St. Charles at Dusk: The House of Crimson and Clover Series Prequel Read online

  I could not believe she was there.

  She had on a long black mourning cloak, so typical of a distinguished Southern woman; the hood engulfing all but a few rebel strands of her long, thick red hair. Her eyes, two cobalt orbs staring back at me from under the cloak, seemed to glow.

  “Oz.”

  Her voice was soft and inviting. What compelled me was not what was left of my love for her, if any even existed, but the need to believe I was wrong; that I had loved Janie. After spending a few moments with her I would realize it was my own fears that held me back, not a lack of love for my wife. And if I was wrong… well, I could do Janie no greater justice than my own misery. I would not fall into this girl’s arms, but I would walk away this time done with the charade forever.

  In bringing closure to both chapters of my life, I could enter the next one alone, with Naomi. The timing was not ideal, but then, timing never was.

  It was my first moment of clarity since Janie died.

  She pulled off her cloak, carelessly tossing it across the back of my sitting room leather sofa. Neurotically, I was one step behind her, wiping the raindrops off of the couch and hanging her cover on the oak coat rack, where it belonged.

  “Some things never change,” she whispered, under her breath, voicing my own thoughts.

  When she didn’t wipe her feet, or make any indication of removing the muddy shoes, I politely asked her to do just that and ignored the eye roll she sent in my direction.

  On the ride over to the house I owned in the Garden District, neither one of us said a word. She stared out the passenger window; I stared straight ahead. My thoughts were a slideshow of the past few days, every scene playing out in Technicolor, slightly surreal but happening to an outsider, not me. I could not guess at her thoughts.

  I placed a call to my father, letting him know I needed some time to tend to my thoughts and I would be over in the morning. He sounded relieved.

  Moving to the kitchen, I went to put on a pot of coffee, but my eyes never left her as I rinsed out the dusty filter, then measured several spoonfuls of the only grounds in the cupboard. They would most likely go out with the trash on Tuesday. Janie was the coffee drinker, not I.

  She flitted from bookshelf to mantel, perusing the archive of photos we took to preserve Janie’s memory. Her interest seemed sincere, yet betrayed no true emotion. She could have been looking at her English professors’ credentials.

  When the doctor delivered the news Janie would not be around to see Naomi grow into a woman, we purchased a top-of-the line camera with all the bells and whistles a lawyer’s income could buy. We took over fifty rolls of film in a three-month period, before she became so sick she didn’t want any more pictures taken. The house was currently a shrine to Janie. This way, Naomi would never have to look far to see her mother.

  And you can simply torture yourself without really having to address the issue.

  “How do you take it? Black, sugar, cream?” I asked her as the coffee pot chimed, announcing its finish. The purchase of said coffee pot was a departure from my normally frugal spending habits. It was the lesser of two evils with Janie, who’d had an affinity for four dollar lattes. By the time we unpacked it, however, her diagnosis was certain and she gave up coffee altogether. Something compelled me not to return it to the store, or even put it in the pantry for storage. Most likely it had been the sense of finality, as if to say, “Well, you won’t be needing this anymore.”

  My guest smiled. It was a careful expression. “You know how I take it.”

  I suppose I did, but such knowledge was no longer welcome in the front of my mind.

  “It’s been a long time.”

  She turned back around to the mantel and drew her finger over a picture of Janie and I, in Corsica.

  In this particular photo, Janie had run out from the beach, splashing into the warm Mediterranean waters. I had followed her, scooping her up into my recently tanned arms. The water sprayed up and foamed around us. We were both wearing those no-holding-back huge toothy grins; ones that said we were happy as hell. Who were you trying to convince more: her or you?

  She pulled her hand back, but didn’t turn around. “Black,” she said.

  We sat on opposite sides of the couch, coffee in hand, and I waited for her to say something. For a long time, she sat there, drinking and staring in my general direction, not exactly looking at me.

  “I’m sorry I waited until a time like this to come back,” she finally offered.

