Sweet Unrest (13 page)

Seventeen

After Mama Legba’s purple van turned out of the gate, I headed back toward the pond. I was tired of going in circles. I was sick of evasive answers.

“Alex!” I shouted when I reached the clearing. My voice seemed to be eaten up by the stillness. “Alexandre Jourdain,” I called again, taking a leap. “I know you’re here somewhere. I want to talk to you.”

I waited in the stillness of the mid-morning heat. The trees rustled faintly in some undetectable breeze, and then, just when I thought he wouldn’t appear, he emerged from the edge of the treeline beyond, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders slumped against the day.

I took a few steps toward him, trying to hide my fear by putting every ounce of frustration I felt into the fire in my eyes. But the fire couldn’t hold.
There you are
, I thought, wanting to reach for him. To hold on to him this time. But I pushed my feelings—Armantine’s feelings—away.

Alex, at least, had the grace to look doubtful. That’s when I realized he also looked tired. He seemed thinner, and dark smudges lay beneath his eyes. Something was wrong.

“What
are
you?” I asked before I lost my nerve.

He ignored my question. “That woman is not your friend.” His voice was suddenly cold. “You should stay far from her kind, Lucy.”

“Let’s get one thing straight,
Alex
. I will do what I want, when I want to do it. If I want to go run around and chant Voodoo songs at the top of my lungs, naked under a full moon, you won’t have a thing to say about it. Got it?”

A ghost of a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Naked?”

I huffed out a sigh in exasperation. “You know what I mean.”

“I understand. But I also know you are new here and you may not exactly understand how dangerous a woman like that can be.”

“Just like I don’t know exactly how dangerous
you
might be?”

“You would think that of me?” He looked genuinely surprised.

“I don’t know
what
to think of you! That’s the whole point.” I huffed out an exasperated breath. “You’re here and then you’re not. You tell me half-truths and keep secrets. Sometimes I think you’re a figment of my imagination. Sometimes I think you’re something … else,” I finished softly, finally giving voice to my greatest fear about him. “What
are
you, Alex?”

He studied me, but didn’t speak.

“Please. Just tell me.”

“You could ask me that?” He sounded frustrated, angry … hurt?

“Why wouldn’t I ask you that?”

“How can you possibly be so blind?” His voice was tired and brittle, an edge of anger cutting through it.

My head jerked up at his words. “Blind?”

“You look through your little camera and draw out the life in everything around you, and yet you cannot see what is right in front of you. What you already
know
.”

His words infuriated me. “Then maybe I should look at
you
through my lee-tle camera,” I snapped, mimicking the cadence of his voice.

“Maybe you should.” His tone was flat. Cold. “Look at me now and see me. Stop ignoring what you know to be true. Finally, Lucy, see
me
.”

I hesitated, but eventually raised the camera and focused. He had a look that was somewhere between anger and lust, contempt and admiration, or maybe it was all of those things together. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

The shutter release snapped, a satisfying
click
that ob-scured Alex’s face for a moment as the viewfinder went black. I lowered the camera and, avoiding his eyes, took my time as I focused on advancing the film.

When I looked up, he was gone. But the coldness of his voice when he’d said I was blind—that still echoed clearly in my mind.

Eighteen

Developing film by hand is a tedious, delicate process. Usually I found it soothing, but after that strange meeting with Alex, I cursed my broken digital camera and all the time it would take to develop his picture. Somewhere on the roll of film, though, were answers.

My parents had given me the bedroom with the large walk-in closet, which they’d converted into a makeshift darkroom—their attempt to keep me happy over the summer. At first I’d been irritated at their obvious bribe, but that day, I was glad they’d done it.

It’s an expensive hobby, but there’s just something about working that way. In a darkroom, time is measured in short bursts, and after a while it’s hard to even tell if it’s night or day. The whole process requires intense concentration—focusing on a single objective and measuring time carefully, so that the mix of chemicals and light transform a bit of paper into an image. Like alchemy. Or magic.

Usually, I loved the whole process, but that day, I wished it went a little faster. When I was sure that everything was in place, I switched on the red safety light and plunged the closet room into darkness. After making the proof sheet, I looked for the picture I’d taken of Alex. Then I looked again, not sure of what I was seeing. The silence that had seemed calming just minutes before now seemed oppressive.

My hands shook as I put the active photo paper into place, and I took an unsteady breath as I clicked on the enlarger and listened to the drum of my own heartbeat as the print was exposed. Endless seconds ticked by before the light clicked off and I could put the paper into the chemicals that would develop it. Endless seconds more before an image swam up from the submersed page.

