She dropped her hand. She was sobbing again. He moved closer. “Do you even have to ask? We’ll pay forever. Both of us. I’ve despised you for ten years, but I still have dreams about you. I remember you the way you were. I dream that we’ve gone away together, that I wake up in the morning and you’re beside me, and when you look at me, you see a man. Not a black one, not a white one.” He touched his chest. “A man.”
“No!”
“Do you dream of me? Of what we could have had? Or did your father destroy that, too?”
“Don’t, Rafe.”
“Answer me.”
The dreams had been so deeply hidden that she hadn’t admitted to them. Now she knew they had been with her since the night of the fire. Once she had believed in love and in herself. She had dared to reach for happiness, and still did, when she slept. But in her waking hours she had reached for little but revenge. She had struggled to regain everything she had lost, everything except the one thing she really wanted.
She couldn’t tell him; she would never be free if she said the words out loud. “Now I know everything. Be content with that.” She tried to turn away, but he clamped his hand on her shoulder.
“Content? Can you imagine I feel anything like contentment? I don’t care if you understand me. I want you to look
at me and see exactly what I am. I’m a better man than the one you married, a better man than your father. I’m the man who could have made you happy.”
“You killed my father!”
“No! Greed killed him. And he took you down with him, Aurore. There’s nothing left of the woman I loved. Nothing!”
Her cheeks were wet with tears. “How could it have come to this?
Love
’s a poor word for what I felt for you. You were all the things I’d never even dared to hope for. When you betrayed me, all those things died. If there’s nothing left of the woman you loved, that’s why.”
He touched her cheek. Not gently, but as if he needed a test to see if her tears were real. She thought his hands trembled. “Don’t shut your eyes. Look at me. What do you see? The man you loved? Or the man who betrayed you? A man, or a man whose blood is tainted?”
“Can it matter?”
“It matters!”
“I see Rafe Cantrelle, a man I’ve loved and a man I’ve hated. A man who is what he is despite and because of his heritage. A man.”
“Do you see a man who still wants you?”
She saw desire in his eyes then, desire as new as this night and as old as their first meeting. An answering flicker stirred within her; she turned away to hide it. “No.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “I see a woman who’s learned to lie.”
She could feel each of his fingers through her blouse, drawing her toward him. “I’m going back now. Let me go.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You won’t force me.”
“If you see that much, then try looking into yourself. Tell me what’s there.”
“Nothing! You left me nothing!”
“I left you my heart.”
She faced him. She saw that he meant it, and that he hated himself for it. She saw how he had tried to protect himself and how he had failed. She saw ten years of hell, but, most terrible of all, she couldn’t tell if the hell was his, or a reflection of her own. “No…”
He dropped his hand. “Our lives have led us here. If you’re strong enough to challenge fate, run away now.”
She couldn’t run away. In despair, she realized that she couldn’t move.
He cradled her face in his hands and held it still. His lips were warm and searching, and as he drank her tears she knew there would be no force. She wouldn’t run; she wouldn’t submit. She would consent; she would rejoice, as if ten years and terrible betrayal had never separated them.
His taste, his scent, the texture of his skin, all were unbearably familiar. He moved his fingers through her hair, not to possess or punish, but to savor the feel of it. She was exhausted from struggle; there was nothing left inside her to summon a voice of reason. The only realities were his lips on hers, his fingers releasing the buttons on her dress, his hands against her skin, her heart beating faster.
The years faded away, and she was a young woman in her beloved’s arms. Rafe had taught her what little she knew of love, and she had never forgotten it. Everything that had happened since seemed a blasphemy, and his body was redemption. There was no cruelty in his hands, no punishment in his lips. As he took, he returned pleasure until she was heavy with it.
“This will change your life,” he whispered.
She remembered their night on the
Dowager,
and her response. “Dear God, I hope so.” And it was true. She wanted nothing so much as change. She wanted to be the woman who had believed in love. She wanted to forget the lies, the deceptions, the secrets, of the past ten years. She wanted him. She wanted to be reborn.