  She had pulled her hair up into a clip, giving me a full look at her face. Still the same high cheekbones set behind round baby cheeks, and almond-shaped eyes.

  I hadn’t expected her to change though, had I?

  “Why? Why are you sorry?” I asked her. With a twinge of unease, I wondered if I had misjudged her intentions. And what of my own? To close a door so a new one could open? Perhaps my own grief and awkwardness had blinded my better judgment. No, not perhaps… probably.

  Bitten with cynicism from a long and taxing day, I added, “I didn’t bring you here so we could reminisce about our… colorful history.”

  She set her coffee on the glass table and looked down at her hands, now fidgeting in her lap. She had always done that when she was nervous or cornered. Was she going to bring up the past, or was she simply getting the long-overdue apology out of the way, before moving on to me and what I was going through? Was she even here because of me?

  It wasn’t fair to be so selfish, but then it wasn’t fair to have lost my wife in such a cruel way. Nothing was fair. I had been rash in my decision to bring her here, to think she would be able to somehow lessen my pain and help me move on. I knew then I didn’t want to talk about the past and I simultaneously realized we were at cross intentions.

  “Please forgive me, that wasn’t where I was aiming. I said I was sorry because I am." Her words were hasty, as though she worried if she didn’t get them out in one stream, they would fade on her tongue.

  “I am sorry that because of what I did, you’re in such a deep despair.”

  What?

  “What would cause you to say such a thing?” I stood up, fuming. The conversation had taken a sharp turn in the wrong direction. For her to come back into my life, on the day I buried my wife, and downplay my marriage as a rebound affair?

  Who did she think she was?

  But isn’t she right?

  “Oz, that isn’t-“

  I thrust my hands out to stop her when she started toward me. The room was spinning, or perhaps it was my head. I realized I hadn’t eaten a single thing all day, but it was too late to do anything about it now. I felt my blood pressure rise, quickly and violently. An overwhelming need to keep Janie, Naomi, and myself on one side of the room, and her on the other, consumed me.

  “The love I had, and still have, for Janie was wonderful and it was real. Out of that love came the most amazing little girl, and I wouldn’t take any of it back for the world. I can’t say the same about you,” I spat at her.

  Fortunately, or unfortunately, my words had the desired reaction. I could see I hurt her. Truly, this only made me feel worse because it was not in my nature to hurt others. The fact I was considering her feelings made me angry at myself. I wanted this day over.

  “I deserved that,” she conceded. “But I didn’t come here to make light of your marriage to Janie. I know you loved her, and I only wanted to say I was sorry things happened the way they did.

  “Oz, I felt like my leaving you caused you nothing but pain. I’m not talking about your marriage; I’m talking about your loss of it. I feel responsible for it. No, I think I am responsible for it.”

  She never was very good at choosing her words carefully. This only stirred up my anger again.

  It was not gradual, what happened next. It was as if I had been drop kicked, slapped crudely across the face, then slammed into a brick wall. The surreal day became painfully lucid.

  Oh my God, I’m finally losing it.

  It was
only partly her fault; mainly she happened to be present when I finally lost my grip. I looked up at the grandfather clock, which belonged to Janie’s ancestors. Her great-grandmother’s oak armoire, in the corner. The Civil War era chandelier in the dining room, passed down from one of her relatives. Janie, Janie, Janie, everything around me lived and breathed her! It was all too much, too fast, and I felt an invisible hand encircle my chest and squeeze.

  Struggling to breathe, my chest further constricted as I tried to inhale.

  A day which had been so complicated was immediately simple. She was a stranger to me now and I wanted her gone.

  Spinning, wavering, the room danced circles around me until I gripped the mantle for balance. My hands slipped and the right hand came in contact with the edge of the marble, drawing blood.

  “Oz? Are you alright?”

  I heard her voice, at least I thought I did, but it was echoed and distant like a faraway train whistle at the end of a tunnel. I had no perception of what was happening to me, no firm grasp on reality, and it happened so fast I didn’t have time to make sense of it.

