His Melody (10 page)

“Oh.” Melody took a sip from her own glass.

“I think something special brought you into that boy’s life.” Blanche shrugged. “The universe? Fate? Whatever it is, it’s ‘bout time. He needs you. I can tell you be good for him.”

Did the universe have to screw me over so severely in the process?
she
asked herself. “How can you know that?” she addressed those words to Blanche.

“I tell you things, and you don’t listen,” Blanche said with a reproving shake of her head. “But I like you
chère
, so I’m gon’ try to help you see.” She tapped the side of her head. “I know things.”

Know things? What things?
Melody thought. Maybe Blanche was just a busybody. Regardless, she seemed harmless. “Were you born here?” she asked, trying to gauge how well the woman might know the Holts.

“Louisiana,
chère
, but you already knew that.” Blanche winked at her. “Cajun country.”

“How’d you end up in Sweet Neck?”

“I got to travel,
chère
. I got to see this world. But you don’t want to know about old Blanche Leroux. You want to know about that Holt boy.” Blanche seemed sure of this fact.

“I do?”

Blanche nodded, continuing to treat their conversation like a perfectly normal and logical one. “Oh yes. Of course you do. That’s why you followed me on down that lane even though you half-thought I was half-crazy. You shouldn’t be asking me how I ended up in Sweet Neck. You should be asking yourself how you ended up here.”

“My car—”

“Hush now,
chère
. Do you want me to tell you ‘bout this here or not?”

Melody nodded. “Please do.”

Blanche settled back onto the stool across from Melody.

“Them two brothers, they don’t act like brothers now. I’m sure you seen that.”

Melody nodded. She had. The two of them seemed to avoid each other whenever possible. And her first night at the house, when the electricity had gone out, Donnie kept making smart remarks about Grayson after Melody had unwittingly brought him up.

“There’s a lot of pain and anger between those boys. Because of it, they both hurt that dear sweet mother they both love. Them boys don’t mean her
no
harm, they love her. They just so angry they don’t know how to do any better than they do.” Blanche looked up at her solemnly. “That’s where you come in.”

“Me? I—”

“Hush now,
chère
, hush now. I ain’t
tell
you it was time for you to do the talkin’ yet, now did I?”

Melody shook her head.

Blanche shifted on her stool and folded her hands together. “Now then. Like I was saying. That sister, Avery, she angry
at
Austin, too, but she do her best to keep the peace between those two. But getting Donnie and Austin back to acting like brothers, that’s the key to the healing that family needs.” Blanche closed her eyes and began humming.

Melody sat up in her chair. “That’s nice, but I should probably be going now.”

Blanche’s eyes popped open. “
That boy come
from a cold place. A cold and dark place, and I
ain’t
just talking about winter in New York City. He
don’t
think nobody understand, but I think you just might do.”

Melody nodded and stood. “I don’t know about all that, but thank you for the lemonade. It was very good.”

“He needs you, Melody James,” Blanche said, using her name for the first time and giving her a stare that made her think the woman could see clear through to her soul. Melody tried to remember whether she’d given the woman her name. She couldn’t remember giving it to her, but maybe she had. Blanche couldn’t have known it otherwise. Right? “He needs you,” Blanche said again.

Melody nodded and stumbled backward in the direction of the door.

“You afraid of me, I know it, but I’m afraid of you failing those brothers.
Such a nice good family.
I hate to see it fall apart and them good folk lose each other. You could stop it from happening.” Blanche stood and folded her arms into the wide sleeves of her dress. “You got a good heart. You’ll see your purpose and fulfill it.” Blanche looked satisfied with herself as she said these last lines. Confident even.

“Okay, well, bye now.” Melody wrapped her hand around the doorknob.

Blanche waved her off, but was singing along with the music coming from the phonograph and seemed to have forgotten Melody was there. Anybody just walking in the door would’ve had no clue about the creepy and intense nature of the conversation they’d just had. Melody stepped out of the door and into the heat. The warmth was welcome against her skin after the chill that pervaded Blanche’s house. She hurried up the dirt path and back to the main road.

Chapter Eleven

For some nagging reason, Melody couldn’t dismiss the woman’s words no matter how much she wanted to. After she left Blanche’s, she went back to the Holts’ and called her mother to tell her she wasn’t coming home right away.

Melody told herself she needed a break from Atlanta anyway and she wasn’t giving any credence to the old lady’s ramblings. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe the woman wasn’t crazy. Blanche had somehow seemed more wise than crazy.

She hadn’t looked forward to the battle with her mom, but she was able to eventually convince Mom that everything was fine and not to worry. That Melody would be home soon.
In a couple weeks at the most.
Her mom would express mail Melody’s cards to her when they arrived from the credit card companies and the bank.

The replacement cards Melody had ordered online for her personal accounts were supposed to arrive some time that week. Mom had insisted on wiring some money to Melody that Monday, but Melody had convinced her that she’d be fine without it. She didn’t want Mom straining her budget like that. Melody had just lost her job, but she at least had her savings to rely on for a while. And a severance package once she worked out the details with Saeed.

And she could always sell off more jewelry. Oh, what a painful thought, but she usually sacrificed a piece or two when things got really rough money-wise. In addition to the Range Rover and condo in the Poconos she’d already sold to get her new life set up in Atlanta and start saving up money for breaking out on her own, she’d taken the small things with her in the divorce like her jewelry and clothes. She didn’t want alimony or any of that. Luckily, though, her ex had paid off her student loans when they got married as a wedding present to her. After the divorce, she left with the bare minimum—the things her lawyer had convinced her to take basically. She didn’t want to admit she needed that fool for anything.

