The Gates of Evangeline (18 page)

Some of her hardness melts away at this news. “Jack died?”

“Last year.”

“He was a good man.”

“They're all gone now,” I say quietly. “There's no one left for you to hurt.” For a moment, I think I've got her.

Doubt flickers across her face, but it's quickly replaced by attitude. She puts a hand on her hip and looks to the door. “Your cop friend is waitin' on you, and I got things to do. You better skedaddle.”

Fail.

Outside, Detective Minot has started up the Impala.

I climb into the passenger seat, defeated. I tell him about my conversation with Danelle and slump back, sure that he regrets bringing me.

“Why the long face?” His cheery tone surprises me. “I think it went all right.”

“We got
nothing
. This was our chance.”

Detective Minot keeps his eyes on the road, but I know he sees me pouting. “Most of these old cases never get solved, Charlotte, and that's just how it is.” He's so stoic, so resigned to inaction. “Anyway, I wouldn't give up on Danelle Martin just yet. Give her a few days.”

“A few days for
what
?”

“Let her sit with it.” He pulls out into an intersection and I see that traffic has picked up. “She might come up with something interesting.”

Is he stupidly optimistic or trying to make me feel better? “I think she'd rather lose her other boob than tell us shit,” I say.

“All right, you think. But I think deep down that woman's itching to talk.” He gives me a rare smile. “Fifty bucks, what do you say? Give her a week.”

“Easiest money I ever made.”

But Minot's confidence rekindles my hope a little.

I
'm not sure why, but the meeting with Danelle fires me up. Back in my guest cottage, I attack the boxes of Deveau miscellanea with renewed vigor. I know it's just a bunch of old crap that's been lying around in storage, but no one has ever properly sorted it. Why stress out over what Danelle does or doesn't say when I've got real, uncensored artifacts all around me?

I set aside the box of Andre items I've already gone through and choose another, laying out its contents on the bed. Children's items, for the most part, that must have belonged to the twins. Dolls, a pink diary with only two pages filled in, a bottle of sparkly purple nail polish. I pull out a third-place ribbon for an equestrian competition, flip through a sketchbook with pencil drawings of badly proportioned horses. On the bottom of the box, there are some 1978 issues of
Teen
. The twins have marked their answers to a “What Type of Guy Do You Go For?” quiz in green ink. I learn that twelve-year-old Brigitte had a thing for jocks, while Sydney preferred bad boys. Actually, Sydney may not have outgrown that. I think I saw something in a tabloid once about her ex-husband being a sex addict.

The one good find is a scrapbook that Brigitte tried to keep. Like the diary, the pages are mostly blank, but over the years she sporadically pasted things in it. Movie stubs and airplane tickets, playbills, concert programs, Polaroids with friends. What thrills me, though, are a couple of baby photos of Gabriel. It's been hard to find any pictures of him at all, and these aren't bad. He's probably just a few weeks old, a shapeless blob in Brigitte's teenage arms. In the other, taken maybe a month or two later, he lies on his back, flashing a gummy smile at the camera. Looking at it, I feel a sense of recognition, a strange rush of love for this child that I never knew and will never know.

He was so small. Vulnerable. And someone took advantage. I remember the feeling of fingers over by the swamp, the violation. I don't know what that poor little body was subjected to, but there must have been signs. Signs that something was wrong. Signs people missed.

What room do I have to judge? I know all about missing signs.

I've searched my mind a thousand times, and I still can't recall anything unusual about the day Keegan died. I was in a rush that morning, like always, and he was taking his sweet time. He fussed about the cereal I gave him, stirring it around until it got soggy. That was nothing new—he was a picky eater. But maybe that morning was different. Maybe he wasn't feeling well. Maybe he already had a headache. I never asked how he was feeling, just packed him into the car and hightailed it out of the house. I don't even remember the last thing I said to him when I dropped him off at day care.
Have a good day at school,
maybe.
I love you,
perhaps. But it could just as easily have been a reminder to behave himself. He'd been a handful for the teachers lately.

How could you forget those last words?

I wonder if Hettie went through this, too. Did she remember the last thing she said to her son? Did she comb through every memory, searching for something a little off? Was she like me, certain in her heart of hearts that, ultimately, the fault was her own? She must have regretted attending that sweet sixteen party every day of her life since.