  Everything started to fade, then blur and come together. I could still hear my guest's voice, but all I could see was Janie. The next thing I remember was looking up at the ceiling from the floor.

  Her mouth was moving, so I knew she was still talking, perhaps screaming. The room continued to spin, taunting me with my dead wife’s life print on everything we owned.

  When I came to, I was lying on my bed, and she was sitting at my side. She had been crying, and despite having taken great pains to repair her make-up, her eyes were bloodshot.

  “What happened?” I asked her, though I remembered every painful moment

  “I don’t know Oz. One minute we were talking, the next you were on the floor, screaming.” Her voice trembled as she placed a cool washcloth on my forehead.

  In her still-puffy eyes I saw a look I instantly recognized and just as quickly regretted seeing. It was a look that stopped time for me when I was twenty-one years old. Gave me butterflies of a roller-coaster caliber. It was a way Janie had never been able to make me feel.

  Now, lying on my bed, I wished more than anything she would stop looking at me like that.

  I wanted Janie back. I wanted to hold her again; I wanted to make love to her. I wanted to talk to her about my clients at the firm, and tell her how my day was, and learn about hers. I wanted her to come with me to the park so we could take Naomi on a picnic. I wanted all the things I hadn’t wanted enough when she was alive.

  But the reality of it was I had eight good months with my wife. Eight. I had the eight months all married couples daydream about years down the road when the honeymoon stage is but a distant memory. Eight months of her giving me everything she had to give and me only meeting her halfway.

  We spent the rest in and out of hospitals, going for chemotherapy, and praying for the cancer to go into remission.

  I could deny it until I was blue in the face, but Janie had really died four months ago, in the doctor’s office, the day we received the news. And though she put on a brave face for me, and for Naomi, inside she had already given up, already thrown in the proverbial towel. She had begun to accept what I refused to until the very end. Part of me wasn’t surprised when the police officer showed up at the door, with Naomi shivering in a blanket, to deliver the news.

  Whether I was willing to face it or not, I knew, with the exception of my daughter, the last year of my life was quickly fading to a whisper. I could not go back and give Janie more of me; could not make the last year of her life more worthwhile. And that, really, is what hurt the most. Regrets and good intentions carry forward. They cannot undo a past wrong.

  True as that may be, your feelings stem more from guilt than love. And that is what hurts the most.

  “I don’t know what made me come here.” My guest was overwhelmed with all she had seen and seemed to realize, for the first time, the impact of her impeccable timing. “I can come back another time and we can talk,” she suggested. I reached out and seized her arm.

  “I don’t want you to leave, Adrienne.”

  “Oz-“

  My eyes pleaded with her not to refuse me, knowing I was acting on irrational feelings, trying to make plans I would come to regret perhaps even more than the last conversation with my wife. Still, I was overcome with such a deep loneliness I knew of no other way to conquer it.

  “You don’t want this,” she whispered, brushing my forehead softly with her hand.

  “I know,” I acknowledged, just as soft, but less convincing. After all, being right was only half of it. Was I going to hell for trying to sleep with this woman on the same day I put my wife into her tomb? Probably. It didn’t matter. Whoever it was I had grown up to be, it was not the person I set out to become.

  I turned from her then and closed my eyes, allowing the tears and exhaustion to lull me into sleep. I pushed the voice of guilt from my head, banishing it so I could get momentary peace. Adrienne made no move to leave, and when I woke up around one the next morning, I found her curled up sideways in the chair beside my bed, sleeping peacefully.

  Not so long ago, at the tender age of twenty-one, I had been ready to make this woman my wife. Instead she chose another life and so I had chosen mine.

  But it was with her my life really began.

  Part One

  “Such being his [Antony’s] temper, the last and crowning mischief that could befall him came in the love of Cleopatra, to awaken and kindle to fury passions that as yet lay still and dormant in his nature, and to stifle and finally corrupt any elements that yet made resistance in him of goodness and a sound judgment. He fell into the snare thus.”

