A Twisted Ladder (38 page)

Between starting back at Tulane and scrambling to put together a home space, she’d managed to stay busy. But in the quiet hours of the night, prickling and sleepless, she lay both anticipating and dreading the fire chief’s investigation. The arson factor had complicated things.

Ironic, Madeleine thought, that she had just salvaged the precious things that belonged to her brother, had hauled them into the mansion on Esplanade, and now everything was burned. All of it gone. All except the documents, including her grandmother’s diary, because they had been in the truck when the house caught fire.

Since the fire, she and Ethan had been talking regularly on the phone, but this was the first time they’d gotten together since the night of All Souls.

They walked side-by-side through the shadowed Vieux Carré, but they did not hold hands. Madeleine touched her face, still battered from her father’s attack. It had made for quite the impression at her first day back on the psychiatric ward.

“Who’s gonna be there tonight?” Madeleine asked.

“Usual crowd. Lotta politicians. Media folks. The Frey family’s pretty well-connected.”

“The social elite,” Madeleine said, and instantly recognized the tone of snobbery in her own voice.

“Actually,” Ethan replied, “they’re hardly elite. Her daddy’s a crewman on a Mississippi River rig, and her mama’s a schoolteacher. They’re both active in the outreaches and that’s why they’re well-known.”

Piano jazz poured from one of the halls along the dark street, though Madeleine could not tell which, and it seemed as though the Quarter itself was breathing music. No one else around. Madeleine felt the sense that this one little block had cultivated its own kind of life force for hundreds of years, and it sprang from every stone, every shingle, and from alley cats and chrysanthemums and even the limestone. Another illusion of space, like the kitchen or the library, but one that coursed with life.

“Listen Ethan, the last time I saw you, you told me I used my affiliation with the poor social classes to alienate you.”

A faint smile played at his lips. “Did I say it like that? Didn’t know I could talk so purdy.”

“All right, I’m paraphrasing. But the point is, I think you might have been right. I think I might have been dealing with some prejudice against the privileged classes.”

“Me included.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Do you feel that way now?”

Madeleine stretched out her fingers and touched his hand. He immediately folded his over hers.

She said, “No. People are just people, and of course it doesn’t matter what class they belong to. It’s just me trying to root for the underdog, but in doing that I turn it into a competition. Maybe my prejudice against old money New Orleans just stems from my own fear.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Hard to say. Forgetting my roots, I guess. Though now that I say it aloud, I realize I’ll never forget who I am or where I come from. That’s probably not what really scares me.”

Ethan paused by an alley. “This is it. The Pelican Club.”

The quiet, unassuming corridor would have been easy to miss but for a single light at an entry part-way down. The flanking walls were patterned in brick, crumbling and rounded at the edges, cobbled like the paving stones in the streets. A half-moon grate bloomed with wrought iron fleurs de lis. She turned to look at him. The clean lines of his face were illuminated in gaslight, his thick dark lashes and brows seeming to form a gentle current, drawing her in, sharing his kindness and calm. It made her feel suddenly shy.

She put a hand over the bruise on her cheek and looked away. “Should we go in?”

“Not just yet.” He reached up and brushed her hair away, then took her hand, and she knew her bruises showed even in the dim light. “I want to know what it is that does scare you.”

She said, “I think . . .” she lowered her eyes. “I think the real fear is . . . It must be that I’m afraid of going soft.”

The gaslight made shadows dance across the brick. She watched them fold and tumble over one another.

Ethan stepped forward and raised his hand to the curvature at the back of her neck. “So what’s so terrible about being soft?”

“When you’re soft, that’s when they sink their teeth in.” The words sounded idiotic even as she said them.

Ethan had to have been looking at her though she couldn’t meet his gaze. But with each fear and prejudice she voiced, she felt them weakening, like ice shavings that melted away under direct touch. It made her smile despite herself.

He said, “Tell you what, Madeleine. Anytime you feel like you’re a soft, chewy center, I’ll be your hard candy shell. We’ll give’m something to sink their teeth into.”

She crumpled in a laugh. He wrapped his arms around her, her forehead against his chest as she giggled, the old brick at her back. He pressed his face to the top of her head and chuckled.

What if we just stayed here, right here, leaning against this wall, for hours?

She raised her head and looked at him. “Ethan, I missed you.”

“I missed you too, Maddy. More than missed you. I love you.”

She nodded, feeling no fear in the truth of it. “I love you.”

