Darkest Fear

  Tia Juliana laughed. “You made the right decision.”

  “How are things there?” I asked, and for the next twenty minutes we talked about my young cousins, my tio Marc, the crazy weather there, her new manager at work. Until now, she’d always been my tia, my mother’s sister, someone I loved but didn’t really know that well. Now we had our own relationship, and I was thankful for that, too.

  • • •

  Around the beginning of December, the weather turned dank and wet. It wasn’t super cold, only in the forties, but somehow the chill cut right through everything. Matéo’s house, like most houses here and at home, wasn’t very well insulated. The tall ceilings that handled hot summer air so effectively did just the opposite in cold weather: Any bit of heat immediately went above head height, leaving us all shivering. Sometimes the only way to feel warm was to sit under a hot shower or by the fire that was usually burning in the parlor fireplace.

  Work, however, was comfortable physically, if not emotionally. For the most part, Rafael and I stayed out of each other’s way—the closest I got to him was his signature on my paycheck. We didn’t have any more personal talks, and though I’d spent hours thinking about his sisters, about what he would be like as a brother, outwardly I remained casual and a little standoffish.

  The first week of December he brought in a tall, beautiful Christmas tree and set it up in a corner by the windows. Hayley went to the storeroom and dragged out several boxes of Christmas and Hanukkah decorations, and we all helped decorate. Rafael programmed holiday music into the sound system. It was chilly and rainy outside, and it felt unbearably cozy to be putting up Hanukkah streamers and dreidels. Kathy and Joey hung Christmas streamers and big ornaments from the ceiling. When the tree was decorated and covered with lights, all the customers clapped.

  My parents had celebrated Christmas, but just the secular part—the decorations and presents and Christmas specials. We didn’t go to church or talk about baby Jesus or anything. Apparently Matéo and everyone at our house did pretty much the same thing: Aly had decorated the altar where Tzechuro and Tzechura stood guard, but had also decorated the stairs and the front of the house with Christmas bows and lights and greenery. I loved the scent of the evergreen wreaths and garlands, but tried not to think about having Christmas with my parents. For the tree, Suzanne and James were heading to Texas for a brief camping trip, and they planned to stop at a cut-your-own Christmas tree farm on the way back.

  “Get a big one,” Aly said.

  “At least ten feet,” Coco agreed. “And when you get back, we’ll have a tree-decorating party. Vivi will make cookies.”

  “Oh, can you make extras?” Aly asked me. “I’d love to bring homemade cookies in to the office.”

  “Make extras for me too,” Tink asked. “I need to bring some to Peter’s parents.”

  So I had been elected to make twenty gazillion cookies. It was going to be great—and a good distraction from this first Christmas without my parents.

  That Thursday night work was slow, and I was looking forward to having the next two nights off for Cookie-Mania. I’d stocked up on supplies and planned to basically hole up in Matéo’s kitchen, watch Jane Austen movies on the little kitchen TV, and bake, bake, bake. I was going to make some to bring in to Ro’s also. Who knew, maybe Rafael would want me to make cookies for the shop. Maybe he would be bummed that he’d rejected me—twice—when he tasted my espresso meringues.

  Maybe I was unbelievably pathetic. Wishing that a guy liked me for my cooking skills was going to set the feminist movement back about fifty years.

  “Did Rafael come in today?” I asked Talia that day at work.

  She shook her head. “Hayley said she didn’t see him this morning.”

  So maybe he’d be in later. He usually made some sort of appearance, which gave me the satisfying opportunity to ignore him while he seethed quietly at me. Yep, a couple of cookies were going to clear all of that right up.

  I was cleaning the display-case glass and thinking about how the scones I made at home were better than the scones we bought when the doorbell jingled. I turned to see old Mrs. Fontenot, dressed all in black as usual, her winter coat engulfing her tiny frame. A big shiny car was parked in front of Ro’s, and a chauffeur in an actual uniform held the shop door open for her.

  “Hi, Mrs. Fontenot,” I said cheerfully as Talia slunk quietly toward the back. I made a mental note to say, “Bawk, bawk, bawk,” when she got back.

