Authors: Erica Spindler
“Still a fan of cabs?” she asked.
He was, and while she opened the bottle of cabernet, he unpacked their sandwiches. He remembered where the plates were stored and got two. As she eased the cork out of the bottle, he set the roll of paper towels on the table.
It was all so painfully familiar, her hands shook as she poured the wine.
He unwrapped his sandwich. “If they’re not sloppy, I’m going to be pissed.”
They were. Ridiculously so, with beef and gravy, “dressed” with mayo, lettuce and tomato.
“There’s no way I’m eating this without a knife and fork,” she said, standing. “Want some?”
“Are you kidding? Amateur.”
She was, she saw as she returned to the table: he had already eaten a third of his sandwich, spilling hardly a drop of gravy. He was attacking it like a starving man.
“How long have you been back?” she asked, scooping up a forkful of gravy and beef.
“A couple days.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “That explains your table manners. Civilization sinking in yet?”
He grinned. “With minimal success.”
“I see that.”
He took it the way she meant it and laughed. “How much can sink in? I slept for the first twenty-four hours and have been awake for the last twenty-four.”
“What was it like over there?”
“Brutal.”
He didn’t embellish on that and she took another bite. “Why’d you join up like that, Connor? Why’d you disappear?”
“I needed a place to hide.”
Mira frowned. “I don’t understand.”
He ignored her question, picked up his glass, swirled, sniffed, then tasted. “My God, that’s good. One of the many things I missed.”
“Why hide from us, Connor?” She leaned toward him. “Jeff was your best friend.”
He looked as if she’d struck him. “You were both my best friends.”
“When you just up and disappeared, it broke his heart. It broke mine, too.”
He caught her hand, holding it tightly. Too tightly. His skin felt leathery, his palm callused against hers. She didn’t pull away or complain, though his grip hurt.
“I promise I’ll tell you everything, just not now. Okay? I thought I was ready, but I’m not. I need time.”
As suddenly as he’d grabbed her hand, he released it. “Maybe I should go—”
“No.” This time it was she who caught his hand, only softly. To comfort. “Don’t leave. Tell me when you’re ready. I trust you.”
They fell silent. He drank his wine while she picked at her sandwich.
She broke the silence. “I haven’t had one of these in ages.”
He eyed her mutilated sandwich. “You still haven’t.”
“Would you like some of it?”
“Sure, pass it over.”
He picked up the untouched half. “No flowers. No po’boys. What the hell have you been doing?”
“Surviving.”
“Shit.” He set the sandwich down. “That was insensitive of me.”
“I was just being honest.” She forced a smile. “How many times did we sit around this table doing a version of this? Eating something uniquely New Orleans and drinking wine—”
“A lot of wine.”
“Talking and arguing?”
“About something stupid.”
“But laughing, too.”
“Yes.” He met her eyes, the expression in his serious. “I’d like to get to that place again. Where we are now is—”
“Awkward,” Mira filled in for him, then sighed. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore, Connor. I don’t want pity or sympathy, and I want to stop missing him.”
She got to her feet and crossed to one of the courtyard windows. She leaned against the casing and stared out at the night. “It’s my fault,” she said softly, after a moment. She looked over her shoulder at him. “I should have been the one who died, not him.”
“No. It’s not true. Don’t say that.”
“How much of the story do you know?”
“Some. From my folks.”
Who heard it from Jeff’s.
“Then I’m surprised you’re talking to me.”
“Do you really think I’d judge you that way? C’mon, Mira.”
She held his gaze for a long moment, then looked away again. “I wanted to stay for Katrina. It was my idea.”
“Which he went along with.”
“Yes, and once I convinced him to stay, we were both excited about it. Truthfully, we figured the worst would be the wind and rain, then losing power. But secretly, we wanted it to be big. Jeff and Mira’s big adventure. We were so naïve, so stupid.”
“Like everyone else.”
“No,” she corrected. “Lots of people did the smart thing and evacuated.” Mira unlatched the window and lifted it. Hot, sticky air greeted her. But heady as well, with the scent of night jasmine and the sound of insects and music from the Balcony Music Club up the street.