She lifted her chin and he lowered his, their lips meeting. Soft and warm. He was so still inside, and that stillness seemed to flow from him and wash through her. It formed a distance against the bramble.

Footsteps on the street, but she didn’t care. She was in love with Ethan Manderleigh and it felt clean and right.

But then the footsteps slowed, and she heard Zenon’s voice: “Well I’ll be damned. The overlord and his little colored girl.”

Madeleine’s eyes flew open.

ZENON WAS STRIDING PAST
, a nasty grin smeared across his face as he continued to the doors of the Pelican Club and went inside.

Madeleine felt sick. Ethan stared after him.

Madeleine said, “Should we skip it?”

“I’m not lookin to hide from him. But you’ve had it rough over the past few days. Maybe you don’t wanna deal with this just yet.”

“I don’t want to hide from him either. But Ethan, I need to know, do you believe what I told you about the night in the flower shop?”

He frowned at her. “I don’t know. I believe that you believe it. Beyond that, I accept it, that’s all.”

More footsteps, and a couple appeared. They passed arm-in-arm and continued into the Pelican Club. The sound of voices and laughter filled the alley as they entered. Cocktails in full swing. The doors closed behind them and the alley fell silent again.

Ethan said, “Assuming it’s real. Assuming that guy really can play with your mind like that. You know what to do about it?”

Madeleine nodded. “It’s a way of not fighting. The more I fought inside, the less control I had. So I just kind of blanked out my mind and observed it like a scientist. Completely objective. And then I was free.”

He watched her face, listening. “OK then.”

She took his hand and they turned toward the entrance.

NEW ORLEANS, 1920

T
HE NUPTIALS OF RÉMI
and Chloe were, by environment, a strange affair.

Jacob had heard that Didier, Rémi’s younger brother, had died while serving in the Great War. However, his death was not a result of battlefield heroics, as fighting had long since quieted on the front. Jacob hadn’t given it much thought until he’d spent the evening in one of the new underground cat houses that cropped up after the Storyville sweeps, where gossip seemed to be the prime method of keeping roses in the girls’ plump cheeks. There, he learned that Didier, who was stationed in Paris in the service of peace, had reportedly succumbed to delirium brought on by a longtime battle with syphilis, and died despite heroic treatments of mercury, iodine, and arsenic. A sobering tale in more ways than one. Jacob rarely put much stock in saloon gossip, but the account seemed convincing enough that he preferred to while away the evening with wine and good tobacco, and keep the lounging girls at a safe distance.

Jacob had attended Didier’s funeral, consoling Rémi and his family on Toulouse Street in New Orleans. That was when Madame LeBlanc, Rémi’s mother, also perished.

Madame LeBlanc had been inconsolable, and Jacob knew that she’d imbibed medicinally prescribed bourbon when she’d taken those fateful steps from her upstairs room and lost her balance, tumbling over the banister, falling four floors to the marble foyer below. An improbable fate, as the stairwell was quite narrow. It spiraled downward in ovals, with no more than eighteen inches of shaft separating the handrails. On the way down Madame LeBlanc should have hit another banister, or possibly even have landed on another section of stair, an event that would have resulted in injury but could possibly have saved her life. However, she was a woman of slight frame, standing under five feet in height and of lean build. And when she tumbled over the railing she hit neither banister nor stair step, but instead fell straight down unobstructed through the eighteen-inch gap.

The guests looked on in horror as she lay on the marble. Jacob had rushed to her, taking her hand and patting it stupidly, impotently, though the old woman’s face was already fixed in an unbecoming gape. She’d bled only daintily and Jacob had hoped she might survive. But the physician had been in attendance—the same one who’d prescribed bourbon for her nerves—and he’d confirmed that Madame was dead on impact.

Jacob attended a second funeral, this one held by Rémi for his mother. Henri, who must have been terribly distraught over these tragedies, was nowhere to be found. In fact, Jacob had noticed that there were markedly fewer mourners present in comparison to the previous sad occasion.

Though Madame LeBlanc had been a prominent member of society, the gentle classes were not above superstition, and Jacob suspected they were taking care to distance themselves from the seemingly accursed LeBlancs. However, Jacob noticed that there was one person present at Madame’s funeral who had not been at Didier’s: Chloe. Rémi had not only brought her, but had taken her to stand by his side for the committal.

Then, a week after his mother tumbled to her death, Rémi married Chloe. Jacob could not help but wonder about the timing and the soundness of his friend’s judgment.