"I'm the one who should be sorry," I said. "I took so long to get here, but I got into an accident just outside New Orleans, and then I got lost for a while."
"Accident? Are you all right?" He stood up and buttoned his shirt.
"Yes, I'm fine. I just slid off the road into a ditch, but a truck driver helped me."
"Oh. Good." He looked behind me. "Isn't your father here too?"
"No," I said. "I came by myself."
"Yourself? Oh," he said without asking any more questions.
"Have you seen anything since we spoke?" I asked quickly.
"No. I watched the house for an hour or so, too. There were no cars. I don't even know how anyone would get here, except . . ."
"Except what?" I said.
"Except through the canals, of course. It was too dark to go down there and check. You want something to drink—cold water, juice?" he offered moving toward the small kitchen.
"No. I'm fine. I'd like to go into the house immediately and look where you saw the light."
"Sure. Let me get us a couple of flashlights," he said and went to a cabinet. "I really didn't mean for you to come up here so late. Tomorrow would probably be just as good. Does your father know you've come?"
"He doesn't know yet, but I left him a note. It's all right."
Jack nodded, but he looked skeptical.
"It's very important that I find my mother quickly. My brother needs her desperately," I said.
He stared for a moment, his eyes softening. "I understand. Okay, let's go, then." He opened the door for me, and we stepped out. "Might as well drive over to the house," he said, nodding at my car. We got in and I drove over, describing how bad the rain had been at the start of my trip.
"Didn't get much here," he said. "That's the way these summer storms are. Sometimes we get them bad and you don't and vice versa."
We got out of the car and walked up the steps to the gallery. He flipped on his flashlight and I did the same. Then, we entered the house. Please, I prayed, please let Mommy be here. If I found her, I would take her directly to the hospital. In hours we could be at Pierre's bedside.
The small amount of illumination our flashlights provided elongated the shadows and made the rooms and corridors look deeper than they were. Furniture draped in sheets resembled spirits waiting patiently to be reanimated, and the silhouettes created by our flashlights slid across the walls and ceilings like phantoms gathering around us. Our own footsteps made the floorboards creak. Our shoes clicked over the tiles, a small sound amplified in the emptiness.
"The light was upstairs," Jack said. "Be careful."
He led the way up the grand staircase. The steps groaned under our weight. It had been a long time since anyone had walked up or down regularly. I felt a rippling sensation on the back of my neck, as if someone had stepped up behind me. I paused and spun around. As we were moving forward, the darkness, pushed aside by our beams of light, was rushing back in behind us. I decided to stay as close to Jack as I could. When we reached the landing, he directed me to the right and we entered what I knew was Uncle Paul's bedroom.
"I might be wrong," Jack said. "But I'm pretty sure the light was in here. I counted the windows from the end of the house. If there was someone in this room, that person was standing about here." He moved to the window. "The light lingered awhile and then grew smaller. My guess is that the person moved deeper into the house, away from the window. I called and called, but no one responded. Could have been a prowler or a burglar, as I said," he added.
"There isn't much here for a burglar to steal, is there?" I asked.
"Well, there are good furnishings, works of art, bric-a-brac, kitchenware . . . sure, there's good loot, especially for some of these swamp pirates. We don't have urban crime, but we do have some lowlifes meandering about the canals, breaking into other people's shacks. This place is so far out that it's not easy to rob, but desperate people do desperate things."
Our flashlights were like candles. They threw a glow over our faces as we stood talking.
"Why would your mother come back here by herself in the middle of the night?" he asked. "You obviously thought she would or you wouldn't have come. I don't mean to poke my nose where it don't belong," he added quickly.
I shook my head and bit down on my lower lip. If Mommy was in the house, she would have heard us, but I couldn't be sure she would let us know she was here. I had no idea what state of mind she was in at this point.
"I told you about my brother's death and how upset my mother was, but I didn't tell you that my mother blamed herself for the tragedy. She went to a voodoo mama and was told to enact certain rituals. The next thing we knew, she had left to do something else mysterious. She sent a letter telling us she wouldn't be coming home for quite a while, if ever. We suspected she had returned to the bayou and found something she left in the shack where she and my great-grandmother lived when my mother was a little girl."
"And then she lived in this house after she married Paul Tate," he said.
"Yes."
"So you think she's coming back here to perform some voodoo ritual?"
"She's returning to wherever she thinks she did something that might have put a curse on us. I'm sure there's some ritual that has to do with driving away evil spirits," I told him.
"You don't believe in any of that, I take it," he said. "No."
He nodded thoughtfully. "I'm really sorry for your troubles."
"It's gotten worse. My little brother, the one who's in a coma, has become very sick. The psychiatrist treating him thinks he believes my mother blames him for my other brother's death because she doesn't go to see him. He doesn't want to live anymore," I concluded sadly.
"That's terrible."
"So you see why it is so important for me to find my mother and get her to come home."
"Yes, I do. I'm sorry I didn't try harder to find whoever was here. You want to go through the rest of the house?"
"Yes," I said.
He reached for my hand. "We'd better be careful. This place has been deserted for a long time. I don't know what to expect."
I didn't hesitate to give him my hand. He grasped it firmly. It was reassuring to sense his strength. We started through the upstairs, going in and out of the rooms, checking closets and bathrooms, looking into every possible space. I called for Mommy. I begged her to reply if she was in the house.
"Pierre needs you desperately, Mommy. If you're here, please call to us. Please!"
There was only the echo of my voice followed by silence. We returned to what had been my mother's bedroom. The bed had no linen, but there were still pillows and a mattress. Both of us ran our light beams over the floors and walls, even under the bed, but we saw no one and no evidence of anyone having been here recently.
"Maybe I just imagined the candle," Jack said woefully, "and brought you up here on false hope. The swamps play havoc with your senses sometimes. You ever see a flash of swamp gas?"
"No."
"It ignites and rolls across the water's surface like balls of lightning," he said. "It happens so quickly you're not sure whether or not you imagined it."
"I think I saw something like that when I drove up to the house. I don't really remember much at all about the bayou; I was just a little girl when I left. It sounds fascinating."
"I wouldn't want to live anywhere else," he said. "Don't mean any disrespect, but as you know, I'm not one for city life."
I smiled for the first time in hours, but I wasn't sure he could see in the dark.
"Well," he said after a moment, "you're welcome to come back to the trailer with me. I can make us something cold to drink. I got some watermelon in the fridge, too," he added. "Unless you're too tired."
I had been so excited and nervous, I never realized the lateness of the hour or the weariness in my body. Now that we had paused for a while, my legs did feel heavy, and fatigue began to climb up as if I had stepped into a pool of it.