“We stocked up on everything we thought we’d need. Water, coolers of ice, batteries and lanterns. Nonperishables. A Red Cross radio.”
“Sounds like you did everything right.”
Except leave,
she thought, breathing in the heavy air, releasing it slowly, memories unfurling. “Jeff got a gun.”
“That doesn’t sound like Jeff.”
“And the marines doesn’t sound like you.”
“Maybe none of us knew each other as well as we thought we did.”
She didn’t want to think that and told him so.
He shrugged. “So, Jeff got a gun?”
“Yeah. I hated it and it scared the crap out of me. But it was a deal breaker for him. He was afraid we might need it if the unthinkable happened.”
The unthinkable. It had happened. In more ways than they had imagined.
“We had made up a shelter in the closet under the stairs. For us and Ginger. We made it through the storm, though there were a couple times I wondered if we would.” She looked back at him. “You can’t imagine … the wind beat at us and beat at us … For hours. Screaming and howling. It felt as if it was tearing at the house, that it might rip it from its foundation at any moment. I remember pressing my hands over my ears and praying for it to stop.
“Occasionally it did, because of the storm’s bands. We’d scramble out of the closet and run to the windows to see what was happening. Then it would begin again.”
He stood and came up behind her. He laid his hands gently on her shoulders. Comforted, she reached up, covered his hands with hers and went on. “Then, finally, it was over. We were fine. The house was mostly intact. We were so”—her voice cracked—“lucky. The damage around us was much worse.”
Connor didn’t comment, didn’t move. Waiting. Understanding that she had shared only the beginning of the story.
“I was worried about my studio. About my windows. I’d just finished a big job, a church in Violet. Installed the windows just a week before the storm.” She cleared her throat. “Jeff offered to go check on whatever he could. We heard there were trees and power lines down, that travel was near impossible. He told me to stay. Thought I’d be safer—”
She tightened her fingers on Connor’s. “Safer,” she repeated. “Because of debris in the roads. And we thought it wise for someone to be at the house. He left the gun with me.”
“So he got in the truck and left?”
“We thought everything was over. We thought it was safe for him to go.” She looked up at him, pleading. “I wouldn’t have let him drive off if I thought he’d never come back.”
He gently massaged her shoulders. “Of course you wouldn’t have.”
“You believe me, don’t you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
His softly spoken question sounded like an indictment to her and she jerked away from him. “Because I’m a rich widow now! Don’t try to pretend you haven’t heard the whole story from your family.”
“I’m not pretending anything. But since I haven’t heard the story from
you,
I haven’t really heard it, have I?”
She went on, trembling. “The Seventeenth Street canal burst. A block from my studio. From where they found Jeff’s truck, they speculate he was on foot when it happened. It would have been like a tidal wave rushing at him.”
She started to cry, but when he made a move to hug her, she turned away. “And it would have been fast. There would have been nowhere he could go. And no time even if there had been a way to escape.”
“How long before you knew what happened?”
“It was three days before the lake and floodwaters leveled, another week before they could collect bodies. It was agony not knowing. The whole time I kept telling myself he was fine. Holed up somewhere without a way to get in touch with me.”
“His body was never recovered. Right?”
“No, they did recover him! It’s just that”—she struggled for control—“they couldn’t one hundred percent identify it
was
him. The condition of the body, from being so long in water…”
She choked on the last. How did one voice the horror of the pathologist’s report, months later? Of a body being ravaged by both the elements and predators?
“What about dental records?”
“Gone,” she whispered. “That’s one of the things people just don’t get. His dentist’s office was totaled, all the records destroyed.”
Mira retrieved her glass from the table and drained the last of the wine. “Jeff’s family accused me of murdering him. Of using the opportunity the storm presented to dump the body.”
“That’s ridiculous. I know you didn’t kill him.”
“How?” She met his eyes in challenge. “You weren’t here.”
“Because I know you. And I know how much you loved him.”
Tears swamped her. “No one else … no one else believed in me like that.”
