Aurore found herself sinking deeper into melancholy, and Claire’s death continued to haunt her. Given the choice between discussing her concerns with a priest and consulting an attorney, she chose a stranger named Spencer St. Amant.
On a cloudy morning, she crossed Canal Street near Maison Blanche and climbed two flights of stairs. She arrived early. Spencer was not Gulf Coast’s counsel; nor was he a friend of Henry’s. His name was an old one in New Orleans, but although the St. Amants had mixed in all the correct circles, they had remained on the periphery. Despite their heritage, the St. Amants were suspect, because they sometimes championed unpopular causes.
That reputation for tolerance had brought Aurore to Spencer. She was secure in the knowledge that whatever she told him would not be repeated. Still, as she waited, she paced the short length of the reception area, debating whether she should have come.
She continued that debate when she was sitting across from him. She twisted the beads at her neck as he welcomed her, and she tried to read his character. She guessed he was several years younger than she, and rather shy. He was slight, with hair so dark and skin so white that despite the fact that he was clean-shaven, the slight shadow of a beard was evident. His eyes were a brilliant blue, and they seemed to be assessing her, even as his hesitant smile promised no assessment at all.
“I believe our fathers were acquainted,” he said. “I’m told they competed for your mother’s hand in marriage.”
“Are you aware she died several weeks ago?”
“You have my sympathy.”
“There’s no reason to be sad.” She found herself telling Claire’s story, leaving nothing out. “So you see, she might have done better to have chosen your father,” she concluded.
He sat back, drumming his fingers on his desk. “I don’t envy your childhood.”
“The saddest part is that I didn’t learn anything from it.”
He waited, as if the rest of the day was at her disposal. She was touched by his patience, and heartened. “I’ve made some terrible mistakes,” she began.
Much later, he leaned forward. “What is it you want me to do?”
She felt as if all the pustulant hatred that had swelled inside her for more than a decade had been lanced. She knew that anger would swell again and fill her, but for the moment, she was free. “If I die, I want Nicolette to be taken care of.”
“From what you’ve told me, her father is a wealthy man. Why are you worried, Aurore?”
She noted the use of her first name, and everything it implied. By her confession, she had asked for more than legal advice. She had asked for an undeserved acceptance, and now he had given it. “Rafe Cantrelle can’t be trusted. I don’t know what he’ll do when Nicolette’s older. I want to be sure she’s provided for, so she can be her own woman.”
“But only if you die?”
“I don’t know what I can do for her while I’m still alive.”
“Do you expect to die?”
She grew cold. “It’s always possible.”
He leaned closer. “Do you expect to die at your husband’s hand?”
She shuddered. “No, of course not.”
“You could divorce him,” Spencer said.
“No! He would trumpet my past, take my son. I can never leave him.”
His eyes were kind, but behind that kindness was strength. “Does Mr. Gerritsen know you’re here?”
She shook her head.
“I think you should tell him.”
“I can’t imagine what he’d do if he knew I had told someone the truth about my past.”
“It might make him think.”
“Why?”
“Because from this moment on, I’ll be sure that if anything happens to you, the authorities look beyond the easy answers.”
“Henry’s a powerful man, and he’s growing more powerful. No one would listen to you.”
“In this city, a man can be powerful one day and friendless the next. I can be patient. I can wait. Tell him that.” He stood. “We’ll begin your will next time, but I want you to think carefully about how you’d like it worded. Only you know how much you want to reveal about your relationship with Nicolette. You have Hugh to think of, too.”
“I want to leave Hugh a letter. When my mother died, I wished there had been something from her, a letter, a few sentences in a will. Anything.”
“Was there a will?”
“No. She had nothing to give away. I paid for her care myself.”
“Have you thought of a memorial?”
She gathered her gloves. “It seems a sacrilege to memorialize such a sad life.”
“Were there happy times?”
She thought of fleeting, lazy days in the sunshine. “One summer at Grand Isle, although even that ended tragically.”
“You know they’ve built a church there, don’t you? I’m sure they’d welcome a donation in your mother’s name.”
