A Billion Reasons Why (25 page)
“Really?”
“Truly,” Mrs. DeForges said.
Katie’s heart lightened. “But I’m not so honest anymore, Mrs. DeForges. I’m not engaged any longer, for one thing.”
“You’re not?” Mrs. DeForges brushed her silvery-blond hair behind an ear. “Does Luc know this?”
“Does it matter?” Katie asked. “Luc lives in a different world from me. I think, like my mam, I’d rather be in shotgun row.” Katie smiled and took Mrs. DeForges’ hand warmly. “Thank you for the invitation to the shower. I’ll see you at the rehearsal dinner.”
“Katie?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes we suffer when we go against God’s will.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Sometimes we suffer when we
do
God’s will.”
Katie didn’t understand, but it hardly mattered now. As Eileen said, it was time to figure out what she wanted. To live her life void of fear.
“You and Luc made a mistake,” Mrs. DeForges continued. “But coming back to this house, being willing to sing at the wedding, you’ve proven to me that you’re bigger than the passion of your youth.”
Katie walked to the gate with her head high.
Y
OU
D
O
S
OMETHING TO
M
E
Luc DeForges uttered a prayer before ringing Irene’s doorbell. Katie would be at the bridal shower, so this was his opportunity to set the record straight.
Irene answered the door and wiped her hands on a tattered apron with a hand-painted crawfish on it. “Luc, I’ve been expecting you.”
He coughed. “You have?”
“I assume you have Katie’s engagement ring,” she said.
Luc swallowed his surprise. “I do.”
She nodded. “Come on in. I’ll put some coffee on.”
He followed her to the kitchen and sat at the table.
“There’re lace cookies in the Tupperware. Help yourself.”
“Don’t mind if I do. Being welcomed with cookies beats getting shooed off your property with a broom.”
“I let you stay for your makeshift movie theater, didn’t I?” Irene asked as she heaped ground coffee into a countertop machine. “So is your plan working?”
“My plan?”
“Your plan to get my daughter back into your good graces. I assume that’s why you brought her here for Ryan’s wedding.”
“No,” he said. “It isn’t working. I suppose that makes you happy.”
“Katie being happy makes me happy. And right now, she’s not happy.” Irene poured water into the machine and flicked the switch. “Heaven help her, she loves you. But she’s got this harebrained idea that if she’d marry practically, without love, she’d be safe.”
“How do you know all that?”
“A mother knows. She should run for the hills. I’ve told her that for years. You’re trouble, Luc DeForges. You and your billions.”
“Millions.”
“Are you correcting me? Because I could give her a billion reasons why you’re a terrible choice of husband for her. My mother told me the same thing about Paddy, but there was one good reason
to
marry him, and it outweighed all the rest. I loved him.”
Katie’s mam kept her cards close, so Luc didn’t venture to believe she was on his side. Not yet. “You don’t think Dexter is the right choice for her, then?”
She ignored his question but smiled slyly. “So you’ve had Katie’s ring all these years. I wondered. I knew Paddy gave it to someone for safekeeping.”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t you want to know why you’ve had it? Why Paddy gave it to you and not to me or to Katie herself?”
“Do you know why, Mrs. Slater?”
“There was no else he trusted with it. You proved your worth to Paddy. I love you for that, if nothing else. But what you did to my daughter . . . letting her take that scoffing all by herself when you ruined her in this town. Sure, it’s a lot less scandalous now, but it’s not remembered that way by the townfolk.”
“Fair enough. But I don’t want my life defined by one mistake any more than Katie does.”
“Two mistakes.”
“Two. I should have married her. I should have asked her to marry me.”
Irene stood and pulled two coffee cups from the cabinet. “You should have.” She filled the cups and set one in front of him. “Cream or sugar?”
“Black, thank you.”
“I worry Katie is going to define herself by that mistake— to the extent of marrying the wrong man to prove she’s a good girl. Maybe not Dexter, but maybe someone else who doesn’t render her weakened. It’s like she wants to punish herself. Have you seen him with her? He tells her to jump and sets his watch to time the action.”
“I’ve noticed.” His jaw set, and he ground his molars.
“Love is a weakened state by its very nature, because the other person matters so much. Paddy gave you the ring for the same reason he sold you the business. He gave it to you so that I wouldn’t hock it.”
“Hock it?” Luc laughed.
Irene sat at the table. “Can I see it? The ring. Do you have it?”
He stood and pulled the gray velvet box from his pocket, setting it on the table. “Your new house is great,” he said, looking around.
“It’s not new anymore,” she said, as she closed her hand around the box. She picked up the box and flipped the lid. “I don’t see what all the ruckus is about. This is barely a chip of a diamond, and the emeralds are faint.”
“They match Katie’s eyes.”
She slid the box back toward him. “Even if I had sold it, I couldn’t have gotten more than an afternoon out of it. Katie’s eyes. Nana’s eyes. He couldn’t afford good emeralds, that’s the real tale.” She topped off Luc’s coffee. “But I admit to liking the romanticized version better myself.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“Paddy thought you’d marry our Katie, but that’s not why he gave you the ring.” Irene drummed her fingers on the table. “Why did you buy the business, Luc?”
“Because Paddy asked me to. He wasn’t a man I’d ever seen ask for help, and I knew if he asked, he needed it. But when I got the books for the business, everything was in the black. No debt, steady income, loyal customers . . . I didn’t understand.”
“I don’t know how to tell you this. Mostly, I hate to say it because it makes what your mother has said about us true. In a sense—.”
