Trouble in Mudbug (40 page)

She got out of bed and opened the window, hoping for a breeze or something to make her feel less like a caged animal, and noticed the drain pipe just outside the ledge to her room. She leaned further out the window and reached one hand over to test the strength of the pipe when Helena’s voice boomed next to her.

“What the hell are you doing? Don’t tell me you were gonna jump. After all we’ve been through, you want to end it now? And from the second floor? You’d probably only break your foot.” Maryse slid back inside the window and stared at Helena before sinking onto the bed in a huff. “I was
not
going to jump. And where were you? I kept expecting to see you around, and then finally I wondered if everything had finally, well, you know…”

“Made me disappear,” Helena finished. “Afraid not.” She sat on the bed and frowned. “I just figured you had enough to deal with without me hanging around the room and only you and Luc seeing me, so I sat behind the front desk and took it all in.”

“Then you heard everything?”

Helena nodded. “I heard everything.” She gave Maryse a shrewd look. “And I know what you’re thinking.”

Maryse shook her head. “You couldn’t possibly.”

“You’re thinking everything you’ve done in life was a waste because the cure wasn’t real and the only relationship you had wasn’t exactly a success.” She stared at Maryse for a moment, but Maryse wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of knowing she was right.

“The worst part is,” Helena continued, “there’s a grain of truth to all of that.”

Maryse sat bolt upright on the bed and glared at Helena. “You’ve got a lot of nerve saying something like that to me. You of all people.”

Helena held one hand up before she could continue her barrage. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Well, not exactly. Oh, hell, I never could get things out right. Might have made life a lot easier if I’d ever learned some tact.”

“It’s apparently not too late.”

Helena grinned. “Why start now when the only people it would benefit are you and Luc?”

“Why indeed?” Maryse sighed. “Please just go away, Helena. I’ve got enough to think about without you mucking things up more.”

“Not until I have my say.”

“You’ve had your say for years, and it’s been nothing but aggravation and trouble. You’ve got five more minutes of my life, Helena, then I
will
pitch myself out that window.”

“Fair enough.” Helena took a deep breath. “The reason I implied that some of your life has been a waste wasn’t because the cure turned out to be a fake, and it certainly wasn’t because you married my useless son—that one is totally on Hank.”

“Then why…”

Helena gave her a sad smile. “It’s because in looking for the cure, you shut yourself away from the very society you purported to want to save. How do you even know people are worth saving anymore if you don’t get out of that swamp and meet any?”

Maryse started to fling back a retort but clamped her mouth shut, remembering that Sabine had said the same thing. “I meet people,” she said finally.

Helena snorted. “Yeah, that Dr. Do-Kiddies being one of them. You’ve locked yourself away from the world, Maryse, and I know you think you had a good reason to do so, but I’ll be the first to tell you that if you don’t change, you’ll regret it. I do.”

Maryse stared at her. “You regret your life? But you had everything…well, maybe not in the husband and kid department, but the money, the respect of the town.”

Helena waved one hand in dismissal. “Respect? Oh, please, I was
tolerated
by this town, and that was all my own fault. For all intents and purposes, I was the biggest bitch on the face of the Earth. Oh, I might have done a couple of good things with my money, but I never really lived myself. I even chose to marry Harold because I knew I’d never really love him so I wasn’t in danger of being hurt.”

“I don’t understand. Why would marriage have to hurt?”

Helena sighed. “That’s my own hang-up. My childhood was miserable. My father was a tyrant who barely tolerated girls and remained angry with my mother until the day he passed for producing a daughter rather than a son, then having the nerve to die while giving birth.”

Maryse stared at Helena in disbelief, unable to comprehend that degree of spite. Unable to imagine a childhood spent with a man who blamed his only child for the gender she’d been born with.

“He died when I was eight,” Helena continued, “and all I can remember is being relieved. Then guilty because I was relieved, you know?”

Maryse nodded. “I can see that.”

“I stayed fairly locked away from the world with a guardian, a tutor, and a live-in nanny. But when I turned twenty-one and gained control of my inheritance, that’s when the circus started. People who’d never spoken a word to me in my life practically lined up at the gate of my house with their hand out. I couldn’t even walk into town without someone hitting me up for money—business loans, medical bills, scholarships, it never seemed to end.”

Suddenly, Maryse understood. “So you became the biggest bitch in Mudbug because all anyone wanted from you was your money. And you funded the orphanage because you could relate to children that didn’t have anyone looking out for them.”

Helena nodded. “That was what I told myself—convinced myself was a good reason. But I was wrong, Maryse. Dead wrong.”

“How so?”

“There are good people in this town, people who wouldn’t have wanted a thing from me. People like your mother, and you, and Mildred.” She smiled. “And even your nutty best friend. By shutting myself off, I denied myself the pleasure of friendship, of knowing what it felt like to have someone care for you that wasn’t being paid to do it.”

She gave Maryse a hard stare. “My life could have been so much more, and it took dying to realize that. Don’t make the same mistakes I did, Maryse. This world would be a much better place with you in it.”