“Do you think it’s important?”
He came around his desk to sit on the edge, just in front of her. “In the years to come, you’ll remember her, no matter how much you try not to. Go to the dedication of the church. Then the memories will be better.”
She thought of a woman’s arms protecting her from the terrors of a hurricane. Her mother had twice given her life. Years had passed since she had thought of that woman, battling the beginning of madness but still courageous enough to act on her own judgment, despite Grand-père Antoine’s demands. Despite Claire’s own fragility. Tears rose to her eyes, tears she hadn’t cried during the recitation of her own sins.
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
He held out his hand to help her rise. He continued to hold it for seconds after she was standing. “Your secrets will be safe here.”
She knew he was telling the truth.
For the entire journey down to Grand Isle, Aurore worried about Hugh. For days she had considered Spencer’s advice, but only when she discovered that Henry would be out of town during the dedication did she make plans. The final incentive had been a letter from Father Grimaud. Father Grimaud served a parish in Carenàlro now, but someone had mentioned Aurore’s contribution to Our Lady of the Isle. He planned to be at the dedication, and he had something he wanted to give her.
She was curious. She had never met Father Grimaud, but she knew how he had stood at the presbytery window with a lantern to guide his flock to safety during the hurricane. Her own father had been the only one to reach him. The story brought back memories of howling winds and trembling walls. What could the priest have for her, except a memento of that night?
On the island, she settled into a small, rustic guesthouse. The hurricane had destroyed more than homes and lives; it had destroyed an entire industry. Few people, if any, summered on Grand Isle now. The hotels were gone, and the Krantz Place was a memory. An attempt a decade before to build a railway from Gretna had failed, and hopes of resurrecting the health-and-pleasure resort reputation of the island had died with it. Aurore had been lucky to find accommodations at all.
After a brief rest, she found her way down to the beach. She remembered the walk as a long one, fraught with magic and expectation. Now she reached the beach in minutes and stood looking out on the waves nibbling at the shoreline. Hundreds of yards away, men in straw hats were hauling in nets filled with glistening, wriggling fish, but there were no sailboats lazily skirting the horizon and no parties of bathers enjoying the water. Sea gulls circled the fishermen, and porpoises leaped not far from shore, but the colorful, pleasure-filled days of her childhood were gone.
She sat at the edge of a sand dune and stared at the water. The sun was the same sun she remembered, nipping her cheeks and the back of her neck when she didn’t immediately raise her parasol. The sand had the same sugar texture; the water was the blue-gray of her mother’s eyes.
Something close to peace filled her as the sun warmed more than her cheeks. Hopes and fears locked deep inside her began to thaw. Away from the responsibilities and restrictions of her marriage, she could almost remember the little girl who had loved the waves and the oleander-scented breeze. From that child had come the woman who sat on the sand today. That woman had become a creature of lies and secrets.
Ti’ Boo was right.
The sun was almost perched on the horizon when she rose and began to stroll. She started toward the island’s central ridge to find the cottage that had sheltered her during the storm. Ti’ Boo had told her that Nonc Clebert had passed on years before. Now the cottage was the property of a son who lived in Thibodaux.
The sky was nearly dark before she found it. The house sat by itself, protected from prying eyes by a dense stand of oaks and denser underbrush. A padlock barred the door, and lavishly twisted vines testified that no one had tried it recently. She remembered the safety of its walls, the hospitality of its cozy rooms. Someone had covered her with quilts; someone had brought her soup and tea. Someone had murmured stories in soft Acadian French as the storm raged outside.
Now the house was silent and alone, its days of usefulness so obviously at an end. She imagined it was a matter of time before someone tore it down and replaced it with a structure that would collapse in the first wind.
That night, she slept fitfully. The island had gently convinced her to lower her guard. Now images crept through her dreams, lapping at her consciousness. For the first time, she wondered if her life could be more than a battleground. She couldn’t dissolve her marriage, because she would surely lose
her son. Hugh and Gulf Coast were everything to her, and she couldn’t hand them to Henry to destroy. But perhaps there were other ways to reclaim her humanity. Somewhere inside her dwelled the child who had laughed and run at the Krantz Place, the child who had believed that happiness was possible.
