Chapter 3 #2
From the front of the house, voices. Faint at first, then louder, the sound carrying through the old walls with an edge that doesn't belong in this house at this hour. A man's voice, clipped and formal, tight with controlled fury.
Darcy's voice cuts through, higher, faster. "Landry, what the hell, you can't just—"
Landry yelling. And Landry never yells.
I push out of my chair and my mug comes with me, my fingers wrapped around it, and by the time I reach the hallway Darcy is already three steps ahead of me, her bare feet slapping against the cypress.
"What is happening right now? It's seven in the morning and people are yelling in this house like we're on a reality show, and I swear to God if someone doesn't—"
She stops. I stop behind her.
The hallway stretches toward the front door, twelve-foot ceilings, old wood, the smell of lemon polish that never quite fades no matter how many years pass, and the light from the transom window picks out dust motes drifting through air that suddenly feels pressurized.
Mismatched photo frames line both walls, generations of LeBlancs in silver and wood, one cheap plastic frame Darcy must have bought as a joke, and standing beneath them on opposite sides of the hallway are Landry and Remy.
Corbin is already between them. He must have come down the stairs because he's barefoot too, in basketball shorts and a wrinkled t-shirt, his light brown hair flattened on one side from sleep, and his hands are up at chest height in the universal gesture of a younger brother who has done this before.
"Landry. Hey. Can we just—"
"You don't get to tell me to calm down." Landry's voice a the shock. I've been in the same room as Landry LeBlanc a handful of times over the years, enough to know that he speaks like a man who irons his casual shirts, every word measured and placed, slightly exhausting in its formality.
The man in this hallway is none of that.
His voice is raw and his jaw is clenched so tight the muscle jumps visibly beneath his skin, and his green eyes, the same LeBlanc green as Remy's but colder somehow, are fixed on his brother with the kind of fury that lives underneath years of silence.
"You show up when it's convenient. When Grams is sick, when the guilt gets heavy enough, and then you'll leave again because that's what you do, Remington. That is what you have always done."
Remy stands three feet from the front door.
His bag is at his feet, the same bag he left had yesterday, and it looks exactly as it looked then, which means he never unpacked it.
The posture is perfect, the face is blank, the hands are still at his sides, and every piece of the man who pressed me against a hotel door and spoke French against my temple is sealed behind something I couldn't crack if I tried.
His eyes find mine.
One fraction of a second, less than a blink. Then they move past me like I'm a painting on the wall, and the nothing in that glance is so complete that my fingers tighten around the mug until the ceramic bites into my palm.
I felt more from him across a crowded bar than I feel now from three feet away.
Darcy grabs my arm, her fingers digging in, and I can feel the calculation I need to be running, the timing, the optics. I told her I left him at Bijou's and went home. He's here now, this morning, with a packed bag that didn't come from upstairs.
If she asks where he slept, I'll have to build a second lie on top of the first and I am not good at this, I have never been good at this. My face does things my mouth hasn't approved, and the only reason it's working right now is because she's not looking at me. She's looking at her brothers.
"Eight years." Landry takes a step closer and Corbin shifts with him, staying in the gap. "I have been running this family for eight years. The company, the estate, the lawyers, the accounts, Grams, Maman, all of it, because someone had to and you chose a security job over your own name."
His voice cracks on the word name and the crack is worse than the yelling because it sounds involuntary, something leaking through a wall he didn't know had a fault line. "You are supposed to be the third. You were supposed to be here."
Remy doesn't move, doesn't defend, doesn't flinch. He stands there and takes it, his jaw working once, the only tell I see, and I watch his fingers twitch at his sides like they want to close into fists but won't.
Something doesn't add up.
The trained part of my brain does what it does, sorting data without permission, and the data says a man who chose to leave would have something to say about it. A man who walked away voluntarily would push back, would justify, would at minimum offer the defense that he had his reasons.
Remy is absorbing this like a confession he's already accepted, and that silence doesn't match a man who left by choice. It's the silence of someone carrying a truth that would end this argument instantly and choosing not to use it.
"Landry, STOP." Darcy pushes past me and plants herself in the gap next to Corbin, one hand on each brother's chest, five-foot-six of fury between two men who tower over her.
