Midnight Bayou (23 page)

S
he stepped into the shower just as he got out. He imagined she’d timed it that way, to avoid the intimacy. Giving her room, he went to the kitchen, found the expected pitcher of tea, and poured two glasses.

When she came in, wearing that same sexy skirt and a fresh shirt, he offered her a glass.

She took it into the living room.

In the last few days, she’d resigned herself to what needed to be. Throughout, part of her had indeed pined for him. And every time she’d caught herself glancing toward the bar door, looking for him, or waking up in the night reaching for him, she’d cursed herself for being a weak fool.

Then she’d glanced at the door, and there he was. Her own soaring pleasure, depthless relief, had annoyed her even before he’d nipped at her pride by plucking her out of her own bar.

“Declan,” she began. “I wasn’t fair to you the other day. I wasn’t in the mood to be fair.”

“If you’re going to apologize for it, save it. I wanted to make you mad. I’d rather see you angry than sad. She makes you both.”

“I suppose she does. Mostly I hate knowing she’s out there with Grandmama, knowing she’ll hurt her again. I can’t stop it, I can’t fix it. That troubles me. But you shouldn’t have been brought into it.”

“You didn’t bring me into it. It happened.” He angled his head. “Correct me if I’m wrong. You’ve got the impression that since I come from where and who I come from, I’m not equipped to handle the darker, the more difficult, the stickier aspects of life. Your life, in particular.”

“
Cher,
I’m not saying you’re not tough. But this
particular aspect of life, my life, is out of your scope. You wouldn’t understand someone like her.”

“Since I’ve been so sheltered.” He nodded. “She came to see me today.”

The healthy flush sex and heat had put in Lena’s cheeks drained. “What do you mean?”

“Lilibeth paid me a call around noon. I debated whether to tell you about it or not, and decided that I’m not going to keep secrets from you, or tell lies. Not even to spare your feelings. She came by, invited herself in for a cold one. Then she tried to seduce me.”

“I’m sorry.” Her lips felt stiff and ice cold as she formed the words. Her throat burned like fire. “It won’t happen again; I’ll see to it.”

“Shut up. Do I look like I need your protection? And save your outrage until I’m done,” he told her. “When she reached for my zipper, I told her not to embarrass herself. Her next tack was to fling herself down on the kitchen table and cry.”

He eased down on the arm of Lena’s sofa. The tone of conversation, he thought in some corner of his brain, didn’t lend itself to lounging among all those soft, colorful pillows. “She didn’t manage to work up many tears along with the noise, but I give her marks for effort. The story was how bad, mean people were after her. They’d hurt her, you, Miss Odette if she didn’t give them five thousand dollars. Where could she turn, what could she do?”

Color rushed back into Lena’s face, rode high on her cheekbones. “You gave her money? How could you believe—”

“First a sheltered wimp, now a moron.” He gave an exaggerated sigh and sipped his tea. “You’re really pumping up the ego here, baby. I didn’t give her a dime, and let her know, clearly, I wasn’t going to be hosed. That
irritated her into threatening to go to my family. Seems she’s asked around about me and got the picture. She figured they’d be shocked and shamed by the idea of their fair-haired boy falling under your spell. For good measure, she’d tell them I’d fucked her, too.”

“She could do it.” It was more than the cold now. The sickness roiled in her belly. “Declan, she’s perfectly capable of—”

“Didn’t I tell you to wait until I was finished?” His voice didn’t whip, didn’t sting. It was simply implacable. “The cost doubled to ten thousand for this spot of blackmail. I don’t think she was pleased with my response. I kicked her out. That’s about it, so you can be outraged now if you want. Don’t cry.” He spoke roughly when her eyes filled. “She’s not worth one tear from you.”

“I’m mortified. Can’t you understand?”

“Yes. Though we’re both smart enough to know this had nothing to do with you, I understand. And I’m sorry for it, sorry to add to it.”

“It’s not you. It’s never been you.” She wiped a tear from her lashes before it could fall. “That’s what I’ve been trying to get through your head from the start.”

