A Ghost of a Chance, Cherie Claire [a court of thorns and roses ebook free .txt] 📗

TB gives me a blank stare, the kind children do when they realize they have done something wrong but haven’t a clue why. I walk to the door and open it and of course it’s Henry on the other side.

“How are you feeling?” he asks. “Alicia told me all about it.”

I haven’t a moment to answer when TB comes up from behind and opens the door wider. “You hurt yourself, Vi?”

I pause and close my eyes for an instant, trying to tame the angry beast inside my head, then slip into the hallway and close the door on TB. “Henry, I’m so sorry. He just showed up. I didn’t invite him and we’re separated and he really didn’t know that guests aren’t allowed on press trips….”

Henry holds up a hand. “No worries, Viola. We have a journalist stuck in Atlanta due to storms and I was just going to invite Bubba to the dinner tonight since the meals are already planned and paid for.”

These are the kinds of things that get journalists kicked off the list. You don’t break the rules. And you certainly don’t do anything to upset the tour without letting Henry know first. I know Henry’s being polite, but this could mean me never being asked again.

“It’s fine, Henry. I appreciate the thought, but TB is out of line here and I’m well aware of the rules….”

“Viola,” Henry says, touching my arm, “it’s the least we can do. Two days on a rooftop? I had no idea.”

Oh shit, oh shit. I will kill him for sure. “TB told you about that?”

“He was sitting in the lobby when we arrived and we got to talking. What an ordeal you all went through.”

“Yeah, well….” Oh please don’t make me talk about it.

“And you had that nasty bump today. How are you feeling?”

Henry moves to my side and takes a good look at my head. He’s starting to pale like Charlene and I wonder if he thinks I will demand health care, a settlement or something. As if. I just want to stay on the list.

That and a hot bath, oh please Jesus.

“It’s fine.” I offer a smile that doesn’t come without pain. “Nothing a martini won’t cure.”

Relief washes over Henry, but he’s still frowning a bit. “We’ll get you one, then, but if you need a doctor or medicine….”

I wave my hand to halt this line of thought. “I’m fine, really. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“Well, let me know. The hotel manager said he has Tylenol and a few other things, that all you have to do is call to the desk and they will take care of you.” Henry hands me a business card with the manager’s name on it, but I’m still focused on staying on the list.

“Again, Henry, I’m really sorry about….”

“Bring your husband to dinner.”

“He’s not my husband.”

“In fact, if he wants to stay….”

“He doesn’t.”

“Sounds like he could use a nice bed for a while. The stories he said about your house were pretty awful.”

That old guilt returns and threatens to consume me. I had barely stepped two feet inside that house before announcing I wanted no more to do with it and now TB is living there, on the second floor above the water line, the mold and the stench.

I hang my head in shame. Damn that man. “Of course.”

Henry backs up, ready to bolt, as if he senses some ugly history here and doesn’t want to learn more. “It’s up to you, naturally, but I wanted to make sure you know he’s welcome.”

I look up and force a smile. “Thanks. We appreciate that.”

Henry nods. “See you at dinner, then.”

I enter the room and find my ex sprawled out on the bed, his gaze cloudy and returned to some basketball game. He may have lost me to silence after Lillye died, or so he always claims, but the TV took his ass to never-never land the moment he was born.

I say nothing, gather up some clean clothes, retrieve my ditty bag and head to the bath. I fill up the tub, utilizing what’s left of the bath products, which is plenty, really. I shouldn’t have been so critical, I think with a heavy heart as I slip into the steaming hot bath. As the water surrounds me, that old black hole follows suit like an old friend. I close my eyes and the New Orleans night looms in front of us, the day we drove back for the first time.

“I don’t understand what we are doing here,” TB said and I fought the urge to punch him silly, even though he made perfect sense. What were we doing there?

“I told you, already. They said to get here early to wait in line.”

“What line?”

I might have agreed with him on that point, but we couldn’t see anything in front of us so, for all we knew, a line of cars existed right around the next bend. I had been sure people were desperate to get back home the moment they opened Orleans Parish and the interstate would have been clogged with traffic, but at that moment I got it. Home to what? It was like a blanket had descended upon my town, replacing New Orleans with something akin to wet, moldy cardboard. If you could see it.

I say darkness and that’s not quite true. We followed the headlights of our car into Orleans Parish once we crossed over from Metairie, the Jefferson Parish suburb showing signs of life due to it being on the unbreached end of the broken levees. Once inside the city limits we slowly watched every foot of pavement in the shadow of our headlights, searching for debris, potholes or even things as large as abandoned boats (we spotted two right away). I finally opened the side window and shined my flashlight alongside the car hoping to spot a street sign, but even those were blown or washed away.

Because Robert E. Lee is such a massive thoroughfare, with a giant open median — what we call neutral grounds in New Orleans, — we drove to the lakefront without too much guesswork. Following the side streets to our house was another story. After an hour of creeping along, dark ghosts of buildings looming alongside us the smell of which turned our stomachs, we finally found our block. Exhausted from the search and craning our necks to the windshield, we parked at what looked like the cleanest stretch of street with no piercing objects to pop a tire. TB insisted on turning off the car — anything to save gas; he was scared we would run out and never leave the city, hunted down by zombies and werewolves, no lie! But once the key turned, we were immediately engulfed into the black abyss.

It was the roof all over again, sans the incredible array of stars, and we kept bickering at each other, hoping our anger would keep the sick anxiety of that memory from consuming us.

“No one is coming here today,” TB said, a frightened edge creeping through his voice. “Who in their right mind would?”

“Us,” I reminded him.

“It’s too early.”

“This was your stupid idea.”

“I wanted to know what our house looks like.”

I considered reminding him that we saw what it looked like the day they rescued us from the roof, but thought it best not to mention, especially since I was the reason we didn’t evacuate. “It’s flooded, it probably stinks and everything is lost.”

The one thing I vowed to stuff tightly inside my brain started leaking through and my breath caught. My heart raced and I prayed that the donuts we ate in Baton Rouge would stay put because I didn’t want to barf on my front lawn smelling the stench of Katrina.

If only I had brought the photos with me.

“It might be okay. You are always so negative.”

“Shut up,” I managed to say between threats of rising bile. “Just please shut up.”

Something in the world shifted for TB turned silent and our environment developed outlines. I could make out what looked like a flooded car in front of us and our neighbor’s fence. Instinctively, both TB and I gazed toward where our house was located, squinting to see the two-story frame of a home still standing.

“I’m going in,” TB announced.

“Have fun.”

“You’re not coming?”

I gave him a look that said it all — at least to most people — but he only sat there, waiting, clueless. Not wanting to explain, I simply said, “I’ll meet you in.”

While TB took off for the house, I managed to calm the rush of nausea and anxiety. My baby’s pictures were in that house, placed high in the hall closet wrapped in plastic just in case. Only I never dreamed the levees would actually break and flood the city. Who did? It was all I had left in the world of Lillye and now I had lost that too.

I hated my life. I despised my husband and my pitiful excuse of a job. The house we were so concerned about was an anchor wrapped tightly around our necks, always taking what precious little income we managed to save, replacing vacations that might have rescued our marriage with new water heaters and plumbing mishaps. The kitchen alone pissed me off every time I came home, gazing at me with its cheap ugly cabinetry and broken linoleum, things we could never afford to replace. Even the car was a lemon. Absolutely nothing in my life mattered to me at that moment. Nothing.

Except those photos. And with them gone, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about