Bringing her emotions back in line, she gently extricated her fingers from Caroline's and reached for the stack of mail she had picked up at the post office on her way to the courthouse. "You've got some interesting-looking letters today," she said, sorting through the stack. She plucked out several fine-quality envelopes, each with a different postmark-Biloxi, New Orleans, Natchez-all of them addressed in flowing, feminine script, one smelling faintly of jasmine.
Caroline accepted them, a soft smile turning her lips as she perched her reading glasses on her slim, upturned nose and scanned the addresses. "How lovely to hear from friends on such a terrible day."
"Old friends from school?" Laurel asked carefully, watching closely as her aunt used a table knife to open the pink one. "Or business?"
"Mmm… just friends."
Laurel chided herself for her curiosity. Caroline's privacy was her own. Of course, Savannah might have just asked her outright.
"I can't believe Savannah is sleeping in so late," she murmured, wondering if today might not be the perfect time to start mending the tears in their relationship. Arguments seemed petty and pointless in the face of death, and life seemed so finite. They could take the rest of the day and drive down to Cypremort Point for bluepoint crabs and a view of the gulf at sunset. They would sit together with the salty breeze on their faces and in their hair, and talk and watch the saw grass sway in the shallows while gulls wheeled overhead. "Do you think I dare wake her up on the pretense of delivering her Visa bill?"
"Hmm? Oh, a-" Caroline glanced up from her letter. " Savannah isn't here, darlin'."
"Where did she go?" Laurel asked, annoyed that the perfect day that had painted itself in her mind was going to be put off. "More to the point, how did she go? I had the car all morning."
"I'm not sure. Perhaps she had a friend pick her up. I couldn't say; I was at the store. Did you have plans?"
"No. It's just that we've been talking about spending some time together. She wanted to do something yesterday, and then Jack showed up."
"She left here in a state yesterday, I do know that," Caroline said, folding back a sheet of pink stationery. "I take it she doesn't approve of your seeing Mr. Boudreaux."
"I don't think Jack is her problem." Concern tugged at the corners of Laurel 's mouth and furrowed her brow. She wrestled for a moment with the thoughts that had been troubling her since Savannah 's blowup, finally deciding they were best shared. "I'm worried about her. She seems so… volatile. Up one minute and down the next. She got into a fight with Annie Gerrard Sunday. A fist fight! Aunt Caroline, I'm frightened for her."
And for myself, she thought, in a small way. The child in Laurel had always depended on Savannah. That child felt lost at the prospect of Savannah 's not being dependable anymore.
Caroline set her letters aside and slipped her reading glasses off, her expression somber. "She was seeing a psychiatrist in Lafayette for a while. I think she might have gotten help there, but she wouldn't stay with it."
Naturally. Just as she never stayed with a job or anything else that might have given her help or a sense of purpose that didn't involve sex. Laurel 's hands fisted on the tabletop, and she wished for something she could hit to let off some of the impotent anger that was building inside her. "She's determined to let the past rule her life, dictate who she is, what she is. We had an awful fight about it the other day. I lost my temper, but it makes me angry to see her throw her life away for something that ended fifteen years ago."
For a moment Caroline said nothing. She sat quietly toying with one of the heavy gold hoops that hung from her ears and let Laurel's statement hang in the air, let it sink in not for her own benefit, but for her niece's.
"Tell me," she said at last. "Do you not still see those children from Scott County in your sleep?"
The abrupt change of subject jolted Laurel for a second. The question brought the faces up in her memory, and she had to force them back into the little compartment she tried to stow them in during the day. "Yes," she murmured.
"But that's over and done with," Caroline said. "Why can't you let them go?"
"Because I failed them," Laurel said, tensing against the guilt. "It was my fault. I deserve to be haunted by that-"
"No," Caroline cut her off sharply, her dark eyes bright with the strength of her feelings. "No," she said again, softening her tone. "You did all you could. The outcome was not in your hands. You had no control over the attorney general or the lack of evidence or what other members of the community did, and yet you blame yourself and let that part of your past torment you."
Laurel didn't try to argue her culpability; she knew what the truth was. The point her aunt was making had little to do with her, anyway.
"Are you saying Savannah blames herself for the abuse?" she asked, incredulous at the thought. "But what happened was Ross's fault! He forced himself on her. She couldn't possibly believe that was her fault."
Caroline stroked a fingertip thoughtfully along her cheekbone and raised a delicately arched brow. "You think not? Savannah is a beautiful, sensual, sexual creature. She always has been. Even as a child she had a certain power over men, and she knew it. You think she hasn't blamed herself for being attractive to Ross or that Ross hasn't taken every opportunity to blame her himself? He is and always has been a weak man, taking credit that isn't his due and shedding blame like water off a duck's back."
A fresh spring of hate for Ross Leighton welled up inside Laurel, and she recognized that a large part of her anger was for the fact that Ross had never been made to pay for his crime. Justice had never been served. Some of the blame for that was hers, she knew, and the guilt for that was terrible.
If only she had found the courage to tell their mother or go to Aunt Caroline. But she hadn't. Vivian was still in ignorance of her husband's atrocities. Caroline had found out the truth years after the fact. There had been no justice for Savannah… so Laurel had spent her life seeking justice for others.
I'm not trying to atone for anything!
God, what a lie. What a hypocrite she was.
Caroline rose gracefully from her chair, tucking her letters into a patch pocket on the full yellow skirt that hugged her tiny waist and swirled around her calves. She came around the table and slipped her arms around Laurel 's shoulders, hugging her tight from behind. "The past is always with us, Laurel," she said gently. "It's a part of us we can't ignore or abandon. And it's not always easy to keep it behind us, where it belongs. You'd do well to remember that for yourself, as well as for your sister."
She pressed a kiss to her temple and went inside, leaving Laurel alone on the gallery to listen to the birdsong and to think.
When her thoughts had chased one another around her brain sufficiently to give her a headache, Laurel turned her attention back to the mail, thumbing through the bills and pleas from missions. At the back of the stack was a plain white envelope with no address, return or otherwise.
Puzzled, she opened the flap and extracted not a letter, but a cheap gold necklace with a small golden butterfly dangling from it. She lifted the chain and watched the butterfly turn and sway, and a strange shiver passed over her, like a chill wind that had slipped out of another dimension to crawl over her skin.
The wheels of her mind turned automatically, searching for the most logical explanation for the necklace. It was Savannah 's-though Savannah 's tastes were much more expensive. Laurel had forgotten it on the seat of the car-but why was it sealed in an envelope?
No answer satisfied all the questions, and none explained the knot of nerves tingling at the base of her neck.
In his office in the Partout Parish courthouse, Duwayne Kenner leaned over his desk, hammers pounding inside his temples, acid churning in his gut. He leaned over the fax copies of crime reports from four other parishes. His eyes scanned the photographs the sheriff from St. Martin had brought along with him of Jennifer Verret, who had been found dead Saturday morning, strangled with a silk scarf and mutilated. On the other side of the desk, Danjermond stood looking pensive, twisting his signet ring around on his finger.
"There's no doubt in my mind," Kenner growled, his voice turned to gravel by two packs of Camels. "We're dealing with the same killer."