Slow Heat in Heaven (2 page)

Schyler slipped through the trees, stumbling over dense undergrowth in her hurry to reach the security of the house. On the creaky footbridge, her head was engulfed by a buzzing cloud of mosquitoes. The bridge spanned the shallow creek that separated the woods from the manicured lawn surrounding the house like a neat apron.

Reaching the emerald carpet of thick St. Augustine grass, Schyler paused to regain her breath. The night air was as heavily perfumed as a Bourbon Street hooker. Honeysuckle lined the banks of the creek. Gardenias were blooming somewhere nearby, as well as wild roses, wax- leaf ligustrum, and magnolia trees.

Schyler cataloged the individual smells. They were resurrected out of her childhood, each attached to its special memory. The scents were achingly familiar, though she was long past childhood and hadn't set foot on Belle Terre in six years.

No English garden smelled like this, like home, like Belle Terre. Nothing did. If she were blindfolded and dropped onto Belle Terre, she would recognize it immediately by sound and scent.

The nightly choir of bullfrogs and crickets was warming up. The bass section reverberated from the swampy creek bottom, the soprano section from overhead branches. Out on the spur, a mile or so away, a freight train's whistle hooted. No sound was as sad.

Schyler, closing her eyes and leaning against the rough bark of a loblolly pine, let the sensations seep into her. She crossed her arms over her chest and hugged herself, almost afraid that when she opened her eyes she would awaken from a dream to find that she wasn't at Belle Terre in the full bloom of summer, but in London, shrouded in a cold, winter mist.

But when she opened her eyes she saw the house. As pure and white as a sugar cube, it stood serenely in the heart of the clearing, dominating it like the center gem in a tiara.

Yellow lamplight, made diffuse by the screens, poured from the windows and spilled out onto the deep veranda. Along the edge of the porch were six columns, three on each side of the front door. They supported a second-story balcony. It wasn't a real balcony, only a facade. Tricia frequently and peevishly pointed that out. But Schyler loved it anyway. In her opinion the phony balcony was necessary to the symmetry of the design.

The veranda wrapped around all four sides of the house. It was enclosed with screens in back, made into what had once been called a sleeping porch. Schyler remembered hearing her mother, Macy, talking about the good times she'd had there as a child when all her Laurent cousins would sleep on pallets during family get-togethers.

Personally Schyler had always preferred the open veranda. Wicker chairs, painted white to match the house, were strategically placed so that whoever sat in one might enjoy a particular view of the lawn. There were no eyesores. Each view was worthy of a picture postcard.

The porch swing that Cotton had suspended for Tricia and Schyler to play on was in one corner of the veranda. Twin Boston ferns, each as plush as a dozen feather dusters tied together, grew out of matching urns on either side of the front door. Veda had been so proud of those ferns and had fussed over them endlessly, scolding anyone who brushed past them too quickly and too close. She took it as a personal injury if a cherished frond was torn off by a careless passerby.

Macy was no longer at Belle Terre. Nor was Veda. And Cotton's life hung in the balance at St. John's Hospital. The only thing that remained unchanged and seemingly eternal was the house itself. Belle Terre.

Schyler whispered the name like a prayer as she pushed herself away from the tree. Indulging a whim, she paused long enough to slip off her sandals before continuing barefoot across the cool, damp grass that the automatic sprinkler had watered that afternoon.

When she stepped off the grass onto the crushed shell drive, she winced at the pain. But it was a pleasant discomfort and evoked other childhood memories. Running down the shell drive barefooted for the first time each season had been an annual rite of spring. Having worn shoes and socks all winter, her feet would be tender. Once it was warm enough and Veda had granted permission, the shoes and socks came off. It always took several days for the soles of her feet to toughen so that she could make it all the way to the public road without having to stop.

The sound and feel of the shell drive was familiar. So was the squeak as she pulled open the screened front door. It slapped closed behind her as she knew it would. Belle Terre never changed. It was home.

And then it wasn't. Not anymore. Not since Ken and Tricia had made it their home.

