Acadian Waltz (14 page)

“Perhaps,” John
broke in. “Five bridesmaids is plenty.”

Mother turned to
John. “Of course it isn’t. No self-respecting Catholic wedding would have less
than nine bridesmaids.” Mother scanned the list of possible bridesmaids in
front of her. “I guess we can iron this out later.” She reached across the
table for another piece of paper. “But this can’t wait.” She handed the paper
to me.

I tried to
decipher my mother’s unintelligible scribble. “What’s this?”

“Father
Delacroix gave me a list of dates for you and John to go over to St. Rita’s and
begin your Pre-Cana sessions.”

I stared at my
mother in disbelief. “Pre-Cana? You’re joking.”

John put his
fork down. “Nora, we have to go to Pre-Cana in order to have a mass during the
ceremony. You want to be married in the eyes of God, don’t you?”

“God doesn’t
have to sit through his own Pre-Cana classes.” My stomach rolled with disgust.
“Look, Mother, I don’t have time to go to Pre-Cana sessions, and I don’t see
why John and I should have to—”

“But John wants
to go,” Mother interrupted. “He’s a very devout man and he told me last week
that he wants your marriage to be sanctified by the church. I told him I would
call Father Delacroix to set up the Pre-Cana.”

I scowled at
John, suppressing a sudden urge to choke the living hell out of him. “But how
can you make time for these sessions?” I asked him, sweetly. “You’re at the
emergency room six days and nights a week.”

He patted my
hand. “I can make arrangements. Don’t worry.”

“There, that’s
settled.” Mother leaned slightly to her left and elbowed her husband. ”Isn’t it
exciting, Lou?”

Lou, who had
been watching the entire conversation with his arms folded over his chest,
grinned at me. “It’s not too late, No. I know a real good rabbi if you want to
convert.”

“Lou!” Mother
screeched.

After the
subject of Pre-Cana, I began to tune out of the rest of the wedding
conversation. Mother and John seemed to be planning everything, even down to
food selection at the reception.

“Nora and I
would love a mixture of tastes—Indian, Chinese, Mexican—that way people would
have some variety. And we must have champagne,” John added with a flourish of
his hand. “We want the very best champagne and lots of it.”

I stared at John
and wondered exactly when in our relationship he had decided to start speaking
for me. I had known the man almost two months, but in all that time I had never
felt more insignificant to him than that morning, sitting with my mother and
Lou.

“Now, Nora,”
Mother badgered as she made notes on one of the growing scraps of paper on the
table. “We will have to go over to Chopin’s next week and pick out the flowers.
First the service flowers, your bouquet, bridesmaids’ bouquets, reception
arrangements, and of course corsages for John’s parents and Lou and me.”

“Roses,” John
announced as he pushed his empty plate aside. “Make it yellow roses. Put them in
everything.”

My body
reflexively twitched at the mention of yellow roses.

I turned to
John. “Since when do you like yellow roses?”

He smiled at me,
making the lines beneath his gray eyes appear even deeper.

“Always. They’re
my favorite.”

“Nora’s, too,”
Mother squealed, clapping her hands together excitedly. “Now we have to look
through these invitation samples. I want to get our selection to the printer on
Monday.”

I sat back in my
chair. “Mother, John is wiped. He’s been up all night and I’m pretty beat.
Can’t we do this another time?”

“I’m all right,
Nora,” John insisted as he held my hand.

I analyzed his
bloodshot eyes and frowned. “Well, I can’t stay,” I stated and let go of his
hand.

“Can’t stay?”
Mother frowned at me. “Nora, we have a lot to go over.”

“John can finish
up here. I promised Uncle Jack I would go to Manchac this afternoon and check
his pressure.”

Mother waved an
impatient hand at me. “Tell the man to go to a doctor like everybody else. And
stop calling him Jack. His name is Jacques. I hate it when you call him Jack.
It’s so blue-collar.” Her face began turning red, a sure sign she was getting
angry. “Nora, you can’t just leave. We have a wedding to plan. You have
obligations.”

I quickly stood
from my chair. “I can’t disappoint Uncle Jack.” I smirked at her. “You know how
he looks forward to my visits, and I haven’t seen him in a while.”

