Flourish: The Story of Anne Fontaine (A La Famille Lagniappe) Read online

  Flourish: The Story of Anne Fontaine (A La Famille Lagniappe)

  Flourish: The Story of Anne Fontaine (A La Famille Lagniappe)

  Midpoint

  Cradit / FLOURISH / 66

  Copyright © 2013 Sarah M. Cradit

  Cover Design by Sarah M. Cradit

  Editing by Shaner Media Creations

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Novels by Sarah M. Cradit

  The House of Crimson & Clover

  Volume 1: The Illusions of Eventide

  Volume 2: Bound (novella)

  Volume 3: Midnight Dynasty

  Volume 4: Asunder

  Volume 5: Empire of Shadows

  Crimson & Clover Series Prequels

  The Storm and the Darkness

  Shattered (novella)

  La Famille Lagniappes (Character Bonus Novelettes)

  Flourish: The Story of Anne Fontaine

  Shame: The Story of Jonathan St. Andrews

  Crimson & Clover Lagniappes (Bonus Stories)

  St. Charles at Dusk: The Story of Oz and Adrienne

  Fire & Ice: Remy and Fleur Fontaine

  Dark Blessing: The Landry Triplets

  Surrender: The Story of Oz and Anasofiya

  And many more to come…

  For all of the readers who reminded me the Fontaines deserved their own satisfying conclusion

  “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

  - David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

  1- Nicolas

  Strong hands woke Nicolas Deschanel with a jolt. Groaning, he rolled over, carefully cracking one eye enough to focus on Condoleezza, the head housemaid, standing over him. He gathered from the familiar sour expression on her face that she had been there awhile.

  "Whaaa??" he growled, shielding his eyes from the noonday sun streaming through the ancient lace curtains. Condoleezza had a lovely habit of opening the light shades when he slept in; her not-so-passive sign of disapproval that the household head was a lazy louse. Unlike some of the others on staff, Condoleezza was not the least bit afraid of Nicolas. She had been with him since he was still waddling around in diapers.

  "That Sullivan boy is on the line," she advised with a mixture of relief and censure. Nicolas and his friend, Oz Sullivan, were in their thirties now, but Condoleezza still referred to Oz as That Sullivan boy.

  Nicolas groaned as she handed him the phone. On her way out of the room Condoleezza shook her head in a resigned derogatory gesture. Close to the door, she was far enough removed it wasn’t outwardly disrespectful, but carefully timed so Nicolas could clearly see and appreciate her body language.

  Clearing his mouth of sticky morning cotton, he finally managed a semi-coherent, "What's up?"

  "Did I wake you?" Oz asked with feigned sympathy.

  "Before noon, the answer to that question is always yes," Nicolas grumbled.

  "I've got one of those girls on the line. You know the ones..." Oz said, a deliberate tone in his voice.

  Nicolas shot upright, shrugging off the grogginess. He knew exactly the kind of girls Oz was talking about. In fact, he lived for these calls, and it had been far too long since the last. "Go on," he urged.

  "Says she's a sister of Adrienne. It was hard to get a clear story out of her. I think she's a bit unsettled," Oz dropped his voice at the end. Nicolas almost smiled. Typical Oz that he would feel uncomfortable talking about an unbalanced woman.

  "Alright, give me the details." Nicolas, now fully alert, scrambled through his messy mahogany nightstand in search of a pen and paper.

  "Don't be too hard on this one," Oz said with a short, almost guilty, laugh. "She might not be all there."

  "Fuck that," Nicolas countered. "Those are the best ones!"

  Nicolas ended the call, studying the name on the paper: Jane. No last name, but there was a phone number, and an address to a hotel. You'd think a damned lawyer could have at least gotten a last name.

  These calls had been coming in steadily for the past year. Ever since Nicolas' baby sister, Adrienne, had become a local celebrity.

  Several years ago, Nicolas' parents, and three of his four sisters, had died in a Vermillion Parish automobile accident. Adrienne, the youngest, had been in the car but her body was never recovered. For three years she was presumed dead, a victim of the unforgiving swampland.

  She emerged last year in surprisingly good physical health, but with a fragmented memory and one hell of a story.

  Adrienne's miraculous reappearance alone would have been newsworthy, but the fact that she was one of the heirs–along with Nicolas–to the vast Deschanel estate made her story valuable in other ways.

