Tami Hoag - Cry Wolf

Satisfied with having the last word, she turned on her red stiletto heel and strolled out the front door as calmly as if nothing had happened at all.

"She gonna come to grief, dat one," T-Grace said, her voice vibrating with anger. She stood beside Laurel with her hands jammed on her hips, electric blue cowboy boots planted apart. Her tower of red hair was listing perilously to the left. Her leathery face was suffused with color, and her dark eyes bugged way out, making her look as if some invisible hand had her by the throat.

Laurel didn't bother to argue the point. Her heart sank at the thought that it was quite probably true. Savannah seemed bent on destroying herself one way or another, and Laurel had no idea what to do to prevent it. She wanted to believe she could stop it. She wanted to believe they could control their own destinies, but she didn't seem to have control of anything. She felt as if she were trying to stop a crazily spinning carousel by simply reaching out and grabbing it. Every time she caught hold, it flung her to the ground.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Delahoussaye," she murmured. "Please be sure to send the bill for damages to my aunt's house."

T-Grace wrapped an arm around her and patted her shoulder, instantly the surrogate mother. "Don' you be sorry, chère. You don' got nothin' be sorry 'bout, helpin' us out like what you did with dat damn Jimmy Lee. You come an' eat some crawfish, you. You so little, I could pick up over my head."

"T-Grace," Jack said, resurrecting his smile with an effort, "who you tryin' to fool? You could pick me up over your head and dance the two-step."

She shook a bony finger at him, fighting the smile that pulled at her thin ruby lips. "Don' you tempt me, cher. You so full of sass, I jus' might show you who's boss, me. You come on sit down 'fore dat bump on your head make you more crazy than you already is."

As they wound their way through the throng, T-Grace snatched hold of Leonce and ordered him to mind the bar. Leonce swept off his Panama hat and made a courtly bow, the tails of his Hawaiian shirt drooping low. He came up with a big grin that split his Vandyke and gave Jack a punch on the shoulder.

"Jumpin' into catfights, talk about! What you gonna do next, Jack? Mud wrasslin' with women and alligators?"

Jack scowled at his friend, reached out with a quick hand, and flipped Leonce's hat off Leonce and onto his own head, leaving Leonce blushing back across his balding pate. "You're just jealous 'cause you were only the warm-up act."

Comeau's face darkened at the reminder, his scar glowing an angry red like a barometer of his temper. He tried to snatch the hat back, grabbing air as Jack ducked away. "Fuck you, Boudreaux."

"In your dreams," Jack taunted, laughing. "Go water the liquor, tcheue poule."

T-Grace whirled around and boxed his ear, knocking the hat askew. "We don' water nothin' here, smart mouth."

She hardly broke her stride, continuing toward a little-used side door, barking orders at a waitress along the way and signaling to her husband to join them. Jack rubbed his ear and shot her a disgruntled look from under the brim of the straw hat-a look that was tempered by a twinkle in his eye.

They went outside and across a stretch of parking lot to the bank of the bayou, where a picnic table and assorted lawn chairs sat, divided from the yard of a tidy little forest-green house by the requisite flower shrine to Mary. The area was partially illuminated by cheap plastic Chinese lanterns alternated with yellow bug lights strung up between two poles. The sun had sunk, but night had yet to creep across the sky. The bayou was striped with bars of soft gold light and translucent shadow.

Ovide planted his bulk in a lawn chair and said nothing while T-Grace supervised the layout of food on the picnic table. Laurel hung back, uncertain, wary of why she was being treated as a guest. She glanced at her watch and started to back away.

"I appreciate the offer, Mrs. Delahoussaye, but I think I should probably go. I ought to find Savannah- "

"Leave her be," T-Grace ordered. "Trouble, dat's all what she'll get you, chère, sister or no." Satisfied with the spread, she turned toward Laurel with her hands on her hips and a sympathetic look in her eyes. "Mais yeah, you gotta love her, but she'll do what she will, dat one. Sit."

Jack put his hands on Laurel 's shoulders and steered to the picnic table. "Sit down, sugar. We worked hard catchin' these mudbugs."

She obeyed, not because she was hungry or eager to please, but because she didn't want to think what she would do if she could find Savannah. She wanted to talk, but the talk would invariably turn into an argument. When Savannah was in one of her moods, there was no reasoning with her. A headache took hold, and she closed her eyes briefly against the pain.

"Eat," T-Grace said, sliding a plate in front of her. It held a pile of boiled crawfish, boiled red potatoes, and maquechou-corn with chunks of tomato and peppers. The rich, spicy scents wafted up to tease Laurel's nostrils, and her stomach growled in spite of the poor appetite she'd had two seconds ago.

Jack tossed the Panama hat on the end of the table, straddled the bench, and sat down beside her, too close, his thigh brushing hers, his groin pressing against her hip. The air seeped out of her lungs in a tight hiss.

"She's a debutante, T-Grace," he said. "Probably don' know how to eat a crawfish without nine kinds of silver forks."

"I do so," Laurel retorted, shooting him a look over her shoulder.

Defiantly, she snapped off a crawfish tail, dug her thumbs into the seam, and split it open to reveal the rich white meat, which she pulled out and ate with her fingers. The flavor was wonderful, making her mouth water, evoking memories. In her mind's eye she could see her father wolfing down crawfish at the festival in Breaux Bridge, his eyes closed with reverent appreciation and a big smile on his face.

"You gonna be a real Cajun and suck the fat out'a the head?"

She jerked free of the bittersweet memory and scowled at Jack, who was slipping his arms around her to steal food off her plate. "Go suck the fat out of your own head, Boudreaux. That ought to occupy you for a while."

Ovide's mustache twitched. T-Grace slapped the arm of her lawn chair and cackled. "I like this girl of yours, Jack. She got enough sass to handle you."

Laurel tried unsuccessfully to scoot away from him. "I'm afraid you've got the wrong idea, Mrs. Delahoussaye. Jack and I aren't involved. We're just…" She trailed off, at a loss for an appropriate word. Friends seemed too intimate, acquaintances too distant.

"You could say lovers, and we'll make good on it later," he murmured in a dark, seductive voice, nuzzling her ear as he reached for another crawfish.

T-Grace went on, unconcerned with Laurel 's definition of the relationship. "A girl's gotta have some sass. Like our Annick-Annie, you know? She gets herself in a scrap or two, but she takes care of herself, oui? She's a good girl, our Annie, she jus' can't pick a good man is all. Not like her maman."

She reached over to pat Ovide's sloping shoulder lovingly, her hard face aglow with affection. Ovide gave a snort that might have been approval or sinus trouble and tossed a crawfish shell into the bayou. A crack sounded from the dark water as a fish snapped up the shell.

"We raise seven babies in this house," T-Grace announced proudly. "Ovide and me, we work every day to make a good home, to make a good business. Now we got this damn Jimmy Lee making trouble for us, sayin' Frenchie's is the place where sin come from. Me, I'd like to send him to the place where sin come from. Ovide, he's gonna get the ulcer from worryin' 'bout what dat Jimmy Lee gonna do next."

She patted her husband's shoulder again, brushed at the wild gray hair that fringed his head and poured out of his ear. She shot a shrewd, sideways look at Laurel. "So, you gonna help us wit' dat or what, chère?"