rug, but it was otherwise intact.

  “Get some towels, Red, in the hall.” She struggled to push a tree branch back out of the window. Leaves and dirt and water spewed in the house. “Go on, now.”

  I grabbed the towels from the closet and ran over to her with eyes wide at the terrible noise the whirling wind made.

  “What happened?” I shoved the towels in her arms and she threw them on the wood floor and over her couch.

  “The storm hurled a tree through my window, what do you think happened?”

  “No,” I shook my head, slipped in the water as I maneuvered next to her to push the branch. “How did the window not completely shatter?”

  “My daddy put in safety glass, but it’s no match for a hit like this.”

  Rain whipped by the wind sputtered in through the hole in her window and she looked at me with water dripping from her bangs. “I knew that old tree would give one of these days.”

  We jostled and pushed the branch but it wouldn’t move. “We need to pull it.” I let go and slid under her and the branch. “I’ll go pull it and you keep pushing.”

  “What are you, like ten pounds? How are you going to pull this thing?” She struggled to move a towel with her bare foot, grabbing at it with her toes.

  “Always with the attitude.” I smiled as I pulled on her slicker by the door. “You have any rope?”

  “In the garage on the shelf by the door.” She shook her head. “I just bought this couch.”

  Shoving the rope in my pocket, I left the garage by the side door and scuttled in the rain and wind towards the front of Verona’s house. Instantly chilled by the frigid water, my teeth started to chatter before my bare feet sank into the muddy grass. “I see it, hold on.”

  The branch, still partially attached to the tree was wedged against the window. There was no way we were going to push that out.

  “Can you pull it out?” Her voice called back over the tapping of the rain and wind on the shingle roof.

  “Not sure.” I pulled on the branch, and then held on with both hands, lifted my feet and hung off it. It didn’t move.

  Throwing the rope over a fork in the branch, I tied it on and fed the rest of the rope as I walked backwards, looping it around the trunk. A white streak blazed across the sky overhead and the hairs on my arms stood up.

  “Well?”

  I could see her eyes just over the branch.

  “What’re you doing?” She asked.

  “Push when I say so,” I yelled and put one foot up on the trunk of the tree, the rope in both of my hands. “Push!”

  I felt her pressure on the branch and picked my other foot up, planted it on the trunk and pulled. Almost sideways, I pulled on the rope as I strained with gritted teeth, ignoring the protest of my bruised side. A crackle vibrated up the rope and I felt the branch give a second before I jumped back to the ground.

  Rushing outside, Verona panted, her hands scratched, but her smile bright. “You have skills, girl!”

  “You have no idea.” I grinned.

  An hour later, after drying off, I dressed in a dark red sweater and black jeans and met Verona downstairs.

  She drove us into town and we wandered through the small hardware stor
e there. Verona had the owner’s son, Dashiell, pile up her supplies by the door.

  I wandered the aisle with drywall screws and boxes of nails, brooding. After my talk with Verona, I’d gone through my packed suitcases from Citrine’s. I had no laptop, and my packet from Salem was gone.

  Whoever attacked me was brutal and thorough.

  Verona’s raucous laugh broke through my thoughts.

  “Better hurry up now, Verona,” Dashiell urged. “We already had half the parish in here this morning.”

  She shook her head, her eyes on the bin of duct tape. “What do you think, Dash,” she sighed. “You think we’re gonna get hit hard?”

  He pulled another sheet of plywood over to her pile and wiped his hands on his overalls. Shaggy brown locks just touched with gray at the temples, his blue eyes danced with good humor and he followed Verona despite the other customers. He seemed to really like her.

  “If you want, I can come over and help you put that board over your window, V.”

  She turned with a look of fake shock on her face. “Dashiell Deveaux, are you flirting with me?”

  “Maybe I am,” he said through a smile. “Am I being too subtle? I could always find a reason to take off my shirt and flex my biceps at ya.”

  “Dash!” Verona laughed and threw a roll of tape at him.

  He ducked, chuckling.

  I watched them, smiling, as I walked down the adjacent aisle. I glanced at the list she’d made for our trip and decided to leave her there to flirt while I went next door to the grocery store to grab some of the rest of the things.

  Outside on the sidewalk, the streets buzzed with people and cars despite the downpour and wind. Street lights swayed over trucks packed with boards for windows and other foul weather supplies. La Foudre was gearing up for some bitter rain.

  I hugged my coat closed and ran, head down, to the next storefront. Pushing through the dinging front door, I shook my coat off and grabbed a shopping cart.

  Excited chatter over at the checkout counters and in the aisle ratcheted up my worry. This type of rain in California would be news, but here? Was I missing something?