  Reporters came crawling out of the woodwork by the droves. Then, researchers and biographers. Finally, the crazies; people claiming to be a friend, old lover, or someone she promised things to while her memory was fuzzy. One man even came forward with a child he claimed was Adrienne's. The "child" was almost as old as Adrienne, and black as night.

  As the Deschanel attorney, Oz fielded these calls on behalf of Adrienne, who was also now his wife. The usual routine involved Oz sending them a simple cease and desist letter, followed by stronger threats if they persisted. Most, realizing their folly, were content to fade into oblivion.

  One night over drinks, in a creative burst unique to a Deschanel mind fueled with alcohol, an idea dawned on Nicolas. Rather than simply ignore the scammers, it would be far more entertaining to toy with them. And anyone coming at the family with such ill intentions was fair game, right?

  Oz, as usual, tried to talk him out of it. To impart some of the Sullivan good sense. But Nicolas had no room for practicality when there was fun to be had. There was no one as capable of taking a seemingly innocuous situation and turning it into a raving adventure.

  Jane. What a boring, and obviously fake, name. This oughta be fun.

  2- Anne

  Anne Fontaine opened her small, peeling leather valise. The sight of her old clothes–hand-sewn by her mother and radically out of place in the big city–somehow made her decision feel even more real than it had when she purchased her bus ticket to New Orleans. It hadn’t even hit her when the cab turned on to St. Charles Avenue, bringing to life the old mansions, complete with flowery gardens she had only read about from her small bayou home in Abbeville.

  No, it was only now, sitting in her cramped room, faced with this stark juxtaposition of where she had come from against where she currently sat, that the full weight of her decision hit. Warring doubts and fears disoriented her as she stood in the old, musty bed and breakfast on Second. Her stomach lurched, and she staggered, bracing against the long oak bedpost.

  What have I done? Why could I not leave well-enough alone, as my mother had told me?


  "There is some money set aside, for you and Jesse," her mother, Angelique, revealed, several weeks before a lifelong illness finally consumed her. Her words were casual, as if they meant nothing. "Do whatever strikes your fancy."

  Such simple words, shrouded in the promise of her mother's impending demise. Anne had never been told to do whatever "struck her fancy." She had spent so long wanting the things her mother wanted, that she couldn't begin to wrap her mind around the idea of wanting something for herself.

  The decision had been much simpler for her older brother, Jesse. The old, kind doctor had helped with Jesse's college for many years, but his health was failing. Jesse would need money for medical school. His dream had been clear for a very long time; he would not end up like their father, struggling to make ends meet.

  Well, like his father, anyway. Anne had never known her own father. Her mother had seen to that. It was only by accident that Anne learned she had been the result of an adulterous liaison between the simple, country-girl, Angelique Fontaine, and cosmopolitan businessman, Charles Deschanel. Anne grew up using the tender moniker, Daddy, on a man who likely never knew the truth. And if he did, he never treated Anne any different than Jesse.

  Getting to know her real father was a nice and whimsical thought, but an impossible one. Charles Deschanel had died years ago, back before she even knew she was not actually the child of John Fontaine. Back before she knew anything except lazy afternoons reading the same, tattered copy of David Copperfield over and over, nestled between knobby knees of old cypress trees.

  Despite growing up with very little, Anne had wished for almost nothing. Her only, secret, desire was to have a sister she could share things with. Confide in. Imagine the cruelty, then, in finding out not only had her father died, but also three half-sisters. Three women Anne had never had a chance to play with, or bond with, and never would.

  When Adrienne showed up several years ago, half-dead in Jesse’s arms, Anne experienced a surge of hopefulness unlike anything she had ever known. When Adrienne awoke, with no memory of who she was or where she had come from, Anne pushed down the guilt that came with wishing Adrienne could be theirs always, her past forever forgotten.

  It equally warmed Anne’s heart when her beloved brother, Jesse, fell in love with Adrienne. It meant this young, lost girl could be further pulled into the Fontaines’ world. As their futures became intertwined, Anne’s world grew brighter.

  But the whispering threat of Adrienne’s memory loomed over them as time passed, and one day scattered bits and pieces coalesced into tangible reality. Adrienne returned to her other life, leaving Anne, and Jesse, heartbroken.

  In spite of the acute disappointment Anne felt when Adrienne returned to her Deschanel family, she could not blame her for that decision. A beautiful plantation, an expansive set of cousins and aunts and uncles, an attentive lover who had never quite given up on finding her. And wealth, nearly incomprehensible wealth… how could Adrienne’s intended destiny compare to a dreary shack in the bayou?