By the next afternoon, she was ready for the dedication. The church had been built on donated land on the central ridge, no more than half a mile from Nonc Clebert’s house. Archbishop Shaw and other dignitaries had arrived for the event, and bright-eyed children crowded the yard in anticipation of a special confirmation ceremony. The church was white frame, with soaring arched windows and a belfry of graceful Moorish curves.
In their days at the Krantz Place, her mother had yearned for a church here. Now, at her death, that wish had come true.
“Do you know about the bell?” A woman clad in an ill-fitting blue print dress joined Aurore in the yard, staring up at the building.
Aurore was glad to break her own silence. “No.”
“It’s the pirate’s bell from the
chénière.
”
“Pirate’s bell?”
“
Oui, chère.
Made of doubloons and pirate’s treasure. Don’t you know about it?” The woman’s eyes brightened at the chance to tell a story. When Aurore shook her head, she continued. “There was a big storm in ’93.” She spread her arms wide.
Aurore warmed to her immediately. The woman’s Acadian accent reminded her of Ti’ Boo. “I was here.”
The woman clucked in sympathy. “Me, I was living up the bayou. It flooded so high, we lived on a lugger for two weeks, till the water went down. But we were the lucky ones, us. The people on Chénière Caminada, well, most of ’em died. And while they did, this bell rang and rang.”
“The same bell?”
“It’s been buried for years. After the storm, someone found the bell in the sand. There was a struggle over who it belonged to. Nobody could agree. The church was gone, so some thought they’d move the bell to a church far away. But before they could, the bell just disappeared.” She snapped her fingers.
“Where was it?”
“Some people who survived the storm, they took it and buried it in a cemetery in Westwego. And it would be there still if this church hadn’t been built. But when it was time, the people on the island, they asked the right men if they would bring it back, and they agreed. It’s our history, don’t you see? Nobody else’s. And when it rings now, it rings for our sister the
chénière,
too, even though nobody lives there except the ghosts.”
At that moment, the bell began to ring, signaling the solemn beginning of the services. Surprised, Aurore found her eyes filling with tears. She didn’t move as she listened to the same resonant summons that had called so many to their death.
She remembered that Lucien had never been able to tolerate the sound of a bell, that he had built his office like a fortress, far from the river and its sounds.
The woman beside her gave a small cry and covered her mouth. Aurore followed her gaze to a priest with a long white beard who had just entered the churchyard, not far from where they stood. As she watched, he covered his ears at the sound of the bell and fell to his knees.
“Ma cloche! Le même son!”
he cried.
“The same sound,” Aurore whispered.
Father Grimaud continued to kneel in the churchyard and weep.
Rafe didn’t know why Aurore was at the dedication. He wasn’t even sure why he was. He had read a small notice about Our Lady of the Isle in a New Orleans newspaper, and memories of struggling toward a white frame church had overtaken him. The memories had made it difficult to concentrate, to walk the narrow line that made his existence in New Orleans tolerable.
He possessed no sentimentality, but in the days after he read the notice, his life had no longer seemed his. He made arrangements to travel to Grand Isle. He’d made arrangements with Violet to care for Nicolette during his absence, and arrangements with his attorney to put all business affairs on hold.
Since his attorney always acted as go-between, no one in the city realized just how much Rafe was worth or how excellent his instincts were. Even the change in Storyville’s status hadn’t affected him. He had begun to sell his holdings there well before business in the district dropped off. He had become disgusted with his role as landlord for a house of prostitution. Rationalizations that worse men, men with no principles at all, would succeed him, had no longer rung true for him. He had found that he was a better man than he had wanted to be.
By the time the navy stepped in with its demands, the Palace—now a second-rate rooming house—was already somebody else’s problem. He owned property in the business district for immediate income, and vast tracts of swamp at the city’s edge, because he knew that with technology’s advances, the swamps would be drained and the city would expand. He was wealthy enough to live a comfortable life, or as comfortable a life as a man of color could lead.