And then I had it. Just as I knew it would be, the photo I’d taken of Alex was almost nothing but a wide arch of almost pure light, as though the sun itself had come out of the clouds the instant I’d taken the shot and overexposed it. But I knew that wasn’t what happened.

I clipped the still-wet image up to dry and then sank to the floor. Not a trick of the light, I knew, as I looked up at that bright sweep of light hanging on the line above. I was too good to make a mistake that big.

I thought of the picture I’d taken of him that first day by the pond, the one where he was a blur heading into the woods. But that wasn’t why the blur of light seemed so familiar to me, I realized. No, the blur of brightness was the same as the one I’d seen countless times in that framed picture on my parents’ bureau—the one of a happy young couple flanked by the major players from the War Between the States. The one I’d always thought had captured a ghost.

I hadn’t wanted to believe it. Even with the dreams of Armantine, even with the daguerreotype in Thisbe’s cabin and the letters carved into the tree, I hadn’t wanted to see what was right in front of me. But in that moment, I knew Alex was right. In that moment, I knew I couldn’t deny what he was any longer.

I stared at the picture that should have shown me the face of a man, but instead showed me nothing but light. The picture of a ghost.

I don’t know how long I sat like that, staring up at the page, before I moved again. But I had to do something—I was strung too tight to just sit there—and photography is the one thing I really know how to do. So I picked a few other shots I’d taken that morning—the close-ups of the voodoo doll’s carvings—and worked on developing some of those.

But seeing the carvings reminded me too much of Lila, and too much of the rumors I’d heard about how Emaline had died. So I set the finished images to dry and turned to something easier, selecting a couple of shots of T.J. I thought my parents would like. It took me a while to get the exposure time just right, and then I worked a little more on hand-burning some depth into the shots. I focused everything on those images of my brother to keep myself from thinking about that other image—the image that should have held Alex.

Finally, the picture I wanted emerged from the liquid bath—T.J. on the banks of the shimmering Mississippi holding up a crawfish as proud as any professional angler. Mud streaked his face and hands, and his smile competed with the brightness of the sun as it lit up the entire picture.

I stretched out, rubbing the kinks that had developed in my neck from bending over the enlarger and chemical-filled trays, satisfied and feeling a little better. I could keep this feeling as long as I didn’t look at that other picture. As long as I didn’t let my thoughts go in that direction.

“Lucy?” My mom knocked on the door. When I didn’t answer right away, she knocked again. “I’m sorry to bother you, honey, but Chloe’s here to see you.”

I jolted a bit at hearing Chloe’s name. “Uh … I’ll be right out,” I called through the closed door. I needed a few more seconds to myself. “Can you send her back here?”

I wiped my clammy hands against my heavy apron as I took down the picture that should have been of Alex and tucked it beneath the notebook where I kept track of the photos I developed.

“Lucy?” Chloe’s voice replaced my mom’s outside the door, and another knock confirmed her arrival. “Hey, Luce,” she said when I opened the door. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. There was still something empty in them, something broken that time hadn’t fixed yet.

“Hey,” I said, accepting her awkward hug. “How’ve you been?”

She shrugged. “I’ve been better.” Her voice was flat, lifeless.

“Well, I’m glad to see you,” I told her honestly.

She was looking beyond me, into the darkroom at the pictures hanging from the hooks to dry. “Those are yours?”

“Yeah.” I was still shaky, still needing time to settle down.

She turned back to me. “I came to see if maybe you wanted to go into the city and grab dinner with me or something.”

“Sure. Let me clean up a bit first?”

“Take your time,” she told me.

“It should just take me a few minutes to wash up. You can wait here if you want. Or in the living room. Whichever.”

“I’ll wait here,” she said, looking at the newly developed prints again. “Those are really good.” She pointed to the shots I’d taken of T.J.

“Thanks. I thought they’d make a good anniversary gift for my parents.”

Chloe nodded. “They’ll love it.” The words were right, but her voice was all wrong.

“I’ll be right back,” I told her. “Make yourself at home.”

I left her there and went to the hall bathroom, locking the door behind me. My dark reddish curls were sticking out all over from the messy bun I’d twisted my hair into earlier. I focused on fixing that. I
could
fix that. A little cream, a hair pin here and there, and I could tame it into something I’d want people to see. Eventually I looked presentable. A new shirt and I’d be ready to go. On the surface, at least.

