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Haley blinked, wondering if she could be dreaming. “Mama?” she said, in disbelief.
Her mother turned away from the photos and regarded Haley. “Hi baby.” The muscles in her face twitched. Then she patted the bed. “Come sit here with me. Your mama has something she needs to tell you.”
Chapter 33
HALEY SAT ON the edge of the bed and watched her mother take long drags from her cigarette. After a moment, the woman set it into the ashtray and exhaled.
“I’ve never seen you smoke before.”
The woman smiled, and Haley could see that she’d finally brushed her teeth. “C’est la vie, Baby,” she said. That’s life. “You don’t live forever, you know, Hale?”
Wrigley jumped off the bed, and went to the water bowl. She lapped at the water in it, then, sighing, lay down on the floor next to the door, staring at Haley.
Haley returned her attention to her mother. “You’re dressed.”
“Yes, baby. You think I look nice?”
Haley nodded and smiled. “You’re okay now?”
“Yes, baby. Your mama’s more okay than she’s been in a long time because I have something to tell you darlin’. Something beautiful.”
Haley waited, an enormous weight taken off her shoulders. She smiled both on the inside and outside. It was the first time she could remember feeling so at peace since the accident.
“Remember when Nana died? How peaceful her face was when we found her on the kitchen floor?” Her mother asked. “As though she was ready to go? Remember that Haley? You saw Nana’s face, didn’t you?”
Haley nodded. Death had waited impatiently for her grandmother, but it was true. She had looked peaceful when she passed.
“But your daddy, darlin’, God bless his soul. No, he didn’t look peaceful at all. He was tormented, baby, pi
“It’s okay,” Haley murmured, the smile gone. Where could her mother be going with this?
The woman squeezed her eyes shut and let go of Haley’s hands. She picked up her cigarette and inhaled. After she blew the air out, she regarded her. “Hale, baby, I haven’t been able to get his face out of my mind, the way it looked the night he died. Every waking hour, I’ve seen your daddy’s face. And all the tremendous pain he felt.”
Haley’s heart beat so furiously she thought it might stop as she again imagined her father at that moment.
The woman’s eyes brightened and she reached out and took her hands again. She squeezed them hard. “But he’s okay, Hale. He’s with us now, and he’s okay.” Her brown eyes danced as though she were a child. “I saw your daddy, baby. He was sitting right there,” she said, patting the comforter next to where Haley sat. “Just about where you’re sitting. He’s come back to let us know he’s doin’ okay. He’s not hurtin’ anymore.”
Chapter 34
ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT, he set a box of Triscuits and a loaf of bread in the cabinet above the stove, then opened the refrigerator and filled it with deli meats, fruit, and condiments. As he unpacked the rest of the groceries he tried to remember Tiffany’s small face, but the fuzzy memory now did little for him.
But he had kept something to remember her by, and to set him at ease when he was angry with Allie and the rest of the world. He hid it beside the sandwich bag full of hair he’d taken from Kelsey Anderson’s room the night he’d had the close call, the night the beautiful Rachel Anderson opened the door much too quickly.
He hadn’t the time to do anything but scramble beneath the bed, and he’d been very lucky for that. She had stood at the doorway for what seemed like ages, before stepping forward, then crawling into the girl’s bed. She had cried for a while, soft whimpers that tore at his heart. But then came the sounds of her peaceful breathing. She’d fallen asleep, waiting on her unruly daughter.
He thought about all the arguing he’d overheard the next morning when Kelsey climbed back through the window. All the hurtful words Kelsey Anderson had shouted overhead. The threats the beautiful mother screamed back at the girl.
He was forced to lie beneath that bed for some hours, until the last door had banged shut, and everyone had gone. And even then, in the dullness of dusk, he feared being seen fleeing the house.
He now set a package on the counter for Allie. Some nicotine gum. A small peace offering for screaming at her the weekend before. He hated shouting at her. She couldn’t help what she was either.
He ripped open a bag of cat food, poured some into a bowl, then walked out to the front porch and set it on the decaying wood.
“Here kitty kitty,” he cooed. “Kitty kitty?” A moment later, a pair of eyes glowed yellow at the edge of the porch. The sickly animal inched its way to the porch steps, then stopped, not knowing whether or not to trust him.
He looked into the stray’s eyes knowing that it, too, was an orphan. Feeling a pang of sympathy for it, he went back inside and watched it hurry to the bowl.
He slept almost peacefully that night with the wool blanket balled up in the shed, one of the Anderson girl’s thin sheets covering his body, and Tiffany’s gold necklace cradled in the palm of his hand.
Chapter 35
DR. BROUSSARD, THE Landrys’ family physician, sat in the recliner in the living room with a faded fishing hat between his sun-spotted hands.
“She swears up and down that it’s your daddy, cher. And this is by far the best I’ve seen yore mama look in the past year.” He ran a hand against the gray stubble of his cheeks and chin. “I don’t think you girls have a thing to worry about.”
“But her sleeping medication might be making her hallucinate,” Haley insisted. “She doesn’t even believe in ghosts.”
The older man raised an eyebrow. “Maybe she’s never seen the dead until your daddy, dear. It’s not uncommon around these parts for people to see the dead, you know.”
Haley thought about Nana and her many tales about the early Cajuns, farmers and trappers who lived off the land in Nova Scotia. She talked frequently of the ethnic cleansing they’d endured by the British, their land taken away, how they had been separated from their families.
Nana believed that the Cajuns began seeing many ghosts after living and dying during le grand derangement, and that their ghosts followed them as they found their way to Louisiana. Nana had even claimed to see the dead while she sat in her rocking chair on the Landrys’ back porch, facing the dark bayou. But Haley’s mother never had. She always said that Nana only told the stories because she was getting old.
“Do you think it’s possible she could become suicidal?”
“Cher, your mama’s goin’ through a hard time. Do I think she’s going to go off and leave her babies by themselves?” He shook his head. “No. No, I don’t think so. In fact, I think she’s getting much better.”
“Would an antidepressant help?” Haley asked, wondering if a pill could really bathe a mind in calm denial and possibly help her mother.
The man shook his head. “Your mama doesn’t want to get herself mixed up with any dang anti-depressant medications. She’s going to grieve it out, just like she should. It’s not always a bad thing for the mind to feel some pain. And in yore mama’s case, it’s perfectly normal. She lost the love of her life, you know.”