His flesh was warm, and the breeze from the Gulf was cool against her naked skin. He pulled her into a hidden place beside a dune, where the sand was as soft as clouds against her back. In a voice hoarse with emotion, he told her that he loved her, and she knew it was true, just as she knew that he hated himself because it was a weakness.
There was nothing to say in return. Her body warmed to his as if it had been frozen in time. As he entered her, she knew that she had never stopped loving him, and that she never would. They were doomed to love each other.
They were doomed.
“Look at me. Be sure you know who I am.”
At the height of passion she opened her eyes and stared into his. She knew who he was. She saw his torment, his struggles, the boy, the man. The man who would haunt her dreams forever. “I know.” She wrapped her arms and legs around him. She wanted to swallow him, to keep him inside her forever, to never relinquish a moment of their coming together. “I know!”
He spilled his seed inside her as she found her own pleasure.
Afterward, they lay without touching. Shadows moved between them, visions of moments that had passed and moments still to come. Tears choked her, and she didn’t know which of them she wanted to cry for first.
“Will you tell me about Nicolette?” she asked at last. “Or will you still punish me?”
He turned to her. “Nicolette is her mother’s daughter. In the end, it was impossible to resist loving her, no matter how dangerous it was.”
She gave a small, choked cry. He gathered her close and held her tightly against him. “You gave her to me when she was an infant, but the day I saw you in Audubon Park was the day you made her mine.”
“Then you’re a real father to her?”
“I try.”
“Tell me about her. Please?”
He told her the little things, and the big. She listened avidly.
In too short a time, he had finished. “She’d rather sing than talk, and usually does. She exasperated every music teacher I found until Clarence Valentine took her under his wing. She knows the words to any song after she’s heard it once. She sings for me every night before she goes to bed. Sometimes, hours later, when I go upstairs to my room, I still hear her humming.”
She couldn’t speak. This was what she had wanted for her daughter, but the picture tortured her. She had sacrificed this: contented evenings, the warm arms of the only man she had ever loved, a daughter she could never replace.
“She asks about her mother more often now,” he said. “Next time I’ll tell her that her mother loved her. That she wanted her very much and watches over her still.”
“Please.”
He stroked her hair. “We haven’t been given a second chance.”
“This…tonight…will only make things harder for us.”
He turned so that she could see his face. “I’m going to leave New Orleans.”
“No…”
“I’m going to take Nicolette and go. I’ll start a new life, and so will you.”
“Rafe, you can’t leave. Not now.”
“Especially now.”
Even as she protested again, she knew he was right. Their lives were so terribly entwined that disaster was inevitable. She couldn’t leave Hugh; she couldn’t live openly with Rafe. There was no place where together they could keep Nicolette safe from hatred and prejudice, no place safe from Henry’s reach.
“Will I know where you are?”
“No. Your husband’s a dangerous man. What would he do to you if he discovered you no longer hate me?”
“I just need to know where you’ll be. I just need to be able to picture you there.”
“Don’t picture me. Forget I exist. We’ve nearly destroyed each other already. You have to be completely free of me or I will destroy you, and you me.”
“Why did it have to come to this?”
“Because neither one of us was pure enough to challenge fate and win.” He brushed her hair off her cheek. “Have you forgiven me for everything I’ve done?”
“Have you forgiven me?”
They stared into each other’s eyes and knew that neither would ever really forget the pain endured at the other’s hands. It was as much their legacy as the love that had brought them to this place and time.
“You’ll be gone, but you’ll still be in my life.” She kissed him, but her lips trembled. “I’ll always wonder where you are. I’ll think about Nicolette until the day my heart stops beating. I’ve always prayed I’d catch another glimpse of her. Every time
I turn a corner, I hope that by some chance she’ll be there. Now I’ll never see her again.” Her voice caught.
“It would just be harder for you if you did.”
“No! I’d have a memory of her, a real memory. Rafe, can I see her before you go? Talk to her? Hear her sing? Just once?”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“We could be careful. Please! It’s all I’ll ask.”
“I don’t know.”
She knew she had to be content with that. She touched his face, memorizing all the planes and angles, the textures of his skin. “Remember I loved you. Wherever you go, remember that. I can give you that to keep.”
