Little Gale Gumbo (30 page)

“We used to think everything was so complicated, didn't we?” she whispered.

“It seemed it then.”

She smiled sadly. “Yeah, it did, didn't it?”

Jack returned the measured smile, feeling the familiar tug of nostalgia creeping in around him, the easy exchange of memories, too tempting.

He set down his bottle. “I should get going.”

“Already?” Dahlia turned back to him, panic flashing in her eyes, startling and raw. “What about dinner? I'll make new rice—and I promise the étouffée hasn't spent any time in the sink.”

He chuckled. “Josie already offered, but I can't stay.”

Disappointment swept over her, stronger than Dahlia would have expected, but it had been a long time since things had been so easy between them, like they used to be, and the craving for more was instinctive.

When Jack came beside her to leave his beer on the edge of the sink, she reached for his hand, grazing his knuckles, just enough to stall him. “I'm sorry too, Jack,” she whispered, her fingers still outstretched.

It didn't matter that she hadn't quantified her apology. They both knew what she was talking about. Jack looked at her fingers, reaching out into the air, and he told himself there was no harm in taking them for just a moment, like he'd done a hundred times before. Their fingers laced naturally, squeezing several times like a pumping heart.

When he finally released her hand and moved toward the hall, she followed him to the front door, feeling the swell of urgency with every step, as if time were running out and there were things still to say, years and years of things.

But at the door, opening it to let the world back in, time returned.

“Take care of yourself, Dahlia.”

She nodded. “You too, Jack.”

She stood in the doorway and watched him jog down the steps to the driveway, watched him climb into his patrol car. Walking back inside, she had to chuckle to see the faint trail of red footprints he'd unknowingly left behind.

It figured. The one man she'd never wanted to keep out.

 

Josie had been watching Wayne fight with the mower for almost fifteen minutes, driving it over stubborn swells of ragweed and around Dahlia's beds, before she stepped into his field of view. Glimpsing her, Wayne reached down to turn off the motor. He crossed to her, wiping his hands on his baggy shorts, long threads of sweat snaking down his temple, disappearing into his beard.

He swallowed, trying to catch his breath. “How long have you been back?”

“Not very long. Jack dropped me off.”

“Jack?” Wayne craned his neck to glimpse the side of the house, looking for the cruiser but not seeing it. “What was Jack doing here?”

“I was taking a walk and he gave me a ride home.”

“Oh.” Wayne dragged a hand across his forehead. His sneakers were covered in shredded grass, the hair on his calves tinted green. “Look, I'm sorry I wasn't here when you got back. I wanted to be; I just lost track of time and . . .” He stopped, his eyes misting. “How is he, Jo?”

“It's hard,” she said. “It's like he's just sleeping but he's not. And no one knows anything, and if they do, they aren't saying it. You should go see him, Wayne. Soon.”

“I know. I will.”

Josie glanced up at the house. “Matty's coming for dinner.”

Wayne brushed grass off his arms, reminded of Dahlia's warning in the kitchen. He wanted to ask Josie not to tell Matthew about the pregnancy, to plead with her to keep their secret, but the words seemed to stick in his throat.

He just nodded lamely and she moved back toward the house, touching his arm on her way.

 

The Queen Anne looked bleached and flat in the shapeless light of dusk.

Jack stared up at it from the front seat of his cruiser, not entirely sure why he'd come back to Ben's massive house on his way home. He wanted to believe Dahlia when she told him she hadn't seen Charles Thursday night, but still the missing hours of the time line gnawed at him. His gut told him the answer was here, in the last place Charles had been before he died, and so Jack had found himself pulling up the gravel drive for the second time that afternoon.

He walked through the first floor, then the second, scanning the rooms with a care he hadn't taken the first time he'd gone through the house, but still he saw nothing new. He even climbed the stairs to the apartment door but found the dead bolt locked and didn't feel like making a trip back to the station to retrieve the keys.

Now he came slowly around to the front of the house, letting his eyes drift over the porch as he walked past, wondering if there was something outside he hadn't seen, some tiny clue. At the steps, he turned and walked backward, lifting his eyes, his gaze moving slowly across the weathered facade.

After a moment, he realized what he'd missed, and his stomach seized.

The apartment window was open.

Maybe Ben had been mistaken, Jack thought. Maybe Charles had broken in through the upstairs and not the front door, but—

No. Jack studied the roofline. It was a treacherous climb. There was no way a man of Charles's age could manage it without a ladder. Of course, it was also possible that Ben was just letting air into the apartment during the stuffier months.

Then Jack noticed the gravel path at his feet. Maybe it was just the way the evening light fell, but he could swear there were indents in the rocks. He crouched and studied the area closer, seeing at once that it wasn't a trick of shadows. There were unmistakable grooves where the gravel gave way to the dirt below, sharp crescents that spread out into even lines.

Jack looked back to the porch, a new theory beginning to grow in his tired brain. What if Charles had come to the house looking for more than revenge? What if he'd come hunting for something else? A document, maybe. An old will, or Camille's life insurance policy? And what if Charles had found the front door locked? He would have remembered that he could access the house through the apartment, Jack realized. Or maybe the front door
wasn't
locked, but Charles had wanted to make a less conspicuous entrance so he would have had more time to look around?

