The Undoing of Saint Silvanus Read online

  Each of her sons strutted toward the refrigerator with a king-size bag of corn chips under an arm. With “Hey, Mama!” flecks flew from both mouths. Soda cans popped open simultaneously.

  “Have those teeth been brushed this year?” Adella asked as she kicked the refrigerator shut. She held their faces in her palms one at a time and kissed each one on the cheek with a loud smack.

  “I know I brushed mine in April for my birthday!” quipped the younger, and all four of them laughed.

  “I tried calling you a couple of times, Dell. You had me worried.”

  That was the first Adella had thought about her cell phone in a couple of hours. She told him where all she’d been as she dug around in her purse for it. “Four missed calls! Emmett Atwater, since when did you start stalking me?”

  “Since when does two phone calls qualify as stalking?”

  “Three voice mails? I never even heard it ring. Pipe down so I can listen to them.”

  Adella waved for Emmett to hush as he said, “One’s from me.”

  She could barely believe her ears. She was shaking her head, still stunned, as she set her cell phone on the counter.

  “Who was it, Dell?”

  “Jillian Slater. Twice. Needs me to call her right away. Lord, she sounds awful.”

  “Well, what on earth did she say?” Emmett pried.

  “Please.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “NOW, LET ME SEE if I understand what you’re telling me.”

  In less than three hours, Adella was looking at Jillian across the kitchen table. The smell of maple bacon still floated through the room even with the skillet scrubbed clean. “You and your boyfriend had a fight. Hold on a second.” She twisted in her chair and yelled, “Emmett, you and those boys get that confounded TV turned down! I cannot hear myself think! And all this noise with company in the house!” Turning back to Jillian, she continued, “And instead of taking a break for a few days and refusing to see him, you hopped on a plane all the way to New Orleans.”

  She wanted to throw in an additional “Did you change your mind about a city full of ‘cavemen’?” But she had to admit the young woman looked a bit haggard, and who knows, maybe she really did misunderstand the word Cajun. She settled for offering to make a cup of tea to busy Jillian’s hands before she plucked that lock of hair right off the back of her neck.

  “I guess that could be good. Do you have a white loose leaf? It settles me down and helps me center.”

  “Uh, no. I am fresh out of loose leaf.” It was a good thing strings weren’t longer on tea bags. “But I have chamomile. Or how about some Sweet Dreams blend?” She pulled out several boxes and set them on the counter. “I’d say you could stand to relax.”

  Jillian agreed to give it a try and Adella lit the flame under the kettle. “Honey, tell me something. How long were you planning to stay? You surely have little more than nothing in that bag.”

  “I left in a hurry and didn’t really get to pack.”

  “And headed to the airport?”

  “Yes.”

  “With no plane reservations and no idea when the next flight was?”

  Jillian hesitated before she answered. “That’s right.”

  “Why? Can you help me with that?” Adella had no intention of letting up until she got the full story.

  “Because I didn’t want him to catch me.”

  “And by him you mean . . . ?”

  “Vince. His name is Vince.” From Jillian’s expression, she hadn’t counted on this kind of interrogation. She took a deep breath and started talking. “Garrett, one of the waiters at Sigmund’s—that’s where I work—called me yesterday afternoon. He said Vince wanted me to get down there right away. I was annoyed but I went anyway. Our loft isn’t far from the restaurant.”

  “Your loft or his? Or by ours do you mean yours and a roommate’s?”

  “Mine and Vince’s! I’m trying to explain what happened, but you’re getting me off track. It’s his loft, really. I’ve been living there with him. He pays for it.”

  Oh, I bet he’s not the only one. Adella followed the thought with the words “Okay, I’m getting the picture.” Adella felt conviction well up in her. She knew better than to cast a stone. She well remembered herself at that age and could only imagine where she’d be today if not for Jesus and Emmett Isaiah Atwater. Emmett was a man who still believed in marriage. A man who believed in a woman and her two fatherless sons. Believed in them enough to navigate the boys’ stormy preadolescent years with the patience of Job, taking it slow until they accepted him.

