French Quarter by Stella Cameron

Author:Stella Cameron [Cameron, Stella]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense
Publisher: Stella Cameron
Published: 2011-08-21T23:00:00+00:00

Twenty-one

“Promise me, Cyrus,” his mother said, clutching his arm as he helped her out of the cab. “Promise me you won’t mention a thing about Celina and that man.”

He paid off the cabdriver. “I will not bring the issue up.”

“What will you say when they ask where she is?”

“The truth. I don’t know where she is.”

“Say she’s at that place. At Errol Petrie’s place. Say she’s upset and not feelin’ well. She wants to be alone. Promise me you will.”

Cyrus smiled at her, longing to be far away, and detesting whatever weakness made him want to flee the constant upheaval that surrounded his parents.

“Cyrus. Say it.”

“Look at me,” he told her. She glared up at him and he said, “I am at the Lamar house because you begged me to come, to bring you. I have promised you I won’t say a word when people start asking why you were too ill to come earlier, but you’re fine to be here now. I—”

“I was too ill. My children have made me ill. You refuse to understand the sacrifices your daddy and I have made for you. But I know my duty, and my duty is to be at my husband’s side while he tries to make the best of what few resources we have left to us.”

“Yes.” The brief flurry of fight left Cyrus. “Let’s go in. You probably shouldn’t stay too long when you’ve been so upset.” He said a silent prayer that he’d be forgiven for his hypocrisy.

His mother held his arm tightly and clipped up the Lamars’ tree-lined driveway in her high-heeled Ferragamo pumps. Bitsy Payne had always worn Ferragamo pumps because her feet were “so small and narrow, nothin’ else would possibly fit.”

“It’s late,” he said when they reached the open front doors and he saw and heard people who had already partied too long. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.” He knew it wasn’t a good idea, but he was a man of peace and intended to get some. Since he’d arrived at his parents’ home to discover his mother alone, Cyrus had listened to her wailing against the evils of ungrateful children. Her tearful suggestion that he should take her to the Lamars’ had sickened him, but he’d given in—in the name of peace.

“Smile,” his mother said. “Go on, smile. Why do you have to wear the collar when you aren’t working?”

At that, the smile she’d wanted came readily. “God’s work is never done, especially in this kind of place.”

She stopped on the black and white tiles in the Lamars’ elaborately decorated, crowded foyer. “This kind of place?” she echoed in a hissing whisper. “What can you mean?”

“Ι don’t mean anything. How does a lawyer keep up his practice while he runs for political office? These campaigns are so long. And how does he afford all this? The house was Sally’s mother’s.”

Mama sighed hugely, smiled at a woman who passed with a glass in her hand, then sighed again. “Money came with the house, Cyrus.

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