Chapter Five

T-Bob got the wheelchair out of the car and set it up on the gallery at once. Then, his muscles bunching, he carried the thin old woman up the steps. This casual display of strength left Laura a little breathless. He braced the heavy door with his back while gently tipping the chair over the sill. Laura hurried up the steps too late to be of any real service.

“She refused to let me build a ramp. Said it would mar the exterior,” Robert LeBlanc whispered confidentially as they entered the wide hallway together.

Directly after their entrance, the sound of more shells being crushed beneath tires in the drive sounded followed by rapid footsteps on the gallery. With a thud of the door, a young girl with long black curls burst into the house.

“I saw a lady come in. Who is she?” the child questioned with enthusiasm.

Miss LeBlanc spun in her chair. “This is my grandniece, Angelle, T-Bob’s girl who sometimes remembers her manners. Angelle, this is Miss Laura who will be taking my place at the library.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” Angelle bobbed slightly after being poked from behind by a silent figure in a white servant’s uniform.

“Our maid, Pearl. You met her sister, Ruby, at the library.”

Except for the light complexion and single pearl earrings inserted in each lobe, Pearl and Ruby had little in common. The maid stood tall, thin and fine-featured. Her hair was screwed tightly into a bun at the nape of her neck. She showed none of the reassuring motherly qualities of her sister. Without waiting to be questioned, Pearl began a defense.

“You were early today, Miss Lilliane. Mr. Bob gave me his truck to take Angelle into town after school for new under things, hers were getting so bad.”

“Well, you certainly had a busy day. There will be one extra for dinner this evening.”

“There’s plenty.” Pearl started for the kitchen.

“And make up the bed in the guestroom.”

Pearl disappeared into her region of the house. No one knew if she heard the last of the orders or not. Laura rushed to relieve the awkward moment. “Will your wife be at dinner, Mr. LeBlanc?”

“Not likely. She lives in New Orleans with her parents when she’s not at one of her spas. We’re divorced.”

“Mama isn’t coming to dinner, is she?” The child’s big, brown eyes went wide with alarm.

“No, cher heart.” Placing a hand on Angelle’s long black curls, he hugged his daughter to him.

“Wait ’til you see my new things. They’re in the truck.”

“Bring them to my room, Angelle, after you show Miss Laura to the guestroom. I have to clean up. I’ll see you at dinner, Mrs. Dickinson.”

Laura followed the girl down a long hall on the first floor. She got the impression Angelle would have loved to stay and chat if her father hadn’t been waiting to see the wonderful underwear. Frankly, Laura was glad the child dashed away after flinging open the door and saying, “This is your room, right next to mine.”

Laura took a seat on an impressive canopied bed so high off the ground her feet didn’t touch the floor. She rummaged in her handbag for tissues, all the while reflecting that in one afternoon she had incited hostility in Lilliane LeBlanc, insulted her nephew, caused anxiety in the child, and brought on rudeness from the maid.

“You sure know how to put your foot in it, Laura,” she murmured as she attempted to clean cow plop off her white shoes with aloe-infused wipes.

Bearing a pile of fresh linens, Pearl entered without knocking. Laura hastily gathered up the dirty tissues from the bedspread and slid to her stockinged feet. Pearl stripped the spread and shook out a sheet without a word. Going to the other side of the large bed, Laura pulled the sheet across and tucked it as she would have on any Saturday when her mother changed the linens. Women did housework together, at least in Pennsylvania.

Pearl glared at her. “I can do my job. Don’t need your help.” She slipped a pillow into a case and gathered an end to pull up the spread.

“I could use a bathroom if you’ll show me the way,” Laura requested, eager to get out of the maid’s presence.

“You pass through that door. It’s two rooms down.”

The sliding door next to a massive armoire led to a small room, obviously once a sleeping place for a servant or a dressing room, but now belonging to Angelle if the abundance of lace, dolls and stuffed toys gave any clue. The next door led to a larger bedroom. Miss Lilliane napped on another four-poster, this one lowered so she could manage it from the wheelchair. Even though the old woman had her head propped on several pillows, her breath came out rough and irregular. The next dressing area had been converted into a bathroom. Beyond its doors, Laura heard Angelle talking to her father.

