Rising Tides (37 page)

“My grandmother knew. She felt it that night.” Dawn struggled to talk. “I felt it, too. Maybe I’d known all that evening. I’d told myself over and over again that I had done the right thing by protecting my father, but I knew, deep inside, that I hadn’t. I was so afraid for all of you. Everything
Grandmère
said that night seemed to underscore my decision. She said that I’d been wrong all those years ago to pit my father against my uncle. And I told myself that I’d avoided that mistake this time,
that I’d done the right thing after all. And the whole time I was growing more and more frightened.”

She finally looked at him. Her cheeks were stained with tears. “My mother called while I was at
Grandmère
’s. I had stayed late. I was afraid to leave her, because she was so upset, and I’d never seen her that way. Then my mother said that she was coming over. She rarely visited my grandmother. I knew something terrible had happened. We waited. I remember we held hands. And then my mother came and told us that Uncle Hugh was dead.”

He reached for her, but she shook her head. “They wouldn’t let me see you until the next day,” she said.

He jammed his hands in his pockets. “The sheriff and his men got there right after your uncle died. But I’d lost a lot of blood by the time they decided that maybe I needed looking after.”

“I was desperate to see you, Ben. I was terrified maybe you were hurt worse than I’d been told. I called the hospital, but they told me I couldn’t see you until the afternoon.
Grandmère
came to stay at our house, and I was with her right through until late morning, then I rushed over to see you. Finally somebody told me it was all right to go in your room for a few minutes. You were the color of the sheets, and you were sleeping. I wanted to tell you what had really happened and why I hadn’t been at the meeting. By then, whether Largo or God had warned my father didn’t matter anymore. When Daddy heard the news about Uncle Hugh, he locked himself in his study and got roaring drunk. I’d never imagined him that way. When he finally came out, the only thing he could say was that there wasn’t supposed to be any violence. No one in authority had realized a mob was forming. They were too busy getting ready to raid the church themselves. Largo had laid
down the law to the sheriff and his men, but some others had heard about the meeting, some of the worst bigots in Bonne Chance, and they had decided to take matters into their own hands. By the time the sheriff and his men got there, everything was already over.”

“That’s what your father told you?”

“I believed him then, and I believe him now. But I don’t have any idea whether Largo Haines was telling the truth. I just know my father thought he was.”

She wiped her cheek with a trembling hand. “When I went to see you, I didn’t think there was any way to make you understand the real reason I hadn’t come to the meeting. By then I didn’t even understand it myself. I just knew that if I
had
told Uncle Hugh arrests were planned, maybe he would still be alive. So when you finally woke up, I didn’t know what to tell you. You were so devastated. How could I tell you the truth? My uncle had been killed, and you nearly had. And you believed the worst about me. You accused me of knowing there would be violence that night. I hadn’t, but I
had
known something that might have changed things.”

“Dawn…” He touched her hair.

She shuddered and pulled away. “I didn’t have the strength to explain, and I knew you didn’t have the tolerance to listen. I thought I’d wait a few days until some of the pain had passed for us both. I thought that was the only chance we had, a tiny piece of a chance. But I went home, and I felt sicker and sicker. I felt like I’d lost you by what I’d done. I felt like I’d killed Uncle Hugh myself.”

“That morning, before you got there, Annie Narrows and her mother came to see me. She told me that the mob and the sheriff had been working together. She knew, because she was the one who’d told Largo about the meeting at the church.”

“Annie?”

“She was angry at her father for destroying her chance to get out of Bonne Chance, angrier than any of us knew. But Largo did, because the woman that Annie worked for had told him. So he went to Annie and promised that if she would give him a little information from time to time, he would see that her father’s job was re instated. Then she could go off to school. She only told Largo little things, things she didn’t believe would make any difference. I think she was trying to get back at Lester for ruining her life.”

“She couldn’t have realized what would happen!”