"You don't get to do this. He came back.
He's here, he's standing right here, and you're going to yell at him for not being here sooner? That's your move? Really?"
"Darce—" Corbin starts.
"No, I'm serious, because I have been waiting eight years for all of us to be in the same house and I am NOT letting it turn into this." Her voice is shaking. Her eyes are bright and wet, her chin is up, and she is immovable. "He came back. That's what matters."
Landry's gaze drops to Darcy's hand on his chest, and the fury dims just enough to show the exhaustion underneath it, the tiredness of a man who has been holding a family together with formality and willpower and little else. He steps back. One step, but it's enough.
Remy turns toward the breakfast nook doorway where Odette is visible in her chair, her tea untouched, her reading glasses still halfway down her nose, and her expression perfectly, unapologetically serene.
"You faked it." His voice is quiet and controlled, every word placed.
"The shortness of breath, the fatigue, the whole production.
Your grip strength is fine. Your pulse has been steady.
You smell like lavender because you put it on the pillowcase for effect, and the only thing actually wrong with you is that you decided you wanted your family in this house and you didn't care what it cost to get us here. "
Odette removes her glasses, folds them, and sets them on the crossword with a care that makes the gesture feel like punctuation.
"Every one of my grandchildren is standing in this hallway.
" Her voice carries as it always does, even, assured, certain.
"For the first time in eight years, all four of you are under this roof.
You can be angry with me, mon coeur." The corner of her mouth twitches, barely, a movement so small I would have missed it if I weren't watching her the way I watch my father when he's won a vote. "I'd do it again."
The silence that follows is the loudest thing I've ever heard in this house.
Remy looks at his grandmother for a long moment, and whatever passes between them is too private and too old for me to read. Then he picks up his bag.
He walks past Landry without speaking. Past Corbin, who reaches for his arm and misses.
Past Darcy, whose hand drops. Past me, close enough that I can smell the hotel soap on his skin and the coffee he must have bought somewhere that wasn't here.
The hallway isn't wide enough for him to pass without his shoulder nearly brushing mine and he manages it anyway.
His footsteps on the stairs are measured and they don't stop until a door closes on the second floor, not slammed, just shut, and the quiet click carries through the old house with a finality that settles into the walls.
Darcy's hand finds mine. Her fingers are cold.
The coffee in my mug has gone lukewarm, and I'm still holding it, and I don't remember a single second of deciding to bring it with me.
I find the hallway because I need thirty seconds without someone looking at my face.
Darcy is in the kitchen with Corbin, her voice muffled through the walls but still running, still filling space as she does when she's scared and doesn't want anyone to notice.
Landry left through the back door without saying goodbye to anyone, and Odette is in her chair with her tea and her crossword and her absolute certainty that she did the right thing, and I can't be near any of them right now because my smile is slipping and I don't have the energy to catch it.
The cypress floors are cool under my bare feet.
I must have kicked off my sandals somewhere between the kitchen and here, and I don't remember doing it.
Morning light comes through the window at the far end of the hall, long and gold, full of dust, and the old house settles around me with its sounds, wood expanding in the heat, the hum of the ancient air conditioning unit that Darcy has been fighting with all summer.
His door opens upstairs.
I hear the soft click of the latch and then footsteps on the landing, and my whole body goes still, every muscle locking at once like a current ran through me.
His footsteps come from the staircase and my legs don't move.
I could go back to the kitchen, back to Darcy, anywhere except this narrow hallway with nowhere to look but at him.
He rounds the corner and stops.
His bag is in his hand, still packed, still ready, because he was never staying. I look at his face and I search for the man who lost control six hours ago, and he is not there. The eyes that meet mine are green and flat and careful, and they give me exactly nothing.
I wait.
He doesn't speak.
The hallway is narrow enough that passing requires a choice, and he makes it.
He angles his shoulder and walks past me and the air moves against my bare arm and I catch hotel soap and coffee, underneath both something warm and specific that my body knows before my brain does, and then he is past me and the space where he was is just air.
The front door opens and closes, and then the house is just quiet.
He's gone.