A Perfect Mess

A Perfect Mess

Zoe Dawson

Acknowledgments

I'd like to thank Barbara Robyor, Dare Cook, Jannice Roy and Sue Stewart for all their many, many sessions of reading this book over and over again. Thank you, also, to Faith Freewoman for her excellent advice and editing skills. A big thank you also to Sarah Hansen for her fabulous cover design.

Dedication

To first loves.

Chapter One

Aubree

“This solution is incorrect, Miss Walker.”

I looked down at the formula and went back over it carefully. “No, sir. I believe that this is the correct answer. I’m sure I got it right.”

“No. It’s wrong.”

“Could you tell me why?”

“Because a mongoose doesn’t mate with a chicken.”

“What? I’m sorry. I don’t understand what that has to do with math.”

“Exactly. Perhaps you haven’t been working hard enough. Maybe you got too many A’s and not enough F’s. Everyone in this class knows that a mongoose doesn’t mate with a chicken.”

I looked around at the class. All the desks were occupied with…chickens. They all looked at me with beady red eyes and sharp yellow beaks, laughing their fool chicken heads off.

Oh god, I was being mocked by a roomful of chickens who knew how to do math better than I did. “But they’re all chickens. Of course, they would know the answer.”

“That’s right, and you’re not a chicken.”

“But I could be a chicken. I could study more, work harder.”

“I’m afraid not. Do you know what happens to you in this class if you get the problem wrong? If you don’t measure up?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s the stewpot. We don’t tolerate stupid chickens in here.”

“But…but I’m not a chicken.”

“No? Then you’re just plain stupid.”

“No!” I cried. “I’ll try harder. I’ll be as good as I can.”

“I’ll be the perfect chicken,” I murmured, tossing and turning, kicking at the bed sheets. A pillow sailed across the room and struck me right in the head, drawing me out of that fitful dream.

“Aubree. You’re having the chicken dream again. If you don’t shut up, I’m going to yank out all your feathers,” Ashley grumbled. My roommate Ashley Cook and I were opposites. I was an uptight stats major and she was an artsy landscape architecture major. She was wild. I was sedate. But somehow we clicked.

Before I could respond to her half-serious threat, my cell phone chimed. I sat up in bed, now fully awake, my heart pounding. A call at this time of night was never good…wait…two a.m….it was technically morning. I fumbled around for the light and stumbled out of bed.

“Aubree. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” I said rummaging through my Einstein tote in frustration.

“Oh, just turn it upside down.” Ashley huffed. Her golden blonde hair fell forward in a loose braid as she got out of bed, grabbed it out of my hands, and upended my neatly packed bag onto my bed. She snatched my cell from the jumble and handed it to me. “I swear, Aubree, you’d spend all night huntin’for it.”

“I knew exactly where it was, miz pushy. You didn’t have to make a mess out of my bag. Albert hates that.”

An indignant sniff was her reply. “Albert can kiss my ass along with your chicken professor. Besides, you love putting all your humpty-dumpty stuff back together again. Admit it.” She yawned and settled herself on the edge of the bed once again, legs crossed, her expression wry.

“Hello.” My voice was scratchy from sleep.

“Aubree Walker?” The man’s voice was deep, brushed with a soft Southern drawl.

“Yes,”

“This is Sheriff Mike Dalton.”

I frowned. I knew that name. “From Suttontowne?”

His voice was brusque, but there was regret threaded through it. “Yes. I’m calling to inform you that your aunt has been injured. She’s in the hospital.”

My hand flew to my mouth, my heart jumping into my throat. “Oh, god. What happened?” My Aunt Lottie was my only living relative. The past and the present merged and I was back against the wall, waiting for my mother to wake up from an eternal nap. If it hadn’t been for my Aunt Lottie, who had welcomed me into her home and her life with open arms, I would have been alone.

“The best that we can tell, she fell down the stairs.”

I bit my lip until I tasted blood, fighting furiously to hold back the tears that gathered in my eyes and constricted into a solid lump in my throat. “How bad is she?”

“She’s been unconscious since I found her when I was doing my rounds. But the good news is there are no broken bones.”

“That’s a relief. I can be there in two hours. Do you know when visiting hours are?”

“Just a moment.”

I heard muffled voices and then he came back on the line. “Eight a.m.”

“Okay. Thank you, Sheriff.”

“You’re welcome, Miz Walker. Call me when you get to town and we’ll talk.”

“Okay, goodbye.”

“What happened, Aubree?” Ashley rose and put her arm around me.

I looked over at her. “My aunt’s in the hospital. She fell and is still unconscious. I’ve got to go back to Suttontowne.”

“Now, tonight? Can’t you wait until the morning?”

I shook my head. My mother had died when I was at school. I couldn’t take the chance that the same thing would happen to Aunt Lottie. I owed her so much.

I went to the closet and grabbed my suitcases and threw them on the bed. I was relieved that exams were over and all I had to worry about was my research assistantship.

“What about your RA with Dr. Wells?”

“I should be able to do the bulk of the work on my computer while I’m in Suttontowne. I’ll email him before I leave.”

“I’m so sorry.”

It took me no more than thirty minutes to pack and dash off an email to Dr. Wells. Ashley helped cart some of my luggage down to the car. Before I slid into the driver’s seat, she hugged me.

