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She could physically feel him pulling back, pulling away from her, and then he was gone.
B’Lynn sat up with a gasp, her heart racing. She leapt off the bed and ran into the empty hall. The wind blew again, and the dancing branches of the oak tree created a strobe effect with the moonlight in the hallway. She was alone. He was gone…if he had ever been there at all.
It had to be. He had to have been there. She was so sure.
The wind rose again. Something banged downstairs.
“Robbie!” she called, racing down the stairs, stumbling, barely catching hold of the banister to prevent falling headlong to her death. “Robbie, wait!”
In her hurry to catch him, she missed the last step, turned her ankle, and went down in a heap, crying out. She scrambled clumsily to her feet and ran down the hall to the kitchen.
She had left the under-cabinet lights on, bathing the lower part of the room in a warm yellow glow. The room was empty. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator. She rushed through into the laundry room and out the back door onto the porch. There was no one.
“Dammit, Robbie!”
Pulling in a big, deep breath, she launched herself down the steps and ran barefoot, wincing, limping hard, across the cool, damp grass to the gate in the tall privacy fence at the back of the garden. The latch was undone. She pulled the gate open and looked down the alley.
There was no car, though she thought she caught a glimpse of red taillights at the end of the street. Her lungs burning, her legs feeling heavy, she hobbled to the end of the alley to try to see, but if there had been a car at all, it was gone by the time she got clear of the trees.
“Dammit!”
She rubbed at the throbbing pain in the elbow she had banged against the hardwood floor in her fall. A maelstrom of emotions swirled through her—panic, frustration, hope, desperation, doubt.
Had he really been there? she wondered as she walked back to her yard and closed and latched the garden gate. Had he come and gone through this gate, or had the gardener neglected to fasten the old latch? How many times had she scolded Robbie as a child, as a teenager, about making sure that latch caught? Back when they had a family dog that had delighted in escaping the yard to run amok through the neighbors’ gardens.
“Robbie Fontenot, you latch that gate! If Bubba gets out one more time…”
Had she dreamed it? she wondered, pulling back from the old memory. Had she just dreamed the whole thing? It had seemed so real. The sense of his presence, the sound of his voice…the sadness in it, the sadness in his eyes.You can’t help me now…
She pressed a hand to her chest as if her heart physically hurt as she climbed the back porch steps. All the aches and pains from her fall began to make themselves known. She felt exhausted. She felt a thousand years old.
How many times in the past twenty-seven years had she flippantly tossed out the phraseThat boy will be the death of me? When had she started to believe that might be true? The first time heOD’d? The third time he’d gone into rehab? The fifth time he’d called her from a police station? The last decade of her life had been consumed by her son’s addiction. How much more could she stand?
The wind rose again, shaking the oak tree and stirring the wind chimes in her memory garden. A chill went through her as the sweat evaporated from her skin. People liked to say the chimes in a memory garden were rung by the spirits of the lost loved ones being remembered there. B’Lynn wanted to scoff, but she had been born and raised on generations of south Louisiana superstition that even her hard-earned cynicism couldn’t completely erase. Maybe she wanted to believe it. But that thought gave rise to another: Had she been visited by Robbie or by his spirit?You can’t help me now…
Tears rose and crested in her eyes on a wave of dread.
“Stop it. Stop it!” she ordered herself, combating her fear with anger directed at herself. She had to keep her wits about her. Panic didn’t help anything.
“Go inside, B’Lynn,” she muttered. Nothing good would come from wandering thoughts of ghosts and spirits.
Should she call Detective Broussard? And tell her what? That she might have hallucinated Robbie being in her house? That she couldn’t tell reality from wishful thinking? That she might have seen taillights going down the side street? She hadn’t seen the car, if there had even been a car. She couldn’t say it was Robbie’s car if she wasn’t sure there had been a car at all.
As she opened the back door to go inside, she realized it had been unlocked when she came out. She had just pulled it open and dashed out without thinking. It should have been locked. She always locked the doors before she went upstairs at night, always. She was a creature of habit and routine by nature. She had her nightly rituals of checking the doors and turning out the lights. Sure, she’d had a couple of glasses of wine after supper, but had she really missed locking this door?
Robbie had a key…
She made a point of locking it now, staring at the dead bolt asshe turned it, trying to imprint the act on her memory. Maybe she was getting Alzheimer’s. Hard to say if that would be a curse or a blessing at this point in her life. There were days when she was just so tired and done with it all. Drifting away into oblivion had a certain appeal.
That thought came with a terrible nip of guilt. Whatever went on with Robbie, she still had a daughter to live for. Lisette was in college. She had her whole bright young life ahead of her. She had yet to go out in the big world and make a career, and fall in love, and have a family of her own. B’Lynn’s life would, presumably, at some point, take on that extra layer of being a grandmother and a mother-in-law. She had another life to look forward to.
She tried to envision herself as one of those “active seniors,” joining clubs and traveling the world with a gaggle of friends her own age. Hard to do, seeing as she didn’t really have friends anymore. She wasn’t good company. The things most women her age talked about seemed frivolous and unimportant to her. And God knew, no one wanted to hear about Robbie’s latest misadventure due to drugs. Most people she knew preferred to keep her at arm’s length, as if her son’s addiction and the trouble that came with it might somehow be contagious.
She couldn’t really blame them. She wouldn’t have wished any part of her struggle now on anyone—except her ex-husband, of course. She was not at all above wishing he could know this misery. But Robert had cut ties long ago and severed himself from all responsibility. How nice for him. The asshole. (Not a word she would have used aloud, having been raised by proper Southern ladies, but she didn’t hesitate to think it.)
She wondered if he had bothered to return any of Detective Broussard’s calls, but she doubted it. Robert had a narcissist’s ability to deny anything that might inconvenience him. He disguised it as being decisive and in charge. Admirable alpha male qualities. It never failed to amaze her how much of his toxic behavior she had taken as a gift wrapped in a big red bow instead of seeing it for whatit was: a big red flag. And all of it to the detriment of her children, Robbie in particular. She would never forgive him for that. Or forgive herself for allowing it.
All too late to cry about it now, though she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—let it go.
