A Twisted Ladder (26 page)

“You have much work. I will send someone to assist you.”

“What?” The proclamation startled Madeleine in more ways than one. “No, Chloe, do
not
send anyone over to help. It’s late and we’re done for today anyway. And certainly don’t ever send Zenon Lansky over again.”

Chloe eyed Madeleine. “He is able. A better match for you than you might think.”

Madeleine gaped. For one nerve-sparking moment, the memory of being ensnared by Zenon flashed through her mind.

“Out of the question, Chloe. If you deliberately sent him to the flower shop in some kind of matchmaker attempt the other night, that was a mistake. I don’t want him near me. So don’t send him my way, not now and not ever.”

BAYOU BLACK, 2009

A
FTER EVERYONE LEFT, MADELEINE
and her father continued to work until the daylight hours faded to night. Marc, Chloe, Zenon, Ethan, Daddy—they all haunted Madeleine’s heart with their own sweetness or sting, or both. But the physical labor helped scrub her thoughts. Madeleine let herself go to what she now thought of as the fascinations; everything around her beamed with a strange kind of life force. The wood floor seemed to respond to her care the way resurrection moss blooms to life after a rainstorm. Even the house seemed kinder, tidy and comfortable and clean, the way she’d remembered it growing up.

Madeleine retrieved Marc’s cell phone, now fully charged, and powered it up. She looked into the “recent call” log and found her own phone number. The last person he’d called before he died. She scrolled through the menu options and opened the photo app. Two pictures in there: One of Daddy and Madeleine on the porch swing, and the other, to her surprise, was a picture of Marc smiling, his arm around an old friend from school. Madeleine tried to recall her name. Millie? Lily? She peered at the image, the girl’s sharp chin and bright eyes smiling next to Marc. About ten years older than the last time Madeleine had seen her, and a few pounds plumper. Emily. Emily Hammond. Madeleine remembered now. And she even remembered Marc mentioning her. But Emily had moved to Nova Scotia. She probably came back to visit family from time to time—her parents lived not too far away in Houma. Madeleine wondered if she and Marc had gone on a date or something.

She turned off Marc’s cell phone and slipped it into her bag. She thought about checking in on the Hammonds, and then thought of Chloe, of how she’d said she’d been in the old house and had found nothing new. Chloe would have been wading through all those papers and photographs. She probably never powered up Marc’s cell phone, nor did she likely know anything about Emily Hammond.

“Look at this,” Daddy said.

He was standing at the closet by the front door. Inside, one of the walls was gaping, with very old lengths of wire running along the studs.

“Marc was going to update the wiring,” Madeleine said.

“It’d have been the first time since the old place was built. Look, it’s the old knob and tube.”

Madeleine knew nothing about knob and tube wiring. Marc was the electrician of the family. She looked at the black, rubbery-looking ropes that crumbled out when Daddy brushed them with his thumb.

She grabbed his arm. “Don’t do that! You could get shocked.”

“If we wind up selling this place, we’ll have to disclose that it’s got old wiring. Funny Marc never got around to updating it.”

“I guess it’s like the cobbler with no shoes. He was the electrician with ancient wiring.”

Madeleine looked around the little house with satisfaction. They’d completed most of the sorting, and tomorrow’s tasks would demand less emotional energy and more of the physical, things like cleaning and moving.
Praise be!

She and her father rewarded themselves by sitting out on the porch swing eating buttermilk biscuits and fried chicken from Thibby’s, though Madeleine could do little more than pick. Now that her physical labor had subsided, she had Ethan on her mind. The more time that passed since their conversation, the more empty she felt. He’d become a significant part of her life without her truly realizing. And his talk of future and children—Madeleine rarely dared to think of such things. Pretty little family units in pretty little houses were the stuff of dreamscapes. Something for normal, privileged people.

The sky was flooded with stars, the scent of elderberry greens enriched the humid night air, and the nocturnal beasts of the bayou sang lullabies.

“You doin all right, kitten?” Daddy said.

