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Rosane set the kitten down. It lapped contentedly at the milk. “She does. Look at her go!”
“Do you like the flavor of maple?” A conspiratorial smile animated Marguerite’s starched face.
It was as if they were trying to outdo each other to gain Rosane’s affection. A smile sneaked up on Christi. Family wanting to fit together, wanting to be liked. There’s no evil in that.
“I love it!” Rosane stroked the kitten as if it were made of glass. “Mom always buys the real thing even though it’s more expensive. It’s much better than that fake syrup stuff.”
“Try this.” Marguerite placed two pieces of toast before Rosane. They oozed with a spread the pale sand of maple sugar. “I think you not have Map-O-Spread at Texas.”
Rosane took a healthy bite and nodded her approval. “This is good. Mom never lets me have sugar stuff for breakfast. Except for pancakes on Sunday sometimes.”
Christi pressed her fingers tighter against her lip to silence her laughter. She’d gone from junk food queen to Mother Earth while she carried Rosane. The transformation had done wonders for her until her parents’ death. Then all the old feelings of rootless-ness returned with a punch, and with them, her stomach troubles. Had Rosane felt deprived? Guilt spiked an unwelcome wave of acid in her gut. Sometimes the creature she’d borne seemed so foreign to her.
Christi shook her head, pasted on her famous all’s-right smile and marched into the kitchen.
“Well, you’re cheerful this morning.” Christi kissed the top of Rosane’s head and ran her fingers through the soft strands of her daughter’s hair.
“Look, Mom! Look what Armand gave me!” Rosane lifted the kitten up for inspection. “Can I keep her? Can I?”
How could she refuse Rosane anything when she looked so happy? “She can be yours while we’re here.”
“Oh, goodie!” Rosane rubbed her nose against the kitten’s. “Did you hear that, Fumée? I get to keep you.” She squeezed the kitten to her chest before turning the creature over on her lap to scratch the soft belly. The kitten nipped at the wiggly fingers, and Rosane giggled at their game.
Christi glanced at Marguerite, then at Armand. The kitchen’s temperature seemed to drop a few degrees. Was it her imagination or had the starched lines and stony expression reappeared on Marguerite’s face?
“You slept well last night?” Smiling at her, Armand pushed away his cup of coffee. His slow gracious charm put her at ease as it had since she’d arrived two days ago.
“Yes, thank you.”
“What can I make you for breakfast?” Marguerite asked in her halting English. Her gaze inspected Christi’s attire and her frown disapproved.
“That’s all right, you don’t have to serve me. I’ll help myself.”
“I do not permit anyone to disturb my kitchen.”
Then the coffee mess Daniel left last night must have tickled her pink this morning. “In that case, I’ll have some tea.” The odor of fresh-brewed coffee permeated the kitchen. Christi longed for a cup, but didn’t think her stomach could handle it this morning.
“Orange Pekoe or menthe?”
“Mint is fine.”
After she put the kettle on, Marguerite turned back to Christi. “What you like to eat?”
“Just toast, please.” Christi didn’t think she could manage anything else and the answer of “nothing” seemed unacceptable, judging from the disapproving scowl Marguerite leveled at her.
“That is all?”
Christi nodded. Acid lapped in her stomach. With a hand, she massaged her stormy stomach. “I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me at the party last night.” She attempted a smile. “Thank you for keeping an eye on Rosane. I appreciate your kindness.”
Marguerite harrumphed and returned to the stove.
Rosane slunk out of her chair to play on the floor with the kitten. She teased Fumée with a lock of her hair and the kitten batted at it with its paws.
Armand pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket, lit it with a monogrammed gold lighter and puffed deeply. A moment later, a rheumy cough rattled in his chest. The stink of the smoke did nothing to improve Christi’s appetite.
“I have a present for you, too.”
“Oh, that’s really not necessary—”
Armand reached behind him to the sideboard and picked up a thick album sheathed in burgundy leather. “I have found the photo album I told you about yesterday.”
“You did!” Christi had never seen a picture of her mother as a child. And her mother had categorically refused to speak of her past. All of Christi’s questions had remained unanswered, brushed aside like pesky fruit flies. As she scooted her chair closer to the table, anticipation warmed her.
A gold L was embossed on the cover. As he turned to the first page, the leather creaked. She wrinkled her nose at the scent of dust and history that rose into the air like fairy powder. He glided the album across the table until it rested between them. She wrapped her feet around the chair’s legs and leaned in for a closer look.
