CHAPTER 59
Shuttered within the telephone booth, Mirielle waited for the operator to connect her to home. The butler answered.
“This is Mirielle. Is Charlie home?”
“No, ma’am, I’m afraid he’s out.”
“And Helen? Is she better?”
He paused. “Still at the hospital, ma’am.”
“Tell Charlie I called and”—her voice broke—“tell him . . .” She ached to say, I’m on my way home.
“Ma’am?”
“Tell him I’m thinking of them all, will you please?”
“Of course.”
Mirielle hung up the receiver and sagged against the booth wall, too raw inside to weep. Perhaps it was best that Charlie wasn’t in. The slightest hint that he’d welcome her home and her resolve would crumble.
Now what? She hadn’t slept in over thirty hours, but didn’t have time to rest, nor did she trust herself to rise if she did. A meal, though. That would quiet her stomach and clear her thoughts.
She bought a sandwich from a street-side vendor and ate it in the train station lobby. The bread was stale and the meat chewy, but it buoyed her nonetheless. She pulled the St. Christopher medal out of her purse and fingered its raised surface. She’d never been the praying sort and put little stock in the papists’ coterie of saints, but she closed her eyes and made a short plea to God that he look after Helen where Mirielle could not. Then to St. Christopher—whoever he was—that he help her find Jean.
When she’d finished, she tucked the medal away in her handbag and focused on the here and now. With sixty-two dollars in her purse and the authorities soon to be on the lookout, Mirielle couldn’t afford to dally. She suspected Jean aimed to get home. But where was home? She tried to recall everything Jean had said to her but quickly gave up. Once Jean started talking, she’d yapped almost as much as Irene. Somewhere in all those words, though, lay a clue.
Mirielle took a deep breath and closed her eyes again. After Felix’s death, she’d all but lived in the past. The gin had helped with that, but also thinking of specific things, touchstones like the softness of his favorite jacket or the nutty smell of the warmed milk he drank before bed. She fanned her fingers over the wooden bench and imagined herself sitting on the living room floor with Jean. She recalled the tickle of wind over the nape of her neck and was high up in the observation tower with her again. She fought back the smell of luggage and cigarette smoke, remembering instead the woody scent of the oak tree she and Jean had climbed.
After several minutes of sifting memories, it came to her. Jean had boasted once that people came all the way from New Iberia and Lafayette to buy boats from her father. The names meant nothing to Mirielle, but she found both towns on the glass-covered railroad map on the wall. The Missouri Pacific line out of New Orleans stopped at both, first New Iberia and farther down the line, Lafayette.
Mirielle hurried back to the ticket line and asked for a first-class seat to New Iberia. Upon opening her purse, she begrudgingly changed her mind and bought a coach ticket. The train left a few hours later. As it pulled away from the station, Mirielle’s heart squeezed tighter with every turn of the wheels. This was not the course she’d imagined for herself when she’d packed her bag yesterday. That course—and every course she’d imagined before it—led home.
* * *
She arrived in New Iberia at sundown. The town was tiny by Los Angeles standards. Automobiles kicked up dust alongside mule-drawn buggies on the unpaved roads. Main Street boasted a gas and greasing station, several grocers, a creamery, two cafés, a theater, a hotel, and a bank. A glance down the intersecting streets revealed a spattering of stately homes with columned façades like the big house at Carville. The rest of the homes were simple shotguns with weathered siding and wide front porches.
She took a room at the hotel and fell asleep as soon as she finished dinner. Strange dreams plagued her through the night—arriving at long last in California but finding her home abandoned and crumbling; jumping into a swimming pool to save Felix only to find that the lifeless body floating on the water’s surface was Jean; running from men brandishing chains and shackles, unable to climb Carville’s fence to safety.
The next morning, she awoke tired but hopeful. Jean was out here somewhere, and Mirielle would find her. The hotel’s staff greeted her warmly when she sat down for breakfast in the dining room and obliged her with answers to her questions about boatwrights in the neighboring towns. She’d hoped it would be as simple as a single name, but the staff listed several well-known craftsmen in the area.
When she asked whether the hotel had a car for hire, they laughed but happily rang around until they found her a ride with Mr. DeRouen, the soda delivery man. She surreptitiously wiped down her fork and glass with a hankie after eating. As feebly contagious as the disease might be, she’d hate to expose anyone else.
When she’d arrived the night before, Mirielle was too exhausted to feel conspicuous. But as she waited in front of the hotel for Mr. DeRouen, the weight of passersby’s stares unsettled her. She’d dressed with care that morning, donning a long-sleeved blouse instead of a more seasonal short-sleeved one, tying a scarf around her neck, disguising the spots on her legs beneath dark-colored stockings. Even so, Mirielle had to fight the urge to fold in on herself.
Mr. DeRouen rattled up in a mud-speckled white truck with the bottling company’s logo scrawled in red letters across the side. He looked a year or two shy of twenty, but his dark hair and summer blue eyes reminded her of Frank. The likeness settled Mirielle’s jumpy nerves while at the same time stirring a vague pain inside her. Would she ever see Frank again? Beyond getting Jean safely back to Carville, Mirielle’s endgame was unsettled. Sister Verena was right; it wasn’t worth the risk to her family to return home uncured. But could she endure a life of captivity until then?
She accepted Mr. DeRouen’s handshake and returned his timid smile.
“Thank you for taking me around. I’ll pay you for your trouble.”
“Nah, ma’am. Happy to do it.”
He helped her into the cab of the truck. “Where ya from, if ya don’t mind me askin’?”
Mirielle hesitated. “California.”
“That explains it,” he said, revving the engine and coaxing the truck into gear.
“Why I talk so funny?” Mirielle kept her voice light despite her renewed self-consciousness.
“Nah.” He cast a shy glance in her direction. “Why you’re so perdy.”
Mirielle tugged on her scarf. To her relief, the rattle of soda bottles as they drove made further conversation impossible. She turned and looked out the side window at the passing sugarcane fields and moss-draped oaks.
Would Mr. DeRouen show her the same kindness if he knew she was a leper? She’d not be “perdy” in his eyes but grotesque. Instead of a handshake, she’d get a boot in the stomach. All the more reason she had to be careful and find Jean soon.