“She didn’t realize how important that meeting was,” Ben said. “It didn’t seem any different to her than the ones at her house. After it was all over and she saw what she’d done, she went to Largo’s. She was probably hysterical. She demanded to know if he was responsible for the mob. I guess he didn’t see any reason not to tell her the truth. Considering her own part in it, he thought she wouldn’t dare tell anybody, and besides, what good was the word of a colored girl? So he told her that he had planned things exactly the way they happened. Annie confessed everything to her mother, and then they came to me. And she told me something else.” He paused. “Your father had spent hours with Largo Haines the day before the meeting.”

“Largo warned my father about the arrests. That’s all. But you…” She took a deep breath. “You heard what Annie said, and that’s all it took to convince you once and for all that I was at fault. You thought…you thought that I’d allowed you, all of you, to be attacked without a warning. How could you ever,
ever,
have believed such a thing, Ben?”

When he didn’t answer, she moved closer. “I’ll tell
you,
then. You never really trusted me. I was Hugh Gerritsen’s niece but that didn’t matter. Instead, you settled on the only thing I can
never change. I’m Ferris Gerritsen’s daughter. I will be until the day I die. That’s all you’ve been able to see for a year. And the afternoon you accused me of participating in my uncle’s murder, you forgot how much I loved him!”

He grabbed her hands. “No, I’ll tell you what’s true. I hated watching you struggle with all the forces that were pulling at you, because the same forces were pulling at me.”

“What was pulling at you? You were perfect!”

“Dawn, every morning last summer I woke up scared. I was scared I wouldn’t see the end of that day, and more frightened that I’d turn tail and run. I knew what I believed, but I didn’t know if I’d be strong enough to stand up for it. The night Largo and his men stopped me on the road, I nearly told him that I’d leave Bonne Chance for good. I didn’t, but a part of me wanted to. And that scared me more than anything.”

She tried to pull her hands away, but he wouldn’t let her. “Don’t you see?” he asked. “I couldn’t tolerate your struggles because they were so much like mine. And in the end, I couldn’t tolerate your weaknesses be cause mine were so much worse.”

She was silent, as if now she were struggling with herself.

“There’s something else,” he said. “After what happened to me on the road, I knew there was going to be a confrontation. As the day of the meeting wore on, I was more and more convinced the confrontation was going to be that night. So I called you, to ask you not to come after all. I was afraid for myself. I couldn’t bear to be afraid for you.”

“You called to ask me not to come?”

“I was going to beg, but I couldn’t get through to you. When you didn’t show up for the meeting, I was so grateful.”

“What would you have done if you had known arrests were planned, Ben?” She moved closer. Her eyes pleaded with him.
“Would you have gone? Would you have been able to talk my uncle into canceling the meeting?”

“I would have gone. And Father Hugh would have gone. There was no one in that room who wouldn’t have been there.”

She crumpled. He pulled her against him. He kissed her hair, her forehead. “You were right all along. Every one of us knew arrests or worse were possible, Dawn. No matter how scared we were, we went anyway.”

“But when it was all over, you blamed me.”

“And after I’d had time to think about it, to get over the shock of what had happened and what Annie had told me, I knew what a terrible mistake I’d made.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“After I got out of the hospital, I called your house over and over again. No one would put me through to you.”

“I left New Orleans.” She lifted her chin. “I packed and went to New York the afternoon after my uncle’s funeral. You hadn’t called by then, and I was sure you never would. I pounded the pavement until I found a couple of magazines that would look at my photo graphs.”

“And then you left the country.”

“Why did it matter? You believed the worst.”

“You believed the worst about yourself!”

She wanted to deny it, but he was right. She hadn’t left the country because of Ben’s betrayal. His betrayal had been a small thing beside her own.

“You didn’t kill Father Hugh,” he said. “And the bullet in my shoulder wasn’t put there by any decision you made. You didn’t betray either of us!”

Her lips were parted in a protest that never came. He kissed her. He wanted to silence her doubts. He wanted to show her
that he believed in her. His faith had been reborn long ago, but he hadn’t been able to show her until now.

The evening was hot and still, like the evening her uncle had died. He held on to her, as he hadn’t been able to hold on to Father Hugh. “I’m sorry.” He said it over and over again.

“Hush, Ben.” She pulled his face back to hers. They clung to each other. He could feel her softness drawing out the pain inside him. His arms tightened around her, to keep her against him and to shield her.