“This is your grandmother, Catherine, and her husband, Henri.” Armand seemed as eager to share the album’s contents as she was to view them. “Henri died young—only a few years after your mother was born. Marguerite and I came to live with Catherine and Caroline soon after when our own parents were killed in a train accident.”
“How awful!”
Although she could not mistake Catherine for Caroline, Christi noticed the strong resemblance between her grandmother and her mother, between her mother and herself. A quick glance at Rosane showed her the resemblance was passed on. Alike, yet so different.
Even the flicker of the imagined woman sitting at the vanity bore a certain likeness to the women in the album’s pages. Had her tired mind invented a distant relative? With a shake of her head, Christi scattered the question and concentrated on Armand’s stories.
“This one,” he said, laughing easily as he pointed to a picture of her mother in a gauzy summer dress and a floppy hat, both soaked and dripping, “was taken after Caro insisted she could row the boat all by herself. She was very bossy even as a ten-year-old. The canoe tipped over as she got in and she fell into the lake.”
Some things didn’t change. Her mother had disguised an iron will with a soft voice. “And you were waiting with a camera?”
“Of course. I showed this photo to all her potential boyfriends. Until she took one of me in a rather ungraceful position after I had fallen while sledding.”
As Armand told her stories of his youth, Marguerite placed a plate of scrambled eggs and ham next to her brother. He ignored it.
A vignette fell before Christi of places and people that were part of her, yet alien—a picnic with Catherine holding a young Caroline on her lap, Armand and Marguerite stood behind them, hamming it up for the camera. Birthday parties. Graduations. Vacations. Family together, sharing, feasting, laughing.
She drank in every detail. Each new glimpse into her mother’s world clicked a missing piece in the puzzle of her past into place. And with each space filled came a growing sense of a form wanting to finish itself.
Daniel was wrong. Armand didn’t want to take anything from her. He wanted to give her what should have been hers all along.
Rosane climbed on Christi’s knee for a while, commenting on the funny outfits in the pictures, but soon returned to the floor with her kitten.
As Armand closed the cover of the album, Christi sighed and sank contentedly against the back of her chair. “Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure.”
Leaving the album before her, he shook out a newspaper and puffed on a fresh cigarette. A moment later, the newspaper convulsed in time to a coughing fit.
Christi fingered the album’s leather, loathe to sever her connection with her missing past.
Armand crumpled the newspaper beside his ignored plate of food. “Has your mother ever told you of the legend of Rose Latulippe?”
“No, she believed fairy tales were too violent for children.”
“Pity.” Armand took out a handkerchief and coughed into it. “It is such an interesting story about a young girl who danced with the devil on Mardi Gras.” He returned the handkerchief to his pocket. “Did you know that legends have a basis in fact?”
“I’ve heard that.” With slow movements of her index finger, Christi traced the gold L on the cover.
“One of your names is Rose, is it not?”
“Y-yes.” Her finger hesitated on the downward curve of the L.
Armand’s gaze drifted to Rosane who tested the kitten’s pouncing skills with a piece of string. “Did you have a strong impulse to name her Rose?”
How could he know such a thing?
“And her father, was he not a handsome stranger?”
She gasped, snapping her finger from the album. “No, of course not.” The quick denial was for Rosane’s benefit.
Christi had woven her memories of Daniel into a mantle of fantasy for her daughter. She’d worn that same fantasy as comfort against the pain his disappearance had caused.
Armand’s eyes twinkled with devilish delight, sending a swell of confusion sweeping through her. He was an old man, one of her only living relatives. He couldn’t possibly want anything but her well-being, could he?
“There’s no need to protect the child.” For once, Armand’s silken voice did nothing to smooth the goose bumps skittering up her arms. Nor did the cup of hot tea Marguerite placed before her. “Rosane is part of the legacy. In time she, too, will take her rightful place.”
“Rightful place? What do you mean? What legacy?”
“All in good time.”
What was happening? Why did Armand’s charm suddenly make her tense? She grabbed the photo album with both hands and hugged it to her chest like armor. She couldn’t have explained the feeling of abandonment that keened through her. Was she in danger? More important, was Rosane? There was no estate, no inheritance, no money other than her pitiful salary. Damn Daniel for planting doubts into her mind.
“Does it give you a thrill to scare people?” Daniel’s frame filled the doorway. His shirt and pants looked slept-in and his hair finger-combed. Her heart lurched at the sight of him. Fear or love? One snowballed right into the other.
Her gaze automatically sprang to her daughter, gauging whether she or Daniel was closer to the child. Then a flush of heat brushed her cheeks at her foolishness. Daniel wouldn’t hurt her. He’d promised.
