Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (22 page)

Only a few inches separated us, but I quickly did away with them, stepping into him and tilting my face to his, making sure he saw me—
really saw me
—before speaking.

“You haven’t dragged me anywhere I haven’t chosen to be.”

His eyes flashed. “I’ve never known anyone like you,” he muttered as my throat burned. “You don’t run,” he said. “Even when everybody else is sprinting. You don’t run.”

If the wind had blown only a whisper harder, I was quite sure it would have taken me with it.

“If things had been different…” he started, but his voice trailed off without finishing.

“What?”

Sunlight glinted off the silver chain around his neck, the dog tag that hid the cross. “Just thinking about you,” he surprised me by saying. “And Jessie … how different her life could have been if she’d had you for a friend instead of Amber.”

It was an odd thought. “Don’t use the past tense,” I whispered.

Sliding his arms around my waist, he pulled me and held me, resting his chin against the top of my head. We stood that way for what seemed like forever, just letting the sun soak in and the breeze swirl.

My homes still stood. My grandmother’s in the Garden District and my parents’ in the French Quarter, the small cabinlike house where I’d grown up. They were all still there for me to go back to, walk through, remember and imagine.

It was hard to imagine something as fundamental as a house being just … gone.

“Show me your room,” I whispered, and when I felt his body tense against mine, I reached for his hand. “Show me where you grew up.”

He pulled back and looked down at me, the blue of his eyes a dark glitter. Then he threaded his fingers through mine and took me on the tour.

“There was a pool table here,” he said as we passed through what had once been a game room. “Out back was the Ping-Pong table.”

I smiled, rocked by the magnitude of the gift he was giving me. “Where was the sofa?”

He glanced to his left, his gaze somewhere far, far away.

I could only imagine what he saw, remembered—
or who
.

Quietly he tugged me deeper into the past, drawing me down what he said was a hall, past his brother’s room to a spot bordered by a line of riotously blooming irises. I didn’t even know how that was possible that they could thrive, while so much else had been washed away.

“It wasn’t anything special,” he said.

“But it was yours.”

He looked back at me, and smiled.
“It still is.”

*   *   *

I don’t know how long we stayed there among the invisible walls of his childhood, but for one of the few times of my life, I was content to be in the moment, without looking to the other side. Words seemed inadequate, so I let the silence do the talking, right up to the moment Chase stood and announced it was time to go.

“Emma Watson was your grandmother’s housekeeper,” he said after we’d been driving several minutes. “Worked for her for twenty-five years, right up to the—”

“End,” I whispered.

Slowing for another intersection, he frowned as he turned onto a two-lane highway. “She was like a second mother to your father, her little girl a sister. When he got older, it was Emma Watson who told him about the house for sale next to hers. Her daughter—Amelia—had a serious thing for your dad. According to Ms. Watson it was mutual.”

“Until he met my mom.” And took the first step down the road that had, ultimately, led to his death.

“And Amelia married someone else.”

Around us, the remains of the broken community gave way to huge trees crowding the narrow road. “The cop?”

“Jim Fourcade.”

Within minutes the bumpy road emptied into a clearing, a big open rectangle ringed by huge trees that looked as tired as they were old. The house sat toward the back, wide and brick and clearly new, one story with a big wraparound porch. The gravel road led straight to a parking area in front of a closed garage, before winding around behind the house to another structure farther back.

Chase shifted the car into park. “Ready?”

I had the door open before he killed the engine.

Stepping into the dappled sunshine, I couldn’t help but notice how peaceful it was here in the middle of nowhere, where there was only the trees and the song of the birds, the tinkle of unseen chimes, and the river somewhere beyond. I would have sworn I could
feel
it.

We started toward the house, where at the bottom step a dream catcher dangled from the railing. Having spent so much time in Colorado, I’d seen my share of the Native American talisman, but I’d never seen one dangling above a statue of the Virgin Mary, and I’d never seen one like this, carved of a pale driftwood, with amazingly uniform feathers seemingly crawling up strands of red and black beads, toward the web in the center, like fish swimming toward bait.

