Chapter Eighty-three

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Cash

Sometimes getting what you want isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

For months, all I’ve wanted is for Luc and Maggie to admit to themselves and each other what I’ve known all along. But now that they have—and believe me, they have; it’s there in their eyes anytime they look at each other—there’s a…a…loneliness to it that I didn’t count on. I’m still here, but it’s like a part of me is gone.

The part of me that was an integral part of them.

“This weekend, Aunt Bea is hosting her annual masquerade ball to celebrate Carnival season,” Maggie says, taking a bite of beignet. “Y’all are invited, of course.”

Powdered sugar lands on her chin, and when Luc reaches over to thumb it away, she smiles at him and then blushes prettily. “Thanks.” Her voice is rough.

I have to look away.

Thought I’d be better at this. But deep down, I’m a selfish bastard. Which I guess goes to show there’s a lot more of Rick in me than I like admitting—may he not rest in peace.

Even the bright sunshine and the lively chatter of the diners at Café Du Monde can’t lighten my dark mood. And the sheen of powdered sugar that tends to dust everything in the place, something I usually find charming, today only irritates. Every time I shuffle my feet, the soles of my boots stick to the floor.

“I reckon now that we’re back to stay, Cash and I should invest in tuxedos.” Luc blows over the top of his café au lait. “With as many celebrations as your aunt throws, they’ll pay for themselves soon enough. What’d’ya say, Cash? Wanna go shopping this week? We could head over to Rubensteins and let ’em fit us up with a coupla custom numbers.”

“I’ll stick with a rental,” I tell him, uncapping my flask and adding a generous portion of whiskey to my coffee. The buzz in my ear is almost unbearable today. It’s worse than the headache. And that’s saying something.

He studies me with a frown and I carefully avoid his gaze. It’s getting more and more difficult to hide things from him. Soon, it’ll be all but impossible.

“Mes amis!” Jean-Pierre appears beside our table, one hand on my shoulder, the other on Luc’s.

“Well, look who got up before noon on a Sunday,” Maggie says cheerfully. “I thought you—good Lord! What happened to you?”

I glance up to find Jean-Pierre looking like he’s gone ten rounds with a swarm of angry mosquitoes and lost. There are painful-looking red spots on his chin and cheeks. A few more run down his neck. His fedora is pulled low over his brow, but the shadow of the brim does little to hide his current affliction.

“He went hunting for snipe and ended up atop a fire ant mound,” Eva says, materializing next to Jean-Pierre and sorrowfully shaking her head.

“Eva!” Maggie jumps up and circles the table to hug her neck. “How’d your date go last night? You never responded to my text, so…” She wiggles her eyebrows.

“I didn’t respond because I was too depressed once I got home,” Eva says as she and Jean-Pierre grab some empty chairs and pull them up to our table. “I think he was more interested in the idea of me than he was in me as a person. The only questions he asked me were about which famous models or celebrities I’ve met.”

“Ugh.” Maggie retakes her seat. “Another one?”

“It’s slim pickings out there, girl. I keep telling you. And the good ones are either taken, not interested, or…” She hooks a thumb at Jean-Pierre. “Gay.”

“You’ll find one,” Maggie assures her. “Probably far, far away from the fashion industry.”

“Trouble is, I’ve been working so much that industry folks are all I meet.” Eva plops down beside me. Then she continues, “I was feeling sorry for myself when I woke up this morning, so I stopped by your place hoping to convince you to come have breakfast with me. But then I remembered this was one of your standing Sunday brunches with these two fine fellows. Good morning, by the way, fine fellows.”

“Eva, pleasure seeing you. As always.” Luc beams at her with those dimples. Like most women, she can’t help grinning back.

“When she couldn’t get you, she settled for me.” Jean-Pierre takes the seat on the other side of Eva. “Made me come out even lookin’ like dis.” He points to his spotted face.

“Right.” Maggie gives him the once-over. “So let’s hear it. I thought you went to your grandparents’ place for a fish fry last night. How the heck did you end up hunting snipe?”

“Uncle Etienne likes ’em,” he says. “And since dey are in season, he thought we could go out and bag us a few and have Mawmaw add ’em to da cornmeal she was already doin’ da fish with.”

“Wait a minute.” I lift a hand to stop him talking. “I thought a snipe hunt was a practical joke. You know, take some city kid out into the swamp, give him a gunnysack, and tell him to use it to catch a snipe. Then he ends up running around all night long trying to find some mythical creature.”

“A snipe hunt is a practical joke,” Luc explains. “But snipes are real. They’re a marsh bird. Taste kinda like quail.”

“Huh. Well, what do you know?”

“Anyway,” Jean-Pierre goes on, “we’re out in da middle of nowhere, and all I had on was dis little ol’ pair of jeans and my wingtips.” He lifts a foot so we can all see his scuffed shoes. “Me, I was gettin’ plumb torn up by all da brush and den I found me a patch of bare earth to stand on.”

Maggie’s hand covers her mouth. “The fire ant mound.”

“Mais yeah. But I didn’t know dat on account of it was gettin’ dark.” Jean-Pierre scowls and adjusts his hat lower over his brow.

“Tell them the rest of it.” Eva is already laughing and holding her side.

“Not much to tell.” Jean-Pierre sniffs. “Me, I barely had time to shuck my clothes before the li’l bastards damn near ate me alive.” Although, when he says it, it sounds more like eht me alive. “Went runnin’, naked as da day I was born, back to Mawmaw’s house.”

