Laurel sighed and pushed her overgrown bangs back off her forehead, watching as Savannah made her way to the door with her lazy, naturally seductive gait, her robe shimmering like quicksilver. "'Night, Sister."
"Sweet dreams."
She would have settled for no dreams, Laurel thought as she listened to the door latch and her sister's footsteps retreat down the hall. But no dreams meant no sleep. She checked the glowing dial of the old alarm clock on the stand. Three-thirty. She wouldn't sleep again tonight no matter how badly her body needed to. Her mind wouldn't allow the possibility of another rerun of the dream. The knowledge brought a sheen of tears to her eyes. She was so tired-physically tired, emotionally exhausted, tired of feeling out of control.
With that thought came the memory of Jack Boudreaux, and a wave of shame washed over her, leaving goose bumps in its wake. She'd made an ass of herself. If she was lucky, he was too drunk to remember by now, and the next time she saw him she could pretend it never happened.
There wouldn't be a next time if she could help it. She knew instinctively she would never be able to handle a man like Jack Boudreaux. His raw sexuality would overwhelm her. She would never be in control-of him or the relationship or herself.
Not that she was interested in him.
Tossing the coverlet and sheet aside, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, went to the French doors, and pulled them open. The night was comfortably warm, fragrant with the scents of spring, hinting at the humidity that would descend like a wet woolen blanket in another few weeks. The magnolia tree near the corner of the house still had a few blossoms, creamy waxy white and as big as dinner plates set among the broad, leathery, dark green leaves.
She had climbed that tree as a child, determined to find out what the experience was all about. Tree climbing was forbidden at Beauvoir, the Chandler family plantation that lay just a few miles down the road from Belle Rivière. Tree climbing was not something "nice girls" did-or so said Vivian. Laurel shook her head at that as she wandered out onto the balcony. Nice girls. Good families.
"Things like that don't happen in good families…"
"Help us, Laurel! Help us…"
The past and the present twined in her mind like vines, twisting, clinging vines attaching their sharp tendrils to her brain. She brought her hands up to clamp over her ears, as if that might shut out the voices that existed only in her head. She bit her lip until she tasted blood, fighting furiously to hold back the tears that gathered in her eyes and congealed into a solid lump in her throat.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit…"
She chanted the word like a mantra as she paced the balcony outside her room. Back and forth, back and forth, her small bare feet slapping softly on the old wood. Weakness surged through her like a tide, and she fought the urge to sink down against the wall and sob. The tears choked her. The weakness sapped the stability from her knees and made her curl in on herself like a stooped old woman or a child with a bellyache. The memories bombarded her in a ferocious, relentless cannonade-the children in Scott County, Savannah and their past. "Nice girls." "Good families." "Be a good girl, Laurel." "Don't say anything, Laurel." "Make us all proud, Laurel." "Help us, Laurel…"
No longer able to fight it, she turned and pressed herself against the side of the old house, pressed her face against it, not even caring that the edges of the weathered old bricks bit into her cheek. She clung there like a jumper who had suddenly remembered her terror of heights.
"Oh, God," she whimpered as the despair cracked through her armor and the tears squeezed past the tightly closed barriers of her eyelids. "Oh, God, please, please…"
"Help us, Laurel! Please, please, please…"
Her fingertips, then her knuckles scraped the brick as her fingers folded into fists. She sobbed silently for a moment, releasing a small measure of the inner tension, then swallowed it back, gagging on the need to cry even as she ruthlessly denied herself the privilege. She pushed herself away from the building and turned toward the balcony, swiping the tears from her face with the heels of her hands.
Dammit, she wouldn't do this. She was stronger than this. She had come here to take control of her life again, not to fall apart twice in one night.
Using anger to burn away the other emotions, she turned and slammed her fist against one of the many smooth white columns that supported the roof of the balcony, welcoming the stinging pain that sang up her arm.
"Weak-stupid-coward-"
She spat out the insults, her fury turning inward. She kicked herself mentally for her failures as she kicked the column with her bare foot. The pain burst through her like a jolt of electricity, shorting out everything else, breaking the thread of tension that had been thickening and tightening inside her.
Gulping air, she bent over the balustrade, her fingers wrapping tightly around the black wrought-iron rail. In the wake of the pain flowed calm. Her muscles trembled, relaxing as the calm shimmered through her. Her heartbeat slowed to a steady bass-drum thump, thump, thump.
"Sweet heaven, I have to do something," she muttered. "I can't go on like this."
That truth had precipitated her leaving the Ashland Heights Clinic. Her stay there had been peaceful, but not productive. Dr. Pritchard had been more interested in digging up the past than in helping her fix her miserable present. She didn't see the point. What was done was done. She couldn't go back and fix it no matter how badly she wanted to. What she needed to do was push it behind her, rise above it. Move forward. Do something. Do what?
Her job was gone. The fallout from The Case had fallen directly on her. She had been stripped of power, profession, credibility. She had no idea what would become of her, what she would ultimately do or be. Her job had been her identity. Without it she was lost.
"I've got to do something," she said again, looking around, as if an answer might appear to her somewhere down the dark corridor of the balcony or in the trees or the garden below.
Belle Rivière had been built in the 1830s by a local merchant to placate his homesick young wife who had grown up in the Vieux Carré in New Orleans. The house was designed to emulate the elegant splendor of the French Quarter, right down to the beautiful courtyard garden with its fountain, and brick walls trimmed with lacy black wrought-iron filigree. The garden Laurel had spent two days trying to put to rights only to have Jack Boudreaux's dog-allegedly his dog-uproot her efforts. Damn hound.
Damn man.
The garden had been maintained sporadically over the years. Laurel remembered it as a place of marvelous beauty during her childhood when old Antoine Thibodeaux had tended it for Aunt Caroline. As lush and green as Eden, spray billowing from the fountain, elegant statues of Greek women carrying urns of exotic plants. Antoine had long since gone to his eternal rest, and Caroline's latest gardener had long since gone to New Orleans to be a female impersonator on Bourbon Street. Caroline, absorbed in her latest business venture, an antiques shop, hadn't bothered to hire anyone new.
Laurel had seen it as the perfect project for her, physically, psychologically, metaphorically. Clear away the old debris, prune off the dead branches, rejuvenate the soil, plant new with a hopeful eye to the future. Resurrection, rebirth, a fresh start.
She stared down at the mess Huey the Hound had left and heaved a sigh. Young plants torn up by the roots. She knew the feeling…
"Where are you taking Daddy's things, Mama?"
"To the Goodwill in Lafayette," Vivian Chandler said, not sparing a glance at her ten-year-old daughter.
She stood beside the bed that had been her husband's, smartly dressed in a spring green shift with a strand of pearls at her throat. She looked cool and sophisticated, as always, like a model from out of a fashion magazine, her ash blond hair combed just so, pale pink lipstick on. She propped her perfectly manicured hands on her hips and tapped the toe of one white pump against the rug imaptiently as she supervised the proceedings. Tansy Jonas, the latest in a string of flighty young maids, hauled load after load of suits and shirts and slacks out of the closet to be sorted into piles.