He drew her into his arms. Sinking into his embrace, she pressed her face against his chest and cried. He held her that way until her tears had run their course.
She eased out of his arms. “Lovely,” she whispered, voice thick. “I’ve made a complete mess of your shirt.”
“I have other shirts.” He looked down at the mascara and foundation smears, then back up at her. He laughed. “Besides, my shirt is nothing compared to your face.”
Mira wiped under her eyes. “That bad, huh?”
“Rabid raccoon, run amok.”
She went for tissues, wiped her eyes, then blew her nose. “The police investigated. The Gallier family, as you know, is very influential. Their ties go all the way to the attorney general’s office.”
Connor snorted with disgust. “What the hell evidence did they think they had?”
“Before Jeff left that day, he gave me a shooting lesson. He insisted I had to at least know how to shoot, in case looters or other crazies showed up while he was gone.”
Connor nodded. “It makes sense.”
She sat heavily. “The gun had been fired and my prints were on it. But the DA refused to charge. No body, no murder. And even if the pathologist had gotten a hundred percent identification, there’d been no gunshot wound.”
“I’m sorry they put you through that,” Connor said.
“But it wasn’t over yet,” she said, tone bitter. “Next, they brought a wrongful death civil suit against me.”
“Which failed as well.”
“Yes.” She laughed, the sound hollow. “So here I am, a rich widow who would give up everything for just one more day with my husband.”
“I should have been here for you.”
“You’re here for me now,” she said. “Thank you.”
After that, they left their sorrow and regret behind. They remembered good times and laughed about them, they spoke of the future and their hopes and dreams.
It wasn’t until he had driven off that she realized he’d told her nothing of the past five years of his life or why he had disappeared the way he had.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Saturday, August 13
2:30
A.M.
“Jeff!”
Mira shot up in bed, breathing hard, her cry seeming to hang in the stillness of her bedroom. She darted her gaze over the interior. The dream had been so real. He’d been here, standing beside the bed, talking softly to her.
“
My sweet star. How I’ve missed you.
” Star. He’d begun calling her that after they’d learned Mira was actually the name of a star. No one else had ever called her that.
Why had that crept into her dreams tonight? It’d been years.
Seeing Connor again. Remembering the old days.
She sat up and reached for the bedside light. Her fingers brushed against something hanging from the lamp’s switch. Frowning, she wrapped her fingers around it. A fine-weight chain. Like a—
It couldn’t be. Her mind must be playing tricks on her. She turned on the light. A whimper of fear slipped past her lips.
It couldn’t be, but it was.
Her cloisonné cross hung from the lamp switch.
Mira stared at it, heart beating wildly. The metal shone like it was brand-new. She reached for it, then froze, the full ramifications of the moment overcoming her. Someone had been in her house. While she slept. Not just in her house, beside her bed. Close enough to touch her.
“My sweet star. How I’ve missed you.”
Jeff’s voice in her head, bringing a wave of comfort. And longing.
Not Jeff. Of course not Jeff.
Preacher.
He could still be in the house.
With a cry, she leaped out of the bed. She grabbed her capris off the floor and shimmied into them, then slipped into her flip-flops. She snatched up her cell phone, started to dial 911, then dug in her pants pocket for Detective Malone’s card instead.
He answered on the second ring. “Malone.”
It vaguely registered that he sounded as if he had been asleep and that she didn’t have a clue what time it was, but her words spilled out in a panicked rush anyway. “Detective, it’s Mira Gallier. My necklace, it’s back!”
“Slow down. You say your necklace is—”
“Back.” Her voice rose. “He brought it back. He was in my house! While I was sleeping!”
“He’s gone now?”
“I don’t know. I woke up and saw it and … Do you think he might still be here?”
“Where are you now?”
“In my bedroom.” She suddenly realized he could be under her bed or in her closet. Quietly listening. Planning his next move.
“Mira?”
“Yes?” she whispered.
“I’m sending a cruiser over now. I’ll be right behind.”
“Don’t hang up!”
“I’ve got to put you on hold for one minute. But I won’t hang up. I promise.”