Entwined (The St. Jean Legacy #3)

Beginning

AYIDA

I walked along the windowsill, touching each little glass jar like it was a rib of my own body, lighting candle after candle till the whole room held its breath with me.

The black mesh veil brushed my eyelashes every time I leaned in, and the smoke curled up sweet and mean, like it recognized me.

Rum and rosewater turned the air soft, but underneath it stayed the hospital smell.

Like antiseptic, and death. Machines breathed like bored ghosts.

The ventilator hissed and paused, hissed, and paused, holding my man when I couldn't, measuring time in plastic and air.

"I know you hear me, Lanmou mwen," My love. I whispered, voice catching, not because I hadn't said it a thousand times these three months, but because sometimes the thousand-and-first sounded like the first time. "Noles, if you can't do nothin' else tonight, just listen."

Thunder rolled over the roof like a slow drumline.

Somewhere the rain tapped the glass. Outside, the parking lot lamps threw halos on wet asphalt, all that gold smeared by streaky water.

Inside, the candles took over the light, made everything flicker.

His cheekbones, the slope of his nose, the way his lashes rested like little commas on his face.

The machines painted him blue from their glow, but my fire warmed him up.

In the glass of the window, I could see the room twice: once how it was, once how the spirits saw it, with me in my veil and black dress, feet bare, a chalk-smeared queen with her heart in her mouth.

The nurse had said, "No open flames," weeks ago.

I smiled at her, knowing I would do it any way.

I'd do anything for him, anything for his soul to return to mine.

She learned to look the other way. Night shift learned quick not to make rounds when I was there.

I took care of his every need. I bathed him, rubbed him down to keep his skin smooth, clipped his nails and toes. I was his night nurse.

I sat the chalk on the rolling table and slid it toward the foot of the bed, careful not to snag tubes.

My hands were shaking, not from fear exactly, but from the distance between what I know and what I can save.

The chalk felt like bone in my fingers, brittle and important.

I stooped and started tracing. Veves sketched themselves under me.

They were the curves Id been drawing since I was big enough to drag a piece of limestone across my granny's back steps.

The lines came quick, certain, and then my fingers stuttered, trembled, corrected.

I breathed into them: "Pa kraze. Pa kase.

" Don't crack. Don't break. The room tilted. Not dramatic. Not sudden. Just enough for me to notice my knees lock before they gave. I grabbed the bed rail, breath coming thin. The candles fluttered like they felt it too. Something in my chest burned cold, like a match struck backward. That’s when I knew.

I wasn't just calling him back. I paid for it too.

"Lwa, koute m," I said softly. Spirits, hear me.

"Zansèt mwen, tande mwen." My ancestors, hear me too.

I had found myself calling on my spirits and ancestors every chance I got lately.

The chalk marked up that square of tile like a map of home.

Sweat slid down my back in the thin cotton of my dress.

The ventilator sighed again. In the bed, my husband looked like somebody paused him mid-sentence.

His mouth was full with silence. His chest rose because a machine had decided it should.

Ninety nights I’d been coming, blowing breath into a man who I knew once ate the world and folded it in his pockets.

Some nights I’d talk to love like it was a stubborn child, coaxing it, bribing it, and threatening it.

"You hear me, lanmou mwen (my love)? You not done here.

" I sat the chalk down, wiped my hands on the veil.

My palms smelled like dust and lemon oil.

I brought his left hand into mine and laid it across my thigh so he could feel heat, even if he didn't know it.

"Rete avè m, Noles," I said. Stay with me.

"Ou pa gen dwa kite." You don't get to leave.

The storm rumbled again, further out, belly deep. Madame Laurent's voice came with it. That voice had lived in my head since I was a girl standing in her doorway, since long before I married into the St. Jean family.

Debt always comes home, bébé. Might miss a generation, but it don't miss the house.

My grip tightened around his fingers. "Shhh," I told the remembered voice. "Ive paid dues till my knuckles bled. If debt got a key, it ain't for this door."

