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Prologue
Katrina Blanchard, a successful and lovely young woman from Pensacola, missed her two best friends who, the previous autumn, had moved to a backwater in the Louisiana Bayou. Her friends had sunk roots down so deeply in the village of Cypress Cove, one with a husband and the other a boyfriend, Katrina knew they’d never return to Florida.
Life had become a drudge without her posse to support her and provide companionship and entertainment. Since she’d met her goal of being a top earner in the medical device field, the drive for success was no longer filling every need. And love had eluded her, no matter how much she dated. She finally stopped looking because it had simply wasted her time.
Then, after New Year’s Day, she landed a dream client. The only hospital in Saint John’s Parish, a city near Cypress Cove, sold to a vast conglomerate, were updating all of their medical devices from monitors in the emergency room and intensive care to perfusion machines in the cardiac unit. Serendipitously, she’d be on-site for a while. It would be the ideal time to visit her friends, Maggie Angel and Annie Casson.
When she left Pensacola for the four-hour drive, she didn’t realize that it was for the last time. A weather-beaten cypress wood sign announced that she’d crossed the parish line and was entering the village of Cypress Cove. Marina Drive veered off the main highway, leading Katrina into town. She drove a Porsche, a car rarely seen in those parts, and she got attention with her windows open, her red hair barely contained by a scrunchie. The air felt different here—balmy, tropical. She’d entered the bayou.
The briny smell of the sea, the clanging of the halyards on the boats added to the captivating atmosphere of a bayou fishing village. At the water’s edge, a shabby marina with the dockmaster’s shack led to Main Street and its row of quaint shops, including Café Delphine.
Its whistle blew as a train stopped at the station at the corner of Main and Bayou Truck Trail, the dirt trail that would take her to her best friend Maggie Angel’s cottage.
Across the street from the station, she saw the sign for Casson’s Hardware. Annie Markley né Casson, her other best friend, lived in a tiny apartment above the store with her new husband, Steve Casson. Katrina pulled up to the curb in front of the hardware store and sat there for a while, looking around, taking in the sights and sounds. A quiet place like Cypress Cove wouldn’t be able to hold her interest for long.
What she hadn’t counted on was meeting someone that first day when she went to visit Maggie at Bayou Cottage. Gorgeous Alphé Beaumont, a local fisherman, ran his trawler aground right next to the island where Katrina and Maggie were picnicking. And by the second day, she was pretty sure she was falling in lust with him.
Alphé had baggage, however; an ex-wife and four kids, two of whom he’d discovered his late brother had fathered. So, Katrina had a lot to think about. Surprising herself and her friends, one thing was for certain; she was staying in Cypress Cove for the rest of her life.
Chapter 1
Lumber Baron Andrew Langlois made the daring move from Montreal to the Louisiana Bayou in 1820. Gaining the lumber rights to a huge portion of land, once logging was underway, he built an enormous home in New Orleans, suitable for a man of his stature, which would house his growing family.
Traveling to sell the lumber became an integral part of his business. The rooming houses along the route accommodated the ax men and swampers, the men who worked logging the cypress before the spring rise. He wasn’t a snob, but he didn’t want to live with his workers for even one night. Because of that, he built a small cottage in Cypress Cove as a place to stay overnight on his way to Baton Rouge and other places up the Mississippi River.
The cottage was considered a design masterpiece in its time. The skilled carpenters carefully chose every piece of wood. They handcrafted the cabinetry and bookshelves surrounding the fireplace, and carved hand-hewn moldings and banisters which led to the second floor, all of local cypress.
Most Creole cottages had four rooms on the main floor, the two front rooms sharing a central fireplace. A shed built off the back housed the outdoor kitchen, and an outhouse in back took care of other needs. The Langlois cottage also had a finished second floor for the rare times his children accompanied him to Cypress Cove.
His wife, Eliza Langlois, would only stay one night.
“No, I’ll stay in town next time,” she demanded, scurrying out of the cottage as soon as Andrew had the horses hitched up to the buggy. “This place is haunted.”
Looking around to make sure they were unobserved, he gently drew her into an embrace. “That was passion you experienced, my love. Not a ghost.”
Glaring at him, she shook her head and pulled away. “You were possessed.”
He laughed, throwing the harness over the back of the horse and reaching under to grasp it.
“I love this place,” Andrew replied. “I’m ready to live here for the rest of my life. I’ll cook our food and hitch up the horses myself if it would ensure another night like last night.”
“You’ll live here alone, then,” she snapped, climbing into the carriage to join their children. “I’m never coming back to Creole Cottage again.”
Two hundred years later, by the time wealthy businesswoman Katrina Blanchard found the cottage, it had changed hands at least thirty times and was in an awful state of neglect. But she didn’t care. She loved every piece of wood, every square nail, the horrible nineteen fifties kitchen addition off the back and the gaudy nineteen eighties bathroom renovation, complete with gold-veined mirrored walls.
When the real estate agent took her on the first tour, Katrina knew the moment she walked through the door that this would be her home. The ghostly presence Eliza had sensed was still there and Katrina felt it immediately. Prickles on her cheeks and arms tickled her as she walked from room to room.
Running her hands across the mantle on the living room side of the fireplace, she saw the imprints of another time.
“There are square nails in this mantelpiece.”
“To hang Christmas stockings for your future children,” the agent said. “There are nails on the other side, as well.”
Will I have children?she thought. Never really believing she’d have a child, a seed planted. Maybe…
The potential for the cottage amazed her. She imagined a huge master suite with a luxurious bathroom. She imagined a terrace off the back of the house, overlooking the creek.
After going up into the second floor, the one big unheated, un-air-conditioned space teased her with possibilities. Those “future children” would grow up there.