  Antony, Plutarch

  1- Oz

  2 Years Earlier

  Summer 1999

  Oz: 24

  Adrienne: 19

  With a single phone call, my life was turned upside down.

  I had been sitting at my desk for hours, the morning phone call dancing through my thoughts. The summer rains of the yearly monsoon storms were beating down outside our law office, the shallow light illuminating only the paperwork in front of me. The rain appeared like shadows on the windows and I could almost feel the mix of cold and humidity. I’d always adored the storms of New Orleans. Loved watching them from the safety of inside.

  Arriving at Carondelet, off Julia Street, shortly after noon, I made my way up the dark, quiet steps leading to the law office that had been my family’s since 1839. With a casual, practiced toss my car keys landed on my desk, next to my gold-plated nameplate, C.A. Sullivan. Born Colin Austin Sullivan III, I adopted the nickname Oz as a child and it remained with me into adulthood. Very seldom did people call me Colin. My father was the exception.

  I released a guttural, long-held sigh before sinking into my chair. Not in a million years, had I expected the story to turn in this direction. Never saw it coming. Regardless, I had no choice but to deal with it.

  A morning run on my agenda, I had been lacing up my shoes when the call came in. Unknown Number, Louisiana. I highly regarded privacy, so didn’t normally answer any calls I didn’t recognize. However, something told me to answer this one.

  “May I speak with Colin Sullivan?” a very familiar female voice requested.

  Of course, it couldn’t be her, so I responded casually, “Speaking.”

  There was silence for a few moments, and I thought the line had dropped. Then, “Oz, this is Adrienne.”

  Letting go of her was something I'd done because there was no possibility of seeing her again. It was not something I decided with this phone call looming in my future.

  My voice shook. I was completely thrown. “Hello, Adrienne.”

  In the moments before Adrienne revealed her actual reason for calling, I concocted a half-dozen scenarios which would explain her being gone for so long. They included:

  I was calling to tell you I’ve been held captive for three years by a madman.

 
; I’ve been in a coma since the accident in a small hospital.

  I was abducted by aliens.

  And so on. The consistent theme in each was the key and important fact of her being held against her will.

  This ended up being the case. Unfortunately, it didn't matter because she had been suffering from memory loss for the past three years. She didn’t even know who I was.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you,” Adrienne began hesitantly. “I was given your name by someone who said my family was a client of your firm. He said I should call you, specifically, to discuss the details of my estate. I understand you and your firm have been looking for me.” She sounded rehearsed, and very unsure of herself.

  I was having difficulty listening, or concentrating at all. “I... so... I’m sorry, I was taken a bit off guard by your call.” I tried to collect myself. Later, I could reflect on how weird this was, but I needed to focus long enough to get through the call. Self-control was the key to avoiding insanity, according to my father.

  Of all the questions flooding my mind, the coincidence of someone stumbling upon her and giving her my name, after months of searching, seemed the most tangible. The safest question. “Who gave you my number?”

  “I, well, I can’t remember. See, this guy, he, uh, came to Abbeville and, uh…” she was stammering.

  When Adrienne spoke again, she sounded collected. “I really don’t remember his name, but he recognized me from a newspaper and said people had been looking for me. When I told him I had no memory, he made a phone call, found out you were my lawyer, and gave me your name. So, here I am, calling you.”

  Yes, here you are, calling me. Back from the dead, in more ways than you know. Adrienne. Adrienne. Adrienne.

  My head was light, my heart pounding. Was this real?

  “How did you…?” The end of this question was open to interpretation.

  “I don’t exactly know how I got here, to Abbeville,” Adrienne answered, guessing correctly at the larger question looming in my head. “I was in some sort of an accident, three years ago, which I suppose you must already know. But when I woke, there was nothing, except the people in front of me. I was told I nearly drowned in the swamp. The lack of oxygen may have been what triggered me to lose my memory.”