The front door opened, and a moment later Katie entered the kitchen with her shoes in her hand and a run the size of the Louisiana boot in her stockings. She looked worn out, physically and emotionally, and he wondered how much he’d contributed to that. More to the point, how much his mother had contributed to that.
“I’m back.” She dropped her bag and shoes at the kitchen entrance. “Luc!”
“What on earth happened to you?” Mam asked. “You look like you’ve been dragged through the bayou. Katie, I don’t know what it is about you, but you always manage to come in looking like you got into a fight with something.”
“She was with my mother,” Luc said.
“Sit down, I’ll pour you some coffee.”
“What are you doing here?” Katie asked, taking a chair.
Luc took her feet from the floor and placed them in his lap. He began rubbing them, and though she struggled at first, she finally relaxed.
“I was—”
“He was just leaving,” Mam said. “Weren’t you?”
“I thought—” One look at Irene, and he gently put Katie’s feet back down on the hardwood floor. “I was just leaving.”
He slid the box into his jacket pocket just as his BlackBerry trilled. To his good fortune, Katie didn’t seem to notice. But he wasn’t going to step foot out of the house until she looked at him. He couldn’t let her deny her feelings in order to do the “right” thing and end up suffering for it, living out of moral obligation rather than what she felt. How she could think God would want her to live a life of loneliness and sacrifice to be considered worthy, he never would understand.
“Where’s Eileen?” Katie asked.
“She went shopping on Magazine Street with her mother. She took Pokey in an old purse of mine.” Irene laughed. “You two and that dog. You treat it better than we mommas treated our babies, and we were good to you. That dog is old.”
Katie laughed. “We feel guilty for abandoning him.” Her smile disappeared as she focused on Luc. “I thought you were leaving.”
“I’m sorry about my mother,” he said, finally getting her attention.
“She was very kind to me, actually. She told me she appreciated my authenticity. I think that was her kind way of saying she excuses me for my emotional public outbursts.”
“I thought Dexter would be here,” he said, hoping for an explanation.
“Your phone’s ringing. Again.”
“The stock is down. Nothing awaits me but bad news.”
“You can answer it.”
“I can’t fix it here. I have to go back to Los Angeles.”
“Now?” She sounded worried.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back before the rehearsal dinner. By the time you finish your rehearsals, I’ll be there.”
He saw that his sudden absence worried her. He took her hand, which trembled at his touch. If he walked out now, she’d make her decision for “safety” and the man she could count on to be at her side. He reached into his pocket and shut off his phone. The beeping stopped.
“I’ll stay.”
“No, no. I’m not going to be responsible for the downfall of your business. You go ahead; I’ll steel myself to handle your mother until you get back.”
He knelt down beside her. “You’re so quick to give yourself up for others, Katie. What is it
you
need?” In her eyes he saw the vulnerability she tried so hard to mask.
She whispered in his ear, “I want to come with you.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and tried to make sense of her plea.
Irene looked at the two of them. “Luc, I think you should go. Katie, I want to speak with you alone about Dexter.”
At the sound of Dexter’s name, Luc rose and let go of Katie’s hand reluctantly. He stared at her, hoping to convey his meaning.
I’ll be there for you
. “Thanks for the coffee and cookies, Mrs. Slater. Fabulous as usual.”
He strode out the door without looking back. Katie had to make her own decision. He couldn’t make it for her.
Katie brushed the wayward tendrils from her updo off her face. Mam had seen what passed between her and Luc. Her face flushed with guilt. “I know, Mam. I know.”
“Katie, what am I going to do with you? The two of you are so stubborn, you deserve each other! You don’t just dance on the dance floor. He comes forward, you step back. You step forward, he retreats. It’s enough to drive a woman who wants grandchildren nuts.”
“It will be over in three days, Mam. I won’t ever have to see Luc again.”
“Katie, all he has to do is snap his fingers. Be honest with yourself.”
“I pledged myself to Dexter, and look how that ended up. Luc does just have to snap his fingers and I run, and that’s the problem.”
Mam rolled her eyes. “You couldn’t have married Dexter, and it has nothing to do with Luc DeForges or the way you look at him.”
“It doesn’t?” She brightened. The very idea of marrying Dexter seemed abhorrent to her now, but she’d felt bound by her promise, tethered by her integrity and what it meant to be a Christian.
Let your yes be yes, and your no be no
. She feared if she didn’t live as she said she believed, she’d be no better than Mrs. DeForges, who admitted she had married for security. Was there any real faith in Katie if she married either Dexter or Luc out of fear? Yet there she was, asking to go with Luc on a business trip, the epitome of pathetic.
“Luc has your ring,” Mam said.
“I know.”
“I want you to know why he has your ring.”
“He said Paddy gave it to him.”
Mam nodded. “He doesn’t know why Paddy gave it to him and not to me, but I do. I know why Paddy sold him the business too, and if you knew it might change the way you see Luc. It might change the way you see his answer to you that night at his graduation party.”
Katie swigged her coffee in preparation for whatever her mam might say. “I don’t know if I’m ready to hear it.”
“I gambled, Katie. It started out innocently enough. I’d make my few dollars from selling produce on the carts, and I’d rush over to Canal Street and spend my meager earnings. Sometimes I’d win, but most of the time I’d go home empty-handed. Then it became more of a compulsion, and my meager earnings weren’t enough. I started selling a few things around the house: jewelry, Irish china Grammy had given me. Eventually, I took out a loan here and there. To make a long story short, we were about to lose the house when your father found out. He asked Luc to buy the business, and he bought this house with the money. It’s in your name, this house.”