He didn’t know the moment when comfort turned to passion, passion that had always been there, waiting just under the surface. He tasted the salt sweetness of her skin and gathered the wealth of her hair. He relived the exquisite pleasure of her hands against his chest and wondered how he had lived a year without it.

They sank to the floor, in the place where Aurore’s secrets had first been discovered. And when Dawn finally lay still in his arms, Ben knew that another secret had been revealed.

R
aindrops drummed against the roof, a persistent, escalating rhythm speeding toward a finale. Wrapped in the harbor of Ben’s arms, Dawn listened and grew afraid again.

They had made love on the carpet, joined passionately and blindly in the middle of a jumble of clothes. There had been nothing comforting about the way they came together. They had been driven by a need she didn’t fully understand. Her release had been so purifying that for moments she believed an ending had been realized and a new beginning awaited them.

Then the raindrops had started.

She burrowed against him and threaded a leg between his, so that he couldn’t leave her. His hands possessed her, as if he wanted to bring back the minutes that had just passed. She wondered if he realized that a finale was still hovering some where in the distance.

Little by little she became aware of more than the rain. The room was sweltering; the carpet rubbed her bare skin. A year had passed, and Ben’s body was not the same. A scar marred his
shoulder where a bullet had plowed into it, a scar that would remain there forever.

“Did I hurt you?” He caressed her back as he spoke. Slow, sensuous, consoling circles.

“Did you want to?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. I’ve never wanted anything that badly before.”

She understood. She had wanted to merge with him, not for seconds but forever. She had wanted to become part of him—and she had almost believed she could. That frightened her. She untangled her limbs from his and sat up.

He helped her dress. His fingers were clumsy and still obviously hungry for her flesh. He reassured her with each touch, but as they covered themselves, their intimacy faded.

“Dawn, are you sorry?” Ben turned her face to his.

“Sorry we made love? No.”

“What is it, then?”

As she struggled to put her feelings into words, she realized that the raindrops were falling faster. “We’ve lost a year, and we’ve both changed. But I feel the way I did when I had to choose between Uncle Hugh and Daddy.”

He kissed her hand and placed her palm against his cheek. “I don’t understand.”

“Can you tell me what our lovemaking means to you?”

“It means we still have a chance.”

“Do we? Isn’t there something that’s still standing between us?” Her hand fell to her lap. She turned away and finished buttoning her blouse. “You say you’ve for given me. You believe everything I’ve told you.”

“I’ll say it again. I believed it before you told me. I’ve known for a long time that you couldn’t have had any thing to do with your uncle’s death.”

“But you still think my father had a role in it.”

He was silent for so long that she knew he was thinking carefully about his answer. “I’m not asking you to believe it,” he said.

She was covered now, and she turned back to him. “But as long as I don’t, you’ll wonder about me. Don’t you see, Ben? Until I condemn my father, you’re never going to trust me completely.”

“I’m not asking you to condemn him. Can’t I trust you and still not trust him?”

“I don’t think so. Not as long as I still love him.”

He wanted to say she was wrong. She watched him search for an answer that would convince her that Ferris didn’t matter. But there was no such answer.

When he was silent too long, she stood. She brushed off her skirt with trembling hands. “I can’t choose between you and my father. The last time I chose between the people I loved, somebody died.”

“You’re making a choice right now. You’re about to walk out of here without me.”

“No. Maybe I’m going back to the house alone. But that’s not the same thing.”

Anger flickered in his eyes. “It feels exactly the same to me.”

She understood then what she had been struggling so hard to grasp. She understood what the rain was telling her and why the magnificence of their lovemaking had frightened her. She understood fully why Aurore had decided to reveal her secrets.

“I won’t spend the rest of my life in the middle of a tug-of-war. That’s what my grandmother did. She let everyone tug at her, because she wanted so badly to be loved. But it didn’t
work. She never really got what she wanted. And I’m going to learn from her mistakes.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re saying I’m a mistake?”

“No. I’m saying that I’m not going to be like
Grandmère.
If I have to make choices, I’ll make them because I know they’re the right choices, not because I want you or Daddy or anybody else to love me.”

“Do you want me to love you?”