John stood up
next to me. “I’ll come with you.”

I placed my hand
on his arm. “No, I’ll go. You stay here and help my mother. She’s right, we
have a lot to plan.”

“I wish you
would stop making promises to that old drunk.” Mother’s face was growing a
darker shade of red. “He’s just like Father. Drank himself into an early grave,
Francois Mouton did. My poor mother had to suffer such humiliation. I swore I
would never be like her.” She pointed a finger at me. “It does you no good to
spend so much time with your uncle.”

I ignored her
warnings and kissed John’s cheek. “I’ll see you back at the house.” Then,
without another word to my mother, I fled from the dining room.

“Nora, don’t be
silly,” Mother called behind me. “That old fool will be high as a kite all
afternoon. You’re wasting your time.”

“Yes, Mother,” I
shouted as I grabbed my purse by the front door. “But it’s my time to waste.” I
stepped through the leaded glass front door and slammed it behind me.
Instantly, I felt better. Reprieved of my oppressive wedding duties, I happily
ran down the steps, eagerly wanting to get into my car and speed away.

Chapter 11

During the
entire drive to Manchac, I kept such a tight grip on the steering wheel that by
the time I pulled in front of the Gaspard’s home, I could barely pry my fingers
off the leather. I sat in my car, outside of the white plantation style house,
and took in a few deep breaths. That didn’t help. I still wanted to rip my
mother’s red hair out by the roots.

I was reaching
for my purse when a tap on my car window distracted me. I turned and saw Jean
Marc Gaspard standing next to my car door, wearing a pair of jeans and a crisp
white T-shirt. He was smiling at me, or more like grinning from ear to ear.

I opened the
door and could not help but notice the thick muscles in his suntanned arms.

“Glad to see you
made it,” he remarked, offering me his hand.

I took his hand
and a little twinge of excitement coursed through me when my flesh touched his.

“Mother has been
asking me every hour on the hour when you were coming,” he added as he helped
me out of the car. His hand stayed on mine for a few seconds after I was
standing from the car, and then he let go.

“I got hung up
at my mother’s.” I sighed and I tugged at my purse strap. “She was in her glory
with the wedding planning.”

Jean Marc
briefly chuckled. “Thank God I avoided that mess when I got married. Cynthia,
my ex, wanted a quick, simple ceremony in Dallas, no family or friends. Mother
has never forgiven me for that.”

“You’re lucky.
My mother is insisting on the whole big ceremony fiasco,” I said as we started
slowly down the narrow shell-covered path toward the house.

“Yeah, my mother
would have wanted the whole blown out affair, too. She claims I cheated her out
of her one chance for a nice wedding.”

I shook my head.
“I don’t know if all the hoopla is really worth it.”

“It’s worth it
when you’re in love, Nora.”

I took in his
profile. “Were you in love with your ex-wife?”

He stopped and
turned to me. “I thought I was, I really did. But after we were married, I
discovered she was missing something. Something I could never quite put my
finger on until I came back to Manchac.”

“What was she
missing?”

He simply smiled
and nodded to the house. “Come on. My mother is waiting.”

As we neared the
end of the path, the full majesty of Gaspard House came into view. It appeared
a little more worn and faded than I remembered, but the home still had its long
sunlit balconies supported by the four round, white columns that ran along the
front of the three-story dwelling. The roof was covered with terra cotta tiles,
hard to find nowadays, but worth their weight when the setting sun made the
tiles glow red against the evening sky. The exterior was covered in plaster and
painted white. The tall french windows still had the original old, imperfect
wavy glass in place. The front door had been freshly painted a deep shade of
red, reminiscent of the swatches my mother had produced earlier that day.
Surrounding the property were grand oak trees brushed with long strands of
Spanish moss, and limbs so heavy with age that they reached down to the ground.
There were pink crape myrtle trees and red azalea bushes growing wild in the
front gardens. Off to the side, away from the oaks, but close enough to the
entrance of the house to spread its sweet aroma indoors every May, was a large
magnolia tree, mandatory in any respectable Southern garden.

I gazed up in
awe at the impressive structure. “It hasn’t changed.”

