Always.
Now death had brought them here again, these people whose lives were tied together in a painful knot of common experience.
Toward the end of the ceremony, Conroy Cooper slipped in the back and took a seat by himself. Laurel met his somber, soul-deep blue gaze as she walked out of the church, and saw the regret there, and the love, and she ached at the irony that of all the men her sister had known, she would love the one whose nobility put him out of her reach.
When everyone else had gone out, Laurel lingered in the shadows of the vestibule and watched Cooper lay a single white rose on the casket. For a long while he just stood there, head bent, one hand on the polished wood, saying good-bye in his low, smooth voice.
Laurel had labeled him an adulterer and condemned him for not being able to give Savannah the kind of commitment she wanted. But he had loved her as best he could, he said, while trying to keep a vow to a wife who no longer knew him. He had given Savannah all he could. It wasn't his fault she had needed so much more.
There was no coffee served after the burial. No time for normalcy to dilute the grief with talk of crops and babies and everyday things. Caroline drove them home to Belle Rivière in silence.
Mama Pearl went into her kitchen to take solace in the familiar ritual of brewing a pot of café noir. Caroline laid her keys on the hall table, turned and took Laurel's hands in hers. "I'm going upstairs to lie down for a while," she said, her strong voice softened by strain to a whisper. "You should do the same, darlin'. It's been a terrible few days."
Laurel struggled for a game smile and shook her head. "I'm too restless to sleep. I was thinking I'd go into the courtyard for a while."
Dark eyes shining with the kind of love and wisdom a mother should possess, Caroline nodded and squeezed Laurel's fingers. "You've got it so pretty out there. It's a good place to look for a little peace."
Laurel didn't expect to find any, but it was true she was going to look, to hope.
She strolled the pathways slowly, with her hands tucked deep in the pockets of her flowered skirt. A fitful breeze swirled the hem around her calves and brushed the ends of her hair across her shoulders. The day was warm and muggy with a sky that couldn't decide whether it should be a clear blue bowl or a tumble of angry gray clouds.
Despite the moods of the weather and the aura of sadness that hung on Laurel like a shroud, the garden offered what it always did. The rich scents of green growth, the soft, sweet perfumes of flowers bathed her senses, trying to soothe, offering comfort. Even the weeds tried to distract her, reminding her they needed pulling. Tomorrow, she promised, moving on down the path, searching for something she couldn't hope to find today.
She felt as if a crucial, turbulent chapter of her life had been abruptly closed. Savannah was gone. The secret they had shared all these years had been unlocked. Danjermond was dead, and while the investigation continued into the dark shadows of his past, and the headlines were still selling papers, the bottom line had been drawn. Between her testimony and the evidence in his home, and at the scene, Stephen Danjermond, Partout Parish district attorney, son of the Garden District Danjermonds of New Orleans, had been established as a serial killer.
She should have felt a sense of closure, she thought as she took a seat on the corner bench. But she felt more as if something had started to unravel and had been discarded with loose threads trailing all around. Savannah was gone. They would never have the chance to repair the cracks in their relationship; it would remain forever broken. The secret had been revealed, but she would go on being Vivian's daughter; Ross Leighton would forever be a part of her past, if not her future. Danjermond was dead, but every life he had touched would be indelibly marked by his betrayal.
And then there was Jack. The man who was bent on paying with his life for the sins of his past.
If she had a brain in her head, she would walk away, make a clean break, start over somewhere new. What had happened between her and Jack had happened too quickly, too intensely. A relationship had been the last thing she'd come home looking for, and Jack was far from the kind of man she had pictured herself with. He had used, abused, and derided the profession they once had in common. She didn't respect him because of it-but she respected the way he had turned himself around in the end, even if he claimed his motives were selfish. He lived a life built on shirking responsibility, another trait that irritated her strong sense of duty, but she had seen him defy that role time and again.
She kept seeing him in her mind's eye-not the rogue male with the wicked grin and the ruby in his earlobe, but the lonely, haunted man whose hidden needs reached deep into a loveless boyhood. She kept feeling the ache inside him that had touched her own heart, the ache of longing for things he thought he shouldn't have.
Jack painted himself as a user and a cad, good for nothing but a good time, but the fact of the matter was he had saved her life and shown a heroism that was exceedingly rare in this world.
He was so distinctly two different people. The trouble was convincing the "bad" Jack that the "good" Jack existed and deserved to have a chance at something better than a half life filled with pain.
Laurel closed her eyes and let her head fall back, turning her face up to the sky as the sun played hide-and-seek with the clouds. For a moment she let herself picture a life where they could truly start over, where people really did rise above their pasts and lived beyond the shadows, where she and Jack could simply have happiness without all the baggage attached.
"Dreamin' about me, sugar?"
It took a moment for Laurel to realize the voice had not come from inside her mind. Her eyes flew open, and she swung around on the bench to see him standing there leaning against one of Aunt Caroline's armless goddess statues in faded jeans and a chambray shirt hanging open down the front. He was pale beneath his tan, and there were lines of strain etched deep beside his dark eyes that combined with the shadow of his beard to make him look tough and dangerous. He smiled his pirate's grin, but there was too much pain in his eyes for him to quite pull it off.
"What the devil are you doing here?" Laurel exclaimed, shooting up off the bench. "Don't you even try to tell me Dr. Broussard released you!"
He winced a little as the volume of her voice set off hammers in his head. "Mais non," he drawled. "Me, I sorta escaped."
"Why does that not surprise me?"
"It's no big deal, 'tite chatte," he grumbled, rubbing a thumb against the goddess's forehead. "All's I got is a boomer of a headache and a busted rib."
Laurel scowled at him, jamming her hands on her hips. "Your lung collapsed! You've got a concussion and stab wounds and-"
"Bon Dieu!" he gasped in mock surprise, black hair tumbling across his forehead as he looked up at her with wide eyes. "Then mebbe I oughta sit down."
He caught an arm around her waist and pulled her down with him, his actions stiff and slightly awkward, but effective enough to land her on his lap as he took her seat on the bench. She immediately scooted off him, but swung her legs around and remained on the bench beside him.
Jack frowned, shooting her a sideways look. "I must be losin' my touch."
Laurel sniffed. "Losing your mind is more like it. You belong in a hospital. My God, you weren't even conscious the last time I saw you!"
"I'll live."
Dismissing the topic, he looked down at her, taking in the deep shadows beneath her eyes. She couldn't have looked more exquisitely feminine or fragile, like a priceless piece of porcelain. That fragility had frightened him once, before he had discovered the strength that ran through it like threads of steel. But he had a feeling the strength was flagging today.