  She softened and said, “I’ve been there. No condemnation here. Go on ahead with your story.”

  Jillian looked at her with confusion and Adella realized condemnation wasn’t even in the young woman’s vocabulary. Adella urged her again, waving off the distraction. “Go on, now, child.”

  Adella had no idea where this was going, and she remembered right then that she hadn’t asked that boy of hers how his biology test had gone. Eventually Jillian got to the point, something about her boyfriend fooling around with another waitress in his office. “Are you sure something shady happened? Sure it wasn’t really a meeting?”

  “Uh, yeah, I’m sure. I was the one in that office less than a year ago. I thought Casey was my friend, too! She’s the one who covered my shift when I came here in June. Now I know why. She’s not even that great-looking.”

  “I’m not sure it’s always about great looks, but I do hear what you’re saying and that’s not how a good man treats his woman. There’s no denying that. What did Vince say to you?”

  “He said, ‘Go home, Jillian.’ Like I was the one who had done something wrong. Then he took off.”

  “And so that’s when you decided to fly here? I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. I’m just trying to get the sequence of events straight.” Adella set the young woman’s tea in front of her.

  “Well, yeah. I made it to Houston late last night but then I spent the night in the airport.” Jillian held the warm mug with both her hands just under her chin and stared into it.

  “You spent the night in the airport?” This woman surely made life harder than it had to be.

  “Yes.”

  “You couldn’t go back to the loft because you didn’t want to run into Vince, right?”

  “Right.” Jillian set down the mug, put her elbows on the table, and rubbed her face. Adella wondered for a moment if the young woman was going to cry, but when she lifted her chin, her eyes weren’t cloudy.

  “What about your mother? If I’d been you, I’d probably have saved myself all this trouble and gone to my mama’s house.” Both boys walked into the kitchen with expressions a mother could read faster than a magazine cover. “May I help the two of you?”

  “We’re thirsty.”

  “Both of you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” What they were was lovesick—or as lovesick as two teenage boys could get over a darling, mysterious female visitor in one short evening. Something about a slightly older woman who was a planet out of their reach could make a pair of boys act like the biggest fools. From the smell of things, Adella could have sworn one had even shaved, and not the one that needed to, either.

  “Get you some water and go then.” Adella tapped her fingers on the table while they hemmed and hawed. “And don’t drink too much. I’m not in the mood for any of that bed-wetting tonight.” That did it. They didn’t show their faces in the kitchen again all evening. Adella heard Emmett in the den bust out with a laugh and then turn it into a cough as both boys passed him by, muttering all manner of offense. She worked to keep from grinning.

  “Your mother, Jillian. We were talking about why you didn’t go to your mother’s.”

  Jillian paused a moment before answering. “Vince would have known I was there.”

  “Would that have been so terrible? I’m thinking men would have left me alone at my mother’s. Of course, my mother was the kind that would get a frying pan afte
r an unwanted guest and all the faster if it was still hot, but most mothers would give their daughters haven from a madman, wouldn’t they?” Adella knew she’d crossed the boundaries of most acquaintances, but this was the best story she’d heard since her goddaughter got saved.

  “I didn’t want to stay there. That’s all. It’s the first place he’d look. There or at Allie’s. I didn’t even call Allie. She’s my other friend. She doesn’t work at Sigmund’s. She’s jealous of Vince anyway and I don’t want to hear all that right now. Jade—my mom—wouldn’t have been all that excited to have me land in on her. She would have told me to do what it took to keep him. Anyway, she likes her privacy, and we free each other to live our own lives.”

  Both of them sat quietly for a moment, Jillian rubbing her index finger along the rim of the mug. The young woman picked the conversation back up with a totally different tone. “And I don’t have any money for a hotel.”

  “Well, sister, you probably could have stayed in a hotel for a solid two weeks while this all blew over on what you just spent for a same-day flight halfway across the country.”

