Hacienda Moon (The Path Seekers) (3 page)

Returning to the living room downstairs, she removed her Smith Corona typewriter from its case along with a photograph of Breena playing on the beach and set them atop the desk near the window. She placed a sheet of paper in the carriage, hit the return key, watched the page swivel up along the typing roller, and tapped four letter keys.

“H-O-M-E.” Smiling, she headed out to retrieve the rest of her suitcases.

5 days later

Focusing on her untitled novel in progress turned out to be nearly impossible. She spent the first five days in her new place alternating between bouts of manic dusting and writing spurts.

She chose to use a typewriter instead of a laptop and read aloud to her Sony mini recorder for emphasis during rewrites. Sure, it was old-fashioned, but that was the way she liked to create. Plus, she hated wasting paper. Using a typewriter forced her to get her words right the first time, or by the fifth round of revisions, at least.

But tonight, her wastebasket overflowed with wads of paper balls.
 
She positioned a new sheet of paper and clicked the red button on her mini recorder.

She’d dreamed about the car accident on three of the four nights she had spent inside the house. It was as though two people lived inside her head. One that told her she deserved to be happy and that it’s all right to live again. The other one was the toughie, the one that kept telling her she should’ve died in that car accident too. Her head was caught in a whirlwind of emotions: anger, desire, loneliness, pain. She decided to ignore both voices, drowning her sorrows in the novel she was working on.

‘Maud ran like the antelope fleeing from the most dangerous prey. Terrified and in pain, she felt his evil menace pressing down on her even as she fled.’

“Evil menace? All right, Harrison. Just lay the cliché sauce on thicker, won’t you?” Her voice echoed in the room. Tandie picked up her red pen, marked through the last sentence, and kept on typing.

‘
Oh Please, no! Maud cried as she ran through the dank alley. Her breaths came forth in heavy rasps, and her heart pounded like a fist through her silk blouse.’

“Much better.” Tandie pulled the paper from her typewriter carriage, kissed it, and placed her work in a folder along with the remainder of the untitled manuscript.

“Marsha better know what I sacrificed to chock this one out of me, Baby B,” Tandie said to the photograph.

She glanced at the image of Breena holding a large beach ball above her head. That was one of the last happy days she and her family experienced together. She picked up the photo of her daughter and closed her eyes. Two years ago they had travelled to Emerald Isle. It was as if she still felt the sun beaming down on her shoulders as she and her daughter enjoyed time off from pre-school and work that stolen day. Back when life was simple, even though the end had already taken roots without Tandie knowing it.

Sighing, she opened her eyes and stared at Breena. “You’re still not going to talk to me, huh?” Tears blurred her vision, and the pill bottle sitting on the desk by the window pulled at her for the first time in weeks. It was the strangest thing, because she didn’t remember putting it there.

“We can do this. You’re better than that bottle,” she said aloud, a swift calm washing over her.

Tandie fidgeted with Breena’s pink topaz ring she had worn dutifully around her neck since the car accident two years ago. Breena used to say that the rose-shaped stone was her magic rock for talking to the fairy people. Now it served as a salve for Tandie.

Although her ex-husband fought to have the ring buried along with their daughter, Tandie raged a mother’s war during their final meeting at the funeral home. He’d already betrayed her with his adulterous behavior throughout the years. But bringing the other woman to the funeral humiliated her beyond words. She took a stand and did what she believed was the right thing to do. She refused to let him take everything.

The ring once belonged to a powerful Lumbee medicine woman on Grandma Zee’s side, making it an extra special keepsake. In the end, the “grieving mother” was allowed her remembrance token. Tandie walked out of the room and her ex-husband’s life for good that day.

“Don’t stay mad at me too long, Baby B. Okay?”

2

Stepping out of his Jeep, Eric’s nostrils were assaulted by the salty aroma coming off the ocean. The intensity was less dank than the air around the swamplands back in New Orleans, but still held its own little kick. His heart sped up a bit. He never realized how much leaving Castle Hayne had affected him until now.

Walking into the Aeneid, he took in his surroundings. The old bar owned by his good buddy, Virgil McKinnon, sat on a street that was close to the coastline. The building’s exterior faced the shores leading to the ocean. The boy he used to play lacrosse with as a kid had done well for himself.

On Thursday night, the place seemed a bit deserted. Several booths along the walls remained open and tables set up along the middle aisles were empty. Three waitresses too many waited on the few patrons already seated. The small stage set up diagonally across the room from the entrance was occupied by a woman reading poetry while a male pianist played a soft tune. Leave it to his best friend to know how to run a club that set just the right mood. The tourists ate this little spot up during peak season, no doubt.

