Threads of Steel (Bayou Cove) (20 page)

“I don’t understand what you mean by trouble, but Miss Ellie’s lawyers have assured us that this is what she wanted.”

“What she wanted? I don’t think so. None of you are her family. She was an old woman who was probably brainwashed.”

“Excuse me. I don’t know who you are. . .”

“I’m Elliott Harrington, one of her grandsons,” he said interrupting her.

“Well, sir, we may not have been kin, but we loved her, and as I said, this is what she wanted.”

He leaned nearer to her window.

She sat up straighter and stared at him.

“I don’t think she wanted the daughter of her murderer to live in her house."

For a moment, his words took her breath away. She thought about driving away and never coming back, but then she remembered how Miss Ellie felt toward them. “I thought about pulling my name out of the will because of what my father did, but Mr. Lowery refused to listen to me. He said she loved us and wanted us to have the house. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to leave. You are welcomed to let the law offices know what you’d like to remove from the house and they’ll certainly allow you to do so.”

She raised the window, started the car and forced herself to drive away slowly instead of speeding away from the obnoxious man. She looked in the mirror. He stood in the middle of the street and stared at her car.

She turned the corner, pulled to the side of the road, and put her head on the steering wheel. She breathed deeply, refusing to cry.

“Oh, Miss Ellie.
I’m so sorry that it was my dad who ran over you. I loved you so much. Please forgive me for not even knowing he was out of prison. Maybe had I known, I could’ve stopped him from drinking that
day.
”

As the man said, her father
was
Miss Ellie’s murderer whether he knew what he was doing or not. It was a fact that Anna Marie knew she’d have to live with the rest of her life.

CHAPTER
12

Anna Marie’s cell phone sang as she turned into the hotel’s parking lot. With her hands and body still shaking from her encounter with Miss Ellie’s grandson, she found a parking space before fumbling for the phone
.

“Hello.”

“Hi. Did I catch you at a bad time? Sounds like you’re out of breath.”

Doug’s mellow voice from the other end of the line put a smile on her face.

“No, not at all.
In fact, you couldn’t have more perfect timing. I’m just pulling into the hotel.”

“Are you going to be around today, or do you
have
to get back to New Orleans?”

“Yes to both of those questions. I do need to get back to the office, but I think I’m not going back until tomorrow morning. I have some thinking to do, and I can’t do that on the job.
”

She relaxed against the warm
leather,
feeling like the weight of the world had lifted from her shoulders. The man had a way of doing that.

“Does that mean you need to be alone to think, or would you like some company? If you haven’t eaten, I could pick you up and take you out for lunch.”

Anna Marie looked at the bag of fries and burger she’d picked up at the drive-through. “No, I haven’t eaten. I’d love to go some place. Maybe I need to talk about some of what I’ve been through in the last twenty four hours.”

“Good. How much time do you need? I’m at the house and it won’t take me long to get over there.”

“You can come now, if you want. I’ll be ready when you get here.”

She grabbed the bag of food as soon as he hung up, found a trash container on the walkway, and dropped her untouched food into it as she raced off to her room. She smiled when she got to the door and inserted the card. “What’s wrong with me? I act like I haven’t been out with a man in a decade.”

She pushed the door open and stepped in. “Well, not quite a decade anyway.”

She was surprised at how much she wanted to be with Doug, but it also frightened her. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been out in a long time that caused her excitement. She could have a date anytime she wanted. Men in the city repeatedly asked her out, singled her out at gatherings, and called her on the phone. None of them interested her, at least beyond having a good time as a friend. Sometimes she went out for dinner or a concert simply to get out of the house, but she never let the relationship go any further, not since her previous disasters with men
.

But Doug—here was someone whose company she really enjoyed. Was it his maturity?
His quiet manner?
It didn’t matter. She loved the time she’d spent with him already, and if she were honest with herself, she hoped there would be other times to enjoy his company. Anything beyond that scared her—no, terrified her.

But even terror of what might lie ahead with him couldn’t keep her from getting excited that he was coming over.

Glad that she’d packed a few nice blouses and slacks, she pulled out a fresh one from the closet. She actually wanted to look good for Doug. This was a step in the right direction
.

She ran a comb through her hair and brushed her teeth just in time for the knock.

“Hi,” she said as she swung open the door. Doug stood on the walkway dressed in a pair of
well-worn, but neat jeans and a black polo shirt. He looked good, really good.

“Hey, you really do get ready fast. I like that.”

“I have to admit, I was already dressed. I just had to freshen up.”

He stepped backwards, leaned against the outside railing and crossed his arm. “I’m impressed anyway. I figured I’d be sitting for thirty minutes waiting for you.”

“Sounds like you’re talking from experience.”

Doug laughed but didn’t answer.

She opened the door and stepped outside. Even if he had a lot of experience picking up women from these hotel rooms, the down mood she experienced at Nancy’s and at Miss Ellie’s house floated away
.

“What do you feel like eating?” He asked as he led her to his SUV,
then
opened the door for her.

“I’m game for anything that’s not any place fancy. I wouldn’t mind going back to Captain Jack’s.”

“Then Captain Jack’s it is.” He backed out and within minutes they were pulling up to the little restaurant on the bayou.