Catching up with me, Chase reached for my hand and I instinctively took his. I winced, too late remembering the gashes on my palms.

He pulled open the screen door, and I knocked. And knocked. And knocked.

No one answered.

Frustrated, I glanced around, keying back on the new motorcycle and old pickup next to where we’d parked. “Maybe he’s around back,” I said, already pulling away.

Chase tugged me against him, moving a step or two ahead of me as we left the porch and edged around the house.

“Wonder how long he’s been back,” Chase said, and I didn’t even have to ask. I knew. This close to the river, Jim Fourcade had surely lost everything.

“What I don’t understand is why he’d
come
back,” I said. “If it happened once, it can happen again, right? Just because you’ve had one big hurricane doesn’t mean there can’t be others, and if what they say about global warming is true…”

Chase shot me a quick look. “It’s his home,” he said, and I could tell that to Chase, it was as simple as that.

The dogs came out of nowhere. The second we stepped into what I would have called a backyard even though there was no fence, I heard the barking. By the time I swung right, they were halfway toward us, three of them, big and fast and growling as if they’d been waiting their whole lives to tear into us.

“Shit!” Chase yanked me behind him, going very still as he jutted out a hand. “Easy, guys.” His voice was steady, commanding.
“Easy.”

The dogs—I think they were rottweilers—kept running.

“Easy!” he shouted again, this time a little more desperate, and a whole lot louder.

The huge dogs didn’t care. They closed in on us, running hard, and sickly I realized what Chase had known all along. We would never outrun them.

“Allez!”

The rots went absolutely, insanely still, like some invisible cage had dropped around them. They stayed on all fours, staring straight at us with slobber oozing from their mouths and hunger in their eyes, but they didn’t move a single muscle.

Heart slamming, I pivoted right and my breath caught. Adjacent to a separate but identical dream catcher, someone stood in the shadows of the back porch, tall, dark, as absolutely deadly still as the dogs. Like a predator, I thought a little insanely, watching. Waiting.

I should have felt relief. I knew that. But the echo quickening through me was anything but. Instinctively I stepped closer to the safety of Chase, felt his hand again reach for mine, felt my fingers slide in against his.

“What the hell—”

The agitated voice from behind us broke the strange silence. We swung around just as a man erupted from the smaller garage, where through the shadows I made out what looked to be a boat.

He strode toward us, working some kind of white rag in his hands. When he got close enough for me to see the grease—he stopped. Cold. Like … death. The wind kept whispering—I was sure that it did—but everything else slowed, allowing me to see the lean lines of his leathery face, and the dread in his eyes.

“Mary Mother of God,” he muttered. “You’re the girl.”

TWENTY

Silver. I’d never seen anything like it. Everything about the man was silver, from the shoulder-length hair slicked back into a tight ponytail behind his neck, to the whiskers crowding his jaw, his brows—and his eyes. From between narrowed lids they glowed, as if he’d come face-to-face with something of great beauty—or even greater ugliness.

“What girl?” My question was barely more than a choked whisper.

“The girl with the dreams,”
he breathed, and my knees wobbled.

Chase edged closer, held on a whole lot tighter. I could feel the strength of his hand and his body, and for that I was grateful.

He knew. This man, this complete stranger, knew about me—and my dreams.

“How do
you
know that?” That was from Chase, and the words were as uneasy as they were accusatory.

“You’re on my property, son. The way I figure, that puts questions in my mouth, not yours.”

Chase stiffened, making the Gothic cross on his T-shirt tighten against his chest.

The man shifted his attention back to me, and I would have sworn the silver in his eyes … tarnished. “My God you look like your mama.”

The words sounded ripped from a throat too accustomed to cigarettes and whiskey, and in response, my own throat tightened. “So it’s true … you
did
know her.”

“What’s true is you shouldn’t be here,” he said as his hands fisted against the grease-stained rag. “What in sweet God’s name is Rosemary thinking—”

“She’s not thinking anything,” I whispered, so tired of all the lies.
“She’s dead.”

