Rising Tides

Nicky stopped a short distance from her son. She nodded to him, her eyes wary; then she looked past Phillip to the porch. “Mr. St. Amant?”

Spencer smiled and stretched out his hand. Nicky introduced her husband; then she paused. “And Ferris Lee,” she said, inclining her head. “Ferris, you probably haven’t had the pleasure of meeting my husband, Jake Reynolds.”

Jake didn’t offer his hand, and Ferris didn’t move. Ben filled the gap by offering his to Nicky. “I’m Ben Townsend.”

Spencer watched them shake. He could not think badly of Aurore, but for a moment he wished that she had made different decisions in her lifetime. “I was just telling the others that beds have been prepared,” he said. “And I’m sure there’s dinner, if you haven’t eaten al ready.”

“Thank you, but we’re going to listen to this will, then we’re leaving,” Nicky said. “Maybe Aurore Gerritsen thought a little black-and-white pajama party would further the cause of civil rights, but I don’t savor the idea of staying in this house tonight.”

Spencer had expected resistance. He applied his gentlest coercion. “It’s much too late to think about driving back.”

“I’m afraid we have as little interest in being guests as Senator Gerritsen has in being our host.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s not that straightforward.”

“Let them go,” Ferris demanded.

Spencer had known that gentleness wouldn’t be enough. Somehow, it never was. He smiled sadly. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, Senator. Your mother stipulated that everyone has to spend the night at the cottage tonight. In the morning, I’ll share all the conditions for the reading of her will. But I’ll warn you now, it won’t hurt any of you to unpack everything you’ve brought. We’ll be spending four nights together.”

“What kind of charade is this?” Ferris asked. “You can’t keep us locked up here. I won’t tolerate it.”

Spencer sighed and remembered that moment when the ancient two-seater had lifted away from the earth and his world had changed forever. “I can’t keep you here,” he agreed. “But there’s one more thing I ought to tell you now. Anyone who leaves before the reading is completed will not inherit.”

Dawn heard Spencer’s final words from the hallway of the cottage. She started for the door, but before she reached it, Nicky Reynolds spoke. “I can’t imagine a woman I never met left me anything so significant that I should let myself be strong-armed.”

The screen door slammed shut behind Dawn. She should have expected it, because standards at the cottage were more relaxed than at any of the other Gerritsen homes. But she hadn’t, and she hadn’t expected to see Ben flinch, as if someone had just aimed a gun at him and pulled the trigger.

“Mrs. Reynolds, if my grandmother asked you here, it couldn’t have been to hurt you.” She walked down the porch steps, purposely concentrating on no one but Nicky and her husband. She had heard her father’s voice, but she wasn’t prepared to deal with him. Dawn had heard of Nicky Valentine Reynolds, of course. Nicky, who had never tolerated segregated audiences in a city famed for them, had always interested her, and the interest factor had just multiplied enormously.

“I’ll be happy to show you to your room,” Dawn said. “There’s a large one next to mine that I think you’ll like. You can see the Gulf if you have the determination.” She held out her hand to Nicky. “I’m Dawn Gerritsen. Please, I hope you plan to stay.”

Nicky lifted her hand with her signature languid grace. She introduced her husband, and Dawn felt her hand disappear into the hard flesh of his. Jake Reynolds was an imposing man, large and muscular enough to feel at ease anywhere. He seemed at ease now, but he stood close to his wife, hip edged toward hers, with the skill of a bodyguard.

Dawn turned so that she could see her parents, too. They had changed little in the months she was gone. Her mother was gazing into the distance. Her father was staring at her, his eyes narrowed, and for once his thoughts were visible for anyone to read. She knew the price she would pay when he got her alone. She spoke to him, as well as to Nicky. “No one here will hurt you. I give you my word.”

“Now that’s interesting,” Phillip said, “considering that the influence of this family couldn’t even keep one of its own from being gunned down like an animal.”

Dawn looked at Phillip for the first time. He was a stranger to her. “I’m sorry. We haven’t been introduced.”

“This is my son, Phillip Benedict,” Nicky said.

Dawn recognized the name. She had often read his work. Before she could respond, Jake spoke. “We’ll be staying. All of us.”

