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“Start your own traditions. Daddy and I did it one way, and now you can do it yours.”
“I don’t know what that is though.”
“Research it, like you do everything else,” she said. “It’ll be fun, you’ll see. You’ll be starting something you can pass down to your children.”
“Oh, Mom, I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about. If we were still in Florida, we’d probably do what we always did. But now here, I don’t know, it just feels like we need to do Christmas the bayou way.”
“And what way is that? What did you do for Christmas that was so different when you lived here as a child?”
“Lonnie played the accordion, you remember that, don’t you? Yeppers. You can’t listen to zydeco and stay down, sweetheart, trust me on this. You get your music on right now and then think about Christmas.”
She explained where Maggie could find her grandfather’s turntable and LP records.
“Okay, thanks, Mom. I’ll try it.”
Inside, she looked over the shelves where Lonnie Langtry’s books were lined up next to hers. In the left corner was a box covered with crumbling leather. She’d never moved it, just ran a dustcloth over it from time to time. It was Lonnie’s record player. Whatever that was, she had laughed when Rose described it to her. She didn’t even own a CD player. Lifting the top, it looked like something out of a museum. Rose had said to place the record on the round disc, and after switching the on switch, it would work automatically, the arm would move over to the edge of the record and begin to play.
The records were lined up on end, and she found the one Rose said to look for: Queen Ida. She pulled the cardboard cover out of the stack and looked for the open end. The black record was in pristine condition, and she vowed to keep it that way. Following Rose’s directions, she waited for the arm to move over on its own, and it did, and music began to play in seconds.
Rose was right; it was impossible to be down and listen to zydeco, and it was next to impossible to stay still. Her body started swaying with her eyes closed, and the music filled her. She danced around the room, her hips moving in circles like she was making love to Justin. The music lifted her soul. It had to be less than five minutes and it transformed her, all the wishy-washy worries of her ex disappeared, and she could only think of one thing, and that was her future.
She didn’t hear him come in or have any indication that he had been watching her, but Justin was suddenly in front of her, wrapping his arms around her, and she yelped a little, shocked, but his mouth covered hers, and before she knew it, she was making love to him with an abandon she’d never experienced before.
***
The sun had set over the bay, the red glow on the water burning on the headland, as well. Justin came in from the kitchen with a glass of lemonade and handed it to her.
“Do you want a sweater?” he asked, sitting down next to her.
“No, I’m good,” she answered, taking a sip of the lemonade. “Look at that.” She nodded to the water. The crickets and bullfrogs were just starting up, and they looked to their right as one horse followed by another came down the trail into the clearing around the cottage.
“It’s like they come to watch us,” she whispered. “It’s the same thing every night.”
“Do you like it?” he asked.
She looked at him in wonder. “Do I like it? I love it. This is my life. You and Brulee and the wild horses. You’re what I live for.”
He leaned over and kissed her. “Are you mad that I snuck up on you?”
“No. I’m glad I didn’t make a bigger fool of myself. The music had only been playing for a few minutes, so I couldn’t have done anything too embarrassing.”
“You’re beautiful. It was so sexy. I drove up, and the music was coming out into the yard, and it was like a throwback, being a kid again and coming to the bayou and hearing your grandpop playing the accordion. Greta and your aunt Elizabeth be dancing on this very porch while he played. It was something you’d have to see. Describing it don’t do it justice.”
He’d slipped back into his old, natural way of speaking, a little Cajun covering up the college years out west. She liked it. She wished she’d lived there all her life and talked that way, too. Gus did, and Steve Casson. Rose and Elizabeth were slipping back into their old speech patterns, too.
“I want to belong here,” she said.
“You do. You will. You only been here a few months, sweetheart. Give yourself a chance. You already dance like you from here,” he said, moving his eyebrows up and down.
“Oh god, knock it off,” she said, laughing. “I’m as graceless as a rolling rock.”
“That’s not true. Not to be gross, but my dick is getting hard just thinking of you floating around that living room.”
She roared laughing. It was so out of character for Justin to say anything ribald, but there you are. In the night just as the sun disappeared at the horizon, she’d heard something new from his mouth.
“Are you hungry? ’Cause I’m starving, and now I want barbeque, and after that, I want to do the two-step on a scuffed-up wood floor, listening to zydeco.”