“I don’t think there’s any possibility you can. Not yet. Maybe there never will be.”

“And what if I tell you I already do?”

“Don’t tell me. Please don’t make this harder.”

He reached for her, but she backed away. Outside, the rain washed over her, but there was nothing cleansing about it. It fell harder as she raced for the house.

Ben wanted this charade to end. For the first time, he wanted to find Spencer and demand that this insanity be brought to an immediate close. He had come, and taken a risk. But there was nothing he could do to expose the lies that still held Dawn captive.

In the afternoon, before he went to the
garconnière,
he had finished Hugh Gerritsen’s journal. He knew more, much more, than what he’d discussed with Dawn. Now he knew things that would upset the all-too-fragile balance at the cottage and destroy the Gerritsen family forever. But Ben knew he couldn’t be the one to tell the final truths. He was poised beneath the web, like the dressmaker’s dummies.

He entered the cottage through the kitchen, where Phillip sat alone at the table, eating the last of the craw fish. If the others were about, at least they weren’t nearby. Phillip looked up. “Get caught in the storm?”

“Close.” Ben bit off the word.

“Dawn’s been and left.”

“Left?”

“She’s up in her room.”

Ben didn’t know anywhere else he could turn for help. “Phillip, how much more do you know?”

“More?”

“We both know this isn’t finished yet.”

“I know we’re set to meet with Spencer one last time.”

Ben tried to decide whether to reveal the final story he had learned from Father Hugh’s journal, but Phillip gave one subtle shake of his head, as if he knew what Ben was about to say. “You know what? It can wait, Townsend.
You
can wait. Bad news is best heard from strangers.”

Something not quite as strong as relief filled Ben. Phillip knew the truth, perhaps more of it than Ben did, and telling the rest of the story was going to be his job. “Where’s your mother?” Ben asked.

Phillip frowned. “Why?”

Ben didn’t blame him for asking. Like Dawn, Nicky had already been asked to endure too much. “I have something to tell her.”

Phillip took his measure, then nodded. “She’s in her room, resting.”

Upstairs, Ben tapped softly on Nicky’s door and waited until she asked him to come in. She was sitting beside the window, looking out over the trees. He was surprised to find that the Gulf was visible here and that the tide was creeping inland.

“Nicky, may I talk to you?” he asked.

She nodded, but after one glance she turned back to the window.

“I have something to tell you,” he said. “Something I think
you have to know. It’s something I’ve known for a while, but I didn’t understand it. I…” His voice trailed off.

“Has this been as hard for you as for the rest of us?” she asked without turning.

“It’s been harder for you than for any of us.”

“There were so many things I didn’t understand.”

Ben wasn’t sure whether Nicky was talking to him or to herself. Or perhaps she was talking to people who were no longer living. The woman who had given her away, the man who had been forced to desert her.

“I’ve read Father Hugh’s journal,” he said. “All of it.”

“Then you know.”

“I know that he knew you during the war.”

“Yes. And I had the pleasure of knowing the senator, too.”

“I lived with Father Hugh last summer,” he said. “Be fore he died. I got to know him well. Sometimes, late at night, we talked, more like friends than anything, I guess. I was closer to him than I had ever been to my own father.” He knew he was rambling, trying to get to the heart of it. “Nicky, I asked him once why he did the things he did. Whether he felt called by God to put him self on the line, when so many other men of faith were turning their backs on the civil-rights movement. And he said…” He stopped, not sure whether to go on.

She turned. Her gaze was steady. “What did he say, Ben?”

“Well, he smiled and he said no. He said that he had been called by a woman.”

Nicky stood at the French doors leading out to Aurore’s bedroom balcony. She wondered how many nights her mother had stood in this place and gazed out at the same dark landscape.
Had Aurore thought of her then? Had she watched her sons play under those stunted, twisted trees and thought of the child she hadn’t kept? And in later years, when Hugh visited Aurore here, had he thought of Nicky each time he looked into his mother’s eyes?

She thought perhaps he had.

“When are you coming to bed?” Jake asked. “It’s get ting later and later.”

“It does that every minute of your life. You never noticed that before?”

“The rain’s heavier, isn’t it? That hurricane’s coming our way. I know it is.”