Eric chose the next to last booth on the right side of the club all the way in back. With no overhead lights near the doorway, he’d be able to surprise his friend.

“Eric Super Cute Cheeks Fontalvo,” the woman’s voice said from behind him.
So much for stealth tactics.
A noise similar to a squeak shrilled into his right ear, and then he was tackled by arms and perfume. There was only one woman it could be—Abby Poole, Virgil’s baby sister. “It really is you. Oh my god! Nobody told me you were back here in these parts.”

“I’ve been laying low. You know how it is around here every time I come to town. I always find out I slept with about ten of your friends before I leave.”

“Do you think you can hide your sweet cheeks?” She pushed him toward the wall, reached down, and pinched his ass. Glancing around at the Aeneid’s patrons, he felt his face heat up. She could still make him blush after all these years.

“Behave. That is, if you can,” Eric said, his face flushed.

“Why should I want to behave with you back here in this town? Should have told me you were coming back. This is exciting news.” She scooted her body closer to Eric’s as if she were trying hop up on his lap. The remnants of cigarette smoke curled around his nose. “Tell old Abby, how’s my favorite pupil doing?”

His face flushed. “I’m glad to be back. I love what Virgil has done to the place,” he said, anxious to turn the subject away from talking about their history together.

Abby still wore the same trademark outfit: a tight red skirt, a black v-neck tee shirt, and a scarf with both colors swirled together in a box pattern. She always had a thing for putting those two colors together. She’d told him after the first time they made out in high school that red and black mixed together were her spiritual colors. And when she wore them no one could make her feel like she wasn’t worth anything.

Virgil tended the bar. He’d wiped the same glass at least fifty times, his eyes glued to the woman reading the poetry. As if he heard the silent pleas in Eric’s head, he scanned the area until his gaze rested on Abby sitting beside him.

“Don’t look now but more attention is headed your way, baby. My brother with the chubby belly and the I’m-a-man-on-lockdown grin just spotted you.” A wide smile spread across his friend’s face. Placing his glass down gently, Virgil approached Eric and Abby’s table.

“What am I paying ya for, gal? My customers need drinks, hospitality. Hell, they might even need food. What they don’t need is dick waxings,” he added. “Now get outta my way so I can greet my friend.”

Abby rolled her eyes upward and slid away from Eric, but not before she ran her hand over his crotch, lingering over it a moment. And then, she gave Eric the smile that won him over back in his youthful days.

Virgil shook his head, rolled his eyes upward, and said, “Get outta here.”

Snapping her head around to face her older brother, she said, “You’re just mad because you got the old hag for a wife.” She turned back to Eric and said, “So glad you’re back. You know where to find me, Sweet Cheeks.” She winked and shuffled off to the bar. Her next victim, a man about six years younger than Eric, sat on one of the stools lined up along the counter.

“That damn gal, I’m telling ya. She hasn’t been right since you two had a go at it all those years ago. That Italian feller she was married to didn’t stand a chance. You know why?  Because he wasn’t an Eric Fontalvo.” Virgil pulled Eric up into a bear embrace and then plopped his husky body down in the seat across from him.

He signaled to another waitress, a blonde. Dressed in a white tee shirt and red shorts, she appeared sweet and innocent next to Abby.

Eric craved a conversation with his old friend that would move him in another direction. He had no interest in bringing up any of his old flames. “What’s this talk about a wife? You didn’t send an email or anything. Did you go soft on me?” Eric said, a slight ache hitting his chest.

Virgil glanced at the woman reading poetry to a somewhat bigger crowd now. Eric recognized the way his face lit up. At one time, he looked at his own fiancée that same way.
 
”That’s my Shania. And that handsome fella at the piano, the one wearing the Harry Potter glasses, that’s our friend, Gus, aka the bartender. As for your soft statement, I’ll just tell ya right now. She sets me up with something soft every single night and it rocks, my man.” They both shared a good, hearty laugh and it felt good.

No one in his family back home laughed much. With his older brother, Javier, being recently diagnosed with cancer at age 40, Eric didn’t expect the situation to improve much.

“Her nickname’s Shay. That’s short for Shania. I think she spells it the wrong way. I pick on her about it, and she gets so mad at me. The make-up sex takes care of it, though. For a guy that spent most of his life doing everything wrong, I think I finally got it right. She makes me feel that way, you know?” Virgil glanced over at his wife, a calm look on his face.