“Come see, Daddy. Each one has a day of the week on it and a different color and real lace.”

She heard Robert LeBlanc rumble an appreciation of the marvelous underwear. “Don’t show those to any other boys,” he cautioned.

Angelle giggled. “Oh, Daddy! Never ever.”

David would have made a good father, too. Laura washed her face with cold water, repaired her makeup and retired to her room as quietly as possible, privately embarrassed over passing through the bedrooms of strangers when she could have been directed to the hall door.

****

The dinner went better than the day. Seated at a heavy mahogany table far too large and ornate for three family members and a guest, Miss Lilliane headed the table while her nephew—cleaned, groomed and freshly shaven—not a hired man at all, sat at the foot. Laura was placed opposite the next generation of LeBlancs, the child Angelle, who sat on a cushion to raise herself to table level.

A crystal chandelier from a more formal era of dining illuminated a simple meal of shrimp stew over rice and a green salad with vinegar dressing. They passed a deep basket of fresh French bread among themselves. Once during the meal, the surly servant Pearl appeared to refill the tall glasses with iced tea. The length of the table made conversation difficult, and Laura found herself speaking mostly to the little girl. That suited her. The afternoon had been full of faux pas from the moment she stepped in the manure. A child would be less likely to notice more blunders.

Lithe Angelle, a vivacious child, obviously preferred talking to eating. She had her father’s dark eyes, enormous in her small face. Her curly black hair held back from her face with red barrettes fell to her waist. Despite the early autumn heat, she wore a long-sleeved white blouse and her plaid parochial school kilt. If she had a physical flaw, her complexion was too pallid, saved from being sickly by a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of the nose. The gaps in her smile where her adult teeth just began to make an appearance added to her seven-year-old charm. She reminded Laura of the wonders of being in third grade and having the ability to read chapter books alone and learning to write script.

“I could write to you in Pennsylvania. I know where that is. Up north,” Angelle volunteered.

“I’ll be coming here to live, dear, so that won’t be necessary.”

“Will you live with us? My room is right next to yours. We could visit.”

“I believe I’ll have to find a place of my own.”

“But you are welcome to stay here until you find something,” added Robert LeBlanc, now the gracious host and not the catfish po-boy man.

Not freakin’ likely, Laura thought. No way could she live here with the man who had bedroom eyes and didn’t recall meeting her at Domengeaux’s, the man she’d called T-Bob in her best schoolmarm voice. Not to mention Miss Lilliane in her perpetual cloud of smoke, and the hostile Pearl.

Miss Lilliane did not reconfirm the invitation, thank God. She seemed more relaxed among her relatives and lit a cigarette only when dinner ended, but this didn’t mean she welcomed Laura as a long-term houseguest.

Pearl started clearing the table and signed to Laura to sit down when she stood and began to stack her plates. “A very tasty meal, Pearl.” Laura offered a compliment instead of undesired help.

Pearl did not smile. “Not too spicy for you?”

“Oh, no. David and I used to eat Mexican food all the time. The flavor is a little the same.”

“David is your husband?” Robert asked.

“I’m recently widowed.” It was the briefest answer she could give. Thankfully, Angelle, who had no interest in marital status, interrupted to ask for dessert.

“Coconut cake or lemon sherbet, Angelle?” Pearl asked the child.

“Oh, coconut cake! Pearl’s coconut cake is the best.”

“On that advice, I’ll try some, too.” Laura smiled at both of them.

“Make it three, Pearl.” Robert LeBlanc added his order.

“Lemon sherbet for me. It’s so cooling after a hot meal,” Miss LeBlanc said as if determined to be different. “Afterwards, perhaps Mrs. Dickinson would like to see the house. We have so many tourists asking to see the place that I finally wrote out a tour. Even Pearl and Angelle know it by heart.”