One thing about her ex.
He hadn’t been a cheap man. He liked for his woman to look good because she was an extension of him. At least that was the way he saw it. Melody had sold most of the things he’d given her right after the divorce, but she tried to save back her favorite pieces. That meant she had thousands of dollars worth of platinum and diamond jewelry as well as her remaining designer clothes and shoes stashed away at her place in Midtown and at her mom’s house in Marietta. Occasionally, she’d sell things on eBay—or sometimes take the jewelry to a local
pawn shop
—to add to the fund when she had no other choice. Maybe this was one of those times she had no other choice.

The money could come in handy. It would’ve been nice to get a room at the one motel in Sweet Neck so she didn’t feel like she was imposing on Leigh Anne and the rest of the Holts. But she knew enough about Leigh Anne already to know the woman would have taken her leaving as a personal insult, so she let it go.
 

After the long, somewhat painful conversation with her mom, Melody hadn’t been able to stand the thought of telling another person about her decision to stay in Sweet Neck. She decided to call Jen the next day. For the moment, what she really needed was a bath.

She sank gratefully into the tub and pressed a damp washcloth to her face, letting thoughts of the past few days’ craziness flit around in her head.

Austin needed her.
For what?
He seemed perfectly happy and normal and
well-adjusted
to her. Blanched seemed so sure of it, though. So he wouldn’t talk about his past. Maybe he didn’t feel like telling his whole life story to someone he barely knew. And even if he never wanted to talk about it, he still didn’t seem to need saving. Her life was more of a mess than his was.

Why was she even worrying about anything Blanche had said? She would get Austin to fix her car, she would go back to Atlanta, and she would deal with Saeed and then find a new job. Those were the things to worry about—not some enigmatic bayou woman’s ramblings.

Still. Family was important. She thought about how difficult it was to lose someone you loved. She’d lost a father, too, even though the circumstances had been different. Her dad died of cirrhosis of the liver when she was a senior in high school. He’d only lasted a few years after the divorce; he drank himself to death. Austin didn’t have to lose a brother as well as a father. Donnie was right there. It didn’t seem like either of them was interested in reaching out to the other, though.

She dozed for a while and realized with a start someone was pounding at the door. She sat up, shivering as her wet body made contact with the air. “Yeah?”

She heard Donnie’s voice through the door. “Just wondering if you were still alive in there,” Donnie said, laughter in his voice. “We’re going out to Regan’s farm in a little bit.
Gonna
invite her to Sunday dinner. I was checking to see if you wanted to come along.”

“Okay. I’ll be out in a minute.” She sighed and reached down to drain the tub. She stood and stretched, arching her back. What was she? A narcoleptic? She kept falling asleep. Then again, it probably had something to do with the fact that she hadn’t been sleeping so well at night.

After she got dressed, she went to Austin’s door and knocked softly.

“Come in,” he called out in that soft Southern accent. The combination of deep voice and soft accent made her knees weak every time she heard it. She’d avoided speaking with an accent all her life, but it sounded good on him. And that threadbare white T-shirt looked good over his broad chest and shoulders.

“Donnie said y’all—everyone—is going down to Regan’s,” she said.

He chuckled.

“What?”

“It’s just funny to me the lengths you go to not to sound like you’re from the South.”

“Ha,” she said. “I’ve come to a decision about my car.”

“Oh?” He fixed those deep green eyes on her.

She stuck her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. “Yeah. I want you to put in the engine, and I want to stick around here while you do it. If it’s okay, I’d like to stay here with you a—fine, y’all, happy?
But only if you let me work off the cost.
At least part of it.”

“And how do you plan on doing that? You know your way around a carburetor?” The corners of his mouth twitched with a smile as he said it.

“
Um…not hardly.
But I do know math. I could help with bookkeeping. I’m a C.P.A.” She’d been
a music
and accounting double-major in college because her mother had insisted she do something “practical” in addition to studying music. It was ironic that a mother who named her Melody wasn’t more supportive of her dreams of making a career out of music. Then again, Melody’s name had been mostly her father’s idea.

“Yeah, I remember you mentioning that,” Austin said.

“I still have my license. I could also help you clean up that office. It needs it desperately. I don’t even know how you can get through the door with all that junk lying around.”

Austin’s smile faded. “Yeah I guess nothing’s really been done with it since Dad died.”

She thought back to their talk in his room on the night of his storm. He obviously didn’t like to talk about his father. “Oh. Austin, I’m sorry.” She started to walk toward him.

He stood and grabbed his keys from his desk. “You ready to head out to Regan’s? If we don’t get going, Donnie’s gonna come up here after us.”

“Sure.” She backed off and let him walk past her. As she followed him downstairs, she thought about what Blanche had said again. About Austin needing to be saved from
himself
.

Chapter Twelve

Sunday night, Austin sat in his room staring at a blank page of his notebook. Regan had just left after eating Sunday dinner with them. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to look at Regan without having bittersweet feelings, but he definitely couldn’t do it yet. They both agreed that they weren’t right for each other. They cared about each other and were still friends. Still, he felt guilty about what had happened between them.

He’d been needy and angry and immature when they were together, and she had been so patient with him. He’d never be able to thank or repay her. He really hoped she’d find someone who would make her happy
one day
. She swore out she’d never get married. Whenever he threatened to marry her if she didn’t hurry up and find somebody, she’d just laugh.

They’d never had much of a real relationship. It’d been more like a quick affair; it’d been good except for the times when he’d been an idiot. He hoped she remembered it the same way—mostly good. She said she did.