A Twisted Ladder Read Online Free Page B

aside his whittling and brushed off his hands.
    “It’s so good to see you, Jacob,” Helen said as she embraced her brother. “You’ll stay for supper, won’t you?”
    “No honey, I gotta get back. I was just passing through and wanted to welcome y’all home from your honeymoon.” He kissed her cheek again and turned to Rémi, shaking his hand. “Take good care of my little sister, now, you hear?”
    Jacob descended the steps, and Rémi noticed that Chloe’s gaze measured Jacob with distaste as he joined his driver by his motorcar. For one who’d appeared from nowhere, desperate and hungry, Chloe was not terribly deferential. A good thing, as Rémi saw it; he preferred to know the minds of those in his employ. Rémi and Helen waved at Jacob and watched the vehicle disappear through the allée of pecan trees.
    “You are so thin,
chérie
.” Rémi said as he slipped his arm around his bride’s waist. “No one would even know that you are carrying my child.”
    He nestled his face to her neck and breathed the warmth of her skin, his knuckle gently brushing her belly.
    She pushed him away. “You prefer that I were fat?”
    “I wish you to be healthy, and our child to be healthy.”
    “All right then.” She patted his cheek.
    “
Eau de cerise, monsieur?
” Chloe was staring at him, her cheekbones forming chevrons in the waning sunlight.
    “English, please Chloe,” Rémi said. “Remember at Terrefleurs we speak English now, in honor of our new mistress. And no, I have had my share. See to Tatie Bernadette.”
    She paused for a moment, then retreated around to the rear gallery where he heard her open the pantry door.
    Helen lifted her face toward Rémi. “By the way I meant to tell you, I’m going to have the house painted.”
    Rémi glanced at the outer wall in surprise. The paint was in good condition, glowing in shades of gold and coral with a red roof and teal trim.
    “It’s going to be painted
white,”
Helen added.
    “White? But
chérie
, we’ve always painted the house in bright colors.”
    “Creole colors. You said you are ready to behave like an American. And the American houses are white.”
    “You use my words against me.”
    He stepped away from her. Perhaps the time had come to impose limits on this American homogenization.
    “You are worried that our child will grow to be a Creole savage,” he said.
    “Now who’s using words against whom? It was never I who said that!”
    Her black hair shone in a clean knot at her neck. Rémi imagined how he would like to free that knot, and watch those black waves spill about her shoulders. He reached for her hand, but she pulled away and turned her face toward the river. Even out on the gallery with no one around, Helen behaved as a proper lady.
    Rémi smiled. He did not mind, because he would visit her later in her parlor, in the lantern glow of night, and she would not feel compelled to be such a lady.
    “Ah, well,” he said. “Maybe white walls are a nice change.”
    The sun began to set, bringing the golden gallery to a crescendo of brilliant orange. On the horizon, a flash in the charcoal-smudged sky. Clouds channeled in from the south, and with them came the sound of thunder.

four

     
     
    NEW ORLEANS, 2009
     
    I GUESS YOU’RE CHLOE , then?” Madeleine said, because the old woman had still not offered her name even though Madeleine had introduced herself. “Chloe LeBlanc?”
    The Victorian drawing room on Toulouse Street smelled of rot and had not undergone much restoration after the hurricane. Madeleine felt Mrs. LeBlanc’s stare lingering over her blue eyes and black skin. A typical reaction, but she hadn’t expected it from her own great-grandmother, stranger or not.
    Mrs. LeBlanc herself seemed of purer African blood; no hint of Caucasian. With dark eyes and mottled coffee skin, the only lightness about her was in her startled-looking gray hair.
    “I am one hundred and fourteen years old,” the old woman replied, as if that