Expressionless, Jim Fourcade looked away, off toward the wall of trees, where somewhere beyond the river flowed, and even though we stood in a clearing and the sun lashed down from high overhead, I would have sworn a shadow fell around him. That, combined with the way his sweat-stained T-shirt and baggy jeans hung on his lean body, made him look as weary as the frail cypress trees in the distance. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

His words were barely more than a mutter.

Once I would have accepted his sympathy and said something all nicey-nice, like “that’s okay,” or “thank you,” following the rules of etiquette and respect my grandmother had drilled into me. But that was before. Before she died and before I came to this strange place, before everything changed. Now something deep inside me gave way, allowing questions to spill like flood waters.

“What I want to know is why,” I said, not giving a flip at how rattled he looked. “Why shouldn’t I be here? Why did my grandmother keep me a virtual prisoner in the mountains? Why does everyone look at me like I’m some sort of psycho?”

Curled around mine, Chase’s hand tightened.

“What is everyone so afraid of?” I asked. “Why does everyone think it’s better to leave me in the dark? If it’s something bad,
shouldn’t I know
?” How else could I protect myself? “I’m not a little kid. I’m sixteen years old!
I have the right to know.
”

Jim Fourcade’s eyes returned to mine, and yeah, they still glowed. I was starting to think that’s just the way his eyes looked, like embers lit by an internal fire.

“You’re right,” he said, and my heart just about stopped. “You’re right.”

So not the answer I was expecting. But the thrill of anticipation kept me from lingering on my surprise.

“How did you know it was me?” I asked, this time quieter, calmer. “How did you know about my dreams?”

Jim Fourcade let out a deep, full-body breath, looking beyond me and Chase, toward the back porch, where the guy in the shadows—

I swung around.

He was gone. So were the dogs.

“Come on,” Mr. Fourcade said, heading toward the house. “It’s hot as Hades out here.”

It was, that was true. But at the thought of going inside that house, something sharp and visceral twined through me. Because of
him,
I knew. The guy who’d stood so weirdly still …

I tugged at Chase’s hand, shooting him an
I-don’t-want-to-go-in-there
look the second he glanced back at me. He nodded, his hand firm around mine as he led me to the edge of the patio.

“We’ll stay out here,” Chase said, and at the screen door, Mr. Fourcade swung around, and laughed.

“There’s nothing that can happen inside, son, that can’t happen outside.”

I felt my eyes widen, hated the spurt of panic. This man was supposed to be my mother’s friend.

Or was he? Had Chase said that? I scrambled through all that he’d told me in the car, realized that I’d filled in gaps with my own stupid little fantasies.

Chase had never once said Jim Fourcade was my mother’s friend.

I’d just assumed.

This man was Emma Watson’s son-in-law. Emma Watson who hated my mother. We were in the middle of nowhere. No one knew we were here.

No one would come looking.

No one would suspect …

“Suit yourself, though,” Fourcade said, glancing toward a rusted wrought-iron table in the far corner. Nearby sat a shiny new gas grill big enough to cook for my entire chemistry class all at one time.

“I was on the force almost twenty years,” he said, picking up a tin watering can and moving toward a cluster of droopy red flowers in clay pots.

“That’s longer than you’ve been alive,” he pointed out. “My resignation doesn’t mean I don’t still have friends there.”

I swallowed, watching the curiously gentle way he went down on one knee and fussed over the faded flowers.

“Folks talk,” he went on. “Especially when a pretty girl goes missing and another girl claims to have dreams.”

Chase stayed close to me, shifting his hand from holding mine to secured around my waist. “How’d you know that girl was Trinity?”

Fourcade looked up at Chase—then me. “Because she’s got her mama written all over her. Those eyes…” He had to be somewhere in his forties, but in that moment, he looked ancient. “I would know Marguerite’s girl anywhere.”

I stiffened. So did Chase.
“Marguerite?”
The scrape of disappointment almost overwhelmed me. “My mother was Rachelle.”

Fourcade let out a heavy breath. “Rosemary did good,” he said, but his smile was weary.