He kissed her, and no more words were exchanged. Their bodies said what their lips could not. When he was gone, she dressed in the shadows. It was almost morning before she returned to the cottage and packed to go home.
S
he was not to tell Nicolette who she really was.
Aurore folded the letter from Rafe and gazed around the room, searching for a hiding place. After the letter arrived that morning, she had slipped it under her mattress. Her bedroom was decorated sparingly with cypress furniture made by Louisiana artisans of the early nineteenth century. But none of the sleek inlaid armoires or cabinets was a safe place for secrets.
A small fire burned on the hearth to steal the chill from the November air. As the United States celebrated the end of the war, the deadly Spanish influenza had arrived. Aurore kept the house warm, just as she diligently kept Hugh out of crowds and away from Henry, who went to the riverfront every day. Epidemics of old had often arrived on foreign ships; Aurore was frightened that the flu might, too.
Silently she repeated the contents of the letter. On Friday, Rafe and Nicolette would wait for her in an apartment above a shop he owned in the Vieux Carré. The old woman to
whom he rented it would be away, and she had agreed to let Rafe use it. Aurore was not to tell Nicolette who she was.
How could Rafe believe that she would ever have the courage?
She went to the fireplace, where she had known since receiving the letter that she would have to consign it. She didn’t want to burn it. Even now she could see Rafe’s handwriting, a bold scrawl that was so like the man. They had created a child together, yet she had nothing of him.
Nothing was left but ashes on the hearth when she heard the door open behind her. Without turning, she recognized the footsteps crossing the room. She rubbed her hands together as if she had been warming them. “We left supper for you, Henry. Sally roasted a hen, and there are potato croquettes and turnip tops, I think.”
She turned before he could reach her. She could protect herself best if she knew what to expect. “I’m sorry I ate without you. Would you like me to come sit with you?”
“Such an accommodating woman.”
“I try to be.” She smiled the cool, inscrutable smile she saved just for him. She saw that he had been drinking, though it might not have been apparent to anyone else. He had a large capacity for whiskey, which usually seemed to intensify his mood. But she had never blamed any of Henry’s failings on alcohol.
“Who else do you accommodate, Rory?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who else?”
She searched for an answer. “I try to please Hugh, but not spoil him. I try to be as pleasant as possible in business dealings….”
“And Rafe Cantrelle? Do you accommodate him, too?”
She was careful not to show her alarm. She lowered her voice. “Please. That was a long time ago…before we were married. Are you going to punish me forever for something that happened before we met?”
He moved so swiftly she didn’t have time to retreat. He wrapped his fingers around her neck, the heel of his hand pressed tightly against her throat. “Then let’s talk about Grand Isle.”
She tried to get away but couldn’t. He held her while she struggled. “Let go of me!” she gasped.
He pressed his hand against her throat until she could barely breathe. She struggled more, but the harder she tried to get away from him, the harder he pressed. Finally she made herself go limp, and he relaxed his hand until air rushed back into her lungs.
“Tell me about Grand Isle.”
She took a deep breath, then another. The room spun. “There’s nothing to tell. I went there for the dedication of the church. I…I gave a donation in my mother’s name after she died. As a memorial. That’s all.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t want you to be angry. It was my money, but I thought you might disapprove.”
He stepped away and dropped his hands, as if he were satisfied. She knew better.
“And where did you stay?”
“Someone on the fund-raising committee had a cottage.”
“You stayed there alone?”
She rubbed her throat. The skin felt raw. “Of course.”
“Tell me about the ceremony.”
“I was moved. My mother would be happy there’s a church on the island now.”
“Your mother was a slobbering lunatic committed for most of her miserable life to an asylum.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you, but it was something I needed to do, and I was afraid you’d make it difficult.”
“What else would you like to tell me?”
She went very still. “What else would you like to know?”
He struck her so swiftly, and with such force, that only when she was lying on the floor did she realize what he’d done. She had just enough time to cover her head before he fell on top of her and rained more blows over her shoulders and arms. When she tried to get away, he hit her harder.
The attack ended as swiftly as it had begun. He got back to his feet. “Get up.”
