Mark took Allie’s hand and made her look at him. “Maybe you should.”
“Why? I have T.J. here, and you. The killer found Francis Bledsoe at her mother’s in Slidell. What makes you think he wouldn’t find me in Georgia?”
Mark closed his eyes and let that sink in for a moment.
“Mark, I’m not leaving, no matter what you say. I’m staying, and that’s final.”
He seemed to be undergoing some supreme struggle. She laid her hand on his chest. “Mark, I mean it. Don’t even think about it.”
Mark looked at her mother, then her father, who had approached the bed himself. Mark’s eyes were deep with thought. For a moment, she thought he would agree with them and insist that she leave, and she wondered how in the world she would convince all three of them that her place was here.
But Mark surprised her. “She’s right. She’s really probably safer here, where there’s a mob of press people downstairs and a bodyguard outside the door.”
Her father’s teeth came together, and through compressed lips, he said, “That’s selfish, Mark! You want her here taking care of you, so you’re letting your selfishness endanger her life. She’s my daughter. I want her to be safe.”
“She’s my wife,” Mark said. “And I want that, too. If I thought she’d be safer in Georgia—”
Her mother’s tough facade shattered, and she turned away. “You don’t even love her, Mark. You were going to divorce her just a few days ago. Why should we believe now that you’ll do everything in your power to protect her?”
Allie’s face was hot, and tears stung her eyes. “Mother, please—”
“You’re right,” Mark said, closing his hand possessively over Allie’s. “My power is pretty limited right now. And there’s no good reason you should believe me when I say that I’ll make sure she’s protected.”
“Yes, there is, Mark!” Allie shouted. “There is a good reason.” She swung around to her parents, her face raging red. “He almost died protecting me! He almost died! The least I can do—the very least—is to stay here with him now.”
Mark tugged on her hand and turned her back around. She saw the pain on his face, and realized that he’d misinterpreted her words. “You don’t owe me anything, Allie.”
“No, Mark, that’s not what I meant. But they can’t pretend that you haven’t protected me. That you haven’t done everything in your power—”
“We appreciate what Mark did,” her father said, more softly now, as if trying to appease her. “We do. But now it’s our turn—”
“No, it’s not! I’ve made my choice.”
“You’re our only daughter,” her mother cried. “We don’t want to leave you.” Her voice broke, and she began to sob. In a high-pitched voice, she cried, “We may never see you again.”
Suddenly, Allie understood the reason for her parents’ domineering stance in this. They were terrified. Maybe even more terrified than she was. Melting, she whispered, “Oh, Mom,” and went to her mother, hugged her, then pulled back and hugged her father. “Dad—I’m gonna be all right. Really. Please. Just go home. I’ll call you every day.”
“You promise?” her mother asked through her tears.
“Yes. You can pray for us, and trust that God is still watching over us.”
Her mother, who had been the one to teach Allie to pray, nodded her head, unable to speak. Her father struggled with his own tears as he turned to Mark. “Don’t let anything happen to our little girl, do you hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
He settled his gaze on his daughter.
“We’ll go home,” her father said. “We’re just getting in the way here, and we’re not going to see things eye to eye. But we love you, sweetheart.”
“I love you, too.” She hugged them again, and finally, he took her mother’s hand and escorted her out.
She turned back to the bed and met Mark’s eyes. Though they were still bruised, she saw clearly the longing in them.
“You know, you don’t have to stay,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to take care of me. If you want to go with them—”
“I want to stay, Mark.”
“Why?” The question seemed important, but she was too tired, too hungry, too depressed to answer it eloquently.
“For the same reason you want to take care of me.”
The quiet seemed to bond them in some unspoken way as they gazed at each other with sad, questioning eyes. Questions needed to be asked, questions about where they stood in each other’s hearts, what their next step would be, whether there would still be a marriage when all the dust settled. But those questions were never asked, because Jill came hurrying in with a Styrofoam plate in her hand.
