Paula Morris (35 page)

"Miss Claudia!" he shouted, lowering his head to peer
in.

"Can you see them? Can you hear them?" Rebecca was
almost hysterical. The usually quiet neighborhood was roaring with noise now,
flashing with police lights and sirens, unnaturally lit up by the burning
Bowman mansion.

"No," Anton told her, reaching in to fumble for the
window latch. "How do I get this thing open?"

He answered his own question by wildly smashing another pane.

"Be careful." He pushed up the window sash and helped
Rebecca climb in. "There's glass everywhere."

"Oh my god!" Rebecca crunched across the room, making
her way to the hallway. Lights were on there, but the

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kitchen was empty, everything exactly where they left it earlier
in the day. Anton opened each of the bedroom doors in turn.

"I can't see anyone," he called. "Have you looked
... what?"

The splintering sound of exploding glass in the distance made them
both jump. The front door rattled, as though it was giving way, being forced
open.

"Rebecca!" It was her father, roaring for her. "Are
you in here?"

"Yes!" She threw herself into the hallway. Her father
stood just inside the front door, his face bruised and scratched, Aunt Claudia
pressing in behind him.

"She's here, Paul," her aunt said. "I knew she'd be
here."

"Thank god you're all right," he said, and Rebecca
hurtled into his arms, burying her face in his heavy coat. "It's all over,
honey. It's all over."

She could hear Anton's footsteps, slowly thudding up the hallway.

"Thank you, Anton," said Aunt Claudia. "Thanks for
bringing Rebecca home."

"The Bowmans' house," Anton said, his voice cracking
with emotion. Rebecca lifted her head to look at him. He was wiping at his face
with the back of his hand. "Is it ... is it too late?"

They moved onto the front porch in a dark clump, Rebecca still
clinging to her father. The night sky glowed a burnished orange. Rebecca's eyes
stung with smoke and tears and ash, and she couldn't trust herself to speak at
all. In the distance, flames danced from the roof of the Bowman mansion,

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shooting into the sky. Anton gripped the railing, staring out at
the fire. Marilyn the cat scooted up the stairs, weaving around Anton's legs
and rubbing up against the post.

"Mama!" A breathless Aurelia was running toward them,
thundering down the sidewalk. She stopped at the other side of the gate,
beckoning wildly. "We've been out watching the fire! You can see much more
up on Prytania -- come on!"

"We'll stay right here, thank you," Aunt Claudia said
firmly. "And I think you should come up here as well, out of harm's
way."

"But, Mama," Aurelia pleaded. "It's fine up there,
really. Claire's parents are there and everything. It's like ... it's like Rome
is burning! The barbarians are at the gates!"

Rebecca rested her head on her father's shoulder, and they stood
there together, in silence, watching Rome burn.

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EPILOGUE

On a sunny Saturday in mid-May, two teenagers made their way into
Lafayette Cemetery. One was a seventeen-year-old girl, tall and dark, carrying
a simple wreath of pungent olive leaves. The boy was even taller, his hair
brushing his collar, his fingers paint-stained and cut. The school year was
over, and they'd spent the last week working on a house in Tremé. It was an old
Creole cottage, one of the oldest homes in the city of New Orleans. With the
help of a local charity, and a group of enthusiastic volunteers from their
schools, they'd managed to gut the house, clear out all the rubble from its
collapsing roof, and give the exterior a fresh coat of pale blue. Work on its
renovation would continue throughout the summer, even after the girl returned
to her hometown, New York City.

In Lafayette Cemetery, its calm ruffled by the usual Saturday
morning tour groups, the stone angel still lay in broken pieces at the foot of
the Bowman tomb. One of the tour guides steered her group of half drunk
convention-goers past that particular alleyway, lamenting the grave's recent
state of disrepair. She pointed to the blackened ruins of the Bowman mansion
and told them how the famous curse on the house had finally come true. A
terrible and mysterious fire had taken place there, the night of the Septimus

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parade -- terrible because it had destroyed one of the finest
houses in the Garden District, and mysterious because the fire department
seemed to have no idea at all how it started.

The boy and girl waited until the tour group drifted away before
walking up to the Bowman tomb, carefully picking their way around the stone
shards littering its steps. The girl reached forward, leaning the wreath
against the door.

"Good-bye," she said, and took a step back. The boy
reached for her hand, and they stood for a moment in silence among the broken
wings and shattered torch of the toppled angel, reading the name recently
carved into the marble sealing the vault's door.

lisette villieux bowman 1836-1853

One of the city's oldest curses had ended. At long last, one of
the thousands of ghosts of New Orleans was resting in peace.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to Richard Abate at Endeavor, Aimee Friedman and
the team at Scholastic, and two excellent readers -- my husband, Tom Moody, and
my niece, Rebecca Hill, who helped me so much with this story.

Readers interested in learning more about the rich and complex
history of New Orleans might want to start with Ned Sublette's
The World
That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square.
And anyone keen
to help rebuild and renew this unique American city should visit
www.makeitrightnola.org or www.habitat-nola.org.