When she didn’t move quickly enough to suit him, he kicked her ribs. But the kick was just a warning. She rose with her hands out in front of her to ward off more blows. He lifted a brow, as if to ask why she thought she needed to defend herself.
“What else would you like to tell me, Rory?”
“Have you gone crazy?”
“Tell me about Rafe Cantrelle.”
“He was there. I admit it. But I didn’t know he was going to attend. How could I have known?”
This time, when he hit her, she was ready. She braced herself so that she only stumbled backward. “Tell me what happened,” he demanded. “All of it. Because I’ll know if you leave anything out.”
“Nothing happened, except that we talked for a few minutes!” She was dizzy and nauseated, but fear eclipsed both. She could feel something, probably blood, trickling down her chin. “He told me he was leaving New Orleans and taking Nicolette. I told him I was glad, because I’ve spent too much
of my life hating him. Now I never have to think about either of them again.” She held out her hands, pleading. “It’s over, Henry. Completely over!”
He smiled and moved toward her again.
Nothing was over until the door finally closed behind him. Aurore lay in front of the fireplace, by the ashes of her lover’s letter, too bruised and aching to rise.
At the end, she had done nothing to defend herself. She had allowed Henry to beat her, because he had earned that right. Not because he was her husband, but because she had deserved his abuse. She was everything he suspected and more.
From the attic room of the house in the Vieux Carré, Nicolette stared out at roofs that looked like waves in a storm-tossed sea. Rain had fallen recently, and the old slate and tile glistened. Behind her, Rafe paced back and forth. The room seemed too small for him, the ceiling too low. He was a giant in a child’s dollhouse adorned with lace and faded flowers.
The door had been left ajar, but neither Nicolette nor her father realized that Aurore was standing on the other side of it, or that she could hear them. Nicolette tugged at the hem of her dress. Aurore wondered if Rafe had bought it for her just for today. The dress was blue, with red-and-white trim. She wore matching red bows in her hair, and soft white stockings. She was the most beautiful little girl Aurore had ever seen.
“Where’s the lady who lives here?” Nicolette asked.
“I told you. She’s gone away for a while.”
“I’m tired of waiting.”
“It shouldn’t be much longer.”
Nicolette closed her eyes as Rafe stepped forward and smoothed her hair back from her face. She leaned against him,
as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and he wrapped his arms around her. “You look very pretty today,” he said.
“Will the lady who’s coming think so?”
“If she has eyes.”
“Tell me about her.”
“I told you, Nicolette. She was a friend of your mother. She wants to see you before we leave.”
“But why do we have to meet here? Why can’t she come to our house?”
“She’s white. And we’re not.”
“My skin’s white. Almost.”
“But you’re a Negro. Like me.”
“Your skin is white, too.”
“Do you want to be white?”
She appeared to think it over. “I could sit at the front of the streetcar,” she said.
“Yes, you could.”
“If I was white, I could go to any school I wanted.”
“Except the ones that only have colored children.”
“I’d miss Anne Marie and Mignon.”
“A good reason not to be white.”
She moved away to search his face. “Why was my mother friends with a white woman?”
“You can ask her.”
“Violet married a white man.”
“Violet will have to spend the rest of her life pretending she is what she isn’t,” Rafe said.
“I don’t understand why.”
“You never will.”
Aurore couldn’t bear to stand in the hallway any longer. She couldn’t bear any more barriers between them. She knocked
on the door and stepped inside. She stopped, afraid to move forward. Nicolette gave a little curtsy, as if she had been tutored in advance. “Hello.”
Aurore still didn’t move. She turned her eyes to Rafe, because looking at her daughter, so close and yet a million miles away, was painfully bittersweet. “Rafe?”
“Come in, Mrs. Friloux, and meet Nicolette.”
Aurore forced herself to move forward. Slowly, so that the room suddenly seemed much longer than it was. She stopped just in front of Nicolette. “Do you remember me?” she asked.
Nicolette appeared to search her memory. “I don’t think so.”
“I met you a long time ago. When you were only six. You got into my carriage, and I gave you a locket.”
“Oh.” She looked up at her father, as if she dimly remembered that he had taken it from her. “I don’t have it anymore.”
