Chapter Five
“Nice truck,” I say.
“Thanks. Took me forever to save up for it.”
“No patrol car?”
He laughs, and there goes the dimple again.
“Hell, no. Even the chief doesn’t have a patrol car.
No damn money. We’re lucky we even have a police department.
Lots of small towns have lost theirs. It’s just me, the chief, and two other officers in a run-down rented building north of Bridge Street.
Oh, and we do have Margie, who works the front, but she volunteers because she’s married to the chief.
” He side-eyes me and winks. “A real coup.” He glances at me again. “You know, Nan’s is pretty casual.”
I look down at the suit pants and navy-and-white-striped blouse. Silk, like the one I ruined on Fort Worth Live. “Unfortunately, this is my casual.”
“Suit yourself.” He slides his gaze at me with a smile. “No pun intended.”
I roll my eyes. It’s strange, being in a car with him again.
One of the last times I was in a car with him, Travis snuck me to a spot outside the town.
His uncle’s place, where Travis worked during the summer.
Then he took me for a joyride. In a crop duster.
I remember the sinking drops in my stomach as he dipped over the fields.
I was laughing and crying at the same time.
No roller coaster came close. I’d never been that out of control.
And by the time we finally landed, I’d discovered a piece of me actually liked it.
I gaze out the window. The town looks tired.
The ditches are overgrown with weeds, and the small houses are sagging, some even boarded up.
The complete opposite of the town down the road.
St. Francisville capitalized on its antebellum homes and gardens, and created a quaint place for tourists to ooh and aah over a past we have no business oohing and aahing over.
Maybe that was Broken Bayou’s hope for Shadow Bluff.
Even though Shadow Bluff isn’t technically antebellum.
It’s old, yes. But not a plantation. The Aunts liked to brag it was, but it’s just an imitation.
I looked it up, researched it when I was in middle school and looking for a history project.
Shadow Bluff was built in the nineteenth century but well after the Civil War ended.
Beautiful, but never even had a crop. And as I look around, I don’t think the restoration of that place will bring this town back to life. Broken Bayou looks . . . broken.
Travis pulls into the parking lot of Nan’s Café, a small box building with windows on two sides.
We hop out, and Travis opens the glass front door for me.
A lively hive of clinking silverware and slow southern drawls greets us.
Inside, it looks like most small diners.
Booths against one wall, tables in the middle, and in the back, a long counter with stools facing the open kitchen.
A menagerie of jelly packets, salt and pepper shakers, and Louisiana-brand hot sauce jars adorn every table.
Beige walls and linoleum floors finish out the look.
No cutesy decor like I expect in a southern establishment, only kids’ drawings taped on the walls.
Which is odd considering there don’t seem to be many kids here.
We head for an empty booth. It’s overly warm and smells like sweet perfume and bacon.
Topics of conversation float around us as we weave through the tables, most people commenting on the worst drought in this region’s history.
As we pass, one man takes off his cap, rubs his thinning hair, and says to the waitress taking his order, “Some people talk about hundred-year floods. Well, this here’s the hundred-year drought. ”
We slide into the booth, and a waitress with a messy ponytail and a sour look on her face approaches, turns over our ceramic coffee mugs, and pours coffee before we ask. Then she abruptly leaves.
“So much for southern hospitality,” I say.
“The locals can be a little cranky.” Travis nods to a table in the back. “You look like one of them.”
I look around more closely and notice a table where the customers are dressed like me, suits and slick city hair. “What’s going on?”
“Media.”
The waitress reappears, tops off my mug to overflowing, and onto the table, drops two plastic menus that announce Nan’s proudly serves breakfast all day.
Before she can walk off, Travis stops her and orders spicy sausage and biscuits with white gravy, a side of fried green tomatoes, and a crabmeat omelet with grits.
I stare at him with my mouth open. “Really?”
“You have to try all the house favorites. Besides, I remember you liking a big breakfast.”
My cheeks flush, and I study the menu until it subsides. When I look up, he’s watching me.
“What else do you remember?” I say.
His smile mirrors mine. “I remember it all.”
What does that mean? His tone is flirty, playful, but so is mine. Maybe he’s following my lead. Or maybe he’s testing me. Or maybe I’m overthinking it all, and it means absolutely nothing.