  “You! Girl!” the old woman said, waving her cane at me.

  “Can I make you some coffee?” I headed behind the counter.

  “Yes! Like you always do. Don’t cut corners! Don’t try to sneak that modern junk in there!”

  “You know I don’t do that to you,” I said, getting to work as she pulled out a chair and sat down at a table, her feet barely touching the floor. I wondered if she had been taller when she was young, and had shrunk in old age. As I made the coffee in one of our little French presses, I thought that Mrs. Fontenot seemed anxious, kind of fidgety. I guess she always was, but there was an alert nervousness to her that was new.

  She always liked our palmiers, so I put one on a plate, wishing again that we had a toaster oven instead of just a microwave. When her coffee was done I carried it all over to her table.

  “Here you go. I got you a palmier, too.”

  The tiny old woman sniffed the coffee, inhaling deeply, then took a sip. Her whole body seemed to relax, and she drank more.

  “You,” she said, not looking at me.

  “Yes?”

  “Has my grandson been in today?”

  “I don’t think so. Not yet.”

  Mrs. Fontenot frowned fiercely and bit into the crisp palmier, unable to avoid a rain of sugary crumbs landing on her plate.

  “If you see him, you tell him to come home.” She seemed upset, not looking at me.

  “Yes, of course, Mrs. Fontenot.” I was surprised—had he not been home in a couple of days? When had I seen him last? Yesterday? Tuesday, maybe?

  The old lady tipped the cup and drained the rest of her coffee, then stood, almost a foot shorter than me. “Thank you, petite fille,” she muttered, and then walked stiffly to where her driver waited by the door.

  Little girl? I thought, trying to remember my eighth-grade French.

  “Come back soon,” I told her. Her driver took her elbow gently and helped her get into her big black car. It was gusty outside, bits of leaves and paper skittering along the sidewalk. The other businesses on this block had also decorated for the holidays, and Mrs. Fontenot’s shiny black car reflected red and green lights as it drove away.

  I walked to our hallway and called, “You can come out now, you big chicken!”

  Talia immediately poked her head out of the former kitchen. “She’s gone?”

  “Yes. I don’t know why you don’t like her. She’s perfectly fine,” I said innocently, aware that Mrs. Fontenot had pretty much made everyone who worked here cry at one time or another.

  Talia rolled her eyes. “Good. I’m glad you think so. You can deal with her all by yourself, till kingdom come.”

  “She seemed odd,” I said, replaying the visit in my mind. “She said she didn’t know where Rafael was.”

  Talia shrugged. “He’s probably off drawing or painting somewhere. Maybe someone hired him to do a mural or something.”

  Or maybe he had met someone. Someone who would take him home to her bed, like he had asked me to. “I guess. Well, he’ll turn up.”

  • • •

  When I got home that night a little after one, I was surprised to see lights on and people moving inside the house. Sometimes someone was awake when I got home, but more often people were either out, or at work like Matéo, or asleep.

  “Vivi.” Aly looked upset.

  “What’s going on?”

  She shook her head. “We’ve all been so busy, but this afternoon I realized that Suzanne and James should have been back yesterday.”


  “Oh.” Automatically I felt a little jolt of fear—the attacks had receded a lot in my mind but would never disappear. Trying to think clearly, I said, “They left, what, four days ago? Maybe they decided to stay for an extra day?”

  “I think they would have called,” Matéo said. “But it’s probably nothing. Maybe their phones died. Maybe they just decided to stay an extra day.”

  “Yeah.” Aly looked unconvinced. “I’ve been trying to call them, and then I saw Suzanne’s calendar here.” She pointed to a small open notebook on the kitchen counter. “It looks like she has an important exam on Monday. It seems odd that she wouldn’t already be back, getting ready for it. You know what she’s like.”

  Overprepared and anal? Yes, I knew.

  “That is weird. I don’t think she would skip an exam, or skip preparing for it. So what are you thinking?” I was trying not to let my imagination run away—that wouldn’t help anyone. In all likelihood they were fine. But after everything that had happened, it was concerning.

