“Don’t count on it.” He made an obscene milking gesture with a hand on one of her breasts, then returned the hand to the wall beside her head.
Unable to squirm out of his extended arms, she tried to calm herself down. “Isn’t it time you earned your own way, Nick?”
“You owe me, Sammie,” he said, spittle settling at the edges of his lips.
“For what?” Samantha knew she should scream for help, but she didn’t want to appear frightened. It was just Nick, after all. All flash and no bang, as her grandfather used to say.
“For five years of torture living with you.”
She should shut up, but she had to ask, “So you never loved me?”
“Get real!” He gave her another of those insulting once-overs. “As if! Now, you’re going to go inside that courtroom and drop this complaint for termination of alimony, or—”
“Or what?”
He shook her until her teeth practically rattled. “I know where you live, Sammie. Remember that.”
“What? Are you threatening me?”
Nick had been a heartache during their marriage and an expensive pain in the ass since then, but he’d never threatened violence before. This was something new, and, truthfully, a little scary.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she lied. “You are the biggest mistake of my life, and I’m done paying for it.”
As voices came closer, he released her and turned on his heels, but, before he stormed away, he said, “You’ll be done, all right, unless you back down.”
She decided not to tell Luc about Nick’s actions. Not just yet. She didn’t want to get involved in filing a complaint with the police, which is what Luc would surely demand. Not just yet. And truth to tell, she was a bit rattled.
Samantha was an educated woman. And a wealthy one. Her family owned Starr Foods, a chain of supermarkets throughout the South. Her grandfather, Stanley Starr, a Yankee carpetbagger from Boston whose family had emigrated from Scotland, founded Starr Foods with a little French Quarter grocery store after World War II. There were now more than a hundred stores. Thus, she was guaranteed a healthy income for life. Not that she didn’t work for it, both in the accounting department and as director of the Hope Foundation, the umbrella organization for Starr Wishes and Jude’s Angels, the latter being Tante Lulu’s brainchild.
To outsiders, Samantha appeared independent and confident. And she was good-looking, dammit, no matter what Nick said. Not beautiful, but attractive.
Despite all that, by the time she returned to her Garden District home that evening, she felt shattered. Forget about physical threats, her ex-husband wounded her with words, every single time.
What she needed was a Prince Charming to rescue her.
Nah.
She would settle for a suit of armor, or thicker skin.
Chapter Two
What’s your theme, baby? . . .
One week after his mother’s death, a still reeling Daniel LeDeux stood in her backyard.
Don Ho was belting out “Tiny Bubbles” from the loudspeakers. A pig was roasting on a monster rental spit in the backyard, which was decorated with sand and fake palm trees. Among the fifty or so guests were men wearing garish, floral, Hawaiian shirts and women dazzling in sarongs or skimpy, fake grass skirt outfits, all accented by artificial leis. Luckily, the weather had cooperated. While normally the July temps in Alaska didn’t go above the sixties, it was in the low eighties today. Everyone sipped at drinks adorned with pineapple slices and little umbrellas. Macadamia nuts were heaped in one bowl, and a questionable grayish purple poi of three different consistencies was available for one, two, or three-finger dipping. Those who had already overimbibed on the coladas were dancing in a wacky hula-style conga line that skirted all four sides of the house.
It was the best luau Juneau, Alaska had ever seen.
At the same time, it was the wackiest funeral Daniel and Aaron had ever attended. Unfortunately, the guest of honor was their mother, whose body, donated to science, had already winged its way to the Johns Hopkins research facility in Baltimore more than seven days ago.
“I feel a little guilty,” Aaron confessed to him. “Like we should be howling with grief, instead of partying.”
Daniel shook his head. “No need. She was in so much pain. Even morphine didn’t cut it near the end.”
As a single parent, their mother had struggled to bring twins into the world, care for them while attending college and medical school, and provide a loving home for thirty-odd years. Her death was a monumental loss to both of them. But, really, they’d said their good-byes to her months ago, when she’d still been able to put two coherent sentences together.
He squeezed his brother’s arm.