  With that, Jillian stood up from the table and said, “I knew I shouldn’t have called you. I thought maybe I’d misjudged. I’ll call a cab. I can stay at that same old motel by the airport . . . if it hasn’t been condemned.” She picked up her bag and fished out her cell phone.

  “Oh, no, no, Jillian. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any offense. I was just being nosy. I’m glad you called me. You did the right thing. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but things like this have a way of working out.”

  Jillian looked off into the distance through the kitchen window.

  Adella had no choice at all. She had to say it. “But I think you remember all the trouble I got in with your grandmother for lying about you last time. It’s a wonder I still have a job. I have a room for you tonight. A good soft bed and a hot shower. But in the morning, I’ve got to go over to Saint Sans and talk to Olivia.”

  Adella knew something was off when Jillian nodded and said, “Okay.”

  CHAPTER 10

  OLIVIA’S HANDS WERE FOLDED on the table, her gaze boring such a hole through them that Adella wondered how they didn’t catch fire. Adella resisted the urge to oversell the point. She’d said what she came to say and now Olivia needed to think.

  Adella didn’t have a single notion how the whole thing would go. She could be talking her employer—and, despite the last few months, her friend—into a center-stage production of Family Nightmare: The Next Generation.

  “Here? It has to be here?” Olivia asked.

  Adella needed to choose her words carefully and rein in any negative attitude or excessive emotion. Either of those would elicit an automatic no. “Well, she doesn’t have money for a hotel and, needless to say, she lost her job. She literally brought the clothes on her back and a couple of shirts she bought in the airport.”

  “I have money,” Olivia stated matter-of-factly.

  “Yes, you do, and that’s one option. You could pay for temporary lodging.”

  “Or I could pay you to keep her.”

  “Olivia, you’re not boarding a pet.” Easy, Adella Jane. “Whether or not she can admit it or even consciously think it, she’s here in New Orleans because you’re here. You’re the only family she’s got.”

  “I most certainly am not. She has Jaclyn.”

  “Who’s Jaclyn? Are you saying there’s another relative around here?”

  “No, Adella. She has a mother.” The disdain on Olivia’s face was impossible to miss. “Jaclyn.” She said the name the way Clementine would cough up a hairball.

  “You mean Jade?”

  “No, I mean Jillian’s mother. Jaclyn!” Her face was turning red.

  “Sorry. I’m new to the family tree. Jillian called her mother Jade.”

  “Oh, so it’s Jade now, is it? That figures. It must suit her most recent persona. I seem to recall her insisting at one point years ago that we all call her Jac-leeeen.”

  Adella’s curiosity roused but she’d hold it off until another time. If she didn’t get this conversation refocused on Jillian, they’d get nowhere. “How about a week? Invite her to stay for a week. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

  Olivia took that intense stare of hers and shifted it right to Adella’s face like a spotlight from a prison tower exposing an escapee. “Would I have to eat with her?”

  You have got to be kidding, Adella thought. We’re back in elementary school and it’s nearly lunchtime in the cafeteria. “What do you have against this child? Can you just tell me that?”

  Another round of interminable silence. Don’t speak, Adella. Make her answer you.

  But she didn’t. All she said was “Okay. Let her come.”

  “Are you going to be decent to her?” Adella had lost her patience and, right about then, couldn’t care less if she lost her job with it.

  “For one week.” Then Olivia stood, smoothed her pant legs, and walked out of the room.

  Adella decided not to sugarcoat to Jillian what she could expect at Saint Sans as they headed uptown. As much as she hated to, she decided that the only way to spare the child in the long run was to alert her to the dim forecast. She took a deep breath, looking straight ahead, both hands squarely on the steering wheel. “You have the room for a week. I wish it were longer, but don’t you think that will buy you a little time to think?”

  “That’s fine.” Staring out the passenger window, Jillian continued, “I’ll keep my distance. No trouble.”

