Midnight Bayou

terrified woman be raped and strangled. I can’t explain it.”
    “You don’t have to. I felt some of it. Not as strong, not as clear as you, but . . . When you looked at me, when she was looking at me out of your eyes, I felt such grief, such regret. Such guilt. Drink your tea now, sweetheart.”
    He lifted the mug obediently. “It’s good. Pretty sweet.”
    “Sweet tea and toast. It’s good for you.” She crawled onto the bed behind him, knelt and began to knead at his shoulders. “She was stronger than he was. It’s not his fault so much. He was raised weak. But he loved her, Declan. I know that without a doubt. Even without knowing the terrible thing that happened to her, he blamed himself. For not being with her, not giving her enough of himself.”
    “He deserted the child.”
    There was such finality in his voice. “He did. Yes, he did,” Lena replied. “And though it was wrong of him, wrong to take his own life and leave their baby an orphan, she had a better life because of it. She was surrounded by people who loved her, who valued the memory of her mother. She would never have had that life here, in the Hall.”
    “She was entitled to it. He should have seen to it.”
    She laid her cheek on the top of his head. “You can’t forgive him.”
    “I can’t understand him.”
    “No, a man like you wouldn’t understand a man like him. Maybe I do, maybe I understand a man who’d run off with a woman rather than stand up to his parents. One who’d bring her back into a house full of resentment and shadows instead of making them a home. One who’d fallapart enough to drown himself rather than live with the hurt and raise his own child with the love and compassion that had been denied him. He wanted to be more than he was. With her, he would have been.
    “You shouldn’t despise him, Declan. You should pity him.”
    “Maybe. It’s hard. I’ve still got a lot of her despair inside me.” Abigail’s, he thought, and a good portion of his own.
    “Can you rest?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Why don’t you try? I need to go change.” She slid off the bed, then lifted the tray and set it aside. “Try to sleep awhile. I won’t be long.”
    He didn’t try to stop her. It was probably best to be alone. He lay back, stared at the ceiling as the first birds began to sing.
    Abigail had been broken, he thought. Body and heart.
    He was feeling pretty much the same himself.
    H e must have dozed, for when he opened his eyes the sun was up. Still early, he decided, but the General and her troop of whirlwinds would be coming along shortly to storm through his house with mops and brooms and God knew.
    Maybe the place needed to be cleaned up, shaken out. It was still his. He wasn’t giving it up. Whatever had happened, whatever shared it with him, he wasn’t giving it up.
    And by Christ, he wasn’t giving Lena up, either.
    He sat up, scowling, and saw her sitting in the chair across the room. She wore jeans, a plain white T-shirt. There were three small bouquets lying in her lap.
    “You up for a little drive?” she asked him.
    “I guess.”
    “Put a shirt on, and some shoes.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “I’ll tell you on the way.”
    She drove, and he kept the flowers in his lap now.
    “I want to take flowers to her. To Marie Rose.” As her ancestor, Lena thought, as her father. “I thought you might like to visit there, too.”
    He said nothing.
    “Grandmama told me,” Lena continued, “how Marie Rose used to go to the cemetery once a year on her birthday. She’d bring him flowers. This morning, when I went over to change my clothes, she told me where we’d find his crypt, and we picked these from the marsh. I want to take flowers to Lucian, too.”
    He picked one clutch up. “Your symbol of pity?”
    “If that’s the best we can do.”
    “And the others?”
    “Marie Rose took them to her mother, once a year as well. A part of her must’ve known. She went to the river, every year on her birthday, and dropped flowers in the water. Grandmama told me where.”
    She drove smoothly, a little fast, then slowed to turn into the cemetery. “I know you’re still angry with him, and with me. If you don’t want to do this, you can wait in the car. I won’t blame you.”
    “Why are you doing it?”
    “He’s part of me. Through blood, and more. If I can find a way to accept who birthed me, if I can live with that, then I can find a way to accept this. To live with