Maryse looked at Helena, decked out in blue jeans, the “dead people” T-shirt, and neon blue Nikes. A far cry from the unrelieved black she’d always worn. But it was too late to share her newfound style with anyone. Too late to leave a different mark on this Earth. Because for everyone but Maryse and Luc, Helena was already gone, and Maryse had stopped living so long ago that she’d been dead longer than Helena.

Maryse didn’t even try to hold in the tears as they rolled out of her eyes. She cried for Helena, the little lost girl and the older lost woman. She cried for herself—the life she’d never bothered to live and had almost lost—and the realization that she still had an opportunity to change it all before it was too late.

She looked up as Helena rose from the bed. “Where are you going?”

“My five minutes are up,” Helena said. “And I’ve probably given you enough to think about.” She walked to the door, then looked back. “There is one last thing.”

Maryse looked up at her. “What’s that?”

“When Johnny broke into your room, I ran out of the hotel desperate to find a way to help. Luc was sitting in a car across the street from the hotel, and if I had to guess, he’d been there for a while and wasn’t planning on moving.”

“He was watching the hotel,” Maryse said. “You sent him to save me. That’s how he knew.”

Helena nodded. “Luc LeJeune is no Harold or Hank Henry, Maryse. And I think I overheard him say he needed to pick up some stuff at the office first thing in the morning before he cleared out of town.” And with that, she disappeared through the wall.

Maryse rose from the bed and pulled on her shoes, knowing with a certainty she’d never felt before exactly what she needed to do. But first, there was someone else who needed to hear Helena’s speech.

Chapter Nineteen

Despite the fact that it was darn near sunrise and nobody had really slept the night before, Maryse figured she’d find Sabine in her shop. Peering through the window of Read ’em and Reap, she saw Sabine sitting at her table in the center of the room, eyes closed and her hands covering a crystal ball. She was wearing her purple robe, one she brought out for only two reasons—stress or trying to contact her parents.

Maryse sighed. All the drama with Maryse and the land and Sabine’s own medical worries had probably driven her to the edge. But none of that was going to prevent her from what she needed to do. She took the last couple of steps to the shop entrance and pushed the door open.

Sabine looked up in surprise when the bells over the door jangled, then realizing it was Maryse, her expression changed to worry. She jumped up from her chair and hurried over. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Actually, I’m not all right.” Maryse smiled. “I’m fantastic. I just had an interesting conversation with Helena.”

Sabine studied her for a moment. “Are you high? Did the paramedics give you some drugs or something?”

Maryse’s smile faltered a bit. Okay, so obviously telling people to take their lives back wasn’t her strong suit. How in the world was it that Helena, of all people, did this so much better? Maryse took a deep breath and repeated Helena’s story from the beginning. Sabine listened in rapt attention, her eyes growing wider until Maryse wrapped it up with Helena’s ultimatum on living life and regrets.

“Wow,” Sabine said when Maryse finished. “Helena didn’t pull any punches.”

“No.” Maryse took a deep breath and pushed forward. “And neither do I.” She placed her hand on Sabine’s arm. “You’re not living either, Sabine. Your obsession with your parents has kept you so grounded in the past that you have no future.”

Sabine stared at her in surprise, then pulled away her arm. “How can you say that? You know what it’s like not to have a parent. How can you blame me for wanting to know something, anything, about mine?”

Shit. This wasn’t going so well.
“That’s not what I meant. Look, Sabine, I’m just excited by my new outlook on life. I want you there with me…like you always have been.”

Sabine’s angry expression softened, but before she could speak, a glow of bright light appeared a couple of feet from the table, and they both stared in disbelief. “What the hell?” Maryse asked as the light swirled round and round, something slowly taking shape in the center.
Please, God, no more ghosts.
She didn’t think her heart could take the strain.

As the shape took form, Maryse realized they were looking at a young couple, smiling over at them. The man was tall and thin, the woman petite and slender. Their haircuts and clothes betrayed the era of their existence, and Maryse knew they had been gone from this world for some time. The woman looked directly at Sabine and extended one hand. A flash of silver at the woman’s neck caught Maryse’s eye and she cried out. “Her necklace. Sabine, look at her necklace.”

Sabine looked at the woman, and her hand flew to her throat, clutching the matching locket she wore. The only thing she had of her mothers. “It’s them,” she whispered.

Maryse nodded, unable to speak.

“They’re beautiful,” Sabine said, and started to cry. “My parents. I finally know my parents.” Sabine took a hesitant step toward the light, but as she moved, the light began to dim and the couple faded away into blackness. With a final blink, they were gone.

“No!” Sabine ran to the spot where the light had been, but there was nothing left to see. She sank onto the floor, tears streaming down her face.

Maryse rushed over to her friend. “Please don’t cry,” she begged as she sat on the floor and hugged Sabine. “I don’t want you to be sad. I don’t want anyone I love to be sad, not one more moment of their lives. It’s too short.”

Sabine choked a bit and laughed. “You ninny. I’m not crying because I’m sad.” She pulled back from the hug, and Maryse could see that even through the tears, there was a smile on her face. “I’m happy,” Sabine said. “I’m thrilled. I finally got that sliver of closure that I’ve always prayed for.” Sabine grabbed Maryse’s shoulders with both hands and shook her. “I saw my parents, Maryse. Do you know what that means?”