“Daddy can do the downstairs, and I’ll do the upstairs.”

“Your father has paperwork to do. I’ll give the downstairs tour myself.”

Laura could only regret the paperwork and another hour in Miss Lilliane’s company. They began the tour on the front porch.

“Chateau Camille was built from 1830 to 1835 by the slaves of Aurelien LeBlanc. Previously, the family lived at Bon Chance, a French raised cottage recently destroyed by fire. Its remains stand a mile from the Chateau, and the oak alley between the two homes was planted in 1835 also. The slave quarters, now demolished, were down the road from the new house. Only household servants lived on the premises.”

In her first departure from the rote tour, Miss LeBlanc eyed Laura wickedly and added, “Yankees always want to know where the slaves were kept. One ass even asked me where we beat them. I told him if I knew, I’d be glad to show him how it was done.” She slipped back into the monotone of the tour guide.

“Aurelien LeBlanc made his fortune in sugar and at one time owned three-hundred slaves. Many of the slaves were skilled craftsmen, and the plantation ran almost totally self-sufficiently. Bricks for the house were formed of local clay and baked in kilns on the plantation. Native cypress on the property provided all the lumber. The walls are two feet thick and coated with whitewash. Eight plastered and whitewashed brick columns support an upper gallery. The house possesses fourteen rooms not including servants’ quarters and a detached kitchen.

“Although Aurelien and Camille LeBlanc had only one surviving child, they maintained the custom of providing lavishly for houseguests who often stayed for months enjoying their hospitality. LeBlanc, of course, also wished to pass on a house suitable to the status of the family to his son and began building the year of the child’s birth. Chateau Camille, unlike other southern mansions, has never passed from the hands of the LeBlancs despite the hardships inflicted by the War Between the States.” Miss LeBlanc nailed Laura with a glance as if the war were her Damn Yankee fault.

“Follow me.” Swiftly, the old woman reversed and wheeled her chair directly toward the heavy cypress door. Laura dashed ahead to open it, sure Miss Lilliane would crash through the wood in a shower of splinters at her present rate of speed. The image made Laura grin, and Angelle, persuading the chair over the sill, answered the smile with a giggle totally ignored by the wheelchair occupant.

Once in the hallway again, Laura became aware that despite the briskly professional tour, Chateau Camille lacked a museum quality. Its hardwood floors bore scuffs from the child’s shoes and the runners of the wheelchair. A Chinese bowl of fresh yellow chrysanthemums hid the chips and scratches in the marble top of a fine pier table set between two tall doors. In the dim corners of the twelve-foot ceilings, small spider webs collected dust as well as insects.

Miss LeBlanc paused before the two portraits hung over the pier table. “The left hand painting done by Emile Devereaux is a portrayal of Aurelien LeBlanc at the age of forty-one. The right hand portrait, also by Devereaux, shows Camille Castille LeBlanc and her son, Adrien. The table below is, of course, a petticoat table with a mirror inset in the base so the ladies of the day could check the condition of their voluminous skirts without being too obvious.”

“I’ve been told the mirror served to project more light into the room,” Laura added.

“Who is giving this tour, you or me?” Miss Lilliane stared her down.

The shrewd gray-blue eyes of Aurelien LeBlanc seemed to approve of this put down. His high white collar poked into his meaty, prosperous jowls, but did not appear to be causing him any discomfort. His cleft chin rested on a frothy silk cravat. Despite his age, golden if thinning curls still clustered on his broad white brow. Laura moved her eyes from the master-of-the-manor gaze so aptly captured by the artist and regarded Camille Castille LeBlanc.

She thought Emile Devereaux might have overemphasized the virility and vitality of his rich patron, but if he flattered the master, he had been unkind to the mistress. Camille LeBlanc showed her age in the wings of white in her black hair. While her olive complexion was free of wrinkles, the artist had made no attempt to hide a double chin, the broad bosom, or the wide lap of a middle-aged wife going to fat, not a lovely woman by any standard. The only beauty she possessed rested in the dark eyes shining lovingly down on her only son, a curly-haired imp dressed like a little man and looking more like a doll on her large lap than a small child.