“Make sure to keep me posted on how she’s doing. And be a good chicken while you’re gone.”

“Cluck, cluck.” I managed with a weak smile. “I’ll call you. Thanks, Ash.”

As I drove towards Suttontowne in Hope Parish, where I had lived with my aunt for seven years, I struggled to manage my increasing anxiety. I couldn’t lose my aunt. She was the only family I had left, and losing her would leave me totally alone. Even more alone than I had been for the first twelve years of my life.

It had scared me something terrible when my mother went into one of her blue spells—crying all the time, hardly ever getting out of her nightclothes, shutting herself away. I’ve always thought that the last spell she had did her in. She’d been too blue to get out and see a doctor, and she’d died of pneumonia. Two days later my Aunt Lottie found me still pressed against the wall too terrified to move. Too terrified about what would happen when they found out my mother was gone and I had nobody.

I shook the anxious thoughts out of my head and turned on the radio to a lively Cajun station, hoping the cheerful Zydeco music would keep my fears at bay.

Avoiding the rear view mirror, where I couldn’t help seeing the old ghosts that haunted the depths of my green eyes, I let the music take me home.

Someplace I didn’t want to be.

Ever again.

But I couldn’t turn my back on my aunt.
You already have,
that strident little voice inside me said.

My aunt was in a coma. In the hospital. That only added to the mountain of guilt I carried around like a backpack filled with bricks. And it’s always easy for me to add another brick.

I should at least have gathered up the courage to visit. But I wasn’t there. Just like I hadn’t been there for fall break, or Thanksgiving, or Christmas. New Year’s Eve? Nope. Rang in the New Year in the lab so I wouldn’t have to think about it. Spring break? Yup, you got it. I was working. Easter came and went while I did my statistics thing. I hadn’t planned to be there for summer vacation, either. Work, right. A great RA with a fabulous professor analyzing clinical trials.

What Thomas Wolfe said, that you can never go home again, was so close to the truth it was scary. But I hadn’t had any way to truly understand what it meant back when I was sitting in high school English. With maturity comes wisdom? Maybe not in my case.

As I headed towards South Louisiana and the swamp, a storm gathered on the horizon and lightning flashed. That storm also made me think of the boy I had left behind in the worst possible way, under the worst possible circumstances.

I was heading back to the place where Booker Outlaw and I had collided on one of the worst nights of my life. I trembled just thinking about him and what he’d done for me.

Now—as I returned to Hope Parish, to Suttontowne, Louisiana for the first time since I left for Tulane—I began to understand the message of Wolfe’s quote

My experiences changed me. I’d never be the same girl I was before the secrets and the lies. Before the night Damien Langston changed my life forever.

By the time I pulled into my aunt’s driveway, the rain was coming down so hard I couldn’t see anything but silver sheets streaming down my windshield. May in Louisiana was like monsoon season. The downpour trapped me inside my car and left me feeling isolated and cocooned at the same time. And I don’t do well when I’m alone with my thoughts. When there’s no problem to solve or work to accomplish.

My aunt’s white plantation house, generations old, had aged gracefully into a soft patina of yellow. It almost broke my heart to see it again, to think that my aunt might die before I could tell her I was sorry for my neglect…to realize that although I hadn’t planned to come home again, ever, I had missed this house—and even more, my beloved aunt—with a deep, enduring ache.

But abandoning this town had been a necessity that burned inside me like old Mr. Lacroix’s cheap moonshine.

My vision blurred, my nose runny and probably red from the tears that had started when I was about an hour outside Lafayette. I sat trapped by the rain. My stomach had already been in such knots that I hadn’t eaten anything since leaving Tulane.

No, I couldn’t come home again, but I could and would be there for my aunt. It tore me up to think of her falling down that wide, grand staircase, lying there alone for who-knows-how-long in that big, empty house.

I went cold at the thought. Really cold. And scared. It was too early to visit her at the hospital and, even though I wanted to see her desperately, I would never break the hospital rules. They were there for a reason. Sick people needed their rest to get better. And I wanted my aunt back.

Grief clutched at me. My throat went tight with pain. Memories of life with my wonderful aunt flooded me, only adding to my tears. Those memories opened up deep emotions that rocked me. I was a terrible niece. I hadn’t bothered to come home for the holidays, instead making the excuse that I had to work. The guilt made the knot in my throat even more painful.

All because I was a coward.

I was trying to mop up a fresh flood tears when something furtive darted past the back window. It appeared abruptly in my peripheral vision, its figure distorted by rain, mists on the window, and still more tears. I gasped and grabbed the steering wheel in panic, while the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I stared in the rear view mirror,
raising a hand to quickly wipe my eyes clear,
searching for the apparition, but just as abruptly, it was gone.

Were my eyes deceiving me? I peered into the rain-soaked darkness, but the silver sheets obscured my view.

The pelting cascade of water struck the roof in a staccato rhythm which had, only moments ago, been soothing. But now I realized the downpour muted any outside sounds that might have given me a clue about what had flitted past the car. The storm had rendered me deaf and blind, and my skin crawled. Was someone out there? I looked around, my senses on full alert, but could see nothing.

Suddenly my back window exploded in a cascade of finely-beaded glass. Something heavy hit the back seat. I screamed as glass fragments and blowing rain struck the back of my head and neck with moisture and stinging pain.