“Allie, I’m so sorry it took so long to bring this back, but the line was long.”
“It’s okay,” Allie whispered. But her eyes stayed locked with Mark’s in sweet anticipation and fragile hope.
Chapter Forty-Six
Two days later, Aunt Aggie puttered in the kitchen at the fire station, making a thick gumbo that she didn’t really have the heart for. These funerals were wearing her out. It was one thing saying good-bye, one by one, to people her own age who’d led long lives and were ready for the fat lady to sing, but it was another watching them bury a beautiful young woman with twin girls who would need their mama. The sight had broken her heart; it almost made her want to stay at home in mourning today. But her boys had to eat, and they, too, were in mourning. They needed some comfort, even if she could only offer it through their stomachs.
Nick had come in after the funeral and a visit to Susan Ford in Slidell, looking drained and sober. He looked worn and aged, too, she thought, even though he was only thirty. He needed a wife to take care of him and keep that soft heart of his pumping. He was a good man, even if Aunt Aggie didn’t believe a word of the stuff he preached.
Dan Nichols hadn’t gone to the funeral. He had stayed behind on the skeleton crew that kept the fire station open, as had Cale Larkins, who said he couldn’t bear the thought either of attending another funeral or of staying in a lonely house. One by one, they had all returned to the station. It was quiet, deathly so—there hadn’t been a call in hours, they’d said, not even a cat up a tree. She wished someone would turn on music or something, to break the quiet. She thought of humming as she prepared the meal, but she just had no hum in her.
She heard footsteps in the doorway and turned around to see George Broussard standing there in a pair of worn jeans and a gray sweatshirt, holding that little baby, Tommy, on his hip. The little boy looked freshly bathed, and his hair was slicked over like that of an older child. His face was so clean it shone.
“Oh, let me see mon enfant,” Aunt Aggie said, rushing to his side. “Oh, George, how is he, bless his heart?”
George pressed a kiss on his cheek. “He’s good, Aunt Aggie. He’s gon’ be awright.”
“My heart break for him. And for you, too.”
He swallowed and looked down at the baby, then asked, “Is Nick here, by any chance?”
“He in the back changin’.”
“I need to talk to him,” he said.
“I’ll baby-sit for you,” she said, “soon’s I get the table set. Y’eat?”
“No, but I ain’t hungry.”
“Y’have to eat, George. You look like nothin’ but skin and bones.” She’d meant it to make him smile, since it was so obviously untrue. But it didn’t work.
“I ain’t been hungry.”
“Neither has nobody.” She hurriedly set the table, then reached for the baby. “Come here, darlin’.”
Tommy puckered up like he was going to cry, and George shifted him to the other hip. “I b’lieve I’ll just keep him with me.”
“You sure?”
“Oh, yeah. No problem.”
Aggie watched them disappear to the back. She heard a knock, and turned to see Celia standing in the doorway. “Aunt Aggie? What’s wrong?”
She dabbed at her eyes with a
corner of her apron. “Just George,” she said. “And that poor little orphaned boy.”
“He’s not an orphan, Aunt Aggie. He has his daddy.”
“But not his mama. We could set up a whole school full of young ’uns lost their mamas in the last week.” She dabbed her eyes again. “How many is that monster gonna kill before Stan stops him?”
“He’s doing the best he can, Aunt Aggie. You know he is.”
She waved a frustrated hand. “Ah, it’s takin’ forever.” She pulled a tissue from a box on the corner of the counter and blew her nose. “So what bring you here? You smell my gumbo all way across town?”
Celia smiled. “No. I was just talking to Allie Branning, and she said that Mark is doing so well that they might let him go home tomorrow.”
“Really? After gettin’ shot in the head?”
“The Lord was really looking out for him.”
“Then why he got shot in the first place?”
“He was protecting Allie.”
“No, no,” Aggie said with frustration. “I mean, why did somebody go t’ shootin’ at him? If the Lord was lookin’ out for him, why he got shot? And was the Lord not lookin’ out for Martha and Jamie and Susan and Francis?”