Still, the portrait of the boy was not wooden. Devereaux had captured the dark-eyed mischief and the merriment in the full lips. The son had the father’s cleft chin, though where he had gotten his small, straight nose and handsome high-cheeked face would have been hard to say. Perhaps, Mistress LeBlanc’s heavy flesh concealed finer bones.

Miss Lilliane rolled on to the first large room to the right. “This is the parlor. The pocket doors in the rear could be pushed back enlarging the room into a ballroom for parties and dances. At such times, the rosewood and horsehair settees and chairs would be pushed against the walls and the Turkish carpets taken up. A band of slave musicians played their instruments in the space between the two fireplaces.”

As Miss Lilliane began enumerating the dates and origins of various antiques, Laura noted the comfortable modern armchair, a small television recessed into an old mahogany cabinet, a doll with a plastic, rather than a porcelain face in the corner of the sofa. She imagined Robert LeBlanc watching the evening news from the one inhabitable chair while Angelle played with her blue-eyed, big-busted doll—or David sitting in that chair while their own blond baby played in front of the fireplace.

A sharp note from Miss Lilliane broke Laura’s domestic ­daydream. “Over the mantel is a self-portrait of Adrien LeBlanc, son of the builders, artist and wastrel. It’s no thanks to him that the family still owns the Chateau.”

Laura wondered if this outburst was part of the written tour. Probably not. The adult Adrien LeBlanc had Byronic good looks, a floppy white shirt open at the neck and one elegant hand holding a palette, the other a brush. He gazed not at his viewers, but at himself, his full, sensuous lips smiling slightly at his own image in a mirror. Laura dismissed him as one of those “I’m too sexy for my shirt kind of guys,” definitely not her type now or a hundred-sixty years ago.

“Come here!” Miss LeBlanc wheeled imperiously to the pocket door and slid it easily aside. Over a matching fireplace in the other half of the ballroom hung yet another ancestral portrait, this one done in the same relaxed, romantic style of the Adrien LeBlanc self-portrait. A beautiful woman with honey-colored hair flowing about her shoulders and clad in a loose white morning gown held a chubby, beruffled baby of her own angelic mold, but of undetermined sex, in her lap. A somber dark-eyed boy stood behind the wicker chair holding his mother and his sibling. He rested one hand possessively on her shoulder. A middle child sat at her mother’s feet, dark eyes, black curls, and small face half buried in the full petticoat.

“This is Caroline Montleon LeBlanc, wife of the good-for-nothing Adrien and the savior of Chateau Camille.” The words, definitely not part of the tour, spewed from Miss Lilliane with as much bitterness as if Adrien LeBlanc had tried to disinherit her specifically.

“I’ve read her diaries. She was never at any time fooled by her husband. They met in New Orleans where he had gone to study art after his mother forbade him to go to Paris. He established quite a name for himself painting all the young women and many of the quadroon mistresses of prominent men. Some of the portraits were scandalous nudes painted under more scandalous circumstances, but he never painted Caroline in any guise except that of his wife and mother of his children.

“It seems they reached an early agreement. She, trained and educated to run a plantation, wanted only a plantation to run. He wanted only to be free of responsibility. They married under those terms. His mother, realizing how badly she had spoiled her only child, approved of his sensible choice. Camille LeBlanc died shortly after her first grandchild came into the world. On her deathbed, she placed the keys to the Chateau in Caroline’s hands.”

Miss Lilliane paused dramatically. Laura searched for words and came up with “Fascinating story.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” Miss Lilliane cleared her throat and plunged back into her narrative.