  “I wish I could say I didn’t think that was a good idea. But as it is, yes, I think the more you look at this offer as simply a free room where you can have a little quiet and hear your own thoughts for a week, the easier you’ll get through it. This is not ‘Over the river, and through the wood, to Grandmother’s house we go.’”

  “I know.” The young woman sounded worn and weary. Adella had hoped she’d get a good night’s sleep in that guest room bed at Emmett’s and her home, but the mattress was as old as Methuselah.

  “You know what, Jillian? The temperature might be a bit on the cool side at Saint Sans, but that bed in the room where you’ll be staying is heaven on springs. You’re not going to want to get out of it.”

  Not a word.

  “And don’t feel the need to make your flight arrangements back to San Francisco right away. Let your head clear a bit. You can come back to my house for a day or two when your week is up . . . if you think you can stand the smell of aftershave.” Adella was hoping for a smile.

  “I don’t have any money, Adella. I told you that last night. I don’t have a way to buy a return ticket. I’ll spend the week trying to think of where to go and how to get some work.”

  Adella wondered what in God’s creation the girl had done with the money she made from a full-time job and no rent, but those kinds of questions needed to wait awhile. First things first. They needed to survive the move-in.

  When they pulled into the driveway of Saint Sans, Adella reached into the backseat. “Jillian, I took the liberty of bringing those pajamas I lent you last night. I know they nearly swallowed you whole, but jammies that fit tight are no fit jammies at all. On the way back to get you, I ran by Penney’s, and well, I got you these.”

  Jillian opened the bag to look inside.

  “It’s unders.” Adella stated the obvious. “White ones. I just went with your basic white. I guessed at the size—”

  “Thank you, Adella.” For the first time all day, Jillian postured herself toward Adella. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do.” She didn’t hand them back to her and Adella took that as a good sign.

  And just like that, Adella would’ve emptied out her checking account for Jillian if she hadn’t been up to her eyeballs in sons and house payments. “How about tomorrow we go grab you several changes of clothes and some groceries?” she asked as they walked to the back entrance. “Emmett gave me some mad money, and I can’t think of anything I es
pecially want right now. You won’t need to spend a dime. Oh, and you have a small kitchenette in the room, but the boarders also have access to the main kitchen. As long as they clean up after themselves.” She just couldn’t leave off that last part, no matter how weak she was feeling, or she’d be washing the dishes at Saint Sans three times a day before the weekend was out.

  Adella pulled out her key to open the guest room door and realized it wasn’t locked. She opened the door, smiled at Jillian, and said, “After you, young lady.”

  “Adella?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Is there not an empty room down there in the other wing, where the rest of them are?”

  Who could blame her for not wanting to be just across the library foyer from Olivia? “I’m afraid not. The house is full to capacity. You haven’t met the others yet, but Caryn is a med student at Tulane and she’s in 3A. David is in 2A, you may remember. He’s the high school choral teacher. And we try to keep Mrs. Winsee a little closer. She’s in 1A. There are five suites in all. Of course, Mrs. Fontaine’s is a bit more like a traditional one-bedroom apartment. Her part is the biggest.” Adella was so peeved at her right that moment that she refused to insult Jillian by referring to her as grandmother. “Originally, this was a freestanding parsonage, but during the remodel it was attached to the main building.”

  “All well here?”

  Adella nearly jumped out of her skin. Olivia was standing at the door. She wasn’t exactly smiling, but she also didn’t look like she was about to rip somebody’s gizzard out.

  “Yep,” Adella answered, “I’d say so. I was just telling her who all lives in the house.”

  “Yes, I heard you. Thank you, Adella.” A pause, then, “Jillian, how are you?”

  “Fine.” She wasn’t rude. Just uninformative, an instinct she must have inherited.

  “Wooooeeeee, look at the time! I better get to it!” Adella wasn’t sure what “it” was, but it had to be better than hanging on to two icicles with sweaty palms.