Page 116 of The House on Prytania
I stared at him. “A woman? Do you know who it was?”
“She didn’t say her name, but she was very persuasive and told me I needed to hurry whenever I asked her any questions.”
I thought for a moment. “Had you seen her earlier, at the party?”
He shook his head. “No. And she wasn’t really dressed up, either. But there was one thing that was kind of weird.”
“Weird?” I asked. “In what way?”
“Her hair was dripping wet.”
CHAPTER 38
Three weeks later, I was on the front porch of my cottage, scraping the remnants of peeling paint from the porch floor. After much discussion between Jolene, me, and Thibaut and Jorge (although I’m still not clear why they had a say), and an open contest on our YouTube channel that garnered thousands of entries, we’d chosen the historically accurate colors of pewter for the outside walls and mist gray for the trim, shutters, and porch floor.
The Marigny fell inside a “full control” district of the Historic Districts Landmarks Commission. Any exterior changes to my house had to pass their approval, but not exterior paint, as was evidenced by my neighbors’ eclectic choice of colors that resembled a child’s crayon box. Still, since I was a certified old-house hugger, it would never occur to me to draw outside the lines for the exterior paint shades. Yet I had reserved the front door for a bit of artistic license and had chosen Charleston green for it. When I’d told Melanie, she’d sent me a brass palmetto tree door knocker to hang in the middle.
The renovation was nowhere near completed, nor were we at the stage to paint the exterior (we were still working on rehabbing all the windows), but I felt as if I’d made a huge step forward by choosingmy home’s new look. When the door was painted and my new door knocker attached, I would finally be able to feel at home in this place that reminded me so much of where I’d come from, of who I’d been and who I was meant to be. It was a nice hybrid, one that now felt as comfortable to me as a worn pair of jeans.
Jolene opened the front door holding a notepad and pen. “I’m working on the guest list for the house-blessing party. I know it won’t be until January, but with the holidays coming up I don’t want to get too distracted. I’ve already got twenty-eight so far, including you, me, and Cooper, and I’d like to invite Connor Black. Do you think any of the neighbors will come?”
I looked across the street to where Ernest and Bob had changed their Christmas trees to a Thanksgiving theme, with strings of lit turkeys and a large cutout of their dog, Belle, wearing a Pilgrim costume.
“It’s possible,” I said. “With Antoine Broussard gone, the house feels almost normal, and no more weird light shows.” I still winced when I said his name, unable to forget the events of the night of the fund-raiser. “And no more pipe smoke either, which means no more calls from the neighbors across the street about the dangers of smoking. People might actually come.”
“But will they RSVP? That’s a real problem these days. It’s like they were raised in a barn or something.”
I sat back on my heels. “I can’t imagine.”
“And I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve already asked Jaxson’s brother for his available dates in January so we can narrow it down. Unless you’d prefer another priest for the house blessing.”
“No—he’s perfect. Not that we’ve met, but he’s Jaxson’s brother. Besides, he’s the only priest I know about. We’ll have to invite Carly, you know.”
She kept smiling. “I know. Jaxson’s planning on giving her the ring over Christmas, so they’ll be engaged by then.”
“But if they’re not, we don’t have to invite her.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that,” she said, writing something in her notebook.
We looked up at the sound of an approaching vehicle and watched as Beau parked his truck at the curb. I hadn’t seen him since the night he’d been taken from his house in an ambulance, but I hadn’t needed to. He seemed to play a starring role in my dreams each night.
“Are you supposed to be driving?” I called out.
“Nope. But neither are most of the people out on the road, so I figured I’d fit right in.”
He held something wrapped in tissue paper, and when he stepped up on the porch he gave it to me. Then he sat down in one of the rocking chairs that Jolene kept dragging up on the porch even when I’d told her they were in the way. She had informed me that no house was a home without rocking chairs on the front porch, a battle she easily won.
Beau was breathing heavily, as if the effort of walking from his truck had exhausted him. I supposed two weeks in a hospital with a fractured skull along with a scattering of broken ribs would do that to a person.
“Go ahead and open it,” he said, indicating the package.
I put down the scraping knife, then pulled back the tissue, revealing a rectangular dark blue denim pouch with a long, narrow leather neck strap. A pocket, just the size for a house key, had been carefully stitched onto the front, along with the embroidered outline of my house in pale blue thread.
I looked at Beau with surprise. “It’s from Sunny, isn’t it? She said she was going to make one for me. I was thinking it was just part of her act.”
He examined it with narrowed eyes. “What is it?”
“A phone pouch. I needed one for times I didn’t want to bring my backpack.”