“Old Aurelien LeBlanc still lived and attended to business matters, but he shifted more and more of the burden onto Caroline. The two of them watched Adrien come and go, living on the generous allowance they gave him. He spent enough time at the Chateau to impregnate Caroline seven times in ten years with total disregard for the work required of her. She miscarried three times and lost her second son in infancy. Her surviving children are shown in the painting, Charles, who fortunately took after his mother in business acumen, Catherine who later became a nun and it is said, prayed daily for her father’s soul, and the baby, Felice, who married back into the Orleans Parish Montleon line. Why Caroline didn’t lock the bedroom door against him, I’ll never know!”

“Maybe she enjoyed the sex.” The urge to be irreverent of long ancestral lines bubbled up in Laura during the tirade. Immediately sorry, she had completely forgotten the inquisitive seven-year-old tagging along on the tour.

“What you talkin’ about? Where babies come from? My friend, Jenny Cavalier says…”

“Angelle, go tell your father I’m too tired to complete the tour.”

“Oh good!” The child dashed off to drag her father from his paperwork.

“Let me tell you one more thing about the romantic Adrien. He deserted his wife and children during the War. He passed the time in Paris painting and fornicating. He never returned. He died of well-earned dissipation at the age of forty. And he killed his own father, indirectly, of course—but that does not absolve him. Old Aurelien felt he had to enlist to save the family honor. Nearly seventy, he died of camp fever and left Caroline to face the war and the changed world to come later. I loathe having Adrien LeBlanc in my family history. Loathe it!”

Angelle returned dragging her father along by the sleeve.

“Go to bed, Tante Lil. I’ll take over.”

Without a parting word, Miss Lilliane wheeled from the room.

“Really, I don’t need a tour. I’m keeping you from business.” Laura had the urge to escape the amused dark eyes of her host by running to her own bedroom.

“Doesn’t take much to upset Tante Lil since the accident. Too many changes for her in too short a time to adjust, most of them my fault, though her opinion of me hasn’t fallen to loathsome yet. By the old Napoleonic Code in this state, she is a co-inheritor of this house along with Angelle and myself. She has the right to live here until death, and she will. But, my father was a lawyer. I have complete control of the land. Since my conversion of its use from cane to cattle, we haven’t had as much cash to keep up the house in the old manner. This house is all to her.”

“Then why did you do it? Stop growing cane, I mean.”

“If I go into that, Mrs. Dickinson, your tour won’t end until midnight. Let’s see, according to Angelle, the tour broke off just when you were going to tell her where babies come from.”

Laura rarely blushed, but she did now.

“I think we’ll skip that and continue with the heroic Caroline. This was her sitting room. She did her correspondence at that Queen Anne desk in the corner. The wicker furniture is not original to the house. We bought it at Lowe’s when the old stuff wore out. We can pass from this area easily into the dining room, convenient when you are having a ball. We haven’t had any lately.”

Robert LeBlanc had none of the lean, pale romantic elegance of the reprehensible Adrien, though they shared the cleft chin, dark eyes and curly hair of the family. Not very tall, the living owner of Chateau Camille stood around five-eight, broad, ­muscular and tanned from outdoor work, comfortably masculine, and good casual company as long as the dark eyes remained amused and did not turn their serious, longing look on Laura. No, not a surly hired man at all, but the genial country squire. She packaged him neatly in her mind, put him away and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the tour.

“Here is the dining room. The table is as small as we can make it. With leaves in, it seats twenty-four. The chandelier is from Venice, the china we never use from France, the crystal from Germany. At one time, all the food served here was raised on the plantation or harvested nearby from the wild roast duck with rice to ham, yams and fresh seafood from Vermilion Bay. Food bills being what they are, I’d like to see that day come again. At this point, I usually ask for a donation to be placed in the Sevres sugar bowl, but you are exempt.

“On to the guest bedroom, once the bower of Caroline LeBlanc and containing an absolutely authentic Mallard bedroom set given to the bride as a wedding gift from her family in 1851. The acorns on the posts symbolize fertility. Since I am here, it worked.”

Laura stood in the doorway of the room where she was to sleep, suddenly in awe of resting in a bed where this man’s forebears had made love, given birth, and perhaps died.