“He says his granny told him she thought he’d been snacked on by Comte de Saint Germain when he came through the front door covered in bloody bites.” Eva slaps the table and wipes away a stray tear as both Luc and Maggie burst out laughing.

“Who’s Comte de Saint Whoever?” I ask. Everyone at the table seems to get the reference but me.

“He was an alchemist way back when,” Maggie explains. “He claimed to have found the elixir of life. Told everyone he was six thousand years old. It’s all well documented in the history books,” she insists when I give her a skeptical look. “Anyway, sometime around the turn of the last century, a man by the name of Jacques St. Germain who claimed to be a descendant of Comte de Saint Germain bought the house on the corner of Royal and Ursaline.”

“The big one with the red door and all the ironwork?”

“That’s the one. So the story goes, Jacques was said to be quite the ladies’ man. But one of the ladies claimed Jacques attacked her and bit her. When police went to the house to arrest him, all they found were bloodstains and empty wine bottles. Jacques was never seen again. And to this day, no one knows who lives in that house. But the taxes are always paid on time.”

“So let me guess, everyone thinks Jacques St. Germain was actually Comte de Saint Germain,” I surmise. “And it wasn’t the elixir of life he found, but vampirism.”

“You got it in one.” Maggie winks.

“You know, if there were as many vampires running around New Orleans as people claim, there wouldn’t be any of us left alive. We’d all have ended up as snacks of the undead a long time ago.”

She makes a tching noise with her teeth. “Oh ye of little imagination.”

Before I can say anything to that, her sister appears, and my improving mood takes an immediate nose dive. Haven’t seen Violet since New Year’s Eve, when we had our little tiff followed by my not-so-little confession.

“Look!” Violet says, smiling at everyone gathered around the table. When her eyes touch mine, they seem to linger for a while longer than necessary. “The gang’s all here.”

“Hey, Vee.” Maggie glances around the coffeehouse. “Are you with your Ladies Who Brunch or—”

“No, no.” Violet waves her off. “We only do that once a month. I came in to grab a coffee, and then I’m supposed to meet Aunt Bea for lunch after church lets out. I’m helping her organize the masquerade ball, and we need to talk flower arrangements. The florist ran out of the morning glories I wanted for the centerpieces, so now we have to come up with a different purple flower to go along with the yellow and green ones. I was thinking aster or gladiolus, but I want to get Aunt Bea’s opinion before I change the order and…absolutely none of you gives a damn about any of this.” She laughs, shaking her head.

A joke. Miss Humorless made a joke. It wasn’t a great one, but hey. Plus, she’s smiling. Truly smiling. And…touching Maggie’s shoulder?

What the hell is going on here?

Luc sees my frown and leans over to whisper, “They’ve had a recent come-to-Jesus talk. I’ll tell you about it later.”

I nod and listen as Maggie invites her sister to join us. To my surprise, Violet actually accepts, taking the seat across from Jean-Pierre and doing a double take when she gets a look at him.

“It’s a long story, cher,” he tells her. “Involvin’ snipe, a fire ant mound, and missin’ clothes.”

“Ah.” She nods. “So your typical Cajun Saturday night.”

Jean-Pierre grins and then winces like it hurts.

“I’ve told y’all how my night went,” Eva says, glancing between Maggie and Luc. “How did your night go? Did that recipe I gave you for blackened redfish turn out, Luc?”

I frown. “You guys had dinner together last night?”

“I told you,” Luc assures me.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did,” he insists.

Dread lands like an anvil in the bottom of my stomach.

I have been forgetting things recently. Only yesterday I couldn’t remember where I put my house keys—now that there’s furniture and appliances in the place, I try to remember to lock up. And Monday I completely blanked on a delivery of flower-bed dirt I scheduled. When the guy from the nursery arrived with a truck full of the stuff, I was at Johnny’s getting po’ boys with Luc. The dude was none too pleased he had to wait until I ran back home and unlocked the gate before he could take the dirt around back. Said it put him behind schedule for the whole day.

I tried making up for it by giving him a big tip. But if the scowl he wore as he was leaving was anything to go by, it wasn’t big enough to overcome his irritation at having his day screwed up.

“When did you tell me?” I demand of Luc now, hiding my numb hand beneath the table so no one will see it’s developing a tremor.

“As I was heading out,” he says. “You were on the phone with the guy who’s firing the replacement bricks for the courtyard and—”

“Oh, right.” I nod. I do remember him mentioning something about dinner, but I wasn’t paying much attention.

“The redfish was amazing,” Maggie gushes to Eva. “He paired it with collard greens and then served Auntie June’s recipe for peach cobbler for dessert.”

“You’re pretty, you dress well, and you know your way around da kitchen?” Jean-Pierre narrows his eyes at Luc. “You sure you’re not gay?”

That makes everyone at the table laugh.

This is how it’ll be, I realize. Maggie and Luc and family and friends. There will be laughter and stories and coffee dates and… Life will go on like life has always gone on.

I feel Violet’s eyes on me. When I look up, her expression is speculative and maybe a little bit compassionate. Not because of the secret I shared with her, but because she, of everyone at the table, seems to sense how hard this is for me.

Imagine that. Violet Carter is the one person in the whole world who gets it.

I swallow and look away from her. But when I do, I catch Maggie gazing at Luc again with that particular gleam in her eye.

They say love is a verb. A conscious act.

Sometimes that conscious act is simply finding the strength to let go…