It takes a couple of hours, but I make it through four more boxes and confirm they're all junk. When I find a brown leather Bible in box number five, I almost ignore it. But it's lying amongst items from the early eighties, and there's a bookmark inside, so I open to the marked page just to see.

I skim the section briefly: the Judgment of Solomon. I'm not much of a biblical scholar, but even I remember the two women fighting over a baby from the children's Bible my aunt Suzie gave me. The story is supposed to contain a great lesson on wisdom, I guess, to inspire the reader with Solomon's brilliant deductive powers.

Who in the Deveau family was drawn to this story? And why? I flip to the first page of the Bible to see if there's a name or inscription and find a sheet of yellow stationery covered in big, loopy cursive. Not Andre's handwriting—I remember the tight, neat numbers and letters in his old physics notebook. This looks female and it doesn't match what I've seen of the twins, so my money's on Hettie.

I unfold the paper and realize that it's a list of Bible passages.

Isaiah 64:6
. We have all become like one who is unclean,

and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

We all fade like a leaf,

and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

This strikes me as a pretty bleak worldview, but I keep reading.

1 Corinthians 6:18
. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

This gets my attention. Was Hettie considering sexually immoral acts? Was she worried for someone else she deemed immoral? There's no date on the paper, so I can only imagine when this might have been written.

1 Corinthians 10:13
. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.

I can't help but think of Andre as I read. These seem like passages that a religious mom might dig up after learning that her son was gay. Could Hettie have been trying to offer him spiritual guidance? Or was she seeking help for her own reasons?

1 Thessalonians 4:3–5
. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust . . .

The reverse side of the paper has two more passages, a little less grim:

1 Corinthians 13:7
. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 Peter 4:8
. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

I look for a common thread in the Solomon story and these Bible verses, but the lessons in each don't strike me as similar. I could ask Leeann what she thinks—she's pretty churchy. I don't have much confidence in her capacity for theological analysis, however. Maybe Dr. Pinaro could shed some light.

I put the Bible on the table by my bed and work through the remaining boxes. By the time I'm done, it's past midnight and I've got nothing more of interest. The Deveau clan may be fancy folk, but their twelve boxes of attic junk wouldn't fetch fifty dollars at a yard sale. The day has not been all I hoped. I slip into my PJs, turn on the TV, and go to bed. For some people, going to bed means going to sleep. I am not one of them.

•   •   •

I
DON
'
T LEAVE THE COTTAGE
the next morning. It's Friday, and if Cristina Paredes has a purely working relationship with Noah, she should be heading home today—not that her leaving would prove his innocence. There's
something
funky going on with them. At this point it's just degrees of bad. Still, I open the curtains enough to keep an eye on what's happening outside.

In the late morning, Isaac calls to discuss the chapters I sent him. “This is risky,” he mutters, almost to himself. “You've got kind of a nonfiction novel going. It's not what we discussed. I can't use it for the
Greatest Mysteries
series.”

“Do you want me to change it?”

He exhales. “Not yet. Give me a few more chapters. I like the sociological aspect, the class differences between the staff and the family. But, Charlotte?” He's quick to temper his praise with reality. “Not a lot of writers can pull off the whole
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
thing. Be prepared for a rewrite.”

After our talk, I sit down and map out where I'm going with the book in more detail. Around two o'clock, I'm distracted by voices outside. Peering from behind the curtains again, I see Noah hauling two obscenely large purple suitcases. Cristina follows in a pair of poured-on jeans and heels. I don't see which cottage they came out of, so I can't tell if she was staying with Noah or had her own place. But she's leaving.

It's embarrassing how fast my heart beats when there is a knock on the cottage door about fifteen minutes later. I'm tempted to leap to my feet and fling open the door. Instead, I catch myself, count to ten, make him wait. If I could survive Eric cheating on me after four years, surely I can muster up some cool when my one-week fling doesn't work out.

But it's hard, seeing the way Noah's face lights up at the sight of me. His grin seems like the worst kind of lie.

“Hey! Been too long.”

“I take it you've been tied up.” I speak in a voice that's neither nasty nor friendly, just to see how he'll play it.

“Work stuff.” He shrugs. “I missed you, though.” He leans in the doorway toward me, waiting for me to step aside and let him in.

I don't budge, don't smile.