“The top bar of the bedstead could be removed and used to fluff the mattress. Or it could have been used to fend off the advances of the lecherous Adrien.” T-Bob lifted and waved the heavy bar threateningly.

Angelle, his best audience, giggled some more. “Oh, Daddy! About babies…”

“It didn’t work or wasn’t used. Caroline LeBlanc gave birth to all of her children in this bed and eventually died here. But don’t worry, the mattress is new.” He read Laura’s thoughts with a teasing gleam in his eyes. “The rest of the downstairs rooms were at one time, the plantation office now too messy to be shown because I sleep there, and a nursery with servants’ sleeping closets between each. All are now the private quarters of the LeBlanc family and off-limits to tourists. End of tour. Back to paying the bills.”

“Look, I appreciate your time.” Laura held out a hand in formal parting. “I did enjoy the tour, especially the last half.”

“It’s not over yet! May I take her upstairs, please, please?” Angelle begged.

“Sure thing, sugar. I will warn you none of the rooms are furnished, and we have some fire damage. After the accidents, I felt we would all be safer on the ground floor. If this old place should burn, the only way out from the second floor is the kind Tante Lil took, through a window or a dive off the upper gallery.”

The yearning look came back into the eyes of Robert LeBlanc. Laura turned away and followed Angelle up a sinuous central staircase, “good for sliding down” the child commented in an almost scholarly way.

A small brass chandelier shone at the head of the stairs, and the last rays of September sun lit the rear of the hall through a large window overlooking the drive and oak alley. Angelle began in the large room with doors opening onto the gallery.

“This was Daddy and Mama’s room.” Dark patches stood out on the Victorian wallpaper where large pieces of furniture had been removed. The child passed into a smaller adjoining room.

“I slept here when I was a little baby.” The small pink rosebuds on the paper were browned and blackened around the doorway on the far side of the room. They passed through the smoke-damaged entry. Glancing back, Laura could see another charred spot on the opposite side of the child’s room.

“This is where Tante Lil jumped out the window. I was real little, but I remember. She screamed so loud, and Daddy ran through my room into here to beat out the fire.”

In Tante Lil’s old room, the burnt wallpaper still gave off the smell of smoke. French doors opened on to a small ornamental balcony overlooking the garden. Below, the huge bushes became black mounds in the gathering dusk. Long, black scars reaching from doorway to doorway traced the line of the fire into the floor. Angelle did not linger. With a toss of dark curls, she went out into the hall.

“This is the bathroom, and these were Grandpa’s rooms and all his books before he died, but I was only a baby then.”

Laura took a quick glance into the suite, an empty bedroom and a library lined with law books, dusty but in perfect order. A large antique desk with a well-used chair of cracked leather sat in front of the library’s balcony window. Angelle quickly lost interest in a set of rooms that held no memories for her. She darted out the gallery door at the far end of the suite. Laura followed her into the soft, humid night.

“You can see all the way to the bayou in the day.” The little girl swung on the gallery railing that creaked a warning of its age to small children. Laura pulled Angelle to her, and they passed together into the house and down to the first floor.

“Can I come see you in your room? At night, I’m afraid of ghosts in the guestroom, but Daddy says if there are any ghosts in this house, they are all upstairs. With you right next door, I won’t be afraid. And you can tell me where babies come from, maybe?”

Laura passed the rest of the evening meeting Angelle’s dolls, including one old Raggedy Ann slightly crisped by the fire of the past. She firmly resisted the child’s pleas to learn about the origins of babies and referred her to her father or Tante Lil.

“But they won’t tell,” pouted Angelle. Once the child settled for the night, Laura used the front hall to reach the bathroom, took two aspirins from the LeBlanc’s medicine cabinet and ended the stressful day with restless sleep in a strange huge bed.

In the morning, her rented car was, indeed, repaired. “Only a small leak, cher. Jules Picard, he picked up da tab, him,” said old Thibodeaux over the phone.

