Back to Bayou Sabine: A Novella by Faulkenberry Lauren

Author:Faulkenberry, Lauren [Faulkenberry, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Velvet Morning Press
Published: 2015-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

I set the gardenia in the window of our room at the Dauphine Inn and fell asleep thinking of summers with Vergie.

Kate lay sprawled in the bed next to mine, sleeping diagonally just because she could. She snored quietly between slow breaths.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Vergie’s bright blue eyes and gray hair, the way her eyes had wrinkled at the corners when she smiled at me. I remembered her fishing in the lagoon behind her house, both of us rolling our jeans up to our knees, sitting on the dock so we could splash our feet in the water. She teased me, telling me a catfish would bite our toes if we didn’t bait the hooks well enough. We’d pack sandwiches for lunch so we could stay out there all day. It was like escaping to a whole different world.

Sometime after two, I got up and crept out of the room, careful not to wake Kate. The inn had a courtyard with a small garden and a rock path. The wild roses and honeysuckle were so sweet I could almost taste them on my tongue. I lay in the grass for a long while, staring up at the stars. The sky was clear, but the moon was so bright it was hard to draw a line between the few constellations I could remember. Vergie had taught me some of them—Orion, Cassiopeia, Cygnus. I couldn’t see much of anything in the sky in Raleigh, but out here she connected all the stars, dragging her finger through the air, telling me about heroes and goddesses, creatures I wished might protect me someday. She’d made everything seem magical. She’d made me feel like I was more than ordinary, and that was a feeling I’d long forgotten.

When I caught myself dozing off in the grass, I went back inside, opening the door softly. Kate rolled over when I shut the door, but she didn’t wake. I pulled the sheet over me and breathed in the scent of gardenia, wishing I could go back to when I was sixteen and do just one thing differently.

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