Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 01 - Dark Bayou (3 page)

“Luck,” he echoed, looking defeated. “How long are you in town for?”

“I’m leaving tonight.”

He looked both shocked and hurt. “Aren’t you even going to spend the night?”

“I think it’s for the best if I leave after the funeral.

“You not going to see Lyla?”

“I don’t think she wants to see me.”

“Well, that’s your decision, but I know there’ll be an awful lot of people upset if you don’t stay for a visit.”

I was quiet, and he took the hint.

“Let’s go back in,” he suggested. He stood up, put his jacket back on and held out his hand for me. I took it, and he helped me up and held the door open for me. A well-bred Southerner indeed.

2

The Funeral

I
kept my distance from the chapel. I tried to hide from all the mourners who wanted to express their condolences, but every time I turned around, there was someone to say how sorry they were and, my personal favorite, “such a tragedy.” Lucas, Carrie and Jonathan stayed by my side through it all. Clothilde was busy with the mourners. She knew everyone there. She sat in the chapel, near the caskets, and greeted everyone who paid their respects. When it was time for the Rosary, Carrie excused herself to the chapel to find a seat in the packed room. Lucas and his son stayed with me.

“You can go in if you like,” I said to Lucas.

He shook his head no. “I’ve already spoken to God.”

I refrained from making a snarky comment but couldn’t help thinking,
Where was God when they died and left their ten-year-old daughter alone?

“Is it time to pray, Daddy?”

“Yeah, but you and I are going to stay out here with Miss Leigh.”

“You two go. I’ll be okay,” I said.

“I want to hold the necklace,” said Jon.

“Beads,” Lucas corrected as he pulled a small, brown rosary from his pocket. I recognized it as the kind our high school gave out to the juniors every year at the confirmation ceremony, when they were blessed by the current bishop. He handed it to Jon, who carefully clasped it in his hands as though it were a rare treasure.

“You still have that old thing?” I asked.

Lucas nodded meekly. “Nothing wrong with this one, so why get a new one?”

“Please. The two of you go in. I promise I’ll be here when you get out.”

He hesitated and then said, “Okay. Come on, Jon.” They entered the chapel, and I was alone in the lobby. I headed to the kitchen for some coffee and smiled as soon as I saw what was on the counter: doughnuts and boudin, funeral food staples. I hadn’t had boudin in years, but I was always fond of the delicacy, which consisted of ground pork and rice in a thin sausage casing. I’d been raised on it.

There was one aspect of Cajun culture I simply could not ignore, no matter how much I tried, and that was the food: chicken gumbo, seafood gumbo, hen gumbo, sausage gumbo, crawfish étouffée, rice and gravy, boudin, cracklins, and my favorite, boiled crawfish. If I traveled out of state or even to northern Louisiana, the food never tasted the same. Everything was so bland compared to the spicy dishes I grew up on in Acadiana. It was only a couple of weeks after arriving in Hollywood that I was craving gumbo. I learned to make it and would cook it sometimes, but it never tasted the same, because the meat was different from the wild game flavor of Louisiana gumbo. I lost a lot of weight that first year of living there and soon grew used to the boring flavors of the local cuisine.

I wanted to grab a couple of pieces of boudin, but knew I would just be forcing myself. I wasn’t hungry. Instead I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat at the small table near the fridge. As I sipped, I could hear the rosary start. I listened to the familiar recital of prayers: the Hail Mary, the Our Father, the Glory Be. How many times had I said those very prayers in school and church? The English rosary eventually gave way to the French rosary, as was customary in Acadiana.

Acadiana comprises several parishes in the south western and south central part of the state with Lafayette being the biggest city. It never felt big to me, though; it always felt small and confining, and I was often embarrassed by the Cajun citizens. I refused to have a Cajun accent, opting for a generic tone, rather than the flat, thick assault of syllables and the occasional French word thrown into a perfectly English conversation. I often claimed my German heritage over the French. I refused to take French in high school. What little of it I did know was what Clothilde taught me and that was when I was about eight years old.

I heard Clothilde leading the French rosary and was taken back to when I was still a little girl, helping her make biscuits for her coffee parties, when she would teach me how to say each prayer in French. At the beginning of the coffee parties, Clothilde and her lady friends would begin with the rosary, and I was so proud to join them in my new-found language.

Today, I hid out in the kitchen, drinking coffee, until I no longer heard the group prayers. I heard the shuffling as the guests left the chapel and went out the lobby doors. I peeked out of the kitchen and down the hall. There was only a handful of people in the lobby, including Carrie, Lucas and his son, and Clothilde, who would be the last to leave, save for the funeral director and his assistants. I joined them in the lobby just as Clothilde was thanking the last guest for coming.

“I have to go. I’m leading the procession with my cruiser,” said Lucas, as he put on his jacket and buttoned up. “Jon, Miss Carrie will bring you to the cemetery, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy.”

Carrie took hold of Jon’s hand as Lucas leaned in to kiss Clothilde and give her a hug.

“Thank you, cher,” she told him. “If I don’t get to talk to you over there, I’ll see you at the reception.”

Lucas noticed I had joined them in the lobby and, probably figuring this would be the last time he would see me, hugged me and kissed me on the cheek, too. His kiss lingered a little longer for me than it had for Clothilde, and I just knew Carrie caught it and would read way more into it than I did. No doubt she would pump me for information later.

Carrie hugged me and Clothilde and left for the cemetery with Jonathan. I was left alone with Clothilde. “Are you coming to the cemetery?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

She nodded, again a hint of argument building up in her. “What about the reception?”

