The House on Prytania (Royal Street #2)(99)
Author: Karen White
I used my fingers to expand the photo, zeroing in. I saw Jeanne’s name and dates, and below them the names of her father and uncle, Antoine and Frank. Her mother, Paulette, sat right beneath them. Just looking at their names carved in marble sent a shiver through me. “What are you wanting me to look at?”
She sighed in my ear, as if I had bricks instead of brains, and I wondered if I’d been that insufferable when I was twelve. “Keep looking under Jeanne’s family. You’ll see a list of three names of children who died close to or on their birth dates. See them?”
“Sadly, yeah.” Each name had the last name of Sabatier and every date was in the nineteen nineties and early two thousands. “Mrs. Sabatier said that she’d had three miscarriages, so those must be her babies.”
“Yes. And those were the last members of the family to die, right? Because every name is in chronological order, starting with the top name on the far-left column, with some old guy named Pierre Riviere Broussard who died in 1835 at the age of ninety-eight.”
Sunny, Jolene, Connor, and Michael came out of the door, looking like a ragtag band led by a Franciscan monk. I told Sarah to hang on while I stood. “You all can go on ahead. Cooper’s on his way, and I don’t want to make everyone late.”
“I really should get there as soon as possible,” Sunny said, her face lacking its usual animation, her skin drawn and pale in the porch light, “since I’m a member of the host family. I need to be there to help Mimi greet her guests.”
“No problem. Like I said, Cooper’s on his way, and I’m happy to wait for him. You go on and we’ll see you there.”
I watched as Connor pulled out a small step from his backseat to assist Jolene into the front passenger seat before sliding in beside her. Michael and Sunny got into Michael’s black Mercedes, the same one he’d used to pick me up for our dates. I waved and gave them a wide smile so they’d know I didn’t care.
As soon as they’d left, I sat down on the steps again to finish my conversation with Sarah. “Sorry. Okay, where were we?”
She gave me another exaggerated sigh and I pictured it being accompanied by rolling eyes. “Sorry to interrupt your social life. So, look at the last name in the first column. It’s out of place there because the dates are out of order. It’s almost like it was an afterthought. Or maybe whoever asked for it to be put there didn’t want anyone to notice.”
Enlarging the photo again, I scanned down the first column, stopping when I came to the bottom. F. Jeanne Broussard. 2003–2005. “Should I recognize the name?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“No. I mean, I recognize the middle and last names, but the years are different, and there’s a first initial.”
“Yeah, well, remember I said I saw wet handprints? They look like they’re making parentheses around that one name.”
I squinted to see what appeared to be dark parentheses on either side of the final name in the left column. I squeezed my fingers closer to put the picture back in perspective, and with a sickening nausea rising in my throat I knew that those weren’t random marks on the stone.
“I see them.” My voice sounded thick. “Adele’s?”
“I think so, since she’s the one who told us to go to the cemetery.”
“But you said it was a little girl who brought you to the Broussard mausoleum, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What did the little girl look like?”
“She was little—like Button.” Button was Aunt Jayne’s youngest, who’d just turned three years old and was named after Jayne’s paternal aunt, from whom she’d inherited her house on South Battery. “She had really blond hair, and it was in a ponytail with a big yellow ribbon.”
“It was yellow? You’re sure?”
“Pretty sure. It matched her dress; I do remember that.”
I listened to myself breathe in and then out, trying to make sense of what Sarah had just told me.
“Nola? You still there?”
Cooper’s car turned into the driveway. “Yeah. Thanks. I need to go.”
“Wait—that’s it?”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.” I hit End and closed the screen.
Cooper walked toward me, carrying a small duffel. “I’m so sorry I’m late. . . .”
I ran to him and threw my arms around him for no other reason than that I was happy to see him, and because if there was anyone who could understand what I was grappling with—besides Beau—it was Cooper.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, holding me at arm’s length and looking closely at my face.
“Nothing—I mean, I’m fine. It’s just . . . I need to work out some stuff I just learned, and I need someone to talk it out with.”
“Sure. I have to go inside and change into my costume anyway, so come on. We can do that thing your dad does with a large piece of poster paper and markers and begin to connect the dots. If you think Jolene won’t mind it hanging on the wall.”
“As long as you don’t mind her monogramming it and giving it a decorative frame, we should be okay.” He followed me through the door and up the stairs. After greeting an excited Mardi, Cooper went into the bathroom to change, and I went in search of poster paper.
The back room’s original purpose, with its two walls of windows, was supposed to be as an office area, but mostly it was for me to rediscover my love for writing music and playing guitar. It had instead become more of a multipurpose space serving as a guest room, craft room, sewing room, and general catchall.
I stifled an inward groan after flipping on the lights and seeing the tall pile of pillows, books, and magazines that had apparently toppled over, the obvious source of the crashing sound made as Sunny was getting changed. When she’d made the promise to clean it up later, by “later” she’d obviously meant “by someone else.”
Using my sneaker-clad foot to clear a path, I made my way toward the back corner of the room, where Jolene kept her carefully organized art supplies. I’d gone only halfway when I stopped at the sight of Jeanne’s hatbox lying on its side, its lid resting on the desk.
I picked up the hatbox, knowing it would be empty before I’d even looked inside.
I felt Cooper enter the room behind me. “Everything okay?”