Snow on the Bayou: A Tante Lulu Adventure Read Online Free PDF Page B

looked him in the eye and said, “Your grandmother has lung cancer.”
    He inhaled sharply. “Oh, my God! When… how… will she…” He inhaled again to catch a breath. “Tell me everything. I saw her last summer in New Orleans, and she seemed fine then.”
    Tante Lulu took one of his big hands in two of her tiny, veined ones.
    He tried, but couldn’t pull free, not without making a fuss.
    “She was diagnosed last fall. She’s already been zapped with radiation and sez she’s in remission, but I doan believe it. She needs oxygen jist ta walk around. And she’s havin’ trouble carin’ fer all those animals.”
    “All what animals?”
    “
Tsk-tsk-tsk!
If you came home once in a while, you’d know which animals.”
    He squared his shoulders and counted to ten so he wouldn’t say something particularly offensive to the old biddy, although he suspected that insults would bounce off her wrinkled Teflon skin.
    “I doan know why you’re stayin’ away, an’ I doan care. You gotta come home now. Your grandma needs you.”
    “I could probably get a liberty, especially with this bum knee. Yeah, I could probably come for a week or so.”
    Tante Lulu frowned at his limit on the time he would stay, but she had the good sense to keep her opinion to herself this time.
    When Tante Lulu went to the ladies’ room, Charmaine smiled at him and shrugged.
    “How do you stand her?”
    “She can be nerve-racking, but she’s got a heart of gold.”
    “More like a lead sinker, if you ask me.”
    “How many ninety-something-year-old women do you know who would travel all this way to reunite an ailing grandmother and her grandson?”
    “I don’t know any other ninety-something-year-old women. What’s with the ninety-something crap anyhow? Why don’t you know her exact age?”
    “She lies,” Charmaine said with a grin, as if that were a good thing. “Family is all important to Tante Lulu. Did you know her fiancé was your grandmother’s older brother, Phillipe Prudhomme, and he was one of the original Navy SEALs, a frogman? He died in the Big War.”
    “The Civil War?” he asked, before thinking.
    “Idjit!” she said, smacking his arm lightly. “World War Two.”
    Feeling like an idjit, he defended himself lamely. “Hey, everyone in the South still thinks the Civil War was the Big War, don’t they?”
    She just smiled. “Are you married, Cage? Engaged? Involved?”
    When he answered negatively to each of her questions, she gave him a pitying look and asked the oddest thing, “Do you have a hope chest?”

    *dpgroup.org*

Chapter Three
    Doing the horizontal boogie without the boogie…
    E melie was a list maker, and whoo-boy, this was some list!
    —Six foot tall, brown hair, hazel eyes, Caucasian, Italian, age 22, medical student at an Ivy League college, marathon runner, favorite music: Aerosmith.
    —Five foot ten, blond hair, light brown eyes, Caucasian, Irish-German ancestry, age 30, artist, favorite music: Mozart.
    —Five foot eleven, brown hair, dark brown eyes, Cuban, age 24, law school intern, hobby: mountain climbing.
    —Six foot three, black hair, dark brown eyes, Cajun, age 20, commercial fisherman, favorite music: Zydeco.
    She was sipping at a cup of
cafe au lait
and scanning her culled list of sperm donors. It felt almost like arranging a blind date without all the fuss of dressingup and awkward initial meetings, usually followed by disappointment.
    Inside her office, she had a folder with additional info on each of the candidates. Blood type. Three generations of family medical history. Facial features. Complexion. Sperm count.
    It was Sunday, and Emelie was sitting at a table on her back, upper gallery, facing the fountain courtyard in the back. Her 150-year-old home was not large, but it was two-storied. In the old days, the living quarters were on the second floor, its shuttered, floor-to-ceiling windows open to catch every little breeze, the family in one section and the slaves out back.
    She