Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (37 page)

Emotion clogged my throat. Sometimes games were fun, I remembered thinking the week before, and sometimes they were not. Pitre’s game, no matter how pseudo-noble it had started, was going to leave the kind of scars no amount of penance could erase.

I’m not sure what made him look up, but slowly his head lifted, and his shell-shocked eyes met mine. Something flared there—sorrow? Gratitude? Respect? I’ll never know. But as my own eyes filled, he looked back down.

And then Jim Fourcade stepped from the open doorway, and everything else fell away. Leaner, I thought. Somehow from one day to the next he looked leaner, stripped bare, like a tree in the aftermath of a violent storm. He was still standing, still there, but there was something in the stark silver of his eyes, and without even a word, I knew what was inside that room.

And started to pray.

My mother’s friend lifted an arm and extended a hand. I stared at it, at his palm and scraped fingers, the solidarity he was offering. And something inside of me tightened. He’d done this before. He’d lived moments like this one. With my mother. He’d been by her side. He’d taken her hand, given her his strength.

By stepping toward him, by putting my palm to his and curving my fingers around his hand, it was like I was joining them. Joining her.

Then I saw Jessica.

She sat on the far side of the dirty hospital room, on the floor with her bloody arms wrapped around her knees. Rocking. Just rocking. Discarded candy bar wrappers surrounded her. Chocolate stained her face. Bruises and blood, some new, some old, covered her arms. Her hair was stringy. And I knew, I knew I would never forget the look in her sunken eyes, dark and vacant and staring. And like the dead guy in the basement, I was pretty sure she didn’t see anything. Until she spoke.

“Chase,” she whispered, looking beyond me to where Chase stood at my side. Somewhere along the line his hand had fallen from mine. “Chase…” she said again.
“You’re here.”

*   *   *

Amber couldn’t stop crying. For a while she paced, but the second Drew arrived, she dived into his arms and totally lost it. I’d always thought she looked stupid skinny. But at six in the morning, in the Tulane Hospital waiting room, with no makeup and uncombed hair, swollen eyes and sweats instead of designer clothes, she looked like a girl overcome by the news that her BFF had been found … alive.

Bethany fidgeted. I tried to see Jessica’s younger sister as she’d been a little more than a week before, when she’d climbed through the broken window in a fragile attempt to impress her older sister and her sister’s boyfriend. She’d seemed like a little girl then, with a serious case of hero worship. Now the sterile glow of fluorescent lights revealed an awareness to her, a wisdom beyond her years, and I couldn’t help but think that I’d had it wrong. She was the sister with the strength, the confidence. She was the sister who was going to take her sibling by the hand, and lead.

Throat tight, I glanced away, to where Chase stood with his parents. Susan and Richard had been so elegant and reserved a few nights before, but like the rest of us, now they looked like people roused from bed during the predawn darkness by a phone call. They had their arms around their son, as if comforting him. But I was pretty sure he was doing most of the comforting. The Bonaventures and Morgenthals had been friends a long time.

We were all there. All waiting. All except Aunt Sara, who’d gone to check on Detective LaSalle. He’d been the first to stumble across the room where Jessica was being held. There’d been a fight. Detective LaSalle had been bludgeoned with something. The junkie had run, ending up in the basement after discovering cops swarming the hospital lobby.

We would never know. We would never know why that man with a spotless record but track mark–littered body had taken Jessica—and possibly the other girls. We would never know if he’d been watching her, or if she’d simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time. If Pitre had never lured her—

Pitre.
He was the only one from that night who wasn’t with us at the hospital. Because he was at the 8th District police station, in serious trouble. He’d lured Jessica to the house to teach her a lesson. He’d locked her in the room, gone to get a burger. He’d wanted her to feel the fear I had when she and Amber had played their joke. He’d never seen the man hiding in the shadows.

When he returned an hour later, the room had been empty, and hell had begun.

Across the room, the morning news played across a muted television. I watched a reporter standing outside Big Charity, no doubt conveying all that had gone down.