“Cancer is a bitch,” Aaron said.
You’re telling me! Try watching a ten-year-old kid wither away to nothing.
“You boys havin’ a good time?” Aunt Mel asked, giving each of them a hug.
“Just super!” Daniel remarked.
Smiles twitched at their lips as they viewed her attire. She was a native Aleut, except for some Russian blood contributed by an anonymous grandfather, thus her height of five-foot-eight. Despite a huge appetite, Mel had always been skinny. Now, she had her almost nonexistent hips tucked into a grass skirt riding way too low on her butt. Halved coconuts looked like torpedoes covering her breasts, which were also practically nonexistent. A circle of lavender orchids lay atop her permed, bottle blond hair. On a chain about her neck hung a half of a silver heart pendant to match the one their mother had always worn. Although Mel had a smile on her mouth, her eyes were red-rimmed from crying.
“Just wait ’til the singing starts,” she said. “Father Sylvester is gonna lead us in hymns.”
“Yippee!” Aaron said under his breath.
“At least it’s not Barry Manilow songs,” Daniel murmured back, with a hand over his mouth.
“Gag me at the Copa,” Aaron quipped.
Despite their whispered remarks, neither of them would ever deliberately hurt Aunt Mel, who had been with them since they were toddlers. In fact, she had given Aaron his first flying lesson when he was twelve years old and later welcomed him as half owner of her air shipping company.
“I know it’s cornball, having a theme funeral, but your mother and I never made it to Hawaii. Fate intervened.” Tears welled in her eyes and dripped down her flat, round face onto her lei. “Do you think it’s crazy? Or disrespectful?” She spread her arms out to indicate the whole shebang.
“No, it’s wonderful.” My nose is probably growing.
“This is just what I want when I die,” Aaron added. “A theme funeral.”
Daniel gave his brother a sideways glare of warning.
“Except mine would be held in a strip club, or a Playmate Mansion kinda place. Clothing optional. And there would be a wet T-shirt competition, and lap dancing, and Victoria’s Secret models, and—”
“Oh, you!” Aunt Mel punched Aaron playfully on the arm. At least the tears were gone, which had probably been his intention.
“Mellie!” State Representative Rogers stepped up and gave her a sympathetic hug. “Come with me. There’s someone I want you to meet.” Before they walked off, Aunt Mel told the two of them, “We need to talk later. I have something important to discuss with you.”
She probably referred to their mother’s will, which surely left everything to her, as it should. “There’s no need, Aunt Mel. We can talk later this week.”
Aunt Mel shook her head. “No. I promised your mother.”
On that puzzling note, she strolled off with the politician, whose wife had been a longtime MS patient of their mother’s.
They were silent then as they sipped at their drinks, then grimaced at the sickening sweetness.
“I keep thinking Mom will step out of the house and push her famous gumbo on us,” Daniel remarked. Or talk to me about medicine. She understood what it was like to lose a patient. Lots of patients.
Aaron l
ooked at him with concern.
Oh, great! I probably have tears in my eyes, too.
“If that hula dancer over there in the grass skirt decides to give me a lap dance, I won’t complain.” Aaron was clearly trying to cheer him up, like he had Aunt Mel.
“Yeah, right. That’s Kirima Kulowiyi, a nurse from Mom’s practice,” he told Aaron. “She’s married to a roughneck who does hard manual labor out on the oil rigs. That’s him over there by the barbecue . . . the guy who looks like he could bench press a polar bear.”
“Okaaaay,” Aaron said with a laugh. Then, blinking rapidly to hide his own tears, he put down his fruity drink and took a beer out of a cooler and handed a second one to him.
Raising the bottle, as if in a toast, Daniel took a long draw before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I quit my job today,” he announced out of the blue.
“Job? Being a doctor isn’t a job. Do you mean that you won’t be working at the pediatric medical center anymore?”
“No, I mean that I’m quitting medicine.”
“No way, Dan! You love being a doctor.”