Underneath, I was still thinking about that picture. And shaking like a leaf.

Nineteen

I
couldn’t get over how much Chloe had changed. As we drove into the city, she was uncharacteristically quiet. Her face was stiff and closed off, like she was on a mission and determined to be successful at it. I’d once thought we had the beginnings of a close friendship going, so if I could help her deal with Emaline’s death by being there for her, even in an uncomfortable silence, I was happy to do it.

But the evening didn’t go much better once we got to the Quarter. We ate at a little place on the corner of St. Louis and Chartres Street. After we ordered, the silence between us resumed.

“Soooo,” I said, trying to think of something to talk about. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to you much lately.”

“It’s been busy,” she told me. I waited, but she didn’t elaborate any further.

Even Chloe’s eyes seemed dimmer. Her skin looked sallow, and she had yet to flash the smile that I’d come to identify as pure Chloe. I tried again, hoping to brighten her mood.

“Mama Legba came out to Le Ciel the other day to help us with Thisbe’s place,” I said. “She did some sort of cleansing ritual or something. She asked about you.”

Chloe’s eyes were no longer flat, but instead of brightening, as I’d hoped they would, they flashed with anger. “That so?”

“Yeah,” I continued, not knowing what it was I’d said to offend her. “I thought maybe since we’re around the corner you might want to stop by and see her. Oh yeah.” I reached into my bag. “She wanted me to give you this.” I set the Gris-Gris on the table between us.

Chloe made a hissing sound. But then she composed herself, relaxing each muscle of her face one by one. The effect was downright creepy. “I don’t want it,” she told me. “My momma doesn’t think it’s a good idea for me to see her any more.”

“She doesn’t think that Mama Legba had something to with Emaline’s death, does she?” I asked. After developing those pictures of the Voodoo doll, I’d wondered if Thisbe was connected somehow to Lila’s death—and whether Lila’s death had anything to do with Emaline’s. I’d just developed a picture of one ghost—it didn’t seem too much of a stretch to think there could be another. But I knew for sure Mama Legba was no ghost.

“She says Mama Legba is trouble, and she’s right,” Chloe said. “I should have listened to my mother to start with and stayed away. Maybe then Emaline would be alive right now.”

“Chloe.” I reached out to lay my hand over hers, but she pulled it away. “You know it’s not your fault, right? You’re not responsible for her death. You can’t always stop bad things from happening, no matter how safe you try to be.”

She looked at me with barely veiled contempt. “How would you know? You been snooping around looking for evil, maybe? Trying to stop bad things from happening? Sticking your white Yankee nose where it don’t have no business being?”

I blinked. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your trying, Lucy. I certainly don’t need your help.”

“Fine,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “I just thought maybe you needed a friend. I’m sorry if I over-stepped.”

“I don’t think I’m very hungry any more. Maybe I should take you back.”

“Maybe you should,” I said slowly, not understanding the abruptness of her moods.

We left without eating, and she drove me back to Le Ciel in complete silence. If she had been anything like the old Chloe, I might have tried to tell her about Alex, about the strange pictures and even stranger dreams. But this Chloe had a wall of ice built up around her, so I kept my worries to myself. When we got back to my parents’ cottage she didn’t bother turning off the car. I didn’t offer to have her come in.

“It was good seeing you again,” I told her. I meant it. Whatever was wrong, I’d missed her.

“Same goes,” she said, but she didn’t look at me when she said it.

I went to shut the door, but she called out to me.

“Yeah?”

“I just want to say that you should be careful,” she said, her voice low and conspiratorial. “Emaline’s killer hasn’t been caught yet. She didn’t die easy, you know. Throat cut. Arms and chest all sliced up.”

I’d heard the rumors, like everyone else, but Chloe sounded so sure. “Did her parents tell you that?” I asked.

She didn’t really answer my question. “They brought that woman in and questioned her,” she said instead. “Like she was gonna tell them anything about it.” She snorted her disgust.

“You talked to Mama Legba?” I pressed, trying to figure out how Chloe had gotten her information.

“Why would I do that?” She turned away, focusing on the drive ahead of her. “Anyway, you be careful. I’d hate to see you end up like her.”

Her words sent a chill through me, even though she’d softened her voice. She reached over and pulled the door shut.

I’d barely backed away before the tires spun and her car shot down the long drive. Mounting the steps to our house, I watched as it passed through the heavy gates and disappeared onto the main road.