“Ah, Daniel, it is a bit early for you, is it not?” A crooked smile spread over Armand’s lips that somehow now seemed unnaturally red.
Daniel sat in the empty chair across from Christi. “It’s never too early to deal with the devil.”
Marguerite banged a frying pan onto the stove and snapped on a burner. She jerked open a drawer and with a loud rattle, extricated a whisk. From a low cupboard, she clanked a bowl.
“The devil exists only in legends, dear boy.” Armand looked much too pleased with himself. He turned to her. “Have I scared you, ma chère?”
“Of course not.” Christi shrugged, letting the album slip to her lap, and sipped her tea. She wasn’t sure what she felt about anything at the moment.
“I was merely trying to enrich you with the most famous Mardi Gras legend of the area. You wanted to know of your past. That includes the bad as well as the good, no?”
“Is the legend bad?”
Marguerite dumped the metal bowl in the sink. It rattled against the sides before landing upside down over the drain.
“It is merely a tale to warn young girls there is a price to pay for dancing with the devil.”
Was he trying to warn her to stay away from Daniel? Her gaze jumped from Armand to Daniel and back. Had she become the pawn again? Were they playing for her attention, the way Armand and Marguerite had vied for Rosane’s? The sudden tension between the two men was palpable. Daniel’s long silence didn’t help matters. What was he thinking behind that intense frown?
Rosane tugged at the skirt of Christi’s flannel gown and mouthed, “Who is he?”
“Daniel is a guest,” Armand said, saving Christi from the fluster of her own thoughts. She needed time to sort through all this and was given none.
“Can I watch TV?” Rosane asked, cradling the kitten in her arms.
“For a few minutes. As soon as I get dressed, we’re going to go shopping for some snow pants so you can play with the little girl next door.”
“Okay.”
Armand folded his discarded newspaper. Tucking it under his arm, he rose. “If you will excuse me, I have some business to attend to. You may keep the album. Perhaps this afternoon we can share an apéritif and I will tell you about the time your mother stole Marguerite’s beau and about the hair-pulling match that followed on the church steps. Or maybe you would like to hear about the Christmas we all got the mumps.”
All of it. She wanted to hear all the stories that would bring her closer to her mother. “Will you tell me why she left?”
A twinge of pain pierced his features. He suddenly looked old and vulnerable. Not like the devil at all, but like the shadow of the healthy man he’d once been. “If you wish.”
Daniel had to be wrong. There was no subterfuge. Whatever game existed between them had nothing to do with her. “Thank you.”
Marguerite placed a cup of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs and toast before Daniel, then attacked the sinkful of dishes with enough vigor to dislodge industrial slime.
Christi drained the last of her tea, but couldn’t force herself to eat any more of the toast. As she moved the chair back to get up, it screeched against the linoleum tiles.
Daniel leaned forward across the table and placed a hand over her forearm. His touch, soft as sin and just as seductive, shivered all the way down to the soles of her bare feet. “I have a meeting this morning, but don’t think you can escape me. We need to settle this thing between us.”
Nestling the album in one arm, she rose, uncharacteristically unsure of what she wanted to say. “You promised me a week.”
“Before you make your decision, not before I get you out of here.”
ARMAND SAW the pictures clearly in his mind. The colors were gone, but the contrast of black against white made his memories that much more vivid.
He was eighteen and walking back from a soirée dansante with his cousin Caroline and his sister Marguerite. He’d had a little too much to drink and done too little dancing to wear it off. That was the only reason he could imagine why he’d made such a monumental error.
“Ah, Armand, you were an impulsive fool then, but you have grown since and learned the value of patience. This time, you will allow no mistake.”
Winter’s cold bite and the wine cellar’s peaceful darkness engulfed the small space, but the wine would keep him warm and he didn’t need light to see the past. By the dim glow of the weak sun eking through the dirty square window, he poured himself another glass of red wine and savored half its contents before he allowed the movie in his mind to restart. He reviewed the film of that night long ago, immersed himself in the memories.
Ma belle Caroline.
“Do you know who you are?” he’d asked her as their boots crunched the hard-packed snow on the sidewalk.
“Of course I do. I’m your cousin, Caroline Rose Langelier. I’m not the one who drank too much wine tonight. You are.” She’d laughed at him and hooked her arm through his.
“No, you’re more than that. You’re a direct descendant of Rose Latulippe.”
“Did you hear that, Marguerite?” Caroline called back to her cousin trailing behind them. “I’m a descendant of a lost soul.” Then she teased him with a playful tickle. “Maybe you’re right, Armand. I danced with a lot of devils tonight!”
