Marisa Carroll - Hotel Marchand 09 (5 page)

Luc was right. He’d kept his nose clean since he’d come to Indigo and Alain had no good reason for giving him a hard time, other than the fact that he hadn’t liked seeing him stand so close to Sophie under the big umbrella. He gave the other man a curt nod. “I’ll get Maude’s things for her while you bring your car around.”

T
HE DAY
of the funeral was cool but sunny. The low dark clouds and cold rain that had persisted all through the night of Maude’s wake had been blown away by the wind that sprang up just before dawn, allowing the few weary mourners who remained a glimpse of a glorious sunrise. By the time her godmother was laid to rest in the pink marble Picard vault in the cemetery behind St. Timothy’s church, blue skies canopied the crowd of friends and townspeople who attended the service.

There had been tears at the funeral, but none at the luncheon that followed in the church hall. Like the dark clouds, the sadness was swept away by the happy memories of Maude’s long, busy life. By the time Sophie had said her last goodbyes to the mourners, assured her parents it was okay for them to go back to Houston and leave her behind in Indigo, and driven back to the B&B, she was so tired she’d gone directly to bed and slept until noon the next day.

She’d awakened feeling rested physically, but reluctant to leave the B&B. She wished her grandmother could be with her. She didn’t want to face sorting through Maude’s possessions on her own. Now it was the middle of the afternoon and she still hadn’t stirred herself to go into town but sat rocking on the wide front porch of La Petite Maison. She wrapped her sweater more tightly around her and set her chair gently swaying with her foot. She was honest enough to admit that some of her reluctance to leave the B&B resulted from the fear she would find more than a few unwanted memories of her long-ago summer romance with Alain Boudreaux lurking among Maude’s things.

The screen door opened. “I brought tea and scones and muffins,” Luc announced, offering her a teak tray covered with a vintage embroidered tea towel and set with green Depression glass and a silver teapot, covered with a second towel knotted around it as a cozy. “But I can take them back if you’re not in the mood for tea right now.”

“No. Please stay. A cup of tea sounds heavenly.”

“I don’t want to interrupt your reverie.”

“My reverie was coming perilously close to turning into a nap,” Sophie admitted. “It’s so pleasant out here I’m tempted never to move again.” The B&B was a wonderful place. An authentic, two-hundred-year-old raised Creole cottage built of native cypress timber with a cedar-shake roof. The guest rooms all recently remodeled, had access to the porches that ran the length of the building. Her tiny attic suite even had a small balcony of its own. In another month or two the yard would be a riot of blooming shrubs and spring flowers lining the brick walkway that led to the bayou, but today winter grays and browns still held sway.

“It is nice this afternoon. A welcome change from the cold weather we’ve been having.”

She uncurled her legs from beneath her paisley skirt and rested her hands in her lap. “I’m a little ashamed of myself for frittering away the day like this. I should be at Maude’s, or the shop, setting things to rights.”

Luc studied her for a moment with shrewd blue eyes before he spoke again. “You’ve had a tough couple of days. Maude’s things will wait. The Lagniappe Ladies took care of all the perishables in Maude’s house. Her neighbor is feeding her cat. There’s no reason for you to wear yourself out sorting through her things until you’re rested and ready.” He set the tea tray on a small wrought-iron table beside her left hand, seated himself in the chair on the other side of it, and began to pour the tea with none of the self-consciousness most men would exhibit performing such a feminine task. But then he was an innkeeper, and a hotelier by trade, she reminded herself, at ease with such rituals of hospitality.

He was certainly easy on the eyes, wearing a silky black polo shirt and a pair of stone-gray slacks with a knife-sharp crease.

“These muffins are wonderful,” she said hurriedly when he caught her absentmindedly licking melted sugar from her fingers. She hoped he wasn’t reading her thoughts. “What kind are they?” She looked down at the crumbs on her plate. She hadn’t even known she was hungry, but she’d eaten a scone and two of the mini-muffins—and was thinking about trying a third.

He pointed them out. “Honey orange. Cranberry walnut and blueberry.”

“They’re marvelous. Just like the nut bread I had for breakfast.”

“I’ll pass the word on to the baker, Loretta Castille. She’s starting her own business and she’ll appreciate the compliment.”