  When Anne thought about all that had been denied her, all she had been robbed of through lies, she felt a calm, detached sense of acceptance. Her life had been so simple that the revelation she had an entirely separate family with big, fancy lives did not fill her with jealousy, but with sad emptiness. She could not even begin to grasp a life other than her own, and she was not sure she wanted to. Her small world was safe, and it was hers.

  Yet the more Anne gave thought to her mother’s casual encouragement, the more frustration bubbled to the surface. Where was this money when they were growing up, in a rotting shack along the edge of the swampland? Where was it when they walked around in rags washed in bacteria-infested waters? When Jesse almost died from malnutrition? Anne did not crave beautiful dresses or expensive toys. However, she did wish to forget how it felt to wonder where their next meal would come from. Anne's wants had never outweighed her needs, but there were many days, and cold nights, where even her most basic requirements had seemed miles out of reach.

  To think Anne's four sisters had grown up just a couple of hours away, never going without a thing in the world. Her mother had known, and said nothing. Done nothing.

  Thinking of her long-lost family back in New Orleans is how Anne eventually realized the answer to her mother's proposal. "I want to find Adrienne," she told her one evening.

  The elder woman looked formidably commanding, even in her failing state. Her long, trembling bony fingers, yellowed from years of labor, pointed at Anne accusingly. Anne anticipated this admission would not go over well, and she was not sure where her rare courage to say it had come from.

  "That smug little harlot," Angelique Fontaine spat. "Hmph. She walked away from us without even so much as a good'day. Think’of what she did to your poor brother. She ain't worth the ground you're walking on."

  "She is my sister," Anne responded, meekly.

  "That ain't mean a damn thing to her, when she walked away from you. From Jesse." Her mother said the last part as if Adrienne had sinned against God Himself. To Angelique, there probably was little difference.

  Anne said no more. It was not a fear of her mother that made her neatly retreat, but a deep-seated reverence. Anne was not completely naive; she understood quite well how her mother had controlled her. Knowledge changed nothing. Angelique would continue to be the dominating presence in Anne's life, long after she was put to rest in the old Settler’s Cemetery.

  Anne didn't mention it again while her mother took breath. There was no use in explaining Adrienne had never belonged in their world. That the young girl's memory loss was a false economy. Stolen time. Adrienne was back in the world she had grown up in, and that was her right. Once Anne's bruised feelings had recovered, she could even understand it. She might have done the same in Adrienne's shoes.

  But that didn't mean Anne couldn't reach out to her half-sister. Her only sister. Anne didn't have the slightest idea how Adrienne would react to her arrival. Certainly, she had not left on the best of terms, with Angelique spouting vile threats long after the girl had fled. Anne had always wanted to tell Adrienne that she did not see things as her mother did, but she never had the courage. Now that her mother was gone, there would be no possessive arms to hold Anne back from reaching out and forging a bridge, maybe even a bond, with her sister. And Adrienne would no longer have anything to fear, either.

  There was a brother, too. Nicolas. But she would worry about him later. First, she had to work up the nerve to venture into this loud and daunting city to find Adrienne. And until she knew more about what she would be walking into, she would use an assumed name: Jane. Possibly a silly invention, but it was her only security against the unknown.

  Anne lifted a stained white slip dress out of her suitcase, realizing it would not do at all. It would be the first time the two women had seen each other in several years, and Anne did not want Adrienne's first thoughts to be of how unfortunate her clothing was.

  That's not what's bothering me. No, Adrienne was a lot of things, but she was not unkind. She would not make Anne feel like a lesser being for her circumstances. If she knew Adrienne–and she thought she did, although who knew how much of the real Adrienne had been there with them in the bayou–her sister would buy her new things and make her feel welcome. But that wasn't why Anne was here.

  Anne trembled, as her last memories of her mother rushed up suddenly, drowning her thoughts. Angelique, raising hell in that frail little body, the pain growing in Anne's temples with every false word her mother spouted. Then, as her mother's angry yells turned to screams of terror, the pain in Anne's temple subsided, and she was filled with a wash of serenity.

  Peaceful detachment was really the only reasonable reaction as she watched the hospital foliage come to life, weaving and dancing around Anne as if to say, We are yours, Mistress. Did they sense Anne’s rolling anger when they twirled and wove through the windows, and doors, groaning and twisting in the direction of her mother? Anne may not have given the orders
, but she knew they had taken direction from her nonetheless. They had somehow pulled it out of her subconscious, out of the deepest recesses of her heart where a dark, shaming hatred burned.