In his battered pickup truck, the master of Chateau Camille drove Laura to the ancient Canal gas station still bearing the sign of a company long out of business. Robert LeBlanc sat behind the wheel and talked pleasantly of cattle and crops, sometimes digressing into a funny anecdote about his daughter. If his guest became a little too aware of the biceps bunched under his rolled shirtsleeves or the occasional dark regard of his eyes that was not his fault. Laura moved closer to the truck door and farther from the warmth of his body. After four months benumbed by grief why had her hormones decided to wake up now on a narrow country road in Louisiana?

T-Bob had asked her a question, and she’d missed it entirely. He repeated the offer to have Laura stay at the Chateau until she found a place of her own. Considering Miss LeBlanc had not appeared at breakfast to bid her good-bye over the grillades and grits, Laura thought not. Awkward, how terribly awkward it would be to share a house with Tante Lil and the nephew who exuded pheromones like one of his bulls. She wished Robert would put on the sunglasses dangling from the windshield visor, but since he didn’t, she took her dark glasses from her purse and slid them over her own eyes.

At Thibodeaux’s Canal gas station, which now sold Shell, Robert got down and helped her from the truck’s cab by placing a strong, callused hand under her elbow. The heat of his touch seemed to flow up her arm and into her cheeks. She thanked him and stepped away.

“Good luck finding a place. My offer stands if you can’t find anything.”

“I’m sure I will. Thank you again for your hospitality.” She waved instead shaking his hand, and he grinned like a black-haired devil as he got into the truck and drove away.

Laura spent the spare hours of the morning apartment hunting and discovered apartment complexes did not exist in Chapelle. Rental houses were available in disreputable neighborhoods. The town had subsidized housing for the poor. Lavish southern homes for sale glutted the real estate market, but she found no practical place to live. After a fruitless search, she took her parting meal at noon in Domengeaux’s café, this time sitting at an oil-clothed table and spilling out her problems to Miss Lola’s sympathetic ears.

“I tell you what, cher. I got me an apartment right above dis store. First Papa and I lived dere, and my daughter before she took off for Baton Rouge. Dat girl, I prayed to da Virgin for her. I said, Blessed Mother, give me a child, and I make you a shrine right here in my store and tell everyone about your miracle. It worked for dat lady, Camille LeBlanc, a hundred years and more ago. I t’ink it work for me too, you know, and it did. So I put up my shrine right here in da store where everyone can see it. Da Holy Mother, she kept her part of da deal. So my daughter grows up, gets married and moves to Baton Rouge. I never see her no more—maybe once a month if I go dere, but I don’t like da drive. She never brings my grandkids to see me hardly ever—except on most Sundays. Come, I show you da place.”

They took a rickety staircase to the second floor. The apartment had generous space for one person, two large rooms, a small bath and a kitchenette. The hardwood floors and an elaborate ceiling decorated with plaster festoons of fruit and flower garlands came as pleasant surprises. The antiquated plumbing fixtures and ancient gas range did not.

“Dis building, cher, is real old. Dem French aristocrats built it when dey found out dey had to stay a while after dat revolution. Papa and me, we put in da bat’room and lights. Dis old armoire, it’s always been here.”

Lola Domengeaux pointed to a vast cabinet filling one wall of the bedroom. Its inlay of fruits and flowers matched the ceiling design. Laura opened the well-oiled doors. The interior had many wide shelves and small drawers. In one corner of the door, she noticed the carved initials “C.S.”

“This must be terribly valuable.” Laura ran her fingers over the initials and thought of the Mary altar in the church that could be seen through the French doors in the front room.

“You know it, cher. We got lots of offers for it, but how you gonna get it out of here? It must of been brought up t’rue da windows and den in pieces. I figure it belongs here, so here it stays.”

“I’m staying, too. You have yourself a tenant.”

“I knew you’d get dat job, cher heart, and I’m pleased to have you. Now come, let me pack you some pralines to take home for your mama. She ain’t gonna like you being so far away, but you tell her Lola Domengeaux will take care of her girl.”