Relieved there were no pictures of me, I glanced toward the sterile room that pretended to be cheerful, with its collection of plastic plants and sofas and magazines, where Amber and Drew held each other and Bethany stood stoically—but Chase no longer stood with his parents.

I turned as he came up behind me with a Styrofoam cup in his hand. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

I’m not sure why my throat got all tight, probably because of the word “okay.” I knew what he meant and I knew what the right answer was. And technically, I was okay. Jessica was safe and her abductor was dead, but …

In the course of one week, my life had changed forever. If Jim Fourcade had not asked his son to follow me …

I looked away.

“Just tired,” I said, taking the coffee Chase offered. I sipped, welcoming the warmth despite the bitter taste. A little sugar could go a long way.

“Then why don’t you go home—” he said, reaching for my free hand. But he never finished. Instead he stilled, his eyes going dark. “Whose shirt is that?”

I looked down at the huge black T-shirt hanging from my shoulders. “Oh,” I whispered, not sure how much to tell him. “I…” Fell in the river? “… had an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

“Just … I fell,” I hedged. “Dylan—”

“Dylan?”

There was a hard edge to Chase’s voice, one I’d never heard before. “Jim Fourcade’s son. He was there,” I downplayed. “His dad asked him to keep an eye on me.”

“You’re wearing his shirt?”

I’m not sure why I smiled, maybe because Chase sounded so totally bothered by the fact I was wearing another guy’s shirt. Or maybe because for the first time since we’d been together on his sofa, the little kick in my heart was a happy one.

I didn’t want to think about Jim Fourcade’s son—or why I hadn’t seen him since the morgue.

“It’s just a shirt,” I said.

But Chase looked like he did during football games when the other team intercepted one of his passes … which did not happen often. Actually, I’d only seen it happen once.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said, setting the small cup on a table and stepping into him, wrapping my arms around him. He was all rigid and tight, like he wasn’t about to let down his guard.

I’ll never know what would have happened next, because Jessica’s parents emerged from around a corner, stepping into the waiting room. Marian and Bryce Morgenthal were both tall, beautiful people, but in that moment they were just tired, haggard parents. Bethany flew to them, and they hugged. The Bonaventures moved closer. Amber and Drew held hands. Chase and I separated.

“She’s going to be okay,” Jessica’s mother said. When they met mine, her eyes filled. “Thanks to you.”

I stiffened, tried to back away. That was instinct. But Chase wouldn’t let me.

Through her tears, Marian Morgenthal smiled. “She’s awake now … and asking for you.”

*   *   *

I’m not sure what I expected. Jessica had looked gaunt and frail when I’d seen her huddled in the corner of the hospital room. And it’s not like we were friends. That she would want to see me before her sister or BFF …

For a long time I stood outside her door, trying to figure out what to say. How to act. What I really wanted to do was walk away.

But that was the coward’s way out, and I was so done with that.

Telling myself the only way to get it over with was to do it, I took a deep breath and for the second time that day, stepped into a hospital room where Jessica waited.

Before, at Big Charity, she’d been on the floor, her gown stained, her hair tangled and matted with blood. Her eyes vacant. Now she lay propped up in a bed, the sheets clean and tucked around her. Machines beeped. Tubes and cords ran to and from her body. Oxygen ran to her swollen nose. A half-eaten bowl of ice cream sat on a tray, next to a huge plastic cup with a handle and a straw.

She’d showered. She’d washed her hair. Her face was scrubbed clean. The blood and chocolate and grime were gone, but the cuts and bruises remained. As did the fear. Dark smudges still ringed her swollen eyes, but they were no longer as vacant.

“Hey,” she whispered, and I made myself swallow, even though my throat felt like someone had a cord wrapped around it, pulling tighter and tighter.

“Hey,” I said back, sifting for the right words.
You look better? I’m glad you’re okay? I bet that ice cream tasted good …

In the end, I didn’t need to say anything.

“Thank you,” Jessica said as I neared her bed, and I just stopped. That was not what I was expecting.

Her mouth was swollen, her lips cracked, but the faint smile was obvious, and somehow with that one simple gesture, we were just two girls, one in a hospital gown, the other in a T-shirt, neither of us with makeup, both of us with stringy, air-dried hair.