“It’s not you, either, Lena. It’s never been you. I looked at her. I looked close and hard, and there’s nothing there that’s part of you. Family’s the luck of the draw, Lena. What you make of yourself, because of or despite it, that’s where the spine and heart come in.”

“I’ll never be rid of her, not all the way. No matter what I do.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I’m sorry. No, damn it, I will say it,” she snapped when his face tightened. “I’m sorry she came into your home. I’m sorry she touched on your family. I need to ask you not to say anything about this to my grandmama.”

“Why would I?”

She nodded, then rising, wandered the room. She loved this place because she’d made it herself. She respected her life for the same reasons. Now, because she cared for, because she respected the man who was so determined to be part of her life, she’d explain.

“She left me before I was two weeks old,” she began. “Just went out one morning, got in her mama’s car, and drove off. Dumped the car in Baton Rouge. I was three before she came back around.”

“Your father?”

She shrugged. “Depends on her mood. Once she told me it was a boy she loved and who loved her, but his parents tore them apart and sent him far away. Another time, she told me she was raped on the way home from school. Still another it was a rich, older man who was going to come back for both of us one day and set us up in a fine house.”

She turned back so she could face him. “I was about eighteen when I figured she told me the truth. She was high enough, careless enough, mean enough for it to be the truth. How the hell should she know, she said. There were plenty of them. What the hell did she care who planted me in her? One was the same as the other.

“She was whoring when she got pregnant with me. I heard talk when I was old enough to understand what the talk meant. When she got in trouble, she ran back to my grandparents. She was afraid of an abortion—afraid she’d die of it, then go to hell or some such thing. So she had me, and she left me. Those are the only two things in this world I owe her.”

She drew a breath, made herself sit again. “Anyway, she came back when I was three, made what would become her usual promises that she’d learned her lesson, she was sorry, she’d changed. She stayed around a few days, then took off again. That’s a pattern that’s repeated since. Sometimes she’d come back beat up from whatever bastard she’d taken up with most recently.
Sometimes she’d come back sick, or just high. But Lilibeth, she always comes back.”

She fell silent, brooding over that single, unavoidable fact.

“It hurts when she does,” Declan said quietly. “Hurts you, hurts Miss Odette.”

“She hurts everyone. It’s her only talent. She was high when she showed up on my thirteenth birthday. We were having a
fais do-do
at the house, all the friends and family, and she stoned, with some lowlife. It got ugly pretty quick, and three of my uncles turned them off. I need a smoke,” she said, and left the room.

She came back a moment later with a cigarette. “I had a boy I was seeing, crazy about that boy. I was sixteen, and she came back. She got him liquor and drugs and had sex with him. He was hardly older than I was, so it’s hard to blame him for being an idiot. She thought it was funny when I stumbled over them out in the bayou. She laughed and laughed. Still, when I got this apartment, and she came back, I took her in. Better me than Grandmama, I thought. And maybe this time . . . Just maybe.

“But she turned tricks in my bed and brought her drugs into my home. She stole from me, and she left me again. From then I’ve been done with her. I’m done with her. And I’ll never be done with her, Declan. Nothing I can do changes her being my mother.”

“And nothing she does can change who you are. You’re a testament to your own grit, Lena, and a credit to the people who raised you. She hates you for what you are.”

She stared at him. “She hates me,” she whispered. “I’ve never been able to say that to anyone before. Why should saying such a thing, such an awful thing, help so much?”

“I won’t say she can’t hurt you anymore, because she can. But maybe now she won’t be able to hurt you as much, or for as long.”

Thoughtfully, she tapped out her cigarette. “I keep underestimating you.”

“That’s okay. That way I can keep surprising you. How’s this one? She’s connected to Manet Hall.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, exactly, and can’t explain it. I just know she is. And I think maybe she was meant to come back now, to say what she said to me. One more link in the chain. And I think she’s pretty well done around here, this time out. Call your grandmother, Lena. Don’t let this woman put a wedge between you.”

“I’ve been thinking of it. I guess I will. Declan.” She picked up her glass, set it down again. The useless gesture made him raise his eyebrows. “I was going to end things between us.”

“You could’ve tried.”