  Aly glanced at her watch. “It’s late. Maybe I misunderstood when they were planning to get back. Maybe Suzanne brought her books with her. I think I’ll give them till tomorrow afternoon. But if we haven’t heard from them by then, we need to do something.” She said that last part to Matéo, and he nodded.

  “Agreed. Let’s get some sleep and come up with ideas tomorrow, if we have to.”

  “Okay.” Aly still looked troubled, and I wondered if she’d be able to sleep. For myself, I was hoping that Suzanne was being thoughtless, rather than in danger.

  Upstairs, my room felt cavernous and chilly. Matéo kept the heat at sixty-five degrees because it cost so much to heat such a big house. Cold air wafted around the not-modern window frames, and I pulled my curtains closed against the damp night. Maybe tomorrow I would go buy a space heater. Or maybe I would bribe Matéo to crank up the heat. I was willing to pay for it.

  Huddled in my bed, trying to get warm, I thought again about Suzanne and James. Surely they were okay—they’d probably just lost track of time. But deep down a shard of fear remained, and I prayed to the Tzechuri to protect my friends as I listened to the wind blowing the tree branches to and fro.

  The next day I woke up feeling as if something important was about to happen. A minute later I remembered about Suzanne and James. Quickly I braided my hair, put on sweatpants, and went downstairs.

  Matéo wasn’t in his workroom, but I found two notes on the kitchen table:

  Haven’t heard anything. Went to work. Will check in with you this afternoon. A.

  And:

  Helping Charlotte move furniture. Back soon. M.

  Which left me with nothing to do except wait. Worry was starting to overcome me—Suzanne and James weren’t my favorites of all our roommates, but they were in the roommate family. I thought about Margaret McCauley, who had died up in New York. At least Suzanne and James were together.

  This was pointless. I rolled up my sleeves, preheated the oven, and pulled out my Cookie Mania supplies. Every year of high school I’d made a ton of cookies for my teachers, our neighbors, people my parents worked with. I’d gotten it down to a production line. This year, making cookies was the last thing I’d thought I’d be doing, but it seemed right, and I found myself measuring out flour and sugar with a sense of . . . almost acceptance.

  The long afternoon went by without hearing anything from Aly. Matéo was home by three, and after stealing some Mexican wedding cookies, he disappeared into his workshop. We were now both worried. There was no house phone—everyone had a cell phone—and each time Matéo’s phone rang, we jumped. By the time we heard Aly’s car pull onto the wet crushed shells, it was dark and chilly outside, a winter’s night.

  Inside, the kitchen was toasty warm and full of all of the best smells: vanilla, brown sugar, spices, butter, peppermint. Though I’d been on my feet all day and had burned my hand at one point, I felt about as together as I could, considering. The familiar actions of rotating cookie sheets in and out of the oven, of mixing and washing bowls and reusing them, had helped me feel less out of control.

  Now Aly came in the kitchen door, shutting it against a gust of air that threatened to push it open. “You haven’t heard anything, have you?” were her first words.

  “No. There’s no reason I would,” I said. “But I know Matéo hasn’t. And I’m guessing you haven’t.”

  “Nope.” Aly dropped her purse on a chair and kicked off her work heels. “I called their parents this afternoon. They hadn’t heard anything, didn’t know Suzanne and James were late getting back. And I called the police. They say that I don’t have a definitive due-back-by date, and there’s no evidence of foul play.”

  “Damn it,” I said. “So what now?”

  “We have to go find them.” Aly strode intently to the kitchen doorway. “Téo! Téo!”

  “Hey, babe,” he said, coming out of his workshop. “Nothing?”

  “No. They aren’t back and no one’s heard from them. We need to go find them.” Aly was no-nonsense, and it took Matéo only a few moments to process everything, including the look on Aly’s face.

  “Okay. Let’s throw a few things in the car. We should bring some of their clothes.”

  “Thank you. Look, we’ll be back probably tomorrow,” Aly told me. “This might be for nothing, but I’m worried and really want to know for sure.”

  I had already washed the flour off my hands, and I turned off the TV and the oven before saying, “I’m going with you.”

  They both looked surprised. Aly hugged me. “Thank you, sweetie, but it’s fine for you to stay here. Hold down the fort.”

