Bayou My Love: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

making me want one.”
    “So
do I pass?”
    I
liked his quiet confidence. His eyes had a sleepy look about them, but there
was a sharpness behind them as well—something that said I shouldn’t mistake his
easygoing manner for ignorance.
    “Did
you spend much time with her?” I asked him.
    He
smiled. “When she started renting to me, she came by to see me every Sunday.
She said she was checking on the house, but I knew she was checking up on me.
Your grandmother made a mean chicken pot pie.”
    “You
knew her better than I did in the end.” I wondered what they talked about, what
he knew about her. If I let him stick around, I’d find out. That thought
finally swayed me.
    “I
don’t have much family of my own,” he said. “She adopted me, you might say.”
    I
could have been the one hearing all of Vergie’s stories, instead of Jack
Mayronne. If only I hadn’t been so scared of my father.
    “Come
on, Enza,” he said. “People here have boarders all the time. You’re just
renting me a room like anybody else would do if they had a big old house like
this to themselves.”
    I
took a long drag on the cigarette, watching the line of smoke rise toward the
white porch ceiling. If Vergie trusted him to help her around the house, then
he must be a decent man. She was always looking for the good in people, but she
could spot the bad as quick as she spotted potato beetles in her garden.
    I
made a silent plea, hoping that wherever Vergie was, she could reach out and
intervene if I was about to do something stupid. I waited for an instant, just
in case a pipe burst or a vase went flying off the mantle as a kind of thump on
the skull from the great hereafter. But there was nothing.
    “Here’s
the deal, Mr. Mayronne. You help me with repairs, and I’ll give you six weeks
to move out. If we finish before then, I’ll refund your rent for the remaining
days.”
    “What
if it takes longer?”
    “It
won’t.”
    “I
could help you if it does,” he said. “I owe a lot to Vergie. I’m not saying I
can work for free, but I’ll do you a better deal than anybody else around
here.”
    “Six
weeks is all I need,” I said. “But if you like, we’ll leave that option on the
table.”
    “Fair
enough,” he said, extending his hand.
    When
we shook, his fingers tightened around mine, and a ripple passed through my
arms and chest, like when a pebble is dropped in a pond.
    He
smiled. “This’ll all work out fine. You’ll see.”
    I
almost believed him.
     

 
    Chapter
3
    After
hauling my tool box and suitcases into the foyer, I paused at the bottom of the
stairs to give the banister a shake. It was sturdy as a water oak. That was the
thing about these old swamp houses: The plaster was cracking, and the walls
weren’t straight any more, but the woodwork was solid. The floors were made of
heart pine boards eight inches wide. The ten-foot ceilings downstairs had
carved crown molding that made my heart flutter. The upstairs bath had a
clawfoot tub and a stained glass window that I wanted to cut out and take home
with me. If those details had registered with me as a teenager, they’d been
lost in the ether of young adulthood. In my memory, this had been a quaint
little farm-style house—cute, but nothing special. Now, seeing its pocket doors
and hand-carved moldings, I was smitten.
    Stop, I
told myself. This has to be just another flip.
    Jack
walked in behind me and grabbed my suitcases. “Let me give you a hand with
that.”
    I
followed him up to Vergie’s old bedroom. Of the rooms upstairs, this one was
the most furnished. It had the dresser, the highboy and the four-poster bed. Framed
pictures hung over a vanity by the closet door, and books were stacked on the
shelf of the nightstand.
    Jack
set the suitcases by the dresser and then opened two windows to get a
cross-breeze. “Sorry it’s so stuffy in here,” he said. “I’ll put the extra
window unit in here so you won’t melt.”
    “When
I was a girl, I used to