“I wish I could bake like this.” She didn’t even own baking dishes. She seldom cooked, seldom ate at home. Her business was entertaining the prospective philanthropic donors of her firms’ clients at Houston’s finer restaurants, not cooking for them herself.

“It’s an art as well as a skill.”

“I never looked at it like that, but you’re right.” With a smile she gave in to temptation and popped a bite-size blueberry muffin into her mouth. When she’d finished her second cup of tea she knew she couldn’t put off her trip into Indigo any longer. “I think I can make it through to dinner now.”

She stood up and Luc stood with her. “I noticed there’s turtle soup on the menu tonight at the Blue Moon when I drove through town earlier,” he said. “I highly recommend it.”

“Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.” He held the door for her while she went inside to get her purse.

“If you want some company, I’m not busy,” Luc said easily, but his blue gaze was still assessing, and all too perceptive.

“Thanks, but no. I’ll be fine.” She appreciated his offer, but she realized she needed to do this on her own.

Still, she was almost sorry she’d turned him down when she opened the door to Maude’s house and was greeted with the familiar smell of cats, old leather and lavender sachet that she’d always associated with her godmother. The room was small, packed with heavy, thirties-era upholstered furniture, except for a nearly new flat-screen TV that looked out of place on the drum table where it was sitting. The walls were papered in a faded rose print, covered in landscapes and amateurish still lifes, juxtaposed with fretwork shelves packed chockablock with all manner of glassware and china figurines.

It was all so familiar, and yet sadly empty without Maude’s bustling presence. Sophie sat down on the edge of the sagging chintz sofa and covered her face with her hands, the tears she’d felt burning at the back of her eyelids all afternoon spilling over at last. “Goodbye, Nana,” she whispered into the quiet. “I’ll miss you, and so will Grandma Darlene.”

She had spent so many happy times with Maude when she was younger. Sophie was an only child. Her parents were successful, driven people, her mother now a state district court judge, her father head of the prestigious fund-raising firm of Clarkson and Hillman. Her grandmother was a loving woman, but with a full and busy life of her own that left little time for playing dolls and dress-up with a sometimes lonely little girl.

But it hadn’t been that way when she’d visited Maude in Indigo. There were always vintage clothes in the storage area of Past Perfect to play dress-up in, and bedraggled baby dolls to clean up and bedeck in the yellowing doll clothes that had belonged to Maude herself. She had had summer friends to go on bike rides with along the bayou, swimming in the pool the town had built in the river park, ice-cream cones and ice-cold watermelon slices at the church festivals that went on almost every weekend…and then the summer she turned eighteen…Alain.

She remembered him as he had been in those days, thin and gangly, his big hands dangling from skinny arms, his hair long and slightly shaggy, the way all the boys were wearing it then, his nose too big for his face. He didn’t look like that anymore. He’d grown into his body and his nose. He was harder and stronger…and she wasn’t going to think about him anymore.

Suiting action to thoughts, she stood up and walked down the hallway toward the kitchen, peeking into the room that was always hers when she stayed with Maude. Nothing had changed since her last visit, the familiar pale-yellow wallpaper festooned with purple honeysuckle, the colors faded a tiny bit more than they’d been in the spring, the muted blues and reds of the Oriental carpet, the same walnut armoire and dressing table, the same white candlewick spread on the squeaky iron bedstead and lace curtains at the window.

She went across the hall to stand in the doorway of Maude’s bedroom. The bed, with its antique wedding-ring quilt, was neatly made, her chenille robe, the same one she’d been wearing as long as Sophie could remember, folded at the end of the bed, her slippers peeping out from beneath the coverlet. Her friends had taken care to make it look as if she’d just stepped out of the room, not left it forever.

The kitchen, spanning the width of the narrow house, as the living room did, was just as she remembered it, too. Chrome table and chairs, white-painted, glass-front cupboards and scrubbed pine counters and the collection of china hen-and-rooster salt and pepper shakers on the windowsill above the sink. Surely she didn’t have to start dismantling the bits and pieces of Maude’s life right this minute? Tomorrow or the next day would be soon enough. She left the house, locking the door softly behind her. She swallowed hard to dislodge the lump in her throat.