They were already in the dining room, seated at the long table. Her sister set down her tumbler of bourbon and water. "We've been waiting, Schyler," Tricia said with exasperation.

"I'm sorry. I went for a walk and lost all track of time."

"No problem, Schyler," Ken Howell said. "We haven't been waiting long." Her brother-in-law smiled at her from the sideboard where he was topping off his glass from a crystal decanter of bourbon. "Can I pour you something?"

"Gin and tonic, please. Heavy on the ice. It's hot out."

"It's stifling." Crossly, Tricia fanned her face with her stiff linen napkin. "I told Ken to reset the thermostat on the air conditioner. Daddy's such a fussbudget about the electric bill. He keeps us sweltering all summer. As long as he's not here, we might as well be comfortable. But it takes forever for this old house to cool down. Cheers." She tipped her glass in Schyler's direction when Ken handed her the drink.

"Is it all right?"

Schyler sipped from her drink but didn't quite meet Ken's eyes as she replied, "Perfect. Thanks."

"Ken, before you sit back down, please tell Mrs. Graves that Schyler finally put in an appearance and we're ready to be served."

Tricia waved him toward the door that connected the formal dining room with the kitchen. He shot her a resentful look but did as he was told. When Schyler dropped her sandals beside her chair, Tricia said, "Honestly, Schyler, you haven't been home but a few days and already you're resuming the bad habits that nearly drove Mama crazy up until the day she died. You're not going to sit at the dinner table barefooted, are you?"

Tricia was already aggravated with her for holding up dinner. To maintain peace, Schyler bent down and put her sandals back on. "I can't understand why you don't like to go barefooted."

"I can't understand why you do." Though Michelangelo could have painted Tricia's smile on an angel, she was being nasty, "Obviously there's some aristocratic blood in my heritage that is grossly lacking in yours."

"Obviously," Schyler said without rancor. She sipped from her drink, appreciating the gin's icy bite and the lime's tart sting.

"Doesn't that ever bother you?" Tricia asked.

"What?"

"Not knowing your background. Sometimes you behave with no better manners than white trash. That must mean that your folks were sorry as the day is long."

"Tricia, for God's sake," Ken interrupted with annoyance. Returning from his errand in the kitchen, he slid into the chair across the table from his wife. "Let it drop. What the hell difference does it make?"

"I think it makes a lot of difference."

"The important thing is what you do with your life, not who gave it to you. Agreed, Schyler?"

"I never think about my birth parents," Schyler replied. "Oh, I did now and then when I was growing up, whenever I had my feelings hurt or was scolded or—"

"Scolded?" Tricia repeated with disbelief. "I don't recall a single time. Exactly when was that, Schyler?"

Schyler ignored her and continued. "I'd get to feeling sorry for myself and think that if my real parents hadn't given me up for adoption, I would have had a much better life." She smiled wistfully. "I wouldn't have, of course."

"How do you know?" Tricia's sculptured fingernail lazily twirled an ice cube inside the tumbler, then she sucked her fingertip dry. "I'm convinced that my mother was a wealthy society girl. Her mean old parents made her give me up out of jealousy and spite. My father was probably someone who loved and adored her passionately but couldn't marry her because his shrewish wife wouldn't divorce him."

"You've been watching too many soap operas," Ken said with a droll smile, which he cast in Schyler's direction. She smiled back.

Tricia's eyes rowed. "Don't make fun of me, Ken."

"If you're laced that your birth parents were so wonderful, why haven't you tracked them down?" he asked. "As I recall, Cotton even encouraged you to."

Tricia smoothed the napkin in her lap. "Because I wouldn't want to upset their lives or cause them any embarrassment."

"Or because you might find out they aren't so wonderful. You couldn't stand to eat that much crow." Ken took a final drink from his highball glass and returned it to the table with the smugness of a gambler laying down the winning ace.

"Well if they weren't rich," Tricia snapped, "at least I know they weren't trashy, which I'm sure Schyler's real parents were." Then she smiled sweetly and reached across the table for Schyler's hand. "I hope I didn't hurt your feelings, Schyler."