  “Look, I don’t know what I can do to help,” I said honestly. “I don’t know what your plan is or anything. But you guys—you’re my cousins, my family, and you’re upset about our friends. Of course I’m going with you.”

  Aly hugged me again, and Matéo smoothed his hand over my hair with a smile.

  Coco came home while I was throwing water bottles into a bag.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, and Aly quickly explained.

  Coco was clearly not thrilled. “I can’t go with you—I’ve got to help cater the Cavalitto wedding tonight and the breakfast tomorrow. But what if you guys don’t come back?”

  “Then you go to the cops,” Matéo said, coming into the kitchen with a sleeping bag under his arm.

  “Where’s Tink?” Coco asked.

  “At work. He had to go down to Plaquemines Parish this morning,” Matéo said. “No clue when he’ll be back.”

  “What about Dana?” Coco was frowning, her hands on her hips.

  “Dana went to Amsterdam early this morning, remember?” said Aly. “A TKD exhibition.”

  “Tzechura help us,” Coco muttered, running her hands through her short hair. “Okay, I can’t stop you. But please be extra careful. If you guys get hurt, I’ll kill you.”

  Aly hugged her. “Understood.”

  It was almost seven by the time we left, and a cold December rain had started falling. The chill went right through my sweater and jeans, and I was glad that the Camry’s heater worked.

  As Matéo headed west on I-10, I popped the top on a can of Barq’s Root Beer and felt a little excited and a lot scared, like a kid going on an adventure that would end up forming my character much more than I wanted it to. I had even brought a pillow and a blanket, the way I had when I was little and my parents would take me on a road trip. “Do we know where they were planning to camp?”

  “James mentioned the Sabine National Forest,” Matéo said. “I’ve never been there, but I know it’s in Texas, just west of the Louisiana border.”

  Aly was looking at the GPS on her phone. “It has three different campgrounds, and there’s one road that goes up through the middle. We can start asking questions there, so head north at Orange City. We can eliminate the campgrounds one by one.”

  “I’m hoping that they’re living it up at a Marriott and didn’t think tha
t we might be worried,” I said. “I’d much rather be pissed than scared.”

  “Me too,” said Aly, taking Matéo’s hand.

  What would it feel like to have someone to lean on, like Matéo and Aly had in each other? To know that you could count on someone? Just one more thing I hadn’t appreciated about my parents, and now I wondered if I would ever find it with anyone in my life. Everything felt bleak and scary, and a small, ashamed part of me wished I were home again, making cookies.

  We drove through the night and the rain, west across Louisiana and then north. Sometimes the rain was a fine mist that made the wipers squeak; sometimes we couldn’t hear each other talking because of the drops hammering the car’s roof and windows.

  There was a lot of time to think—too much. Lying on the backseat, my knees bent so my long legs would fit, I looked up through the back window at the water sluicing down. We were on smaller country roads now, and there were no lights except the occasional gas station or restaurant or bait shop. The interior of the car was washed by a faint green glow from Matéo’s radio, but the stations buzzed in and out as we got farther from New Orleans, and finally he turned it off.

  One after another, thoughts, questions, concerns, and fears scrolled through my mind: What did I feel for Rafael, and what did he feel for me, if anything? Where were Suzanne and James? Who had killed my parents, and would I ever not miss them so much, or feel so much guilt? When was I going to break down and tell my tia Juliana where I was and that I knew about Donella? Or would I just go back home and pretend I’d been there the whole time?

  And I did want to go to college, didn’t I? I did want more in my life than working at a coffee shop, right? Why had I been able to be so aggressive with Rafael that night in the park? What had he done with my portrait? What was happening with my home in Sugar Beach? Mrs. Peachtree hadn’t reported anything weird lately. Would I ever be able to live there again?

  All these bits and snippets of thoughts and feelings whirled through my brain, kicked up by a storm of uncertainty. Seven months ago I’d been able to look ahead and see my future clearly defined by my step-by-step plan to live my life far away from my parents while not severing all contact forever. It had been mapped out: a very distant school, maybe junior year abroad, a job not in Florida . . .