Page 12 of A Rose of Steel
“For the night?” Auntie Zanne asked before I could. “You’re staying for just one night?”
Alex put on a wide grin showing beautiful white teeth. “It’s good to see you again, Mrs. Derbinay.”
He was steering away from her nosiness. That was almost an impossibility. Whatever she wanted to know, she’d find out.
“Same here,” Auntie Zanne said, not one bit of sincerity in her voice. “So what did you say brought you here?”
“I didn’t say,” he said. “But I’ve got a conference in Lake Charles starting tomorrow. Series of seminars.” He looked at me. “I was hoping that Romaine would go with me. You can’t attend most of them, but we’d be able to spend some time together.”
“She can’t go. She has a job,” Auntie said.
“Will you stop with the job?” I said. I glanced around and noticed everyone staring at me. “How about we do dinner around five?” I asked. “It’ll give me time to finish up over at the office.”
“That sounds good,” he said.
“You need me to pick you up?” I asked.
“No,” he pointed to a Jaguar. “I flew into Louisiana, but got the rental so I could come and see you. I can meet you here. If that’s okay with your aunt.” He gave Auntie Zanne one of his winning smiles. I’m sure it didn’t score one point in her book. “Then we can ride together.”
“Okay,” I said and smiled. “Sounds good.”
Chapter Six
I had been evicted from my life.
All the things that had separated Alex and I in the first place came swirling into my head as I drove over to the new M.E. office to start on the autopsy. I got Auntie’s permission to borrow one of her cars, all the while hoping she couldn’t detect how befuddled I was over a man.
I remembered the moment I’d found out that cuts made to balance the Illinois budget had handed down my future without me having one say in it. It had made me feel off-balance. I was out of a job when the governor’s defunding of services meant downsizing the Medical Examiner’s office where I had worked for seven years, and I was too leery of what my finances would be in the coming year to renew the lease on my expensive Sheridan Park apartment in Uptown Chicago. Not wanting to dip into my nest egg, I decided to move.
My Auntie Zanne came up to see about me and persuaded me to come home. Back to Roble. A small town, population 985 including me, in East Texas.
That hadn’t been the first time my Auntie Zanne had come to my rescue. At the tender age of twelve, I lost both my parents in a car accident. Auntie Zanne, my mother’s oldest sister, high-tailed it to Beaumont where I lived to get me, arriving before I could shed a tear.
I pulled into the parking lot of the building housing the new medical examiner facilities. My deliveries, which were being made by Catfish, were scheduled to arrive any minute but I couldn’t pull myself out of the car. Alexander Hale’s appearance had sent me for a loop.
What did he want to talk to me about?
Maybe he was finally coming to tell me that everything was okay. That we could finally be together...
I closed my eyes and leaned back on the headrest. Maybe I could get back to the life I wanted.
Life had been different for me after coming to live with Auntie Zanne. She had been widowed at an early age and it had made her fiercely independent. She’d abandoned our French Creole heritage and turned Texan. Big hair and attitude, small town nosiness, she’d traded a Roman Catholic mass for a three-hour service at the local Baptist church, and abandoned her native Louisiana Creole language for a Southern drawl. The only thing she held onto from her roots was the magic and mystery of Voodoo.
I, on the other hand, was proud of my heritage, and that difference in us, even though we got along and I knew there was nothing in life she loved more than me, always made me want to leave. Forge the life I wanted some place other than there.
It hadn’t ever been my intention to make my move back to Roble permanent, although Auntie told everyone I was there to stay. My plan was just to stay long enough to regroup, use my Chicago contacts, including Alex, to find another job. I’d be back in to the Big City in no time.
So I thought.
I soon found that the people I had included in my small circle of closest and dearest friends–the privileged and professional–became obtuse and aloof once my circumstances changed. But even with that fact swimming around in the back of my head, I didn’t want to stay in Roble.
And I had been sure to let everyone in town know that.
I was going back to the life I had meticulously built for myself, which didn’t include the familiar slow drawl and friendly countenance, colorful sayings, or intrusive hospitality of East Texans. Nor did it include a weather forecast which included predictions on the amount my hair would frizz.
Something that didn’t take long for Alex to notice.
Some may consider it rebelling, most thought it uppity. And at forty-something, it perhaps did seem quite childish of me, I know. But I didn’t care. I just wanted something more, and I didn’t want to count on Auntie Zanne again to give it to me. It was me that was supposed to be taking care of my eighty-two-year-old auntie. Not the other way around. It was me, after eight years of post-secondary education, and many more getting certifications, residencies, and fellowships who was supposed to move forward and not backward in status.