I need to think of something to say. Anything that keeps the conversation from drifting to the past.
“How’s your mom? Your dad?” I say and immediately regret it. That might be the worst topic I could’ve picked.
Travis rolls his eyes. “My dad died a few years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. He got drunk and fell off the dock, drowned.”
“That’s horrible.” I remember his father. A burly man who watched Travis like a hawk.
“My mom is still out at the house.”
An image of Liv Arceneaux comes to mind, and it’s not a pretty one: of her holed up in their run-down house, staring out the window when Travis would run out to meet me.
Although I didn’t go over there much. The Aunts forbade it.
I don’t remember much about that house except that it sat tucked into the woods at the north end of town and that I could always see Liv peeking outside.
She would have made a good research study in grad school.
“My brothers Doyle and Eddie live with her,” Travis continues. “The rest of my brothers escaped this place. And Emily,” he pauses, swallows. “Emily passed away a long time ago.”
I set my coffee down. Emily. The sister. I’d forgotten all about her. I only met her a couple of times, even with all our trips down. I want to ask him more about his dad and sister, but I can see the sadness in his eyes, so I settle on, “I’m so sorry.”
He nods, sips his coffee.
I point at his outfit. “And how did you end up in law enforcement?”
He laughs. A deep, hefty laugh that brings with it the memory of a boy and a girl and fireworks. “Thought I’d try out life on the other side for a while.”
“A while?”
“Yeah. Till I get bored, and the juvenile delinquent side comes back out.”
I hold my coffee mug up, and he clinks it, grinning.
The scar under his eye crinkles. The one I know he got from falling through a glass-top coffee table while wrestling with one of his brothers.
But there’s something unspoken in his eyes.
It’s in mine too. I hope to God he doesn’t bring it up. I’m not ready for that topic yet.
I glance at the media table again. The Missing poster and the news vans come to mind along with the conversation with my mother the day before. “I saw several news vans yesterday, then the Missing poster at the turn to Shadow Bluff.”
He shakes his head. “The media’s not here for that missing schoolteacher. They’re here for the barrels.”
I sit up straighter. “What barrels?”
His mouth falls open. “Are you serious?”
That bayou is all over the news. I nod.
“Christ.” He rubs his face. “It’s unbelievable.” He pulls his cell phone out.
“Travis?” I say. “What barrels?”
He holds his finger up. “Hang on.” He taps on his phone, then turns it around so I can see the screen. “Watch.” He hits play on the video.
Two newscasters, a bright-eyed woman and a coifed, lean man, from a Baton Rouge affiliate fill the screen.
They look very serious as they discuss the drought plaguing the area.
Water levels are dangerously low. Crops are dying.
People are worried. Down here, the concern is always too much water, not the lack of.
For the first time ever, people are praying for a tropical storm.
The two anchors look desperately at the meteorologist, who shakes his head and informs them there’s nothing spinning in the gulf, no rain in sight.
I reach for one of the individual liquid creamers on the table and pour it into my cup. When I look back at the screen, the newscasters have switched gears, and the woman says, “Now, Grace Morgan will follow up on that bizarre story out of Broken Bayou. Good morning, Grace.”
I turn up the volume on the side of Travis’s phone.
“Good morning, Sherri. As you can see, I’m here on the banks of Broken Bayou this morning, following up on a story that has some of the folks here quite concerned.”
I lean in.
Grace says, “In a moment, I’m going to talk with Alice and Calvin Boudreaux, the parents of Katharine Boudreaux, the young teacher who went missing after a night out with friends in New Orleans.
” A picture flashes on the screen. The same face I saw on the Missing poster.
“The Boudreauxes believe Katharine took a route home that night three weeks ago that would have led her through Broken Bayou. Specifically, over the bridge behind us.” She points to the bridge in the background.
A bridge I fished and swam under every summer.
And every summer, there was always some story about kids swimming in the bayou and becoming violently ill from swallowing the water.
But not Mabry and me. We never got sick.
The Aunts said our stomachs must be made of stone.
But it wasn’t stone that hardened our insides. We had Krystal Lynn to thank for that.