And he could touch her? Not with his hands, but hell, there were plenty of other body parts he could use, in plenty of interesting ways. If he’d only known earlier, he would most certainly have given her what she needed.
No use wasting time thinking about what he would have done now. Next time, he’d do it all, repeatedly, but he’d have to find a way to spread their lovemaking out, to take their time and not let her drain her energy so quickly. A challenge for sure, but a challenge he was definitely up to. Keeping her here longer was worth it.
And speaking of a challenge, Adeline’s note had given him a place to look for answers. The attic.
Dax left the sitting room and took the stairs two at a time to the third floor and the attic access. The string to open the attic door was typically wrapped around the door’s tiny knob in the ceiling, well above nine feet high, but tonight it was hanging down and waiting for Dax’s arrival.
He pulled on the string and the folding ladder came barreling straight at him like an arrow heading for a target. Dax jumped out of the way just in time to keep the thing from colliding with his head.
Looking down the hallway, he waited for Nanette to come check out the racket. Surely something as loud as that ladder pounding against the floor would wake her, but after a minute passed and there was still no sign of his oldest cousin, he climbed on up. Obviously, she was a sound sleeper. He swallowed, immediately thinking of Celeste sleeping in the hospital chair in Mr. Fontenot’s room. Dax had tried to wake her when he first arrived, but he couldn’t even make her stir. For a moment, he’d considered the possibility that she was dead, then had realized how foolish that was. She was dead. But she was also exhausted. And he still couldn’t fathom how that was possible. But hopefully, he’d figure it out soon, with the help of something in this attic.
The light from the hallway below illuminated a small portion of the room, but Dax knew the only light within the massive attic was a single pull-string bulb. He waved his hands in front of him as he moved so he could find the string. It took several kicked boxes and even more knocks into furniture, but he finally found it, with his face. He moved his hand to the thin nylon, pulled it, and saw that in spite of Monique’s haul, the place was still at least three-fourths full of furniture, boxes and plain old stuff.
“What I need is in the attic,” he repeated from his grandmother’s note. “Couldn’t you give me something a little more vague?” he asked sarcastically.
A loud, roaring clap of thunder rattled the side of the house, and Dax knew this thunder didn’t come from a storm. It hadn’t rained in days, nor was it supposed to.
“Fine,” he said, grinning in spite of his predicament. “I appreciate your help, Grandma Adeline, but really, don’t you think it might be a bit difficult for me to figure out what it is I’m looking for?”
Another booming clap of thunder, louder than the first, provided his answer.
Dax scrubbed a hand down his face, remembered the golden-haired beauty that was worth whatever it took to bring her back for good and uncovered the closest piece of furniture, a tall highboy dresser. He opened each of the drawers, slid his hand inside to check for contents and found none.
What was he looking for, anyway?
“One down. A thousand to go.”
He moved to a box nearby, rummaged through its contents and found a variety of antique kitchenware. Old-fashioned sifters, potato mashers and even aluminum Jell-O molds were stuffed inside. He moved to another box filled with crocheted doilies of various shapes and sizes, which brought back an early memory of his grandmother, crocheting in the Bentwood rocker in her sitting room. He dropped the doilies back in the box, then sat on the dusty floor and surveyed the eternity of furniture and boxes surrounding him. Wasn’t that just his luck? He was the descendant of packrats, and finding whatever he was looking for in two centuries’ worth of their accumulation could very well take him longer than he had, longer than Celeste had.
Kitchen gadgets and doilies. Dax couldn’t imagine how any of those items were supposed to help him get Celeste back. Narrowing his search was necessary, but he had to determine how. Boxes were scattered sporadically throughout the room, some sitting solo, others stacked up four high. It’d take longer to go through them than the furniture, particularly if every box was packed with dreegailles, the Cajuns’ popular term for junk.
Then again, one man’s junk was another man’s treasure. And his treasure, the answer to bringing Celeste back, was somewhere in this attic. He decided the best plan of action was to actually have a plan. There were way more boxes than pieces of furniture, so he decided to tackle the job according to ratio. He guessed three boxes for every one piece of furniture, so since he was already two boxes down, he grabbed another, and prepared for a long night.
After thirty minutes, he’d been through nine boxes mostly filled with ancient knickknacks and three pieces of empty furniture. So far, he’d discovered nothing that looked remotely useful. In fact, he hadn’t found the first thing that even suggested his ancestors had ghosts visiting the plantation at all, which wasn’t that odd, since the family did its best to protect their secret. But his grandmother had indicated that what he needed was here, and since what he needed would certainly have something to do with ghosts, he knew he simply hadn’t found it yet. Whatever it was.
Closing up a box filled with antique dolls, he scanned the remaining pieces of furniture to decide which one to tackle next. One plastic-covered piece was taller than the rest, and seemed to sit away from the others. Maybe that was why it seemed to capture Dax’s attention.
In any case, he stood slowly, his back slightly stiff from sitting on the floor, and then crossed the room. His skin bristled as he neared the tall piece. This was it; whether Adeline Vicknair was somehow leading him in this direction, or he simply sensed that he’d found what he was looking for, Dax had no doubt. Whatever was hidden under the heavy gray plastic was going to help him bring Celeste back.
Grabbing one side of the tarp, he pulled it to the floor and viewed an antique oak chifforobe. A tall door formed the right side of the well-sculpted piece, and five drawers formed the left. He opened the top drawer and found it packed with papers and cards. He held the top one up to the light and saw a greeting card, so faded and yellowed from the test of time that the image on the front wasn’t discernible, but when Dax opened it, the writing inside was intact.
Humbly and forever yours, John-Paul.
“John-Paul,” Dax repeated. John-Paul Vicknair. He could see the name, not only on the card in front of him, but also on a paper he’d recently viewed. One of the Vicknair ancestry logs at the parish courthouse, he believed. Nanette had copied the handwritten parish records from the Civil War years in the hopes of finding someone living in the house at the time, and naturally she’d asked Dax to help her. John-Paul Vicknair had been one of the names from back then, from 1861 to 1865, which meant that the card Dax was holding was well over a hundred years old. He lifted several more cards and letters from the drawer, and found that all of them were either to or from John-Paul Vicknair, and that the other correspondent was his wife, Clara.
“Mon dieu, you scared me to death!” Nanette exclaimed, entering the attic.
He squinted at her in the dimness of the room. She squinted back, her eyes puffy and her black hair tousled from sleep. “I’m looking for something,” he said.