Peg Sutherland - Family Reunion

“She’s worth the effort, seems to me.”

“We fancy our hides.”

“Maybe I fancy hers.”

The slash of white teeth against black beard grew wider. “I understand that, you bet. Still, I’d duck under the gallery if I was you.”

Scott looked up. She seemed to be taking aim. “Good idea.”

He bounded up the steep steps, all new boards, raw and unfinished but sturdy, a match for the new planks on the porch. A mutt dozed in a circle of dappled sunlight and raised two sleepy eyes to take him in. The animal was less wary of visitors, apparently, than the lady of the house. Scott peered through the open front door. The rooms were dark. The foyer was broad, rising two stories. He stepped in.

“I heard the shooting. I’m guessing you’ve already seen my granddaughter.”

He turned to the left, where an old woman sat in a straight-backed rocker beside a fireplace in a rustic parlor. No arches and fancy work here, just a square serviceable room with scarred hardwood floors and plaster walls that were gutted at intervals to reveal electrical wiring.

“I’m Scott Lyon,” he said, taking off his ball cap. “I think she’s forgotten. She wrote me. The family, actually.”

A cat was curled up in the old woman’s lap and an imposing white bird with brilliant orange markings sat on her narrow shoulder. “Scott. I don’t know a Scott.”

“Prescott Lyon, ma’am. Charles Lyon’s youngest son.” Scott was used to people not knowing him but recognizing his family name.

“You may call me Riva, Prescott.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

“You may not call me ma’am. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She gave him a hard look, a look he’d already seen once today from the woman on the roof.

“Yes, Riva.”

She nodded slightly. “Better. So, you the son of Charles Lyon. The ne’er-do-well, yes?”

Her outspokenness reminded him of Aunt Margaret and made him instantly at ease with her, even though she couldn’t have been more different from his aunt on the surface. Riva looked much older, what with her face so lined and weathered and the slumped way she sat in her rocker. Yes, far less vigorous than Margaret Lyon. Also, Margaret wore impeccable navy suits and dresses, decorating herself with nothing more elaborate than a single strand of pearls. In contrast, Riva wore a garish purple wrap of some kind, a red-and-yellow scarf, gaudy jewelry dripping from her ears and her neck and her wrists, and ballet slippers on her tiny feet.

“Yes,” he said, liking the woman well enough not to take offense at her assessment of his father. “There are those who might describe my father as a ne’er-do-well.”

She cackled. “Never mind. They called me worse.”

“Uh-oh,” said the bird.

Riva glanced over Scott’s shoulder and her face broke into a smile. “Ah, Nicki. Your guest has arrived.”

Scott turned slightly to take her in. With her this close, he could almost feel the animosity rising off her in waves. It made his heartbeat accelerate.

She had left the shotgun upstairs.

He extended a hand, gave her a warm smile. “Thanks for not shooting me.”

She ignored his hand. “I asked you to leave.”

“Actually you told me to leave.”

“Nicki, m’enfant, how rude. This young man, he will think the bayou makes us inhospitable.”

Nicki glared at the old woman. “You stay out of this.”

The bird joined in with a shrill “Shut up!”

“You taught him to speak, I take it,” Scott said to Nicki.

Riva cackled. He thought he heard approval.

“I’m only here to take you up on your offer,” he said, tapping the folded letter against his palm. “I suppose I should’ve called first, but—”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Her blue eyes flashed and her wavy hair almost quivered with emotion.

He gave her the letter. She opened it and read it as if she’d never seen it before. Then she balled it up and threw it into the open fireplace.

“Maman, you go too far,” she said, her voice lapsing into a Cajun cadence he hadn’t heard her use before. She looked at Scott. “I’m sorry you wasted your time. My grandmother is toying with us, and I apologize for her, since I doubt she’ll apologize for herself. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

“But...”

She was leaving. Walking away. He took a step in her direction, but didn’t know what to say to change her mind or to pull her into the emotional whirlwind she always created in him.

Maybe if he simply followed and kissed her.

“Wouldn’t do that,” Riva said.

He spun around. “Wouldn’t do what?”

Riva laughed and didn’t answer. “Sit,” she said, and gestured at a matching rocker, occupied at the moment by a ball of yellow-and-gray fur, which proved to be two sleeping cats. When he approached, one hissed while leaping off the chair, the other stood on the armrest and waited patiently for him to sit. Then the feline dropped into his lap and circled four times before settling.

“She likes you, my cat.”

“Your granddaughter does not.”

“My cat is a better judge of people.”

“I’d like to think so.” He waited.

“It is true, what the letter says. Nicki finds people. She uses computers.”

“She doesn’t seem inclined to help.”

Riva shrugged. “She hates the Lyons.”

He didn’t have to ask why. “Then why am I here?”

“Because you want to find Margaret.”

He ran his hand over the cat’s fur and studied Riva Bechet. He had the most compelling sense that he was also here because Riva Bechet wanted to find Margaret, as well.

NICKI TOOK HER FURY to the pier, the only structure on the entire 106 acres that wasn’t falling apart. She looked at the film of green duckweed covering the still water and fumed.

How dare she!

Her grandmother was an unrepentant busybody. Among her many flaws, that was one nobody disputed. Riva Reynard Bechet believed she knew how everyone’s life should be managed, and she never hesitated to jump in and try.

But this! Inviting the Lyons to Cachette en Bayou and using Nicki’s name to do it.

When she turned back toward the house, a gasp of outrage escaped her lips. Riva had brought him onto the brick patio. He was holding a chair for her. Riva placed a hand on his arm as she lowered herself into the chair. She was smiling up at him. He was smiling back.

Nicki wheeled around to face the water again. She couldn’t stand this.

“Hey, Quick-Nick, what’s she done now?”

Nicki squeezed her eyes shut at the sound of her eighteen-year-old cousin Toni’s voice. Not now, she pleaded with whoever had the power to intervene in her life. She felt the slight give of the boards as the girl dropped onto the pier.

“I was out at the cabin and heard the gunshot. Who is he?”

Nicki drew a deep breath and opened her eyes. The water was still smooth and green. Elephant ears still swayed in the barest of breezes, and clumps of bulrush still provided nesting areas for black-crowned night heron and red-tailed hawks. A smattering of low-lying fog clung to the opposite shore. You could count on the bayou, from moment to moment, from year to year. The only change from seconds earlier was a snowy egret that had dropped silently onto a cypress log lodged against the opposite bank. The bird was graceful and still, unlike anything in Nicki’s life.

“I’m coming back as an egret in my next life,” she said.

Toni chuckled. “Not me. I’m going to be a gator. Snap at anything that makes me see red. Course, I guess you’ve got that covered this go round.”

A wry grin touched Nicki’s lips. “Smart mouth.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got my bad points, too.”