"Where did you get this? What is it doing out here? Shame on you for dragging this out!" She slammed the album closed and tossed it onto the seat of the old red leather wing chair that had been Daddy's favorite.
She pressed her hands to her cheeks and paced in a short line back and forth, back and forth, as nervous as a racehorse, her eyes flashing with something like panic. "Shame on you for bringing that out! Mr. Leighton is new to this house, and you're dragging out all this! What would he think if he saw this?"
Laurel didn't really care what Mr. Leighton thought. She didn't like him. Didn't like his staying in Daddy's room. Didn't like the way he patted her head. Didn't like the way he looked at Savannah. She didn't want him at Beauvoir.
"I don't like him!" she blurted out, popping up from her seat on the floor, anger making her feel like she could grow to be ten feet tall and mean as an alligator. "I don't like him and don't care what he thinks!"
The slap came hard and fast and turned her head. Tears rushed up from deep inside and poured down her face, her cheek stinging and half numb. Vivian grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a shake.
"Don't you ever say that!" she said fiercely, her eyes bright with temper and tears. "Your father is dead. Mr. Leighton is head of this house now, and you will be a good girl and mind him and show respect. Do you understand me, Laurel Leanne?"
Laurel stared at her, wishing she didn't have to say yes. Wishing she could dare say no and still have Mama love her. But she couldn't, and she knew it. Mama already didn't love Savannah most of the time.
"Do you understand me?" she repeated, her voice trembling, on the verge of the kind of hysteria that always came before one of her spells.
"Y-yes, Mama," Laurel stammered, anger and sorrow tumbling together inside her like a pair of fighting cats. "I-I'm sorry, Mama."
That quickly, Vivian's temper cooled visibly. Her hold on Laurel 's arms eased. She bent down awkwardly, so as not to wrinkle her new hot pink dress, and stroked Laurel 's hair back from her forehead again and again, wiping tears into it. A trembling smile wobbled across her perfectly painted mouth. "That's my girl. I know you'll be a good girl. You know what's important, don't you, Laurel? You're always such a good girl," she whispered, sniffling. "Mama's little pet. You run along now and play elsewhere."
And Laurel had run. She had run out to find Savannah in the rickety old boathouse down on the bank of the bayou. They sat in the old wooden bâteau Daddy had let them use, and Savannah hugged her and wiped her tears. Laurel desperately wanted her to say everything would be all right, but Savannah had stopped saying that after Vivian and Ross had come back from their honeymoon.
So many things had changed so fast. Daddy gone. Ross Leighton taking his place. Some nights it just scared her so to think of it that she couldn't sleep, and she tried to sneak into Savannah's room as she always had, but Savannah kept the secret door locked now and wouldn't tell her why.
"I wish we could take the boat and float all the way to New Orleans," she mumbled against her sister's shoulder. "I wish we could run away."
"We can't," Savannah murmured, stroking her hair.
"We could go and live with Aunt Caroline."
"No," she whispered, staring out at the water. "Don't you see, Baby? There's no getting away."
The way she said it made Laurel scared all over again, and she shivered and looked up at her sister, feeling all hollow and achy inside at the sadness in Savannah 's eyes. Then Savannah smiled suddenly and tickled her.
"But we can go out on the bayou and pretend we're shipwrecked on a jungle island," she said, twisting around to untie the bâteau from its mooring.
And they let the boat drift out of the old cypress shed that looked like a junk heap and smelled like fish, and headed up the bayou to a place where they could pretend the world was perfect and Ross Leighton didn't exist.
"Dat Armentine Prejean, she kin cook, her," Mama Pearl declared, shaking her wooly head as she snapped beans into a plastic bucket wedged between her tiny feet. "She don' cook nothin' good for Vivian, but she kin cook, I tell you. If she wasn' cookin' for Vivian, you would'a ate her dinner, chère."
Laurel glanced up from the shrimp salad she was picking at. She had changed out of her skirt into a pair of faded denim shorts and a loose purple cotton blouse, and was feeling comfortably inconspicuous again with her glasses perched on her nose. Everyone had trailed out onto the back gallery of Belle Rivière and settled in, cocooned in the quiet of the courtyard and the warmth of the afternoon. "The meal was fine, Mama Pearl. I just didn't have much of an appetite, that's all."
Pearl snorted, her fleshy face folding into creases of supreme disapproval. "Nothin' but bones, you. You gonna dry up an' blow away if you don' get some fat on you."
Savannah stretched back on the cushioned lounge and set her book aside. "Aw, you know what they say, Mama Pearl, a girl can't be too rich or too thin."
Pearl snorted again. "Sa c'est de la couyonade."
Caroline twirled the ice in her glass of tea, her dark eyes carefully fixed on Laurel. "We saw you on the news last night, darlin'. Standing toe to toe with that televangelist."
Pearl cackled and slapped her knees. "You give him good, talk about! Even knowed your Bible verse! Ma bon fille! I tell ever'body at church dis mornin', dat's my girl!"
Laurel made a face that was a cross between a smile and a frown and said nothing. What little appetite she had managed to work up for the shrimp salad fled, and she laid her fork across the plate.
"The Delahoussayes are good people," Caroline said evenly. She let that hang in the air while she recrossed her legs and arranged the hem of her slim pale yellow skirt. "Would it be difficult to stop Baldwin from harassing them?"
Laurel shrugged. "Maybe not. They could talk to Judge Monahan. But that doesn't stop Baldwin from waging his war against sin in other ways."
"A little action is better than a whole lot of talk," Caroline said. She took a sip of her tea and set it back down, tracing a fingertip down the side of the sweating glass.
"Lord knows, action is right up the Revver's alley," Savannah said dryly, winning herself a frown from Laurel. "If Jimmy Lee is a man of God, then the Marquis de Sade is right up there in heaven, tying the lady angels to the pearly gates and licking his lips."
Mama Pearl flung a bean down and scolded Savannah in a rapid stream of Cajun French that rolled off Savannah like water off a duck. Inside the house the telephone rang. Savannah unfolded herself from the chaise in no particular hurry and went to answer it. Pearl collected her bucket and waddled in after her, muttering under her breath.
Laurel quelled the urge to go after them. She could feel Caroline's gaze weighing on her.
"You still belong to the Louisiana Bar Association, don't you?" her aunt asked innocently.
"Yes, but I'm not ready to take anything on," Laurel argued, her fingers curling into fists on the glass table-top. "I don't need the trouble."
Caroline rose, brushing an imaginary crumb from her loose-fitting chocolate silk tunic. She moved a step toward the house, glancing at Laurel as if in afterthought. "Neither do the Delahoussayes."
Laurel ground her teeth as her aunt sauntered through the French doors that led directly into her study. "I came here to rest," she muttered, crossing her arms and sitting back in her chair. "I came here for peace and quiet."
No one answered her. Mama Pearl had gone off to the realm that was her kitchen. Even as Laurel thought of seeking out Savannah so she could vent her spleen, she heard the Acura start and squeal away from the front of the house. Aunt Caroline had given her words of wisdom and retreated.
Suddenly restless, Laurel stood and paced along the gallery for a moment. The afternoon breeze caught at the hem of her blouse, stirred the trailing fronds of a hanging fern, fluttered the pages of Savannah 's abandoned book. Sorely in need of a distraction, Laurel bent and snatched up the paperback.