“I was thinking about my mother.”

“Who else were you thinking about?”

“Hap.” Nicky turned. Jake knew her too well, and Nicky had never wanted to hide anything from him, anyway. He had never been a jealous man; he’d never had a reason. When she was onstage, every man in the audience might yearn to have her in his bed, but Jake knew he was the only man she yearned for.

“I have suffered more in the last few days than I knew a woman could suffer. But in spite of that, it’s better knowing everything,” she said. “Because now I can love Hap again. I can let myself love him the way I should have been allowed to all along. Do you understand?”

He opened his arms. She crossed the room and slipped into bed beside him.

Spencer was up early the next morning. He hadn’t slept well any night of his stay at the cottage. He would have liked to come to Grand Isle under better circum stances. He would
have liked to come with Aurore be fore she was married to Henry Gerritsen.

There had never been a time like that. Aurore had been bound to two men, one by love, one by hatred. His bond with her had been a weaker one. Still, it was Spencer who had been at Aurore’s bedside when she slipped quietly into death. The priest who had administered the last rites had already left the room. Ferris and Cappy had come and gone. No one had expected her to regain consciousness. But, as if she had just been waiting, her eyes had opened when she and Spencer were alone.

She hadn’t been old to him. He’d gazed at her and seen the unlined face, the dark hair, of the woman he had fallen in love with so many years before. She had had no strength to talk, and perhaps he had had none to listen. He had known that she didn’t fear death as much as she had feared life. She had been relieved it would soon be over.

He’d promised her again that he would carry out her wishes. He’d leaned over the bed and kissed her on the forehead. Her eyes had closed for the last time, and she had smiled.

Now he combed what hair he had left and slipped into his suit coat. Wind slammed against the house, and rain fell in steel gray sheets, obscuring what was normally a pleasant view of the Gulf. Since early that morning, he had tried to find a station on his radio, but with no success. At bedtime last night, Betsy had still been expected to head to the northwest and come ashore at the Texas border, but she was a large storm now, hundreds of miles across, with winds in excess of one hundred and fifty miles an hour. She was perfectly capable of changing her mind.

Downstairs, he murmured polite greetings to every one who was stirring. Nicky and Jake were in the dining room, finishing
their breakfast, and he could hear Ben and Phillip on the front gallery. In the kitchen, Pelichere was fixing Spencer’s coffee exactly the way he liked it. In the past days, she had watched over him with a concerned eye. Of those assembled, only she and Phillip had also known Aurore’s secrets. But he was afraid that even she would be stunned by today’s revelations.

“It’s almost over,” he said, as much to himself as to her.

“I don’t like the way Dawn looks,” she said. “I saw her a while ago. This has been too hard on her.”

“Have you heard anything more about the hurricane?”

“They don’t talk about evacuation.”

“Surely they would give us some time.”

Pelichere had a deep, rollicking laugh that made Spencer think of better times. “This is Grand Isle. You think anyone’s worrying about us now, Spencer? They’ll take the men off the oil rigs. Men’ll be all gone, then they’ll think, ‘Ah yeah, those Cajuns on Grand Isle, they gotta go, too. We gotta get ‘em off, too bad we didn’ think about it while there was still a bridge.”’

He smiled, but the smile disappeared when Ferris walked into the kitchen. Spencer had almost believed that Ferris would leave after Pelichere’s account of his father’s last moments. He had threatened to; he had even driven off. But he had returned in the late afternoon. Spencer had never heard of Ferris succumbing to emotion when it wasn’t to his benefit.

From the beginning, Ferris had said that the will-reading was a farce. In this, at least, the two men agreed. Spencer had checked discreetly with several jurists knowledgeable in inheritance law, and there had been a consensus of opinion. No court would uphold such an extravagant ploy to force people to listen to each other. Spencer had told Aurore as much when she first discussed the idea with him, but she had known her
family better than he. She had said they would stay, because all of them had questions that needed to be answered.

Or lies that needed to be fortified.

“I, for one, would like to get this over with,” Ferris said. “May I have your permission to gather everybody now?”

“I would appreciate your help,” Spencer said. “The morning room? As soon as possible?”