The house could wait until she was ready, but Past Perfect was a different matter. It was a viable business concern and she needed to make arrangements for someone to run it until it could be sold. She decided to leave her car where it was and walk the two blocks to the town square. The open grassy area was dotted with huge live oak trees and bisected by brick walkways. A statue of a confederate soldier stood at their intersection. On the statue’s cracked marble base, the names of the Indigo boys who had died in the Civil War were inscribed. First on the list was Alexandre Valois, who had built the opera house and whose widow had paid for the monument. The were also a Robichaux, two Picards, Maude’s great-grandfather and a cousin, and several Boudreauxs, members of Alain’s family.

She smiled. It pleased her that she remembered at least a few of the bits and pieces of Indigo history that Maude had told her over the years. One or two people passed by and nodded pleasantly, trying politely not to stare too hard. Sophie nodded back, recognizing them from the wake and the funeral, but her attention remained focused on the opera house.

The building needed painting she realized as she drew closer, and Marjolaine and Hugh Prejean, the old gentleman she’d spoken to at the wake, were right, the roof did need work. She could see half a dozen places where the shingles were missing just from where she stood. The almost simultaneous blows of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita a couple of years earlier had damaged the old structure even more than the occupation of Union soldiers had.

Sophie turned the heavy key that had been among the items in Maude’s purse in the lock and opened one of the big double doors. Once more the scents of lavender and old leather and dust tickled her nostrils, but this time her sorrow was mixed with happiness. She had always loved Past Perfect. The summer she had been so madly in love with Alain, she had imagined herself living in Indigo and working with her godmother among all these mementos of a bygone day.

Of course, when she’d gotten home to Houston, her mother had disabused her of that notion pretty quickly. And even if she’d had the courage to stand up for herself, Alain’s short, curt letter breaking off their secret engagement because he had decided to enter the army to earn money for college had put an end to her girlish fantasies.

At least until that other summer, the short window of time after her divorce when she’d thought they might find that lost love again, before Alain’s pregnant wife had discovered them in each other’s arms.

In this very building.

The bell above the door jingled a greeting as she stepped inside. Past Perfect’s showroom occupied the lobby of the opera house, a space twice as long as it was deep. The counter, a relic of a demolished Memphis department store, stood directly in front of the tall, carved double doors that led into the auditorium.

That brought her up short for a moment, but she shook off the shiver of embarrassment and remorse. She didn’t have to go into the storage area with its raised stage and two tiny bow-fronted boxes high on the wall—not yet, not unless she wanted to. Eventually she would—sometime when she wasn’t thinking about Alain, but of what a treasure trove of make-believe the opera house had been for a young girl. The narrow stairs to the boxes had been steep and a little scary to climb, but when she was up there looking down, her imagination had had no trouble at all turning the creaky wooden folding chair on which she perched into a velvet and gilt one. She’d populated the shabby seats below with beautiful ladies in hoop skirts and dashing gentlemen in gray uniforms with plumed hats and swords at their sides, hearing voices and music in her head that had once brought the empty space to life. Those were the memories she’d keep in her thoughts when she did venture inside.

She wandered farther into the jumble of furniture and knickknacks, realizing as she always did that her godmother’s seemingly haphazard arrangement of merchandise actually facilitated the flow of customer traffic, leading them eventually to the assortment of antebellum Indigo souvenirs, candles and personal care products, with their generous markups, that brought her a good deal of income from less-than-enthusiastic antiquers and tourists who might otherwise leave the premises without taking out their wallets and credit cards.

She wondered who among her Indigo acquaintances would be qualified to take over the operation of Past Perfect. Sadly, over the past seven years, those acquaintances had dwindled to a handful. But she was getting ahead of herself, thinking about reopening the store. First she needed to have an inventory taken for estate purposes, both here and at the house.

She might as well get an idea of what she was up against.

She headed resolutely for the tall, carved doors leading into the auditorium, took a breath and twisted the handles to throw them wide. The doorbell tinkled and Sophie swiveled her head. Beyond the wavy glass, a tall man in a dark shirt and a gray Stetson was silhouetted against the bright afternoon sun. Alain. Her past had come back to haunt her.