Jack's eyes darted to the shingled outbuilding behind the house. Ben's treasured woodshop. What if Ben was holed up in there Thursday night? he wondered. Jack knew how Ben was when he was in the middle of a woodworking project. Ben could go hours without coming up for air. And with earplugs in to protect him from the whir of his router, Ben would never have heard Charles's invasion.

Jack looked down at the disturbed gravel, then back up to the dormer. Taking a few more steps, he peered around the side of the house and saw exactly what he'd expected. An extension ladder rested against the house on its side. He looked again to the path. A ladder would explain the gouges in the dirt, the drag lines. A ladder would have been tall enough to get Charles to the roof, and from there he could have managed the short climb over to the dormer window. Then, once inside, Charles would have found the apartment dead bolt locked, just as Jack had, and would have had to climb back out the window. Back on the ground, Charles might have realized for the first time that Ben wasn't even in the house, but in the woodshop, at which point Charles might have simply used the front door after all.

Coming back to the island for some urgent treasure would certainly explain why Charles had violated his parole. But even more, it could explain the missing hours in the time line. If Ben was deep in his project, Charles could have been free to rummage through the house for as long as he pleased, as long as he needed. Then, hearing Ben return, Charles might have found himself caught inside and waited for Ben, then surprised him at the top of the stairs, only to lose his footing and drag Ben down with him, the stress and trauma causing Ben to suffer a stroke. Suddenly Jack remembered the broken teacup in the parlor. He'd always assumed it was proof of the location of the attack but what if Charles had simply knocked it over during his search instead?

Jack scanned the roofline again, feeling unsettled. He'd been so quick to judge the scene, so sure he'd understood everything in an instant.

Now the sour taste of doubt burned in the back of his throat.

 

Across the bay, rain began to fall. Matthew watched the drops as they brushed against the tall hospital windows, making no sound at first, then gaining strength like fingernails drummed across a tabletop. He knew the sisters would be wondering where he was, why he hadn't yet arrived for dinner. He'd expected Josie to call, knowing Dahlia never would. He doubted she'd even told Josie about their fight. Even now, he felt prickles of shame for what he'd said, conflicted by the unavoidable surge of rage that quickly followed; he had meant every word—he hadn't meant to say them, was all.

The afternoon had passed slowly in his father's room. Between visits from nurses, Matthew had babbled and rambled, whispered and cried. He had told his father things he knew Ben already knew, and even told him things he never thought he would, confessions of fears and regrets, all the while searching his father's still face for a hint of recognition, of understanding. Once or twice, Matthew had thought he saw a finger twitch, an eyelid quiver. The nurses had just smiled politely.

He hadn't dared to think about the what-ifs of his father's recovery. It still seemed to require an unmanageable amount of effort just to comprehend that the frozen man beside him was the same man who had built him a tree house in a single afternoon, or taught him to drive a stick in a blizzard. The same man who had struggled to learn to make blueberry pancakes without burning them, or macaroni and cheese from scratch; who'd washed his son's clothes, packed his lunch, and filled his humidifier. The man who'd crept out onto the roof to leave reindeer prints on the snow-covered gable so that Matthew would be sure to know Santa had come through the minute he woke on Christmas morning.

Matthew dragged his sleeve across his wet eyes.

With the memories came the longing, stronger than the anger, so heavy and cloaking he could almost forget the rage had ever been there.

He'd kept the sisters waiting long enough.

He kissed his father good night and left for the ferry.

Twenty-two

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We need to hire someone,” Ben said.

It was the end of June, and in less than a year the café had grown so popular that Ben and Camille could barely keep the praline trays and gumbo pots filled. In a few months, Matthew would be leaving for college. Signs for bed-and-breakfasts had recently appeared in house windows around the village with cozy names like Seabreeze Inn and Oceanview. The ferry line had added another boat to its fleet. Island beaches that could go whole days without seeing a single pair of bare feet were now crowded with umbrellas and coolers by noon.

Barely two hours after Ben posted the Help Wanted sign in the window, a young man with curly brown hair and a round, ruddy face came into the store and asked to speak to the owner. Camille and Josie were in the kitchen picking out meat from a towering pile of crabs when Ben walked in with his guest.

“Ladies, this is Wayne Henderson. Wayne, this is Mrs. Bergeron. The talent behind this place.”

“Camille,” she said sweetly, wiping her fingers on her apron. “And I'm hardly a one-woman show here,” she said, flashing Ben a small grin as she extended her cleaned hand. “This is my daughter Josephine.”

“Nice to meet you, ma'am,” Wayne said, though his attention was already elsewhere. He was so eager for his introduction to Josie that he knocked several crab bodies to the floor reaching across the pile to offer her his hand. “Oh, man . . .” He shook his head, embarrassed, and immediately dropped to the floor to retrieve them.

Josie jumped down from her stool. “Oh, don't worry about it,” she said. “They're all empty. Here. Let me help you.”

They smiled at each other, then rose together, each with a handful of crab shells.

“It's really nice to finally meet you, Josephine,” he said, suddenly breathless.

Her smile broadened. “You can call me Josie.”

“Wayne's in Matthew's class,” said Ben. “He's going to be helping us out this summer. Why don't you show him where things are, Jo.”

Josie led Wayne out into the café, where Dahlia was behind the counter, fighting to loosen her fingers from a jammed napkin dispenser. “Motherfucker.”