"No. You didn't. Where I came from never mattered to me. Not like it did to you. I'm just glad that I became a Crandall through adoption."

"You always have been so disgustingly grateful that you became the apple of Cotton Crandall's eye, haven't you?"

Mrs. Graves's appearance gave Schyler an excuse not to acknowledge Tricia's snide remark. The housekeeper's name was appropriate, since Schyler was sure a more dour individual had never been born. Schyler had yet to see the stick-figure woman crack a smile. She was as different from Veda as possible.

As the taciturn housekeeper went around the table ladling vichyssoise out of a tureen, Schyler felt a stab of longing for Veda. Her smiling face, as dark as chicory coffee, was a part of Schyler's memory as far back as it went. Veda's ample bosom was as comfortable as a goose down pillow, as protective as a fortress, and as reassuring as a chapel. She always smelled of starch and lemon extract and vanilla and lavender sachet.

Schyler had looked forward to being enveloped in one of Veda's bear hugs the moment she crossed Belle Terra's threshold. It had come as a crushing disappointment to learn that she'd been replaced by Mrs. Graves, whose meager bosom looked as hard and cold and uninviting as a granite tombstone.

The vichyssoise was as thin and spiritless as the woman who had prepared it, served it, and then slunk back into the kitchen through the swinging door. After one taste of the chilled soup, Schyler reached for the salt shaker.

Tricia immediately leaped to the cook's defense. "I told Mrs. Graves to stop cooking with salt when Daddy's blood pressure started getting so high. We're used to it by now."

Schyler shook more salt into her bowl. "Well I'm not." She tested the soup again, but found it unpalatable. She laid her spoon in the underserver and moved the plate aside. "I remember Veda's vichyssoise too well. It was so thick and rich, you could stand your spoon in it."

With controlled motions, Tricia blotted her lips with her napkin, then carefully folded it into her lap again. "I might have known you'd throw that up to me."

"I didn't mean—"

"She was old, Schyler. You hadn't seen her in years, so you're in no position to question my judgment. Veda had become slovenly and inefficient, hadn't she, Ken?" She asked for his opinion rhetorically and didn't give him time to express it. "I had no choice but to let her go. We couldn't go on paying her salary when she wasn't doing her work. I felt terrible about it," Tricia said, pressing a hand against her shapely breasts. "I loved her, too, you know."

"I know you did," Schyler said. "I didn't mean to sound critical. It's just that I miss her. She was such a part of Belle Terre." Because she'd been living abroad at the time, Schyler couldn't countermand Tricia's decision. But a slovenly and inefficient Veda Frances was something Schyler couldn't fathom.

Tricia paid lip service to loving the housekeeper, but Schyler couldn't help but wonder if she had been acting out of spite when she let Veda go. There had been numerous occasions when her sister had been anything but loving toward Veda. Once she had rebuked Veda so insultingly that Cotton lost his temper with her. There had been a terrific row. Tricia had been banished to her room for a full day and had been grounded from a party she had looked forward to for weeks. Although Tricia was capable of car- lying grudges indefinitely, Schyler was sure there had been a more serious reason for Veda's dismissal.

No amount of salt or pepper made the chicken casserole that followed the cold potato soup taste good to Schyler. She even tried seasoning it with Tabasco sauce straight from the bottle, which was a staple on any table belonging to Cotton Crandall. The red pepper sauce didn't help either.

However, she gave Mrs. Graves's culinary skills the benefit of the doubt. She hadn't had much appetite since she had received the overseas call from Ken, informing her that Cotton had suffered a heart attack.

"How is he?" she had asked fearfully.

"Bad, Schyler. On the way to the hospital, his heart stopped beating completely. The paramedics gave him CPR. I won't bullshit you. It's touch and go."

Schyler had been urged to come home with all possible haste. Not that she needed any encouragement. She had pieced together frustrating flight schedules that eventually got her to New Orleans. From there, she had taken a small commuter plane to Lafayette. She had rented a car and driven the remaining distance to Heaven.