AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her accent was so thick, Katrina wasn’t sure what she said.
“Ma, put her down,” Alphé said, laughing.
“I’m not off the floor yet,” Katrina replied.
She glanced around the rustic but spotless place composed entirely of unpainted wood that had aged to a pale gray. Children’s artwork and framed photos of kids and grandkids covered all the walls. Unadorned windows had shutters both in and out.
“Can you get upstairs inside or only by the ladders outside?”
“We have an old metal staircase go from the second floor to the third, but no way to get to the second but by ladder. It easier to get up there from the outside. Down here you gotta move my bed to get to the hole in the ceiling. When Pop was alive, we slept upstairs, but with just me, I like being down here.
“Come around here,” she said, waving them over. “We eat on the porch today.”
“Where’s Shawna?”
“She’s out back, getting food laid out.”
Leading the way through the modern kitchen, Katrina followed Alphé down a narrow hallway to a huge screened-in porch that covered the entire back of the house.
“Here they are,” Mae announced.
The children had already run back to the porch to see their cousins, so the number of humans under the age of sixteen had doubled. In the center of the vast space, a rough-hewn table surrounded by sixteen chairs of different styles, all painted white. The children gathered around the table, made room for their cousins, and were playing a board game.
But it was the person of Shawna Beaumont Delvecchio who dominated the room. Taller than Katrina, who was tall for a woman, she had to be close to six feet. Long black curly hair pinned up in a messy bun, and like her mother, her face made up for the runway with everything, including false eyelashes. Like the rest of them, she dressed appropriately for the swamp in jeans and a white T-shirt. She was simply beautiful.
Busy organizing a feast on a sideboard when her brother and his girlfriend stepped down onto the porch, she stopped working, wiped her hands on a paper towel, and reached out to shake Katrina’s hand when Alphé made introductions.
“I’ve been wanting to come down for a while to see Alphé,” and then she moved in closer to whisper, “when I heard the news.”
“I’m glad you came,” Alphé said, kissing her. “We need to stay in touch.”
“How’s Calista?” Shawna asked.
“She’s great. She should be here.”
“Ma tried calling her, but there was no answer.”
“She was probably at mass,” Alphé said.
“What about Estelle? She’s only twenty minutes away.”
“They went to Hawaii.”
“Wait. They went on vacation during Lent?”
“Now, Alphé, not everyone’s as observant as you.”
Mae came back with a platter of fried catfish. “I stopped goin’ to church when my son died. I think Katrina should know all that up front.”
“It’s okay, Ma. No one is going to judge you.”
There was so much talking with the children and Alphé and his sister and mother that Katrina felt blessedly released from having to take part and just listened and said yes or no or how interesting enough times that they felt like their attempts to include her were successful.
The meal was delicious, and afterward, Mae refused Katrina’s help to clean up, so she got into a comfortable chair that faced the marsh and just sat and watched the birds for an hour.
When Pris came over and sat on the arm of the chair, pointing out something in a book, it was a good chance for Alphé to begin the exodus.
“They all got school tomorrow anyway,” Shawna said. “You guys come up to Baton Rouge next time.”