“Correction. I used to love being a doctor.” Daniel didn’t elaborate. It went without saying that working day in and day out with terminally ill kids ate away at a man’s spirit. Losing his mother was the last straw. Did I mention that Deke Watson died on Tuesday . . . just two days after Mom? Ten years old, and he weighed fifty pounds. Amy Lewis lost two of her baby teeth on Wednesday . . . and all her hair. Lionel Harris got his tenth spinal tap yesterday. Shiiiit!
Just then, Father Sylvester and Aunt Mel could be seen wheeling a portable organ into the backyard. Aaron and Daniel looked at each other, put their empty beer bottles on a picnic table, and headed toward the front yard and their cars parked in the driveway. They’d already said their goodbyes to their mother.
“Whoever said that funerals are for the living, not the dead, knew what they were talking about,” Aaron remarked, as if reading his mind.
“Yep. Singing ‘Amazing Grace’ isn’t going to help Mom now.”
And it might just push me over the edge.
Aaron summed up the situation very well. “Time to do what comes natural. Let’s go get blitzed.”
Who knew they had a “Daddy Dearest?” . . .
“Your roots are in Louisiana. Cajun country,” Aunt Mel told them the next morning. For the third time. Daniel and Aaron were having trouble understanding the news.
“Oh, my God! We’re rednecks,” Daniel finally exclaimed to Aaron.
Aaron just grimaced with fake horror at Aunt Mel’s announcement.
Aunt Mel put down a tray of coffees, then smacked them on their respective shoulders before sitting down behind the desk in her small home office. Daniel and Aaron sat in chairs before the desk, their long legs extended and crossed at the ankles. Like twins, for crying out loud! Daniel cringed at his use of the expression “for crying out loud,” even in his head; it had been a favorite of his mother’s.
“Idjits!” Aunt Mel had just told them about their mother’s last wishes, that they know their family history. Like they cared at this late date!
“Just ’cause you have Cajun blood doesn’t make you rednecks,” Aunt Mel explained patiently, like they were little boys who didn’t know any better.
The two brothers hadn’t returned to their mother and Aunt Mel’s house until this morning, having exceeded their goal of getting blitzed last night. They’d both ended up knee-walking drunk. My head feels the size of a basketball. Which isn’t helped by the fact that good ol’ Barry is belting out “Mandy” for about the thousandth time. Don’t CDs ever wear out?
Their mother’s death was hitting them hard today. This house, without her in it, felt empty and sad. Any minute now he expected her to come into the room and ruffle his hair or kiss his cheek.
I miss her, too, he heard in his head, and it wasn’t him thinking those words. Glancing over to Aaron, he realized that it was his brother whose word-thoughts he’d read. Twins did that a lot. He could feel Aaron’s silent pain, literally. They nodded at each other with understanding.
Aunt Mel, fulfilling their mother’s wishes, was telling them about their father, Valcour LeDeux. A father whose surname their mother had given them, and nothing else over the years. And about their mother’s family, the Doucets. There were apparently a lot of Doucets in Louisiana. This was a rogue branch of the Bayou Black Doucets. Like he gave a damn about any family branches!
“I thought our father was dead,” Daniel said, scanning once again the documents and newspaper clippings spread across the desk.
“I thought Mom was from France.” Aaron’s brow furrowed with puzzlement. “Hell, that’s how she always explained her accent. I should have known better. It was the strangest French I’ve ever heard. I mean, what born and bred French woman says, ‘Holy crawfish!’?”
“Like you know French!” Daniel remarked.
“Hey, I dated that French model.”
“For what? A week?”
“What’s your point?”
“The point,” Aunt Mel interrupted them, “is that your mother was pure one hundred proof Cajun, same as your father, which makes you two morons Cajun, too.”
Cajun? I don’t even know what that means.
Picking up on his mind cue, Aaron teased Aunt Mel, “Cajun . . . does that mean I have to chew tobacco and wrestle alligators?”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Or talk like Dennis Quaid in that old movie, The Big Easy?” Daniel added.
Aaron glanced at him with surprise.
“Hey, I have a sense of humor when I want one.”
Aunt Mel sighed. “I like Dennis Quaid. He can put his slippers under my bed any ol’ time.”
