Whispers of the Bayou (38 page)

That sounded good to me. Before we left, I told Lisa that I was going to run to the museum with Livvy and catch a ride home with her. In turn, Lisa offered to stop at the grocery store and pick up some food to replace everything of Deena’s back at the house.

“I’m throwing it all out,” she said, casting a hateful look toward Deena, who was sitting in chair against the wall, surrounded by fellow mourners. “I don’t trust her.”

Slipping her some cash, I asked if she could also pick up some beef or salmon steaks while she was there, if she didn’t mind, as I had invited my uncle to have dinner with us tonight. I knew there was a grill on the patio
outside of Willy’s room, and I thought I might roll it out from under the crime scene tape and around to the back door where I could broil some steaks. Meat was one of the few things I knew how to cook well, thanks to a restaurant job I’d held during my college years that had taught me to man a grill but, sadly, little else in the kitchen.

“You got it. Sounds good.”

Lisa offered to handle the preparation of the rest of the meal, including side dishes and dessert, which I gratefully accepted, thinking that if she knew how awful my cooking was, she would know what a favor she was doing for us.

Livvy and I gave Deena some final words and a hug, though I didn’t have the opportunity to clear up her misconception about the casket just then. Outside, it was boiling hot, but the two blocks were short and Livvy didn’t even break a sweat. When we reached the museum, she took me inside and introduced me to her fellow volunteers, gave me a quick tour, and then led me to the reference book section. As it wasn’t specifically a Cajun museum but one that encompassed a variety of Louisiana cultures, there wasn’t a whole lot there that might be of use to me. Still, I found several large books that seemed promising, and even though they were reference materials, Livvy let me take them out as long as I promised to bring them back the next day.

As she wrote up the checkout slip, I asked the other volunteers if they had ever heard of a Cajun myth about a bell.

“Somebody else was asking about that,” one of them said. “Just a few weeks ago. Only they used a French term.”

“
Chucotement du bayou de l’angelus?
”

“Yeah, that was it. They said it had something to do with the Great Expulsion, some old Cajun story about a whole town sneaking out some treasure right under the nose of the British soldiers.”

I asked her to describe the patron who had been asking, but the girl simply shook her head.

“Never saw her. We just talked about it on the phone. She wanted more information, but we didn’t have anything, so I suggested that she try the big Cajun museum in St. Martinville. They got everything over there.”

I tried not to look as stunned, excited, and frantic as I felt. Forcing my voice into normal tones, I inquired about that museum. She gave me a brochure for it but said that, unfortunately, it was too far away to make it there before closing today.

“Thanks, then, maybe I’ll go there tomorrow,” I said, and then I gathered up the books Livvy had checked out to me, headed out the door, and hit the pavement, walking twice as fast as I had coming in. My mind was bouncing around between thoughts about the identity of the person who had called, the description this girl gave me of the myth, and the potential resource of the Cajun museum.

“Are you okay?” Livvy asked, racing to catch up.

“Sorry. I’m just excited. This is the first time I’ve heard that there’s a whole museum dedicated just to the Cajuns. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I don’t know, I guess it didn’t cross my mind.” After a few more strides, she spoke again. “You sure are takin’ all this genealogy research seriously.”

If she only knew.

Slowing my gait, I tried to relax, to come up with a reason for my intensity.

“My mother and s-sister died when I was young,” I said finally, stumbling over the word “sister” as I realized I had never quite put it that way before. “I think that researching my roots gives me a way to reconnect with them and with the rest of my family.”

That explanation seemed to satisfy her. She shared a bit about what it had been like to grow up as one of five sisters, and we quickly covered the two blocks as she chatted the rest of the way.

Nearing the parking lot at the church, I saw that only three cars remained: Livvy’s black Volvo, Uncle Holt’s handicapped van, and one more vehicle I didn’t recognize, a champagne-colored Lincoln. As we moved closer, my heart stuck in my throat, for I recognized the woman who was standing there in the parking lot talking with Holt.

It was AJ, who must have made plans to fly down here the moment she got my message and learned that I had already come.

Patience and abnegation of self, and devotion to others,
This was the lesson a life of trial and sorrow had taught here.

AJ acted perfectly normal and friendly as I greeted her with a hug and introduced her to Livvy. It was only after Livvy had gotten in her car and driven away that AJ’s expression darkened.

“Holt’s been filling me in,” she said, glancing toward him. “You and I have a lot to talk about.”

“I guess we do,” I replied, knowing he must have given her the basic facts about Willy’s death and the involvement of the police. I wondered if he’d also shared the news that I had found and read all of her letters to my grandparents.

“You just got to town?”

“Yes. I flew to New Orleans this morning and rented a car.”

We both looked at the car, as if it were the most fascinating thing to come along in a while, the air nearly crackling between us. I wasn’t sure how to act, because I wasn’t sure how I was feeling about her right now, and I certainly had no idea how she was feeling about me. Was she angry? Scared? Concerned? All of the above?

“Well, I’d better head out,” Holt said, obviously sensing the tension.
“I’ll see y’all tonight at six, ‘less I hear otherwise. Hope you don’t mind, but I mentioned dinner to your dad and he’s coming too.”

“Sure. The more, the merrier,” I lied.