“I know.”
Aurore addressed Rafe. “May we sit?”
“I’m going to leave you alone,” he said.
“Alone?”
“Yes. I think it’s best.” He put his arm around Nicolette’s shoulder. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
Aurore wished with all her heart that Rafe would stay. For a moment she thought he might, because he didn’t move. They stared at each other, the way people did when they wanted to speak but didn’t know what to say. Then he left the room.
Nicolette stood quietly, waiting for her to speak. Aurore found her voice. “Shall we sit?”
“I guess.”
There was a bench across the room, padded with faded velvet-and-satin cushions. They sat together, and Nicolette stroked her hand against the velvet.
Where should she start? Aurore knew she had only a brief time to ask the questions of a lifetime, minutes to absorb the sweetness of this child, her child, who she would never see again. “Nicolette, what did your father tell you about me?”
“He said you knew my mother. He said you wanted to see me before we go away.”
“Yes.”
Nicolette looked up, interested. “Well, did you know her?”
Aurore looked away. “Yes. I knew her well.”
“Did she want a little girl, do you think?”
“Absolutely. She very much wanted a daughter. She would have been proud of you. She would have loved you, Nicolette.”
“Do you think so?”
“I’m absolutely sure.”
Nicolette scuffed her toe against the carpet. “Did she work for you?”
“No. We were…friends.”
“Is that why you wanted to see me? To see if I look like her?”
“I’ve thought about you since she died. I just wanted to be sure you were happy.” Aurore tried to smile. “And well.”
“Oh, I never get sick.” Nicolette obviously couldn’t sit still a moment longer. She began to cross her ankles, first one way, then another. It became a dance.
“Are you happy you’re moving?”
“Oh, yeah. Yes, I mean. I can ride the streetcar in Chicago. And I can sit anywhere I want.”
“Chicago?”
“That’s where we’re going.” Nicolette frowned. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you that. Papa said I shouldn’t tell anyone where we’re going, but I don’t know if he meant you.”
“What will you do there?”
“I have to go to school, but I can have music lessons again. Do you like music?”
“Oh, yes.”
“My friend Clarence lives there now, and he’ll give me lessons. Clarence plays the piano. He’s better than anybody, even Jelly Roll or Tony Jackson. Least, that’s what everybody says. I never got to hear them.” She frowned. “Maybe I will someday. Think so?”
“I hope so. Your father says you like to sing.”
“I sing all the time. Sometimes he has to tell me not to.” She leaned closer, frowning as she gazed at Aurore’s face. Aurore knew too well what the child saw. “Did you fall and hurt yourself?”
“I can be very clumsy.”
“Me, too. Papa says I’ll have to learn to be still someday.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Because I’m annoying. I have the worst manners at my school, and my French is worse than anybody’s.”
“You’re beautiful and intelligent and altogether wonderful.”
“Would my mother have liked me, do you think?”
“She…would have adored you.”
“What did she look like?”
Aurore hesitated. “How do you imagine her?”
“Tall. Bea-ut-iful. With one of those smiles like the ladies in the moving pictures. You know, like this?” She stretched her mouth wide. “Like the Gish sisters.”
Aurore smiled, too. “That’s a very good description.”
“I don’t know if I want to be in the movies or just sing.”
“Will you sing for me now?”
Rafe had told Aurore that Nicolette never hesitated to sing
when asked. Music was her greatest joy, as comforting as his arms. But now she seemed suddenly shy.
“Please?” Aurore asked.
Nicolette stood reluctantly. “I sing the blues sometimes. Do you like the blues?”
“They make me cry.”
“Well, if you cry, that means I sang them right.”
“Then go ahead.”
“I know some funny songs that make people laugh. Maybe I should sing one of those.”
Aurore realized that the child had sensed her sadness. “Sing what you want to. Anything that seems right to you,” she said softly, touching Nicolette’s hand.
“I wish Clarence was here. When he plays for me, I don’t even have to think about the words.” Nicolette closed her eyes and started into one of Aurore’s own favorites, “Saint Louis Blues.” As she gathered confidence, she sang a little louder.