“Sure. I’m fine.”

He sighed, listening to the night sounds. “Got everything under control, don’t you.” He regarded her. “Sometimes I wonder what you’d do with yourself if you didn’t have us driving you crazy.” He paused. “Well, me driving you crazy.”

She shook her head. “Stop it. You know I love you.”

“Ever put a star to sleep?”

“To sleep? What do you mean?”

“You turn’m off, like turning out the lights.”

“I remember this game when we were really little.” She recalled Marc mentioning this to her on the phone.

He pointed a chicken bone toward the sky, then wiped his hands. “Pick a star. Any one of them up there.”

She smiled up at the heavens and selected a single pinpoint of light.

“Now.” He leaned back, chin tilted upward. “Focus on just that one. Keep your eyes on it. Now tell it to go to sleep.”

She gazed at her star, speaking to it in her mind, telling it that it was time to rest.

Sleep for now, little star. You’ve done your job
.

The pinpoint burned a moment longer, and as Madeleine watched, it glimmered and winked, then disappeared.

Immediately, Madeleine’s mind churned out explanations: an atmospheric waver, heat gas, a distant cloud.

But then she decided to let it go, and let her mental log state that she did indeed put a star to sleep.

She laid her head on her father’s shoulder, glad that she had taken that sabbatical, and not just because of the research. A cool breeze stirred from the bayou, and Daddy closed his warm hand over hers.

Despite what had happened, despite the circumstances and a lingering thread of sadness, Madeleine knew of no better place at this moment than sitting on the porch swing of Bayou Black with her father. After all, this was her childhood home.

DADDY GOT HIS WAY.
And Madeleine got her way. After spending the morning sorting and packing things that had survived yesterday’s culling, Madeleine mollified her father by hiring someone to do the rest of the cleaning. But in exchange, she talked him into driving out to Hahnville with her so they could find the old plantation house. He’d been reluctant, but when Madeleine mentioned that Chloe had warned her to stay away from the place, Daddy grew indignant and suddenly insisted they go.

A continuous earthen levee ran high along the north side of the road, blocking any view of the Mississippi River. Most of the houses they passed were old and modest. Natural gas companies owned a good share of the land here, and sprawling industrial plants replaced the plantations that once stood along River Road. They drove under bundles of large pipes that stretched overhead, connecting to the great river beyond.

Though the old plat map hailed from the 1850s, she was confident it would provide enough clues to help them find the Terrefleurs site. The curves of River Road and the Mississippi were the same now as they had been a hundred and fifty years ago. Madeleine kept an eye out for a distinct stretch of high ground above a bend in the river.

Daddy pointed out Esperanza Plantation as they passed, still intact though not open to the public. Some, like Oak Alley and Evergreen Plantations, had been fully restored to their original grandeur. The chances of Terrefleurs having survived the years were slim, and even if it had, it would be in someone else’s possession. But she couldn’t wait to see it.

The river turned, and the road along with it, and Madeleine’s gaze swept toward a swelling of land just beyond the bend. A flash of an old rooftop between thick branches covered with kudzu. The building was almost completely obscured by thick screens of bramble and oaks and magnolia and the climbing vines. But she did see that flash of roof on the high ground, and she was certain she’d found Terrefleurs.

HAHNVILLE, 1912

T
HE WHISKEY HAD SPUN
cobwebs through Rémi’s head, but he found himself unable to sleep. A pervasive sensation that the fiend Ulysses was in his room. That he’d settled into the fibers of Terrefleurs, tainting the very bousillage of clay and moss that insulated the cypress walls. Or even deeper. Deeper than that. Ulysses had invaded more than Terrefleurs; he’d somehow invaded Rémi. He’d continued to appear at random since that first moment by the well. Rémi sat up and looked around, but he was alone.

When he rolled over on his belly, something crackled beneath him in the bed. He lit the lamp and pulled back the bedding. There, tucked within the Spanish moss stuffing of his mattress, lay a bundle of bone, feathers, and herbs tied with twine. A gris-gris.