Dawn saw the rising tide of mutiny in Nicky’s eyes. Even angry, she was a stunning woman. Had she lived a century before, she might have danced at the French Quarter quadroon balls. Beautiful women of mixed racial heritage had been the cause of more than one duel in the nineteenth century. New Orleans society had seen fit to create a special place for them—minus the sanctity or the security of marriage vows, of course.

“We’ll stay the night,” Nicky said.

Dawn admired the way Nicky had neither agreed nor disagreed with her husband in public. They would stay the night. Clearly, whether they would stay longer remained to be worked out between them.

She listened as Ben offered to help with luggage. He was standing beside Phillip, and their similarities were more interesting than their differences. Both carried themselves as if they toted precious cargo, as if knowledge hard won set them apart from mere mortals. And although she had never seen Phillip before, he and Ben seemed united in their decision to condemn her and her family.

“Why don’t you come with me,” she told Nicky, “while the men bring your suitcases? You can tell me if there’s another room you’d like better.”

Nicky nodded. As they climbed the steps, Dawn realized that her father and mother were no longer standing on the gallery, but Spencer remained to oversee the settling-in. He looked exhausted.

Inside, she paused in the center hallway, compelled by the oddity of the circumstances to make small talk. “It’s a large house, though it doesn’t look like it from the outside. It was built by an Acadian family more than a hundred years ago. When I was a little girl, I used to lie awake at night and listen for their voices.”

“Did you ever hear them?”

“What would you think if I said yes?”

“That you have imagination.”

“I’m a photographer. Some people don’t think that takes imagination.”

“Some people don’t think singing other people’s songs takes imagination, either.”

Dawn felt the flush of camaraderie. She pointed out the layout of the rooms downstairs, then started up to the second floor. Her mother had disappeared, and Dawn hoped she wouldn’t meet her now. Since she had openly defied her father, she anticipated his appearance with even less enthusiasm.

She led Nicky to the bedroom at the end of the hall way in the addition. It was large and airy, furnished with pine and cypress antiques of straight, simple lines. The bed, a nineteenth-century tester, was draped in hand-crocheted lace.

“This was my grandmother’s room.” Dawn stepped inside. Immediately she was embraced by the entwined fragrances of roses and vetiver, fragrances she would al ways associate with Aurore. “I think you’ll be comfort able here. There’s a private bath.”

“Your grandmother’s room?”

“It’s one of the larger ones in the house, and it was her favorite, because there really is a view of sorts, if you step out here.” She walked to the French doors leading out to a small balcony and threw them open. Immediately fresh air swept into the room, licking at the scents.

“Why are you giving this room to me?”

Dawn faced her. “Why not?”

“You know the answer to that.”

Dawn was afraid she did. She was the daughter of Ferris Lee Gerritsen, noted for his opposition to civil rights, and blood was supposed to tell. “I hope you won’t hold my father’s prejudices against me. We’re not at all the same.”

“You’re not at all what I would have expected.”

“Well, you’re even more.” As a photojournalist, Dawn had learned to quickly assess faces. Nicky was one of those rare women who would be equally beautiful on film or in person. Her dark hair hugged her head in short, soft curls. Her eyes were an impenetrable green, the still surface of a tree-shaded bayou. Her features were broad and strong, sensual, earthy and somehow—and this fascinated Dawn most of all—wise. Nicky was at least as old as Dawn’s own parents, but age seemed only to have intensified her assets.

She realized she was staring. “You were a great favorite of Grandmère’s. I grew up listening to your voice. Seventy-eights at first. Then 45s. Then albums, with your photograph smiling at me from the record rack.”

“Your grandmother was a complete stranger to me.”

“I think you would have liked her.”

Nicky ran her hand over the lace coverlet, but she didn’t answer. Dawn heard footsteps on the stairs and realized that their private moment was about to end. “This situation is extraordinary, Mrs. Reynolds. Please tell me if there’s anything I can do to make it more comfortable for you.”

“It’s not going to be comfortable, no matter what any of us do.”

“You haven’t met Pelichere Landry yet. She was a friend of Grandmère’s, and she takes care of the cottage when no one’s here. I know she’s set out food in the kitchen. When you’ve settled in, please introduce your self, and she’ll show you where everything is.”