She knew that her niece wasn’t fooled. Everyone in town knew she didn’t believe in the Lord, nor any other supposed higher being, and she sure didn’t believe in divine intervention of any kind. Aggie was making a point, and she hoped she’d made it well.
“Aunt Aggie, I can’t pretend to know what God is doing, or why he’s doing it. I just believe that he is working somehow. Now, the reason I came is to ask you a favor.”
“What favor, darlin’?” Aggie asked, suddenly contrite that she’d offended her niece. If she hadn’t been so grouchy and irritable from the funeral, she wouldn’t have.
“Well, I was just thinking. Allie was a little worried about where she and Mark would go when he gets out. They can’t go home for obvious reasons. In fact, the farther from Newpointe they are, the better. And it’s a little hard to recover in a hotel. They need a place with a kitchen so they don’t have to go out. That got me to thinking about your apartment in the French Quarter.”
Aggie’s eyebrows arched. “You think they’d want to stay there?”
“I’m not sure, but we could offer. Oh, Aunt Aggie, it’s such a romantic little place. It’s just what they need. It was heaven for Stan and me on our honeymoon. I could stock the kitchen and get it all ready for them. That is, if there’s not a tenant in it already.”
Aggie had kept the apartment for her frequent visits to the Southshore. She rented it out through a real estate agent who specialized in tourism, but only for a week at a time. This time of year, between Mardi Gras and Easter, tourism was slow, so the apartment was vacant. “It’s a good idea,” she said. “I’ll call the realtor and tell her we’ll be usin’ it ourselves ’til further notice. And I’ll get the cleanin’ lady I use down there t’ go by and give it a once-over. Oh, and I’ll have some fresh flowers sent over, to freshen it up a little, since Allie loves flowers. Me and you can go down there tomorrow mornin’ and spruce the place up before they get there.”
“Okay,” Celia said with a smile. “What about feeding the guys?”
Aggie looked back at the food, still sitting on the table, cooling. “Nobody ’round here has much appetite, noway. Let ’em order pizza for a coupla meals; they’ll appreciate my eats a little more when I get back.”
Craig Barnes came in just then, his face as tired and preoccupied as all of the other firefighters today. He glanced at the table. “Where is everybody?”
“Nick’s in back talkin’ to George Broussard. Dan, Slater, and Cale’s washin’ the ladder truck. Jacob and Junior is out back shootin’ hoops. Sit down if you hungry. Food’s gettin’ cold.”
“No thanks,” he muttered. “Not hungry.” He disappeared into the back.
“Heaven’s sake,” she said. “Guess I’ll be glad to get out of town tomorrow and do somethin’ with my time that’s worthwhile.”
Celia set a time for them to meet, then rushed out to call Allie.
In the back room where the television set and a couple of recliners and rockers were, George rocked his baby. Nick sat across from him, elbows on his knees, his eyes locked into his friend’s.
“I just wondered, Nick,” George said, his voice cracking as he got the words out, “if you have any advice…on, you know…how to stop feelin’ like I’m smotherin’ in the dark.”
Nick prayed silently for an answer. He’d counseled people before about dealing with death, but never after a murder. He felt helpless, inadequate. “Trust God,” Nick said. “That’s all I know. It’s normal to grieve, George. Jesus grieved over Lazarus. But you have to trust God and know that things are working together for good, and that this grief will just be a memory some day when you’re reunited with Martha.”
Little Tommy’s eyes were drifting shut as George rocked, the steady rhythm of the rocker the most soothing sound Nick had heard in days. “I do trust God,” George said, stroking the baby’s cheek with his rough knuckle. “I just wish he’d let me in on what he’s up to.”
“Don’t we all?”
