Fever Moon Read Online Free Page B

drifted to the men lifting something from the road, and she recognized Raymond Thibodeaux’s muscular back. She felt a pain beneath her breast, a sharp memory of the beauty of his body before he’d gone to war. He’d gone to Europe a lively young man with a quick smile and come home a specter. His dark hair was shot with silver, and some days he walked with a limp, his eyes daring anyone to notice. A bomb had exploded and sent shrapnel into his body. Gossip was that he might become paralyzed.
    Moving to the shade, she waited until Henri’s body had been loaded into a truck bed. When Raymond was left standing alone, she walked to him. “Mother and I would love for you to come to dinner, Raymond.” It was an invitation extended often, and always ignored. Others in town might accept his isolation, but Chula could not. The memory of his kisses, his hands so expert in touching her, would not be snuffed out by his anger. What they’d shared was gone, but never her affection for him.
    “I’m busy, Chula, but thank you.”
    “Raymond, we’ve known each other a long time. I know you grieve Antoine, but you can’t continue like this. Your brother wouldn’t want that.”
    She saw the fire snap into his dark eyes. So he wasn’t quite dead. At least not yet. “You don’t have a clue what you’re stepping into, Chula. Mind your own affairs.”
    He bent down to pick up Henri’s hat that lay sodden in the road.
    “You once loved the fact that I was smart and spoke my mind.” Her voice was soft as she remembered a summer afternoon in her shady backyard when he told her he was going into the army, that when he returned he wanted to be a journalist. “The war took your brother, but only you can let it steal your dreams.”
    His eyes, once a golden brown, bore into her. It was true that the color had changed to near black. “The past is dead, Chula. So is the man you knew. Leave what’s left of him in peace.”
    He took the hat to the patrol car, and Chula felt the gaze of the sheriff watching them. It would be best to walk away, but she couldn’t. She’d delivered two letters to Mrs. Thibodeaux, the first last November telling of Antoine’s death in a small town, a village of no consequence to either army. Antoine had been the youngest son, the charmer in a family of handsome men.
    Six months later, she’d brought the second letter on a beautiful May morning with robins calling from the wild hedges. Mrs. Thibodeaux had opened the door without expression. She’d ripped open the letter, read the words, and looked up into Chula’s eyes with an expression of furious anguish before she slammed and locked the door.
    Raymond had arrived home two months later, unable to walk without crutches. In a matter of weeks he was using a cane. When the cane was gone, he pinned on the deputy’s badge.
    “Raymond, there are people who’d care about you if you’d let them. I remember—”
    “Don’t. Don’t remember, Chula. The past is like a dream. It only exists in memory, and sometimes it’s best to let it go.” He walked away.
    Chula went back to her car, feet sliding in the thick cake of yellow mud called gumbo by the locals. She sat for a moment before she started her car, watching Raymond talk with the sheriff.
    Henri Bastion was dead, and from the sound of it he’d died violently. Such foolishness. If a man wanted a violent death, he could accomplish it easily by joining the army. There were still plenty of German and Japanese bullets. So why bring it home? That was a question without an answer.
    Raymond got out of the patrol car in front of the jail and watched as the sheriff followed Henri’s body over to the funeral home. Doc Fletcher would be there directly to look it over. For now, Raymond had a chance to be alone with Adele Hebert. He’d done a bit of digging, and what he’d learned showed Adele to be a hard worker who’d retreated into the swamps alone to raise twin boys. No one would hazard a guess as to the