AJ offered to help him get into his van, but he waved her off and said he had it under control. Sure enough, we watched as he opened up the sliding side door and pushed a button so that a small elevator began lowering to the ground.

“I guess you and I should head out to the house?” I asked her, reaching for the car door.

“Eventually. There’s somewhere I want to take you first. You want to know the truth? Fine. I’ll show you some truth.”

I got into her deluxe rental and waited as she started the car. Holt was just getting himself situated as we pulled out, and I glanced his way to give a wave, only to catch him looking longingly in our direction. Quickly, I turned to see AJ, and I realized that the look he’d been giving her was mutual. She was staring back at him with some emotion I didn’t recognize on her face.

“He looks good, don’t you think?” she asked as we pulled out of the parking lot onto the tree-lined street. “Older, of course, but still quite handsome, as always.”

“I wouldn’t know. I only just met him, remember?”

She nodded and continued driving in silence, heading toward a part of town that I had not yet ventured into.

“He said you were a little upset about that.”

“There’s an understatement if I ever heard one,” I said, surprised at the anger suddenly boiling up inside my chest.

Again, she simply nodded and kept driving. “There’s one thing you need to know, Miranda, about your ties to the people down here.”

“Ties? Or
lack
of ties, you mean?”

“Whatever,” she replied. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I had my reasons. Good reasons. I’m sorry you lost an uncle in the process, but if you had been in my shoes you would have done the same.”

“And here we go again, as Janet explains why everything she has ever done was purely for my own good.”

“Not everything,” she replied, glancing at me. “Not Holt.”

“What do you mean?”

She put on a blinker and turned into a neighborhood filled with small houses and scraggly lawns. The farther we went down the street, the scragglier it got.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see in a minute.”

“What do you mean by ‘not Holt’?”

She placed a high-heeled foot on the brake, slowing to cross over some railroad tracks.

“I kept your grandparents out of your life for your sake. I kept Holt out of your life for mine. I’m sorry if that cost you an important relationship, but tough. A person can only handle so much.”

I looked out of the window as she slowed even more, finally coming to a stop in front of a ramshackle home so small it couldn’t have held more than two or three tiny rooms, total. A busted chain-link fence surrounded the overgrown yard. In the front window, what looked like a bed sheet tacked up behind cracked glass was pulled away from the window, and a beady pair of eyes looked out at us, though I couldn’t tell if they belonged to man or woman.

“Take a good look,” AJ said, “because I’d better get moving again soon.”

“Where are we?” I asked, studying the creepy house and yard, hoping someone didn’t pull a gun out soon and start shooting. From the backyard a mangy dog was barking furiously, throwing himself against the gate.

“Home sweet home,” Janet said. “My home. Yasmine’s home.”

I didn’t reply but merely looked at her in alarm.

“It was just a rental,” she continued. “Lord knows how many people have lived there since my dad died and my mom moved up to Ruston twenty years ago. But from the time I was small until I left home at seventeen, this was where we lived. And yes, it was just as bad then as it is now.”

I knew that AJ and my mother had come from modest beginnings. I hadn’t realized those beginnings were quite this modest. Our fancy car
was starting to attract attention, curtains parting up and down the street and two kids stopping short on their bikes just to stare.

“Start moving,” I told AJ. “I get the point.”

“Do you, though?” Janet asked as she put the car in gear and slowly pulled out. “Can you imagine the life we lived here, all four of us squeezed into that one horrid little house, my father’s body slowly degenerating from Parkinson’s disease? My poor mother had it worse than any of us, caring for two kids and an invalid husband, working full time on an assembly line to bring in enough money to feed us, and then once she got home having to cook and clean and help us with our homework and empty my father’s bags and feed him his supper like he was a baby. That was our life, Miranda. That’s how I grew up.”

“I’m sorry, AJ,” I said softly. “I didn’t know it was quite that bad.”

She turned out of the neighborhood and back onto a main street.

“As soon as your mother and I were old enough, we had to go out and get jobs too. One year, we both worked the counter at an ice-cream parlor across town. Most of the teenagers who hung out there went to St. James, the private school nearby, so they weren’t fully aware of our situation. That whole summer we were simply the Greene sisters and treated like part of the crowd, even if the two of us were behind the counter rather than in front. Yasmine set her eye on one guy who came in all the time: the rich and handsome Richard Fairmont. She knew all the tricks for reeling him in, and she went at it full steam ahead. She didn’t love him, but she liked him okay, and he was smitten with her. He was going to be her ticket out.”

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear all of this, but AJ kept talking.

“As it happens, I had a major crush on Holt. He wasn’t quite as good looking as Richard, but he was sweeter, a real heartbreaker. I was too young for him, though, so he barely even noticed me. Yasmine knew I liked him, and she used to spin dreams on our way home on the bus, describing the lives we would live as the beautiful Greene sisters married to the wealthy Fairmont brothers.”

AJ glanced at me and continued.

“When Holt got shipped off to Vietnam, I cried for two weeks straight.
He missed his brother’s wedding six months later, where he would have been best man to my maid of honor. If he’d been there, he might finally have noticed me. I had hit a tad of a growth spurt, shall we say, and a lot of guys were starting to pay attention. I didn’t return their affections, though. I was waiting for my conquering hero.”