“Where is it going to be?”

“At Miss Ya’s. Lyla will want to see you, I’m sure.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“You do what you want.” The anger was starting to come out now, but she showed considerable restraint. “I’m in one of the lead cars in the procession, and I’m sure everyone’s in their cars, waiting on me. I’ll either see you later, or I won’t.” And with that, she left me alone in the lobby.

The funeral director stepped out of the chapel. He was tall, lean, and entirely too tan for his line of work. “Would you like to come in before we close the doors?” he asked me.

I shook my head. He started to close them. “Wait,” I said. He opened them, and I walked to the threshold. I looked across the chapel, to the left, and saw the two coffins side-by-side in front of the altar, surrounded by more flowers than I had ever seen in one place.

“I’ll give you a couple of minutes,” he said, and walked over to the lobby desk to take care of the guest book and other paper work.

I entered the chapel and gently closed the doors behind me. It was very quiet and a little chilly in the room. The stained-glass windows decorated the dark green carpet with colorful patterns. I walked very slowly toward the coffins. They were closed. It must have been a really bad accident for it to be a closed-casket funeral. Now I was even more relieved that Lyla hadn’t come.

Out of habit, I knelt at the little pew in front of the coffins, not really intending to pray. I didn’t believe in an afterlife. I didn’t believe that our spirits or souls, or whatever, go on after we die. After Mom died, everyone kept telling me that she would come to me in my dreams, but she never did. They told me that if I prayed really hard, she would visit me in spirit form. Despite working myself into a frenzy of prayer for countless hours, I never saw her again.

I was silent for a good while. I looked up at the two ten-by-fourteen sized pictures of David and Michelle in their police uniforms—one picture over each casket. In the middle of the two caskets stood a picture of the two of them on their wedding day. It was a duplicate of the one in the lobby, but this one was larger.

I stared at it for a moment, remembering that day very well. I looked at the people in the background and saw my dad pretending like he was going to cut the wedding cake before David and Michelle could get to it. I smiled at that, remembering my dad’s sense of humor. I saw Lucas, looking handsome as the best man. I scanned the photo, recognizing everyone under the large tent at the outdoor reception. But over by the big oak tree was someone I didn’t recognize. It was hard to tell who it was because he was in the shadows. He was tall, elderly with long white hair, and looked like he was wearing blue jeans and a black hat, which was odd considering how everyone else was dressed in traditional wedding attire. I couldn’t make out his face at all, but his dark eyes appeared very luminous. He was smiling. I looked away from the picture and back toward the caskets.

I wanted to talk to David again, to tell him how sorry I was for being gone so long. I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault that I left Acadiana. I opened my mouth to speak, but I knew he wouldn’t hear me. Tears pricked my eyes as I realized it was over. I would never see him again.

I stood up and stepped toward his coffin. I ran my hands along the smooth cherry-stained wood. It was the same color as the headboard of the bed he had when we were growing up.
This is his bed now
, my mind taunted, and my stomach dropped. I let my hand linger at the lip of the coffin. Before I knew what I was doing, my hand lifted the lid a little. I stopped myself, frozen in place. I had seen many bodies at school, had dissected them. They didn’t faze me. But I knew that seeing my big brother in this state could seriously warp me. Lucas’ story of the unusual circumstances surrounding their deaths kept nudging my mind. I wanted to see my brother one more time. I took a deep breath and lifted the lid wider until David’s body was exposed.

I gasped. He was pale, and I expected that. He wore a nice, dark-colored suit, and I expected that, too. I also expected to see deep scars, and I was right. But I shuddered in horror, trying my hardest to keep from screaming, because his eyes were partially open, and he was grinning, a sinister smile across his face. I closed my eyes tight, shaking. I put my hand to my mouth and opened my eyes again. His eyes weren’t open. He wasn’t grinning. He looked solemn and almost peaceful with his head laid back against his eternal pillow.
Just your imagination
. But it couldn’t have been that. I would have sworn I’d seen him grinning. I stared down at him, waiting for him to open his eyes again, to—
reach out and grab my throat
—do something, anything. But his body did nothing. I quickly closed the casket.

“I’m losing my mind,” I groaned softly.

I looked over at Michelle’s coffin. I took a deep breath, got my nerve, and quickly opened it. Her body was in worse condition, but at least she wasn’t looking back at me. The corners of her mouth didn’t even look like they wanted to curve up into a smile. I closed the coffin and kneeled down again. I didn’t cry long, but I cried hard. It hurt so much to lose them, especially David. I cried for Lyla, too. And I cried because I thought I was going insane.

I stood up and turned to leave. As I did, I was startled to see a man in the shadows in the back of the small room. “Oh!” I said. I took a step forward, passing through a colorful beam of light coming though the stained glass, which briefly blinded me. “I didn’t know …”

When I stepped out of the light and could once again see clearly, the man was gone. The chill in the air hit me, and I shuddered.
Just your imagination
, that familiar voice in my head told me.

***

I did go to the burial, but I stayed out of sight. The cemetery was in Bancker, a small community that had once nestled between four large plantations, down an old country road on the outskirts of Abbeville. It was where my mom and dad were buried, as well as my grandfather, Clothilde’s husband. Near the cemetery was an old replica of the Grotto of Lourdes, the site in France where St. Bernadette claimed to have seen the Virgin Mother in the nineteenth century. Leading up to the granite grotto was a path lined with wooden crosses, representing the Stations of the Cross, marking Jesus’ journey to his crucifixion.