Lucky by Barbara Cutrera

Author:Barbara Cutrera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: new orleans, plague, brain injury, government conspiracy, voodoo
Publisher: Barbara Cutrera

Chapter Twenty-five

Aric found Chelsea hiding under a table in a far corner of the room. She had her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Aric crouched at one end of the table and apologized for his behavior. Chelsea said nothing and turned away from him.

“Come on, Chere. We should go.”

Turning back toward him, she said, “Only if you will bring the picture home with us. Only if you look at it with me and identify everyone in the photo.”

His jaw tightening, he asked, “And if I say, ‘No?’”

“Then Miss June can take me home, and I’ll stay upstairs in the shut-away room where I belong.”

“You don’t belong upstairs!” he shouted. “Didn’t you hear what Old Helene said? You weren’t a shut-away child! You were a happy little girl named Sunshine!”

“When I was three!” she practically screamed. “What about after that? Who knows what happened to me? Maybe somebody took me and sold me into some sort of child sex ring! Maybe that’s why I’m so good at sex!”

“Chelsea –”

“What if it was my daddy?” she sobbed. “What if he got tired of me and sold me to the highest bidder?”

“Oh, Chere,” Aric breathed. “You can’t be thinking like that.”

“I can be thinking anything because I don’t know anything and never will!” Quickly scooting out from under the table, she stood and cried, “You know everything about your life! Everything! Yet, I practically had to force you to keep anything in this whole gigantic warehouse! All I have is a pair of diamond earrings from the mother who walked away from me because she cared more about her status than she did her own baby! One pair of earrings compared to all of this!”

With those last few words, she made a sweeping gesture with her hands. As Aric stepped forward and attempted to take her by the shoulders, she shrugged him off. He watched as she quickly removed the diamond earrings and then flung them across the room. He heard two tiny sounds as they landed. Before he’d even had a chance to react, Chelsea turned and hurried out of the main entrance.

Aric didn’t go after her. Instead, he moved toward where he’d heard the sounds. When he got close to where he thought they might be, he began to perform a methodical search. After twenty minutes, he found the first earring under one of the rocking chairs he’d electronically tagged. He pocketed it and went in search of the other. It took him forty more minutes, but he eventually located it near the crib that would have been used by his unborn nephew. He snatched the earring up and slipped it in his pocket with its mate. Then he went back to the portrait, picked it up, secured all of the doors in the building, and went out to the car.

Chelsea was sitting in the passenger seat of the vehicle with the door open. Aric carefully placed the framed picture in the trunk and went around to the driver’s side of the car.

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