Jean Marc
laughed as he took my elbow and ushered me onward. “Oh, it’s changed, all
right. A year ago I had to put new plumbing in all of the bathrooms. I just
replaced the central air-conditioning system last spring, had the kitchen
overhauled last winter, and,” he took a breath, “refinished all the old pine
floors just last month. Costs me a small fortune to keep the place up, but
she’s still in pretty good shape, considering she just made a hundred and
thirty-three.”

“That old?”

He looked up at
the house. “The original home burned down in the eighteen seventies. This was
the more luxurious replacement my ancestor built with profits from his
smuggling escapades during the Civil War.”

“Your family has
had such a colorful past.”

“Yes, we
Gaspards claim descent from a pirate who traveled in the company of Jean
Lafitte named Jacques Gaspard. He settled in this area and spent his days
smuggling goods through these swamps. But today’s Gaspard family is not quite
as colorful as our predecessors. Oh, we have the occasional delinquent, like my
brother, but at heart we’re just simple fishermen.”

“Not according
to my mother. She still believes the Gaspard family is filled with men such as
your ancestor the pirate.” I paused and turned to him. “She even mentioned
something about your time in Dallas. Mother believes some nasty rumor flying
around that you were involved with a notorious smuggler.”

He stared at me
as his dark eyes shimmered in the sunlight. “Maybe it’s not a rumor.”

“Is it true what
they say about you?”

He shrugged his
broad shoulders. “My former father-in-law, Lawrence Castille, was a very
wealthy importer of rare and hard to acquire items. Some say he was a smuggler,
and I did witness more than a few illegal transactions between him and other
international businessmen. When he took me under his wing and I married his
daughter, more than a few people began to believe I was a smuggler as well.”

“But you
weren’t, right?”

Jean Marc rubbed
his hand across his chin. “I did things for my father-in-law that I’m not proud
of, Nora.”

As I took in
Jean Marc’s troubled features, I could not fathom how a man I had known all of
my life could be someone so different from what I had imagined.

“What kinds of
things?” I finally asked.

“Perhaps I’ve
said too much already.” He sighed and took in the surrounding greenery. “I can
understand if you think less of me because of—”

I placed my hand
on his forearm, silencing him. “I don’t care about what you did, Jean Marc. How
could I ever question you or your past? You have always been there for my
uncle, and as far as I’m concerned that erases any of your former sins.”

He put his hand
over mine. “One day you might care,” he whispered.

A tingling
sensation passed through my body as his hand rested against mine. I quickly
removed my hand from his arm and nervously took a step back.

Jean Marc waved
toward the house. “We should go.”

We were almost
at the front porch when two monstrous brown, blue, and white speckled hound
dogs, with long tails and tall bodies, approached me.

“Oh, the
welcoming committee,” Jean Marc declared. “Napoleon and Nelson, Dad’s old
Catahoula dogs.”

I held my hand
out to the closest of the hounds, a dark brown creature with black and white
spots on his rump. Instantly, my hand was covered with a layer of slobber. The
second of the dogs, a blue and tan mix, came forward and reached for my hand,
wanting the same attention as the first.

“Careful, if you
get too friendly with them, they might just try and sit in your lap,” Jean Marc
cautioned as he rubbed one of the dogs on the head.

When we stepped
onto the sprawling front porch, complete with a wide assortment of rockers, a
familiar woman’s voice called from inside the open front door.

“Is she here?”

The voice was
soon followed by the figure of a petite woman, delicate almost in her bearing.
She had deep brown hair, smooth, silky white skin, and the warmest brown eyes I
had ever known.

“Nora T!” The
woman held out her slender arms to me. Her oval face was bright with love and
her pale cheeks were flushed with warmth.

“Ms. Marie!” I
ran to her waiting arms.

Ms. Marie held
me back and carefully inspected every inch of me. “Why, look at you. You’re all
grown up, mon p’tit’.” She pulled me to her once more and squeezed me tight.

When I could
finally come up for air, I saw Jean Marc standing off to the side, beaming as
he watched me with his mother.

“Oh, I have
thought about you every day, Nora T.” Ms. Marie put her slender arm about my
shoulders. “I’ve been tellin’ Jean Marc to invite you out to the house for
ages.”