She shooed Laurel aside and made a hasty pass through the box, setting aside a pair of diamond cuff links, a signet ring, a diamond tie pin. Then she ordered Tansy to bring a shoe box and dumped the rest of the contents into it. Laurel watched in horror, tears streaming down her cheeks, the crawfish pin sticking her hand as she tightened her fist around it.
Vivian shot her a suspicious look. "What have you got there?"
Laurel sniffed and tightened her fingers. "Nothin'."
"Don't you lie to me, missy," Vivian said sharply. "Good little girls don't tell lies. Open your hand."
Be a good girl, Laurel thought, always be a good girl, or Mama gets cross. She bit her lip to keep from crying as she held out her hand and opened her fist.
Vivian rolled her eyes as she picked up the tie pin, pinching it between thumb and forefinger and holding it up as if it were a live bug. "Oh, for pity's sake! What do you want with this piece of trash?"
Laurel flinched as if the word had struck her. Daddy hadn't called it trash, even if it was. "But Mama-"
Her mother turned away from her, dropping the pin in the shoe box Tansy held.
"B-but Mama," Laurel said, her breath hitching in her throat around a huge lump. "C-couldn't I keep it j-just 'cause it was D-Daddy's?"
Vivian wheeled on her, her face pinched, eyes narrowed like a snake's. "Your father is dead and buried," she said harshly. "There's no use being sentimental about his things. Do you hear me?"
Laurel backed away from her, feeling sick and hurt and dizzy. Tears spilled down her cheeks, and a hollow ache throbbed inside her heart.
"You're just being a nuisance in here," Vivian went on, working herself into a fine lather. "Here I am, doing my best to finish an awful job, a migraine bearing down on me, and pressures like no one knows. We have guests coming for dinner, and you're underfoot…"
The rest of what she had to say sounded like nothing to Laurel but blah blah blah. Her ears were pounding, and her head felt as though it might explode if she couldn't start crying hard real soon. Then Savannah was behind her, putting her hands on Laurel 's shoulders.
"Come on, Baby," she whispered, drawing her out the bedroom door. "We'll go in my room and look at pictures."
They went to Savannah 's room and sat on the rug next to the bed, looking at a photo album full of pictures of Daddy Savannah had stolen from the parlor the day of Daddy's funeral. She kept it under her mattress and had told Tansy if she ever tried to take it out or tell Vivian about it, she would have a voodoo woman put a curse on her that would give her warts all over her face and hands. Tansy left it be and had taken to wearing a dime on a string around her neck to protect her from gris-gris.
They sat on the rug and looked at their father in the only way they would ever be able to see him again, and felt alone in all the world, like two little flowers pulled up by the roots.
That night Ross Leighton came to dinner.
Savannah sat with her back to her dressing table, one foot pulled up on the seat of the chair, one arm wrapped around her leg, the other hand toying with the pendant she never took off. Lost in thought, she ran the gold heart back and forth on its fine chain. Through the French doors that led onto the balcony she could just see Laurel leaning against a column down the way. Poor Baby. The Case had taken everything out of her-her pride, her fight, her self-confidence, her independence. Everything that had taken her away from here had been taken away from her, and now she was back. Poor lost lamb, weak and sorely in need of comfort and love. Just like old times. Just like after Daddy died and Vivian had offered as much solace as a jagged piece of granite.
Funny how time had run in a circle. All during their growing-up years Savannah had mothered and nurtured and protected, and Laurel had grown stronger and brighter and burned with ambition, reaching higher and going further, eventually leaving Savannah in the dust. But now she was back, in need of mothering and nurturing again.
She turned and looked at herself in the beveled mirror above her dressing table, taking in the tousled hair, the bee-stung lips she pumped with collagen at regular intervals. Her robe had slipped off one shoulder, baring creamy skin and the thin strap of her chemise. Her breasts were barely contained by the lacy cups, their natural shape augmented by silicone implants she'd had put in years ago in New Orleans. She traced a fingertip across her lower lip, then along the scalloped edge of lace, her nipple twitching at the slight contact, a response that triggered a quick, automatic fluttering between her legs.
Laurel had gone off to Georgia to gain fame and fight for justice. To do the family proud. And Savannah had stayed behind, carving out her reputation as a slut.
Shedding her robe, she crossed the room and lay down on the bed with the elegantly carved, curved headboard. Leaning back against a mountain of satin pillows, she lit a cigarette and blew a lazy stream of smoke up toward the ceiling. Life had come full circle. Laurel was home, and Savannah was being given the chance to be important again, to do something worthwhile. Her baby sister needed her. Life could be turning around for her at last. Now all she needed was for Astor Cooper to die.
Chapter Four
Jack jerked awake, bolting against the cluttered mahogany desk, throwing his head back away from the black Underwood manual typewriter that had served as pillow for the last-what? hour? two? three? He looked around, blinking against the buttery light that filtered down through the canopy of live oak and through the sheer lace curtains at the window. He rubbed his hands over his lean face and cleared his throat, grimacing at the taste of stale beer coating his mouth. With his fingers he combed back his straight black hair, which was too thick and too long for south Louisiana this time of year.
The old ormolu clock on the bedroom mantel ticked loudly and relentlessly, drawing a narrow glare. Eleven-thirty. The respectable folk of Bayou Breaux had been up and industrious for hours. Jack had no memory of coming home. It might have been midnight. It might have been dawn when he had stumbled across the threshold of the old house the locals called L'Amour. He cast a speculative look at the heavy four-poster bed with its drape of baire carelessly stuffed behind the carved headboard. There might have been a woman dozing among the rumpled sheets. He had a vague memory of a woman… big blue eyes and an angel's face… fire and fragility…
There wasn't a woman in his bed, which was just as well. He was in no mood for morning-after rhetoric. His head felt as though someone had smashed it with a mallet.
The last thing he remembered was Leonce's leading him away from Frenchie's. He might have gone anywhere, done anything after that. Pain jabbed his temples like twin ice picks as he tried to remember. Funny, he thought, his mouth twisting at the irony, he drank to forget. Why couldn't he just leave it at that?
"Because you're perverse, Jack," he mumbled, his voice a smoky rumble, made more hoarse than usual by a night of loud singing in a room where ninety percent of the people were chain smokers.
He pushed himself up out of the creaking old desk chair, his body doing some creaking and groaning of its own after God knew how many hours in a sitting position. He stretched with all the grace of a big lean cat, scratched his flat bare belly, noted that the top button on his faded jeans was undone but left it that way.
The page in the typewriter caught his eye, and he pulled it out and studied it, frowning darkly at the words that must have seemed like gems at the time he had pounded them out.
She tries to scream as she runs, but her lungs are on fire and working like a bellows. Only pathetic yipping sounds issue from her throat, and they are a waste of precious energy. Tears blur her vision, and she tries to blink them back, to swipe them back with her hand, to swallow the knot of them clogging her throat as she runs on through the dense growth.