Midnight Bayou

for me, and no, you can’t stay here. I made that mistake four years ago, and when I caught you turning tricks up here, you stole from me and took off again. I don’t repeat myself.”
    “I was sick back then. I’m clean now, honey, I swear I am. You can’t just turn me out.” She held out her hands, palms up, in a gesture of pleading. “I’m flat broke. Billy, he took almost everything I had and ran off.”
    Lena could only assume Billy was the latest in the string of users, losers and abusers Lilibeth gravitated to. “You’re high right now. Do you think I’m blind or just stupid?”
    “I’m not! I just took a little something because I was so nervous about seeing you. I knew you’d be mad at me.” Tears spilled out, tracking bits of mascara down her cheeks. “You just have to give me a chance to make it up to you, Lena honey. I’ve changed.”
    “You’ve used that one up, too.” Resigned, Lena walked to her purse, counted out fifty dollars. “Here.” She stuffed it into Lilibeth’s hand. “Take this, get on a bus and ride it as far away as this takes you. Don’t come back here again. There’s no place for you here.”
    “You can’t be so mean to me, baby. You can’t be so cold.”
    “Yes, I can.” She picked up the suitcase, carried it over to the door and set it outside. “It’s in the blood. Take the fifty. It’s all you’re going to get. And get out, or I swear to God, I’ll throw you out.”
    Lilibeth marched to the door. The money had already disappeared into her purse. She stopped, gave Lena one last glittering look. “I never wanted you.”
    “Then we’re even. I never wanted you, either.” She shut the door in her mother’s face. Then flipped the locks, sat down on the floor. And cried in absolute silence.
    S he was certain she’d smoothed away the edges by the time she drove out to Manet Hall that evening. She’d nearly canceled the dinner plans she had with Declan, but that would have given her mother too much importance.
    That would have acknowledged the grief that had slashed its way into her heart despite the locks.
    She needed to put her mind to other things, and would never manage it if she stayed at home, brooding. She’d get through the night, hour by hour, and in the morning Lilibeth would be gone. From her life, and from her mind.
    The house looked different, she thought. Little changes that somehow made it seem more real. It was good to look at it, to focus on it, and to contemplate that some things could change for the better. With the right vision.
    Over the years, she’d come to think of Manet Hall as a kind of dream place, burrowed in the past. More than that, she decided. Of the past.
    Now, with new unpainted boards checkerboarded with the old, peeling white, with some windows gleaming and others coated with dust, it was a work in progress.
    Declan was bringing it back to life.
    Though the front gardens were a bit straggled, a bit lost, there were flowers blooming. And he’d plopped a huge clay pot full of begonias on the gallery.
    He’d have planted them himself, she thought as she walked toward the door. He was a man who liked his hands in things. Especially when he considered them his.
    She wondered if he thought of her as one of his works in progress. Probably. She couldn’t quite decide if the idea amused or irritated her.
    She strolled in. She figured that when two people had slept with each other a time or two, formalities were superfluous.
    She smelled the lilies first, the good, strong scent bringing the garden indoors. He’d bought a lovely old table, a couple of straight-back chairs and, she saw with a grin, an enormous ceramic cow for the foyer.
    Some would call it foolish, others charming, she supposed, but no one would call the entrance to the old hall sterile any longer.
    “Declan?” She wandered in and out of the parlor, noting the few new additions. She circled into the library and found herself crossing to the mantel and the heavy candlesticks standing on it.
    Why did her fingers tremble? she wondered as she reached out to touch. Why did those old tarnished candlesticks look so strangely familiar?
    There was nothing special about them, really. Expensive perhaps, but too ornate for her taste. And yet . . . her fingers brushed down each of them, lightly. And yet they looked right here, so right she could imagine the slim white tapers they were waiting to hold once more; she could smell the melting wax.
    Shivering, she