“For what you did,” she said, and her eyes—wow, I’d never noticed how pretty they were, even bruised with shadows of blood and fatigue, rather than powder and glitter. “I don’t think I could have done that.”

I think I shrugged. “It was no big deal.”

“It was everything,” she said. “After what I did to you … you could have just walked away.”

I looked away.

“But you were there,” she whispered. “I don’t know how … but I could … feel you.”

My eyes whipped back to hers.

“My parents … told me how you put it all on the line … for me.”

The way she said “for me” tugged at me. It was as if she considered herself synonymous with the filth in which we’d found her.

Eyes on mine, never looking away, she stretched out an arm—thin, pale, and bruised—and extended her hand. And when she spoke again, her voice was so quiet it barely registered over the beeping of the machines. “You were … amazing.”

Amazing. It was not a word I’d associated with myself. I’d come to this city of my birth, frightened and alone, looking for answers, connections. To finally belong. There was still much I didn’t know, but in that moment I realized that sometimes what brought people together wasn’t that which made us the same.

But that which made us different.

With the morning sunshine filtering through the blinds, I stood there a long moment, watching the way the light played with the shadows between us.

Then I stepped closer, and took her hand.

THIRTY-ONE

They call them Cities of the Dead. Row after row of weathered white houses stretch in all directions. Angels guard them. Crosses and rusty ironwork adorn them. Shadows dance, and the silence whispers.

I’d heard about the odd, aboveground tombs. I’d read about them. I knew the water table was too high for in-ground burials. I’d been horrified after the hurricane at reports of floating caskets and lost coffins …

But nothing prepared me for actually seeing.

“I can go with you,” Aunt Sara said.

Squinting against the blinding afternoon sun, I glanced back at her and felt the warmth clear down to my toes. She’d insisted on coming with me, even though she was totally wiped out. She’d showered and nibbled on a shrimp po-boy, but fatigue still dulled her eyes. Dark circles ringed them. Without makeup, her skin was smooth, but pale. Even her hair, normally thick and glossy and perfect, hung there.

But the second I’d mentioned where I wanted to go, she’d reached for her purse and offered to drive.

“Thank you,”
I said, and meant on so many more levels than she could possibly realize. She’d taken me in. She’d put her life on hold and welcomed a homeless teenager. She’d stood by me and held my hand. She’d shared her home and given me the two most amazing gifts I’d ever received: herself … and my mother.

I didn’t know how I’d ever be able to pay her back.

“But if it’s okay…” I swallowed, frowning as a tour group tromped along on an adjacent row. The force of the breeze stole the guide’s words, but I didn’t need to hear them. I knew what he was saying, the legends he was telling, the spectacle he was trying to build.

In New Orleans, cemeteries were practically museums.

But for me, St. Louis Cemetery was a sacred place.

I’d been wanting to come since I’d arrived back in August, but for some reason had been putting it off. Now, after all that had gone down over the past week, the time seemed right.

“You want to go alone, don’t you?” Aunt Sara asked, sliding the hair back from her face.

I watched the tangled mass fly right back in and was grateful I’d opted for a ponytail. “If you don’t mind—” I said, shifting the backpack over my shoulder.

Her smile, even with her lips dry and cracked, made me want to throw my arms around her and hold on tight.

But this was something I needed to do alone.

“They’d be so proud of you,”
she whispered, and my chest tightened. “Just like I am.”

I turned before she could see my eyes well up and made my way through the shifting shadows cast by crosses and some of the most haunting statues I’d ever seen.

Two rows over, across from a crumbling depiction of the Virgin Mary, I stopped. Automatically my hand lifted to my chest, my fingers once again closing around my mother’s dragonfly. Such a small thing really, a necklace. And yet to me … it was everything.

Because it was hers.

The aboveground tomb looked like all the others, with a crumbling Celtic cross on top and an intricate iron fence around it. But the marker made it different.

The marker made it mine.

John Mark and Rachelle Monsour

Beloved parents