Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

never quit being scared of him. Nobody could know where we were. She was adamant about that, even to the point of home-schooling me, and it worked. Daddy never found us.”
    “Did you have brothers or sisters?” Faye asked, oddly shamed that she knew this answer, too. All she had done was look at a few pictures in an old yearbook. Why did she feel like a voyeur?
    “My older brother Cedrick stayed behind to finish high school. We heard he went to work in the oil fields. Mama did the right thing. Daddy was a mean man. I believe she saved our lives, but I still wish I knew where my brother was.”
    A breeze kicked up and spoiled the moment by riffling Cyril’s hair back off his temples, revealing a fine white scar running along his hairline. Faye’s heart gave a little skip at the thought of a damaged child making such good repair, not just of his psyche but of wounds to his body, although it argued a degree of vanity, of self-absorption that she found unseemly, particularly in a man.
    To Faye, cosmetic surgery bordered on self-mutilation. She would never forget barging into the bathroom at her fiancé’s house and surprising his mother, who was changing the bandages covering her recent nose job.
    Embarrassed and nauseated, she had confessed her faux pas to her fiancé. “Isaiah, my roommate had her nose done and it wasn’t anything like that. The surgeon worked from the inside and there were no scars at all.”
    Isaiah had stammered a moment before saying, “Well, Mama’s a special case. She wanted him to narrow her nose and reduce the nostrils and—”
    “And make her nose less African? More Caucasian?”
    “I wouldn’t put it that way.” Isaiah hesitated. “See, Mama wants to be pretty and she thinks a few little scars are a small price to pay. Everybody’s not lucky enough to look like you do.”
    Faye wished she’d been woman enough to break up with him on the spot, but she’d let the relationship rock on for another six months. Every time they went out in public, she watched for signs that he saw her as a light-skinned trophy who would be good for his career. They were all too visible. And when they were alone, she couldn’t forget that this man thought his mama would be prettier with somebody else’s nose.
    A year after they broke up, she saw him at a nightclub with a sharp-featured trophy on his arm and telltale scars on his new nose. That was when she decided that it was time to move to Joyeuse full-time. Living among people was making her very tired.
    So why was she sitting here next to this man fifteen years older than she was, a man she hardly knew? She’d been brought up to value family above all else, yet she had none. The loss of her mother and grandmother was an open wound. They would have wanted her to marry, to have children. She herself wanted a baby badly, probably more than she wanted a man. “You’ve got to go out to get asked out,” Mama had always said.
    Well, Mama, here I am , Faye offered, in the way of someone whose prayers were directed as much to her departed loved ones as they were to God.
    She looked at Cyril sidewise. He was a nice-looking man, whatever his age—tall, rugged features, light tan, fine but still-thick hair without much gray. She catalogued his good qualities, most of which she had uncovered through her series of tests. He wasn’t too snobbish to enjoy a picnic in a rundown park. His intellectual interest could be piqued by something as esoteric as the crumbling ruins of a third-rate resort. He was tough enough to withstand an August noon in Florida. He was capable of friendly silence. He revered his mother’s memory. He liked barbecued ribs and good iced tea. And he seemed to like her.
    “Sometime, we should revert to childhood and come back here to wade up the creek, just to see whether all those springs are still there,” she said.
    “Yeah,” he said. “But first, let’s do something more grown-up. Let me take you to dinner at The Pirate’s Lair. How about Thursday?”
    “I’ll meet you there at eight o’clock,” Faye said with a smile she didn’t have to force. She could just hear her mama saying, “You’re so pretty, Faye, when you remember to smile.”
    He rose and helped her to her feet. Older men had their good points. They remembered little courtesies that were unnecessary but pleasant. As if reading her mind, he opened her car door for her and extended a hand to help her in.
    Faye used her car as a home away from home when