“I mean it. We’d both be better off if we stepped back a ways, tried to be friends of some sort.”

“We can be friends. I want our children to have parents who like each other.”

She threw up her hands. “I have to get back to work.”

“Okay. But listen, speaking of weddings, slight change of plans in Remy and Effie’s. We’re having the whole deal at my place.”

She rubbed her temple, tried to switch gears and moods as smoothly as he did. “In . . . with half-finished rooms and tools and lumber, and—”

“That’s a very negative attitude, and not at all helpful, especially since I was going to ask you for a hand. How are you with a paintbrush?”

She let out a sigh. “Do you save everyone?”

“Just the ones who matter.”

S
omewhere between Declan’s leaving the Hall, and Effie’s arrival, Lilibeth paid another call. She was riding
on coke and insult. The lousy son of a bitch couldn’t spare a few bucks for the mother of the woman he was screwing, she’d just help herself.

She’d cased the first floor when he’d led her back to the kitchen, and going in through the back, she arrowed straight to the library and the big rolltop desk she’d spotted.

People with money kept cash handy, in her experience. Moving quickly, she yanked open drawers, riffled through, then let out a shout when she found a neat pile of fifties. Those she stuffed into her pocket.

She figured the books he’d shelved and the ones yet in boxes were probably worth something. But they’d be heavy, and hard to sell. He’d likely have more cash, a few pieces of jewelry up in his bedroom.

She raced up the main stairs. The fact that he could come back at any time only added to the thrill of stealing.

A door slammed, had her falling straight to her knees. Just a draft, she told herself as she caught her breath, as the pulse in her throat began to pop. Big, drafty old house. In fact, she felt cold air whisk over her as she jumped to her feet again.

She touched a doorknob, yanked her hand away again. The knob was so cold it all but burned.

Didn’t matter. What the fuck? His room was down the hall. She wasn’t as stupid as people thought she was. Hadn’t she watched the house over the last few days? Hadn’t she seen him come out on the gallery from the room at the far corner?

Laughing out loud, the sound rolling back over her, she dashed down, streaked through the open door. She yanked open the top drawer of a dresser and hit pay dirt with the old carved box inside.

Gold cuff links—at least she assumed they were real gold. Silver ones, too, with some sort of fancy blue stone. Diamond studs, a gold watch. And in a box inside the
box, a woman’s ring of . . . ruby maybe, diamond and ruby, fashioned in interlocking hearts.

She set the box on the dresser, hunted through a couple more drawers until she found another wad of cash.

Paid anyway, didn’t you, you bastard. Paid just fine.

She tossed the bills into the jewelry box, tucked the box under her arm.

Standing there, her breath whistling out in excitement, cocaine dancing in her blood, she debated the satisfaction of trashing the place. It would be satisfying—more payment. But it wasn’t smart. And she was smart.

She needed time to turn the jewelry into cash, time to turn some of the cash into drugs. Time to get the hell out of Dodge. Best to leave things as they were.

She’d go out the other side, just in case her long-nosed mama was looking this way.

But when she stepped back into the hall, she found herself staring at the third-floor stairs.

What was up there? she wondered. Maybe something good. Maybe something she could come back for later. Something that would make her rich.

Her breath wasn’t just whistling now, but wheezing. Her skin was ice cold. But she couldn’t resist the urge to climb those stairs. She was alone in the house, wasn’t she? All alone, and that made it
her
house.

It was her house.

Swallowing continually to wet her dry throat, she started up. Shivering.

Voices? How could she hear voices when there was no one there? But they stopped her, urged her to turn back.

Something wrong here, something bad here. Time to go.

But it seemed hands pressed to her back, pushed her on until, with trembling fingers, she reached for the door.

She meant to ease it open, slowly—just take a peek. But at the touch of her hand, it swung violently open.

She saw the man and woman on the floor, heard the
baby screaming in the crib. Saw the woman’s eyes—staring and blind. And dead.

And the man, his hair gold in the dim light, turned to look at her.

Lilibeth tried to scream, but couldn’t grab the air. As she opened her mouth, something
pushed
into her. For one horrifying moment it became her. Then it swept through her. Cold, vicious, furious.