The Cage-maker: a Novel by Nicole Seitz

Author:Nicole Seitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2017-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

From the journal of Y. R. Le Monnier, M.D.

RE: NEW ORLEANS, 1907

I could not take it any longer. I shoved my notes onto the floor and stood, feeling dizzy. I needed to get out of the house. I would not read another word this day. I’d been writing my book on Shiloh and researching my old notes, old letters, trying to determine some more information about a curse that lingered on Andrew Reynaud’s family. I’d not left the house in two days. What was I doing, rehashing all of this misery?

Donning my coat and hat, I locked the door behind me and headed to the newsstand three blocks away. I would take my paper in the café and not return home for a very long time. If ever. I was sick it of it there, the rooms filled with their dark emptiness.

I paid the boy my money and took my folded newspaper down the block to the café. With a strong cup of coffee and a beignet, I meandered along the pages, trying desperately to forget anything about my research, anything about the past. A section of my paper flew to the floor with the breeze and skittered across to land beneath a chair. As I reached to get it, another man’s hand was there as well. I looked to my right to see who was attached and there, before me, was an old man, but not just any. Age or no, I would recognize that face anywhere.

“Bonjour, Dr. Le Monnier,” said François Reynaud, the birdcage-maker. He was here before me at long last. My mouth dropped open. Decades dissipated between us.

“Bonjour,” I said, stunned. We did not shake hands. How could I shake hands with a ghost? I wondered if my mind had conjured him.

“I hope you don’t mind, I followed you here. It has been many years, has it not?”

“It has indeed,” I said, though in my mind it felt as if he’d never left. I’d spent my recent weeks reading his intimate letters from thirty years ago. He’d been living and breathing before me for days.

“I think it is time for us to talk,” said the cage-maker. “I know my granddaughter, Carmelite, came to see you.”

“I am very sorry for your loss,” I said. “She seemed a lovely girl.”

“She was. And you are no stranger to loss, yourself,” he told me. I stiffened and closed my eyes. Go away. Go away, I wished.

“I know she asked you for help with her brother,” said the cage-maker, “but I assure you, there is more you need to know. I believe my granddaughter was afraid.”

“Yes, she seemed to be,” I said. “She had mentioned her belief in a curse on your family or on the money which your family received from the Saloy fortune.”

“There is no curse,” he said.

“There isn’t?”

“No. There cannot be. If there was such an evil, the culprit would be myself. I’m the one who became involved with the Saloys. If there is a curse, one birdcage altered the future for my family.

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