The same waitress waved to them as they stepped through the door and seated them on the deck once again.

As soon as they gave their orders, he asked about her day. “So tell me what happened with
Doti
. Did you see her?”

“I did.”
Her
voiced dropped.

“And?”

“And, well,” she blew out a big breath, “that was a biggie.”

Anna Marie told him about her visit and he responded in the same way that Nancy had done. He reached across the table and took her hand.

“If you actually went into her room alone and talked with her, then you acted in a mature manner. That’s all you could’ve done at this point. Surely she didn’t expect you to be her instant friend again.”

He looked up and smiled at Carla who had their beers.

“Here we go.” The waitress looked at Anna Marie as she turned to go.

Anna Marie could almost see the wheels turning in the lady’s head. She probably wondered who this woman was who was with her favorite customer two days in a row.

“So
Doti
apologized to you,” Doug said after Carla left.

“Yes, she said if she could take back anything in her life, it would be going out with Ronnie while he was married to me. I told her I forgave her.” She bit her lip. Her words stopped just as they’d done in the room with
Doti
.

“But you’re not sure if you do.”

She raised her eyes at him and nodded. “You’re very perceptive. After her apology I should’ve hugged her like we used to do. I could tell she expected it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Maybe I’m nothing but an ogre.”

He chuckled. “I don’t think you’re an ogre, Anna Marie. I told you you’re human. Now have a drink and relax. I assume you and
Doti
talked about the house.”

She took a sip of the cold beer. “We did. She wants to sell her share for her daughter Caitlyn. She didn’t try to hide the fact that she was dying.”

“Must’ve been hard on you to listen to her.
It does make sense to give her daughter her share.”

Anna Marie nodded. “I went to Nancy’s this morning. She wants to sell her share too. She said she and Harry are having some financial problems. I can see where the money from the sale would be a big help to them.”

He took a big swallow of his beer. “That leaves you.”

Anna Marie lifted her glass.
“Yep.
That leaves me.” Then she took a sip.

He raised his eyebrows again.
“And?”

“And it leaves me with a big question mark. I guess I’ll agree to the sale. I mean, what would I do with a house like that? I live and work in New Orleans. I’ve never wanted to move back here.”

“Love it.”

“Excuse me
?

“You asked what you’d do with a house like that. You could own it. Use it for a vacation home or a place of business. You could love it.”

Holding her drink in one hand, she slid back in her seat. “I’ve thought about that, but I don’t know what it would prove.”

“What do you mean? People own houses all the time without trying to prove anything. You own a house because it’s what you want to do, not what someone else wants you to do—or doesn’t want you to do. You do what makes you feel good.”

“And you think owning that house would make me feel good.”

“I don’t know. Would it?”

She laughed. “Now you sound like Miss Ellie. She’d never answer our questions. She always answered us with another question to make us think.”

“Plato.”

“Yes, like Plato.” She grinned. “You not only play golf well, you know your history.”

“It was a hobby.”

“I never liked history,” she said after another sip, “not until I fell in love with a literature class in college and realized that literature and history were all connected.”

“Yes, they are, but you’ve gotten away from the subject of the house.”

“Maybe it’s the history of the house that draws me to it.”

“And maybe it’s
your
history in that house that draws you to it,” he said, “the history that you shared with Miss Ellie and Nancy and
Doti
there. Those years must have been meaningful.”

Anna Marie closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of the bayou. “Yes, very meaningful. That’s the same thing
Doti
said.”

After a few minutes, she realized she’d drifted into her own little world, leaving him sitting alone. When she opened her eyes, he smiled at her.

Was it possible for him to understand how she felt about her relationship with Miss Ellie, and now how the house would be so difficult to give up?

How could he? He was a stranger.

“Sometimes we don’t know how intricately we’re involved in something until we lose it or until there’s a chance that we might lose it.” His words were soft and low.

She wondered if he could be thinking about what he lost now that he no longer had his wife in his life.

“What’s the next step?” he asked.

“We’ll wait for the Lowery Brothers to call us to have the house put in our names. The office is working on the paperwork now. You know, doing all the stuff that has to be researched before a house can be sold, or in this case, turned over to someone else. It’ll then be in our
names. They said it’s a simple process as long as all the records are in order.”

“And no one challenges the will.”

She frowned. “
Yes,
and no one challenges the will.”

“Anything’s possible.”

“Yes, very possible.” She told him about her encounter with Miss Ellie’s grandson.

“I wouldn’t worry about it. If the Lowery brothers are sure this is what she wanted, her family might try, but they won’t get anywhere with it, but maybe make you feel awful.”

“He’s already done that.” She inhaled deeply. “Let’s hope they don’t do anything. We don’t want to drag this on forever.
Doti
and Nancy need the money soon. I think as soon as we put it on the market, the better it will be for them.”

“But again the big question? What about for Anna Marie? Is getting rid of the house the best thing to do?”

“Doug, I told you I don’t want to move back here.”

“Yes, you did tell me
that,
didn’t you?”

“Sorry to interrupt your conversation, but you don’t want your gumbo to get cold.” Carla set down two bowls in front of them and a basket of bread in the middle of the table.