Dawn stepped aside as Jake and Phillip entered. Ben was carrying a suitcase, but he stopped in the doorway. Without a word, she moved past him.

“So you decided to come.” Phillip kissed his mother’s forehead, and didn’t have to bend far to do it. She was only half a head shorter than his six-foot-two.

“I don’t know why I did.” Nicky pushed him away before he could answer. She and Phillip had gone round and round about this invitation to Grand Isle since the moment it arrived. She had flatly refused to come, but somehow she had ended up here anyway. “And don’t bother telling me you don’t know why I was invited. You never could lie worth anything. You know a whole lot more about this situation than you’ve let on so far.”

“Have you had supper?” Jake asked Phillip.

“There weren’t a lot of places on the way down where I could have been sure to leave with a full stomach and a full set of teeth.”

Jake laughed, but both men knew the truth behind Phillip’s joke. Black humor, some called it. Both men had theories about that.

“Dawn told me that someone’s set out food for us in the kitchen,” Nicky said.

Jake set down the suitcase he had carried. “Suppose she meant we’ll be eating in the kitchen while the white folks eat in the dining room?”

“No, I don’t suppose that’s what she meant. She was trying to make us welcome.”

“If Dawn’s anything like her father,” Phillip said, “she can charm you right straight to the center of a lie, and you’ll never even know you’ve been there.”

“Would you like me to go down to the kitchen and see if I can get something to bring up?” Jake asked Nicky.

“I’d like that. Phillip?”

Phillip shrugged. “You don’t have to leave us alone, Jake.”

“Think I do.”

Nicky watched her husband leave. His footsteps were no longer audible when she spoke. “I think it’s time you did some explaining.”

Phillip wandered the room, stopping at a bedside table. Wildflowers bloomed in a cut-glass vase, and a handful of novels fanned out along the edges in invitation. “You’re one of the few people who know that Aurore Gerritsen hired me to write her life story. That she dictated it to me chapter and verse.”

“Knowing’s not the same as understanding.”

“Have you wondered just how far she went? How much she told me about her life?”

Nicky didn’t reply.

Phillip faced her. “She left out nothing.”

“How can you know what she left out?” She wandered to the French doors and gazed out over wizened water oaks bending in the wind.

Phillip joined her, putting his hand on her arm. His skin was smooth and brown in contrast to hers. “I can tell you this. I learned that a man I once called Hap, a man I knew in Morocco a long time ago, was really Hugh Gerritsen.”

She stiffened and shook off Phillip’s hand. “Is that why we’re here? Because once upon a time we knew Aurore Gerritsen’s son?”

“I think that’s some part of it.”

He had succeeded in making her look at him. “And what are the other parts?” she said.

“I can’t speak for Aurore. Not yet. But maybe I can speak for you. I think you came for answers to questions you gave up asking yourself a long time ago. Questions you’re going to need to share with Jake very soon. Be cause I don’t think any of us was invited here so that we could hold tight to our secrets.”

Something went still inside her. “You’ve always been the one with questions. That’s why you do what you do for a living. You probe and you probe, like a tongue that can’t keep away from a sore tooth.”

“If you worry a tooth long enough, eventually it gives way.”

“You think that’s what will happen here?”

“I think we can be assured of it.”

She wondered how much Phillip really knew about her relationship with Hugh Gerritsen, exactly how much he had been told and how much he remembered. Phillip had been young during those days so long ago, but his memory had always been extraordinary.

As if he could read her mind, he nodded. “You know to be careful, don’t you?” he asked.

“Careful of what? The truth? The senator?”

“The senator, for starters.”

“So we’re switching roles? When you were a little boy, I warned you about crossing the street, and now that I’m an old woman, you warn me about ghosts and bigots?”

“Something like that. Except for the old-woman part.”

“I know to be careful. I’m so careful I almost didn’t come. You be careful, too.”

“I’ve got careful running through my veins. Only reason my veins are still running.”

Jake appeared in the doorway with a tray. “I only had hands enough for two plates, Phillip. But there’s plenty more in the kitchen, and you’re welcome to come back up and eat with us.”

