Chapter Seven #2
Her mouth was full of deliciousness so Callie could only give her a questioning look.
“You can’t have a café in Louisiana without serving beignets,” she explained with a shrug. “I make plenty of savories too. But if I want to make any kind of profit, I gotta give the people what they want.”
Swallowing in surprise, Callie asked, “This is your place?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tricia said with a grin. “With Bobby and his brothers doing charters and me with the café, we’re getting those tourist dollars coming and going.”
“Nice,” Callie said with a nod. “Tourism is big here, I take it?”
She’d done some basic research on the history of the island and a bit of digging for information on the bird sanctuary and St. Ignatius College—which had moved to the mainland decades ago when all but the library building had been destroyed by Hurricane Rita.
But she hadn’t thought to look into how island residents made a living for themselves.
“You better believe it.” Tricia glanced around the dining room, where families in swimsuits and beachwear jostled alongside men in golf shirts and khakis who were either coming or going to the golf course on the far side of the island.
“Truth is, I don’t know how this place would survive without tourist dollars.
The seafood industry isn’t enough anymore.
Especially not since the processing plants moved inland.
And this place is a good living. I’m a people person and I get to put my culinary degree to good use. ”
No wonder the beignets were so delicious, Callie thought, biting into another one.
Not that she thought you needed a culinary degree to be a good baker, but she was pretty sure it didn’t hurt.
Still, you didn’t go to cooking school to serve coffee.
“You said you prefer savory. Does that mean you started out wanting to be a chef?”
Tricia gave her a wry look. “I did. Even had a couple of high-profile jobs in New Orleans for a while. But that kind of stress is not what I’m about.
And both Bobby’s family and mine were here.
And I knew I didn’t want to raise my kids in the city.
So, after a few years, I saved enough money to open this place, and Bobby and his brothers went in together with the charters. It’s a good life.”
They fell quiet while Callie sipped her coffee, which was better than anything she’d ever tasted from a chain. Trying to sound casual, she decided to just go ahead and ask questions. “I take it you and Bobby have known Trey for a long time?”
To her credit, Tricia didn’t gloat at having Callie ask her about him. “Trey and Bobby knew each other when they were kids here on the island, but later they worked together in the city. Bobby was the best contractor around and Trey always wants the best for his projects.”
“I guess that makes sense for two contractors to work together like that,” Callie said with a nod. “I’m sure they have a lot in common.”
But Tricia was shaking her head, and then held up her hand in the universal sign for stop.
“Trey’s not a contractor,” she said, looking perplexed. “Is that what he told you?”
Callie thought back to her conversations with Trey since she’d arrived at the library yesterday.
She couldn’t remember him ever explicitly saying that he was a contractor, but from the way he’d talked about working on the renovations and getting subcontractors in to do the things he couldn’t do himself, she’d just assumed—
“No,” she said finally. “But he’s so knowledgeable about the renovations and—” Throwing up her hands in surrender, she suddenly felt like a prize dummy.
“But if he’s not a contractor, then how does he know so much about the process?
Because there’s no way you can convince me he’s a novice.
Like, that guy could have a show on the Home & Hearth Channel. ”
At that, Tricia gave a wide grin. “You better not let him hear you say that. He’ll go into witness protection before he lets anybody put him on TV.”
Callie thought about her current housemate’s (library mate?) grumpy attitude and wasn’t surprised to hear he wasn’t exactly eager to see his face on any screens, large or small.
But that left one question unanswered. “If he’s not a contractor,” Callie asked, feeling really confused, “then how does Trey know so much about renovation?”
Tricia gave a little shrug. “His daddy was a contractor, so I guess he picked up a lot of it from him. He and Bobby used to do some work for him in the summers in high school. Plus, he’s an architect, so it all kind of goes hand in hand.”
Callie’s eyes widened. That jerk. Why didn’t he tell her he was an architect? She’d gone on and on about how he could be a successful contractor when he already had a perfectly good profession.
“If Khaki was still around, she’d probably have asked Trey to do some renovations on the old library anyway, so it makes sense that he got started before she even asked,” Tricia said with a sad smile.
“Those two were thick as thieves. And no offense to you, but when we heard she’d left that place to somebody not only from out of town, but from Ohio.
Well, you can understand why the whole island was buzzing about it.
There’s not a person here who doesn’t know Trey.
And Khaki was like everybody’s unofficial grandmother.
So, yeah, I guess you could say we were surprised. ”
Callie hadn’t really expected to get grilled quite so hard on her first full day here.
But she supposed it had been a shock to everyone here to learn that an off islander had inherited the library.
“It was just as big of a shock to me as it was to you all,” she told the other woman plainly.
“Though Mrs. Boudreaux and I were friendly for as long as she had been visiting the library where I worked, I never dreamed in a million years that she’d leave me a gift certificate to my local bookstore, much less an entire beachfront property nine hundred miles from where I lived! ”
“You must have thought you won the lottery,” Tricia said with a shake of her head. “I know plenty of folks over the years tried to buy the library from her but she turned them all down.”
Callie wasn’t surprised, since she knew it was rare for a “decommissioned” library to go on the market. That it was also beachfront and on a picturesque island not far from New Orleans made it extraordinary.
Aloud, however, she only smiled and agreed that yes, she had felt incredibly lucky.
“Mrs. Boudreaux was incredibly kind to me. And she was one of my favorite patrons. And I’m not saying that just because of the inheritance.
She was just a genuinely generous person.
I just wish I’d been able to visit Petite C?te Island while she was still alive. ”
Tricia nodded. “She would have certainly given you the grand tour. Nobody could make you feel welcome like Miss Khaki could.”
“I’ll bet,” Callie said sadly. “I wish I could have been here with her to see the island through her eyes.”
The two women were quiet for a moment as they each seemed to reflect on just how much of a hole the loss of Khaki had left among the small population of Petite C?te Island.
Sighing, Callie continued. “I guess I’ll never know. But at least I’m here now. And I can learn about this place through what she left behind in her library.”