“I wish it didn’t have to hurt so bad. I wish—” His voice broke, and he dropped his head and squeezed his eyes shut as a sob broke from his throat. “I wish Tommy would stop lookin’ around me for his mama.” He drew in a deep, wet breath, and wiped his face with a hard hand. “I wish I’d spent more time with him before it happened…so’s he’d be more used to me. But she was nursin’, so I couldn’t do the feedin’s, and I was here every third night, and she changed most of the diapers and did most of what had to be done. I shoulda helped her more. I shoulda been there instead of actin’ the clown in some stupid parade.”
Guilt. It was a natural stage of grief, yet knowing that didn’t give Nick a clue how to make it easier to deal with. Again, he prayed for strength. An idea came to him, and he sat back in his chair.
“Let’s think about Martha for a minute, George,” he said. “About where she is right now.”
George brought his grieving eyes back up to Nick’s. “She’s in heaven. No question.”
“What do you think she sees there? What’s it like for her?”
George thought about that for a moment. “I couldn’t say.”
“All right,” Nick said, taking it one step at a time, though he realized he was going way out on a limb. “Let’s just think about it. If when we get there, we’re reunited with loved ones, who do you think would have come to greet Martha?”
George was quiet for a long moment, and Nick began to think this line of thought might have been a mistake. Finally, the man said, “Her parents. She’ll be glad to see ’em. Especially her mama. She just lost her last year, and it really hurt her. She wanted so much for her mama to see her as a mama herself.”
“Wonderful. She’s reunited with her parents. Who else?”
“Grandmaws and grandpaws, I reckon. And her sister who died when she was a teenager. I never knew her, but she was in a car wreck, and Martha always missed her.”
“She’s with her sister!” Nick exclaimed. “What a wonderful homecoming she must have had. Anyone else?”
George struggled with his thoughts for a moment longer. “Yeah.” He looked up at Nick with a look of surprise as the thought came to him. “Martha had two miscarriages. Reckon those babies’ll be there, too?”
Nick’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m certain they are.”
George managed to get out a smile, then a soft, poignant laugh as he wiped the tears from his face. “What do you know ’bout that? She’ll get to be a mama, after all. And her mama will see it.” He laughed again, and shook his head. “She’ll have her work cut out for her, what with two babies and me not there to help her.”
“But she’s got her parents there, and her sister. And you’ve got your family here.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I do. Maybe that’s why the good Lo
rd didn’t let the killer take Tommy, too. He left one for me.”
“And one day, you’ll have them all together.”
George looked down at the little baby, a sweet smile on his face. “Wonder if she has cellulite there?”
Nick didn’t think he’d heard right. “Has what?”
“Cellulite,” George said, chuckling and leaning his head back on the rocker. “She always said that she hoped when she got to heaven she wouldn’t have no cellulite. Reckon she has any?”
Nick laughed softly. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t think of a single scriptural reference to cellulite.
When no one had come to the table, Aggie had gone looking for them, one by one, insisting that the boys eat so that her gumbo wouldn’t go bad. When she’d gone after George and Nick, she had heard the conversation going on in the TV room, and had hung back, listening quietly.
All that talk about heaven irritated her. It was a nice thought, but she didn’t see the point in getting a man’s hopes up about some fairy-tale future. Then she’d heard them laughing, and she’d peeked around the door and had seen the beginning of joy in George Broussard’s eyes, and she decided that, fairy tale or not, it had chased the shadows from the grieving man’s face. She didn’t know how he was as a preacher, but Nick Foster would make a great shrink. Empty fairy tales or not, if hope made the man feel better, then she supposed she wasn’t against it.
Miscarriages, two babies, the Lord leaving Tommy behind, the idea of reuniting a family of five when on earth it had only been a family of three…
Funny thing about Christians, she thought. They always managed to see good in the most awful circumstances. At least, some of them did. It beat everything she’d ever seen. Either they were master pretenders or master self-deceivers.
She went back into the kitchen, only to find the other men at the table with their heads bowed as Dan Nichols led them in a prayer of thanks for the food she had cooked. Shaking her head in frustration, she took off her apron, grabbed her sweater, and decided to go for a walk before she came back to do the dishes.