Uncertainty sets in. “Is it a bad time? You busy?”

“No,” I tell him, “I'm just . . . not sure why you're here.”

“To see you . . . ?” He trails off as he puts it together. “You're upset.” He studies me. “Because of my job? Because I haven't been around? I told you 'bout that . . .” He gets a wounded look, like a dog who's been unfairly scolded.

“It's not because you haven't been around. It's because you
have
.”

His eyes widen. The “uh-oh, I'm in trouble” look.

“Let's be real, Noah. You chose not to see me.” I look directly into his mournful-dog eyes and lay it on the line as clearly as I can. “I'm not gonna pretend I have any claim on you, okay? I don't. But it's a little ballsy of you to show up like this after avoiding me for a week.”

“It was work,” he says. “I told you.”

“Work,” I repeat. “Do you even know how sketchy you were acting? You practically broke out in hives whenever I came near you and Cristina.” His mouth opens and then closes again. “I guess I'm curious.” I cross my arms, still blocking the doorway. “How exactly were you expecting me to react? Just give you a big hug, ask no questions, and jump into bed with you?”

I wait for a string of excuses or indignant replies, but Noah just shoves his hands in his pockets and stares at the ground.

“All right,” he says, nodding. “I'm man enough to admit I made a bad call with this—this whole Cristina visit.” He exhales. “I wanted to keep things from gettin' weird, but they're probably even worse now. I'm sorry, Charlie. I am.”

It's a great performance, oozing with remorse, but totally lacking an explanation. I stare at him.

“I get why you'd think . . . there was somethin' goin' on,” he says slowly. “I guess there was, kinda.”

“Is Cristina your girlfriend? Are you sleeping with her or—”

“No, no.” He looks alarmed at the prospect. “God, no. She really is my designer. I put her through school and all. But I shoulda told you, she's Carmen's sister.”

“Who's Carmen?”

“My ex-wife.”

This is the best news I could have expected to hear. “Wait, Cristina is your sister-in-law? And you work with her?” It's a huge and amazing relief, if it's true. Although that would mean that his ex-wife shares genetic material with that woman, which is intimidating.

“She was my sister-in-law, yeah. Couple of Carmen's cousins work for me, too. You can see how messy my divorce got.”

As much as I'd like to believe this story, there are some holes. “Why didn't you just tell me that? Why'd you have to ignore me? What were you afraid I'd see?”

“It's not what you'd see. It's what she'd see.” Having figured out he's not getting into my cottage, he sits down on the edge of the front step. “I've known Cristina since she was in the ninth grade. She was maid of honor in our wedding. I just thought it would be weird for her, seein' me with somebody else. Seein' how happy I was.” He leans his head back and sighs. “And then she'd have to decide whether or not to tell Carmen, and . . . well, it all seemed real complicated.”

I'm getting the sense that their divorce was not quite as amicable as I first thought, which is kind of comforting. I'm not alone in my dysfunction. But his dating someone else should not be that big a deal unless . . .

“Noah, when exactly did you get divorced?”

“December first.”

Not even two months ago.

“Oh Jesus.”

He holds up his hands. “Hey, I wasn't lookin' to start somethin' right off. I took this job with Hettie 'cause I wanted to get my head on straight. I didn't expect some good-lookin' Yankee to haul me off to bed first thing.”

I smile, because this isn't a wholly inaccurate version of events. I think I believe him now. He could've handled this far better, and I'm not thrilled to know his ex-wife's family is still in the picture, but at least he's not a cheating bastard. He's just a gun-toting, deer-hunting son of a potential criminal. Somehow I can live with that.

I sit down beside him on the porch. “I need a smoke.”

He laces his fingers through mine and kisses my hand before breaking out the pack of Marlboros. “Baby,” he tells me, “I got what you need.”

•   •   •

T
HAT NIGHT
, as he snores lightly beside me, I find myself facing a whole new set of worries. Getting attached to someone right now is the last thing I need, and my reaction to Cristina has already proven I care more than I want to about someone I don't really know. I'm supposed to be gathering material for my book and helping Gabriel. Nowhere on this list does it say “falling for Texan with potentially awkward family connections to the case.” Come April, I'll be back in Stamford, and Noah may be leaving even sooner. Haven't I lost enough? Why give myself someone else to miss?