“I think I’ll just go settle in.”

Nicky followed her son to the door without saying anything more. She was both glad and sorry that their conversation was finished. Too much had been said, or perhaps not enough. She was too upset to know. When he was gone, she took glasses of iced tea off Jake’s tray.

Jake moved closer. “Are you all right?”

“I’m just fine.” She waited until he set the tray on the bed before she went into his arms.

She stood in his embrace and listened to the sound of thunder in the distance. Finally she pulled away. “There’s still time to leave, Jake.”

He pulled her close again, and she resisted for only a moment. “Do you want them saying you’re afraid? That you didn’t think you were good enough to face down the Gerritsens and find out what this is all about?”

She was all too afraid she knew what it was about. “I don’t care what anybody thinks.”

“You’d leave your son here to face them alone?”

“At least the food smells good,” she said at last.

“And there are some people here who might be worth knowing.”

Nicky thought of Dawn and the things Phillip had said about her. She wondered if Dawn knew how much she looked like the young Hugh Gerritsen.

“Shall we eat?”

Jake moved toward the bed, but he seemed in no hurry to get the tray. He smoothed his hand over the lace spread, much as Nicky had done herself. “Then I think we should retire for the night.”

“Retire’s not exactly the word you have in mind, is it?”

He flashed her his slow, certain-of-himself smile. “I figure if we’ve got to be here, there ought to be compensations.”

She considered telling him that no matter how important staying here was, she wouldn’t be able to if he wasn’t beside her. But she decided not to. She just smiled slowly and held out her arms. And in her own way, she let him know.

CHAPTER THREE

Cappy Gerritsen needed only one glance around the downstairs bedroom that she and Ferris always shared to set her off. “I told you we shouldn’t have come.”

Ferris didn’t raise an eyebrow or point out that she had been silent for the entire two-and-a-half-hour trip from New Orleans. Cappy frequently alternated between stony silences and passionate oratory. After twenty-some years of marriage, neither upset him greatly.

He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke spiral to the ceiling, where it was sternly disciplined by a fan. One of the few similarities between Cappy and his mother had been their mutual distaste for air-conditioning. Each spring his New Orleans home was held hostage to the heat and humidity until mid-June. The cottage, thanks to his mother’s whims, was unbearable the entire summer.

“Don’t look at me like that. You obviously feel the same way.” Cappy sucked in her bottom lip—a manner ism that had been adorably provocative on a debutante and was nothing short of irritating on a forty-seven-year-old matron.

Ferris snuffed the cigarette in a potted fern and lit an other. “I came out of respect for my mother.”

“That’s what you call driving all this way to be con fronted by these people?”

When Ferris didn’t try to soothe her, Cappy began fidgeting with the shells lined up along the top of a chest of drawers. “Surely you can’t think this makes any sense. Isn’t it bad enough that your mother ordered an immediate cremation? Everyone expected the family to announce the date and time for a funeral mass. Now this. When the word gets out, our friends will think your mother is still leading us around by our noses.”

“I doubt they’ll be that perceptive.”

She looked down at her arrangement, dissatisfied. She tried lining the shells up by size. “Dawn didn’t even call. I sent cables everywhere I could think of to tell her about your mother’s death, and she didn’t even call. Until I saw her standing on the gallery, I didn’t even know if she’d gotten the message.”

From the beginning, Ferris had understood the roots of Cappy’s little tantrum. He paid lip service to it, even as he silently tried to make sense of what his mother had done. “Dawn made it clear some time ago that she does what she wants.”

“This is ridiculous. I don’t want to stay here even one night. This can’t have any bearing on your inheritance.”

“As old as he is, Spencer St. Amant’s still a worthy adversary. He’s often done what he damned well pleased and gotten away with it. I’m sure that’s why Mother chose him to oversee this little drama.”

She moved a large conch to the center and stepped back to view it. “Well, I know the law, and the law says your mother had no choice but to leave you a third of her estate.”

“Do we want a third, or do we want it all? There’s the controlling interest in Gulf Coast to consider.”