I moved and squeezed rum into the little enamel bowl, topped it with water and three soft petals pulled from the grocery store roses that didn’t have a scent till I told them to.

I swirled it counterclockwise, connecting with my mama’s spirit, then wet my thumb and traced a wet cross on his forehead.

"Bondye, si w ap gade," I murmured, "pran pye m de sa.

" If you looking, take my feet out this mess.

I laughed under my breath, quiet and broken.

"Or put 'em deeper if it mean he coming back. "

The air conditioner kicked on. The candles bent, fluttered, then righted themselves like they had never felt the air.

I took the little tin of molasses-brown honey from my bag and uncapped it, set it by his lips.

"You remember this?" I asked him. "I told you how Madame Laurent said sweetness bring back sweetness.

She always say—" Debt always comes home.

Her voice echoed in my thoughts making me pause "—yeah, I heard you," I said out loud, sharper than I meant.

The machine beeped its steady noise. My voice softened.

"You not invited tonight, Maman Laurent.

I honor you. But hush." I said pushing her out of my world for a minute.

I needed everything that wasn't about Noles out of my head and space.

I dipped a cotton swab in honey and let a drop sit on his bottom lip that was visible.

His mouth partially covered. The honey shined there like a small sun.

Something in me pulled tight. If he'd come back to me, I wanted it to be to sweetness first. Not to hurt.

Not to pain. "Leve, lanmou mwen," I whispered. Wake up, my love.

The rain got loud enough to write its name on the window.

My body remembered one of the last wet nights like this together.

We hopped a plane to Vegas and got married in a little run-down chapel with two other couples.

We stayed in Vegas one night walking the strip drunk as hell.

I don't even remember sleeping at all. That night Noles hit for a hundred thousand dollars at the blackjack table.

He swore I was his good luck charm and the only reason he had hit.

We damn near missed our flight the next morning because he wouldn't let up off the table.

I had to pry his ass out the chair. We landed in St. Martin the next morning.

We stayed in a small little bungalow on the beach that I fell in love with and didn't want to leave.

Many nights while we were there it would rain sending the scent of the saltwater rolling through the air.

Every time it rained, we found ourselves wrapped up in one another.

No phones, no work, no interruptions, just us.

I'd give anything to be wrapped up in his arms right now with him caressing and rubbing me like I was soft as cotton.

It hurt me and pissed me off at the same time that he couldn't. I felt like I was bearing every last emotion known to man.

The thunder crack came loud enough to make the bed rails ring like a tuning fork.

I flinched, then laughed again, because it felt like somebody clapped loud to wake a sleeping class.

"All right then," I said to the storm. "Help me. "

I picked up the prayer beads I keep wrapped around my wrist and untwined it, let the beads rest on his chest. I traced the first prayer on his sternum then I switched languages mid-line and whispered, "Kenbe nanm li.

Pa kite fènwa antre." Hold his soul. Don't let the darkness come in.

I went bead by bead till the prayer felt like stepping-stones laid over water and my feet had the rhythm of them.

When I finished, I pressed the beads to the center of the veve chalked on the tile.

I moved to the side, sat the bowl on the nightstand, and reached for the shaker.

Little bells stitched on leather sang soft when I took it up.

I shook them once, twice, and the sound danced around the tubes and cords like they were vines I could coax off him.

"Fanm sa yo, tande mwen," I said to the women spirits my grandma taught me to call, the ones that come when a woman begs without shame.

"M'ap peye pri a, si sa nesesè." I'll pay the price if it's necessary.

The room held, thick and waiting. The floor felt like a drum.

Madame's voice slid in again, quieter: Be careful what you give away to keep a man.

"I’m not keeping," I told the air. "I'm reaping what I planted.

" I looked at his face and wanted to lie, wanted to say I was focused on saving him for his brothers, for his mama, for him.

But truth is a jealous thing. My voice thinned to honesty. "I'm saving him for me."