He’d put on quite a bit of weight since Eric last saw him. Back in school, people used to say he and his best friend could pass as twins; but now, he looked more like Eric’s older brother. The bright Hawaiian design on his shirt added to this new carefree Virgil. Strangely, Eric was somewhat envious.

“You can meet her after she’s done with her set. She loves me. So, I know she’ll like you. One and the same, you and I are.” Virgil winked and grinned.

“This place is hooked, Virgil. You’re still surviving after a decade, and expanding, I see.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Tourist season brings the money to keep it looking this way. Tonight, there aren’t many tourists. I don’t have a fancy contractor business like you, though. Just look at you: your fancy watch, your expensive ride. Man. You left here and worked yourself over.” He made a small laugh, shaking his head as if he were in deep thought.

“It’s not all like that.
 
Not really. The company still has a way to go before I get big-time sponsors,” Eric said, anxious to steer the conversation to the old Chelby plantation and its new owner.

The woman living in Chelby Rose was stock pretty: nice skin, long dark hair, curves in all the right places. Eric Fontalvo had watched her for days. Truth was he watched both the house and the woman. You see there was a curse that his mother claimed some old witch had cast on his family hundreds of years ago—one that started in the calm little town of Bolivia. She even claimed it was the reason his oldest brother, Javier, was diagnosed with prostate cancer eight months ago.

Was it a twist of fate that the woman he just happened to run into at an international airport was the new tenant in a house that had a history with both the Chelbys and Fontalvos?

No. Eric never placed much faith in two things: coincidence and rumor. One involved just as much blind faith in someone else’s theories as the other. Accepting Saul Chelby’s contract meant that he and the woman would meet each other at some point, anyway.

“Go ahead. Act humble. But we all have heard about Eric Fontalvo and his big renovation biz.”

“You give me too much credit,” Eric said, taking a sip of his drink.

The rum in his Wild Turkey burned going down his throat and he winced a little.

“Look at you. Can’t even hold your liquor like you used to,” Virgil said, making a wheezy laugh and slapping his knees.

“Speaking of spirits, I see someone’s bought the old Chelby mansion.” Eric set his loaded drink down and raised an eyebrow at Abby. Over behind the bar, she was scratching her thighs and sticking her butt out each time she bent over so Eric had a clear view of it.

“Oh yeah, you’re talking about that weird chic. She used to be a police medium somewhere up north. They say she had a big-timey husband. Son of a bitch gave her a hard time after their kid got killed. Made the gal lose her job, and everything—a real high-class ass. Don’t you go getting all big in the britches like that, you hear me? Hey, that rhymes: high class and ass.” The two men laughed again.

“Yeah, and don’t let me catch you up there onstage reading poetry,” Eric joked.

“You might catch me doing a lot of things on that stage, but reading poetry isn’t one of them,” Virgil said, still making the wheezy laugh.

“Saul Chelby sent me a work request. It seems I’ll be renovating the place from top to bottom.” Eric wanted to steer the conversation toward the old plantation.

Virgil studied him a moment. “You’re gonna take it? I mean, those Chelbys are part of what spooked your old man out, right?”

Eric took a sip of his drink. “Look at it this way. It’s a chance for me to expand the same way you’ve done with this place. Maybe Saul’s tenant will decide to sell it to me so I can flip it. It’d make a damn good bed and breakfast.” Deep inside, Eric hoped that selling the house and ridding it of the Chelby name might help cleanse the curse attached to it. Or at least it might convince his mother and sister.

“Well, her husband should’ve made her leave,” Abby’s voice said behind Eric’s seat, his laughter fading at once. He didn’t even see her leave the bar. She held the largest beer mug he’d ever seen. “She’s probably a witch. That’s why she moved back down here. Everybody in that old hick little Bolivia is either a witch or a ghost. Virgil, you know it’s true. Don’t be looking at me like I’m talking out of my ass, or something.”

“Abby, you act like Bolivia is a thousand miles away. It’s not even thirty minutes down the road,” Virgil said.

“What are you talking about, Abby?” Eric asked. He was intrigued by the superstitions that were still floating around the town. The more things change, the more they turn into different versions of the same.

“I’m talking about the witches and ghosts haunting that little old town. I can’t believe Saul Chelby is even considering giving up his family’s place. That psychic guru chick must really be something,” Abby said, studying Eric as if she already knew how much he’d thought about meeting the woman. Her jealousy had been one of the main reasons they didn’t stay a couple back in school. It was a problem then and he could tell it would be the same way now.