He watched as her hands went still. Gulf Coast Ship ping was the crown jewel of the Gerritsen family, a multimillion-dollar financial empire that was synonymous with the port of New Orleans and traffic on the Mississippi. Cappy’s own family was wealthy, but Gulf Coast, and Ferris’s connection to it, gave her the power in New Orleans society that she desired.

Ferris fully appreciated that desire. Cappy was an asset he had recognized long ago. When she chose, she could radiate breeding and charm, while simultaneously extolling her husband’s political virtues. Cappy, with her River Road plantation gentility, could work a room like a southern Jackie Kennedy.

He gave her a moment to consider before he continued. “I’ll talk to Spencer and insist he get this over with quickly. If he doesn’t agree, we could always take our chances and drive back to the city. But, of course, if we leave, we won’t know exactly what transpires here, will we?”

“You don’t miss a thing.”

He strolled to her side and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “You’ll stay, then?”

“As always, my choices seem limited.”

“Go ahead and unpack a few things. I’m going to explore and see what I can find out.”

When he reached the doorway, Ferris took one last look over his shoulder. Cappy was leaning over the chest once more, compulsively rearranging the shells. The room was simple, casual and quaint, as only rooms in a summer home can be. But there was nothing there, or in the sprawling twelve-room house, for that matter, that didn’t underscore the ambience of old money and tradition.

And there was nothing that didn’t reek of family now vanished forever.

Ferris had spent all the summers of his boyhood in this place. He hoped this was the last summer he would ever see it.

Dawn unpacked the few clothes she’d brought with her, then wandered the bedroom as memories stung her. Some things were much as they had been years before. The closet still held clothes she had worn as a teenager. A pink bathing suit with a pleated skirt lay in the bottom drawer of the pine dresser, faded rubber flip-flops tucked neatly under it. The view was one she remembered. She stopped at the window and gazed outside at a gray drizzle, leftovers from the earlier shower. The Gulf was just visible here, a wedge of turbulent water that mirrored her emotions.

She turned at the sound of rapping on her door. “Come in.”

Three men had helped shape her into the woman she had become. Ben was the third, her uncle Hugh the second. The man who appeared in her bedroom doorway was the first, and possibly the most important.

She nodded warily. “Daddy.”

Ferris smiled. “You must be my daughter. No one else calls me Daddy.”

She tapered her own smile into a warning. “If that keeps up, I’ll wish I hadn’t come home.”

“You should have called your mother, darling.”

“I know that.” She crossed the room and rose on tip toe to kiss his cheek. “I just needed some time alone to think about Grandmère’s death.”

“That’s one of your problems. You always think too much.”

She stepped away from him and shook her head. “This is the sixties. Women are allowed to think. You’d do well to remember that, if you want to be the next governor.”

“So you read, too. What do you think my chances are?”

Dawn thought his chances were good, but she thought telling him was a bad idea. The state of Louisiana would benefit from a humbler Ferris Gerritsen—but not as much as it would benefit from a more liberal man in the governor’s mansion. “What do you think?” she countered.

“I think you’d better face your mother and get it over with. She’s furious at you for not getting in touch.”

She put that aside for a moment, only too aware of the scene to come. “Daddy, do you know what this is about?”

“No, but I intend to find out. I don’t believe your grandmother really invited Nicky Reynolds and her family here.”

Dawn didn’t want to address that. Not yet. “Do you know why Ben Townsend was invited?”

His expression didn’t change, but then, his thoughts were rarely visible. “No. Are the two of you—”

She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “I haven’t seen him since…in a year.”

“Apparently your grandmother had a sense of humor I never appreciated.”

She stepped back to view him better. “Don’t dredge up old scores to settle with Ben.”

His expression was still pleasant. His voice was not. “Ben Townsend doesn’t belong in this house, and he doesn’t belong with you.”

That was undoubtedly true, but she didn’t want to give her father the satisfaction of knowing he was right. “That’s over now.”

“It should never have started.”

“If we could change history, there’d probably be more significant mistakes for both of us to worry about, wouldn’t there?”

His response was interrupted by a noise on the stairs. Dawn looked beyond her father to see her mother coming toward them. She added guilt to the carousel of feelings she had experienced in the past hour, and prepared herself. “Mother.”