Which was ridiculous, and they all knew it. Aunt Mel was as gay as . . . well, their mother. The two women had been together longer than many married heterosexual couples.
“I don’t understand why Mom wanted us to know about this now. Why, after all these years of keeping us in the dark?” Aaron asked.
“She wanted you to know that, even though she’s gone, you still have family.”
“You’re family. That’s enough for us,” Aaron said.
“Ah, honey,” Aunt Mel said, getting up from her chair behind the desk and giving Aaron a big hug. “I know that, but it’s not the same.” She dabbed at her eyes with the tissue she always had tucked in her bra strap under her blouse, and sat back down.
“Your mother wants you to go there and meet your relatives.”
Daniel choked on his coffee. Whoa! Learning about his family history was one thing. Going all huggy face with a bunch of strangers was something else. “I beg your pardon?”
“Why in God’s name should we go there?” Aaron asked.
“Closure.”
“Whose? Ours? I could care less,” Daniel said.
“You’re gonna do it for your mother’s sake. Yeah, that horndog loser treated her like dirt. Yeah, he never told her he was married. Yeah, he suggested she get an abortion, said he had too many brats already. And, yeah, her own family, the Doucets, put her out like so much garbage, without a penny. They were ashamed of her being pregnant and not married.”
“All the more reason for us to stay put,” Daniel concluded.
“In Valcour’s defense, though not much,” Aunt Mel went on, as if he hadn’t even spoken, “Valcour did give your mother a sizeable payoff that enabled her to go to college and med school. No skin off his teeth, of course, him being filthy rich from oil drilling. And he gave her you two precious boys. You have to go back, for your mother’s sake.”
“Like hell! I’m not going to Louisiana to meet some no-good man who did my mother wrong or a family that kicked my mother to the street . . . uh, bayou. I don’t care if he’s a tycoon or a ditch digger, he means nothing to me.” Daniel poured himself more coffee to calm down his temper.
“Looks Like We Made It,” Barry warbled.
“I wish!” Daniel an
d Aaron said at the same time. Sometimes, that twin thing in their heads was a pain in the ass.
“That’s all I need in my present mood . . . a trip to the Southland. I just gave up medicine. I want to wallow for a while. Maybe I’ll sit myself down on a glacier and push out to sea.”
Aunt Mel cast a blistering glance his way, which he ignored.
“I don’t know, bro.” Aaron tapped his closed lips thoughtfully. “It might be fun to kick some Cajun butt.”
“I’m going to make sure I have a bottle of booze and a good book on that iceberg.”
“How about a woman?” Aaron asked.
“Nope. I’m considering celibacy. Women are too much trouble.”
“Hah! When did you turn into Mister Grumpy?” Aaron asked him.
“I like being grumpy. People stay out of my way.”
“Would you two shut the hell up and listen to me? You have half sisters and half brothers you should meet,” Aunt Mel insisted. “Aunts, uncles, cousins.”
Daniel put his face in his hands.
“Some of them . . . most of them . . . are good people, despite that blasted Valcour. Lucien LeDeux is a lawyer, married to a chemist. Remy is a pilot, like you, Aaron; he’s married to a Feng Shui decorator. René was an environmental lobbyist and musician; he now teaches and is married to a lawyer. He still plays in a band, The Swamp Rats. Tee-John is a cop, about to marry a newspaper journalist. Charmaine owns a bunch of beauty salons and is married to a cowboy. One of the nephews is a New Orleans Saints football player.”
Holy hell! Since when had Aunt Mel become a LeDeux genealogist?
“Andy LeDeux? He’s one of our kinfolk?” Aaron asked. “Wow!”
“Kinfolk? You’re already sounding like a frickin’ Cajun.” Daniel flashed his brother a frown.
“I didn’t know they had cowboys in Louisiana. But never mind. I can’t leave the air shipping business, even if I wanted to,” Aaron said.
“Yes, you can. We have an offer to sell the whole kit and caboodle . . . the air shipping business, the warehouse, both planes, everything. We would make a tidy profit.”