Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
The road home was wet and rainy.
Remy navigated the curves along Vermillion River just before dawn after touching down at the local airport half an hour prior.
He steered the Lexus sedan through Lafayette toward the new house, which became a little more elegant every time he left for a few days.
Liv was like a magician that way. Everything she touched with those creative hands of hers turned more graceful and refined.
Hell, he’d gone from being a backwoods photographer to a reality show producer with prospects.
She had that effect on people and places.
So even though the cost of the travertine marble was putting the decorating costs way over budget, Liv was happy.
Soon, her new perfume would go to market and that would help defray some of the extra expenses.
When he’d talked to her on the phone before bed the night before, she said she was finalizing the package designs.
He couldn’t wait to see what she’d come up with.
Actually, he just couldn’t wait to see her.
The production job sucked ass for the long hours and the travel, but it had given the woman he loved the opportunity to pursue her dreams in a way his photography never could have.
Now Sarah was in private school. He had a new home on three acres along the river. Liv had gardens and a studio.
If he could come up with another show like American Voice, he’d be able to ease up on the travel.
Spend more time helping Liv. His brothers had laughed until tears streamed down their ugly mugs when he told them he liked working in the hothouse with the flowers.
But then, not even Liv could work magic on Armand and Landry.
He slowed down as he turned the last corner before the new house, savoring the sight of the place he’d worked hard to build. An unnatural light shone ahead. The reflection of a streetlight distorted by the rainfall? Except there were no streetlights out here…
Police cars lined the front of his house. Three of them. Two with their headlights shining into the rain, each drop illuminated so clearly it could have been snow falling in front of the cars.
He noticed it every time he remembered this night.
Every time he took those heavy, leaden steps toward the house.
He might have been running, but each step was so slow it’s like he saw every detail.
His own life flashing in front of his eyes, because he knew.
He knew his happiness was too good to be true. His life too perfect.
He’d come too far, too fast. The boy from the bayou had gotten the princess, but then the dream had crumbled to ashes.
Yeah, he knew. Even before the lady cop tried her best to intercept him.
He started shouting at her to let him see his wife.
“Where’s my wife?” he yelled at every single face that tried to get in his way. Tried to tell him gently…
“Remy.”
A frightened voice pulled him out of the dream before he could see Liv.
He’d just sprinted from the house out to the studio in back, his feet sliding on wet grass. All the lights were on…
“Remy?”
Soft hands clutched his arm. Made him realize he wasn’t out in the cold rain, but in a warm bed. In sheets that smelled like amber.
Ah damn.
“It’s okay.” He forced his eyes open and remained in two worlds at the same time. “I’m awake now.”
“Sorry.” Erin knelt beside him on the bed, her hold on his arm easing. “I was worried about you.”
“Bad dream.” He sat up, cradled his head in his hands. “I’ve had it a million times.”
He didn’t want to talk about it and he was grateful she didn’t ask for specifics.
“Is it better if you sleep all the way through or wake up in the middle?” She hugged her pillow.
“I never wake up in the middle so I’m not sure.” It felt strange having her here when he still had one foot in Lafayette.
But it wasn’t a bad thing. Erin’s warmth and her scent helped chase away the cold, metallic fear that always filled him after the nightmare.
“Would it help to talk about it?” She rubbed his knee through the sheet, her touch pulling him out of the dream more and more.
“No.” He didn’t want to linger in that dream. “I’d rather talk about anything else.”
He covered his face and waited for his heart rate to slow.
“If you’re sure”
“God, yes.”
She was quiet for a minute. “I used to have a recurring nightmare that my family forgot me during a summer vacation.”
Absently, she threaded their fingers together. His and hers. He wondered if she could tell how grateful he was to change the subject. The ceiling fan ticked overhead, drying the cold sweat on his forehead.
The electricity must have come back on. Erin wore an oversize T-shirt and a loose pair of yellow cotton shorts.
“I pictured the Finley family as far too perfect to forget a kid.” He wanted to lighten the dark mood still fogging his brain. “Your dad was mayor for a decade, right? And I know your family owns a hardware store and a construction business.”
“I forgot how thoroughly you did your homework on the store.”
“It pays to know who you’re dealing with.”
“Wish I’d learned that lesson sooner in life.” She glanced at their clasped hands. “Anyway, the dream was based on a real Finley family vacation. We’d rented donkeys to view the Grand Canyon and my mom had a mini-breakdown, which created a big drama and everyone sort of flocked to help her.”
Remy tried to recall what else she’d said about her family. He didn’t know much about her other than the affair with the married guy that still tore at her conscience. How self-absorbed had he been to unload so many of his problems on her while she just listened.
“Your mom is scared of heights?”
“Mom is scared of lots of things. Being confined by a seat belt. Bridges. Avocados. I could list for a while. She’s bipolar, but she has some other issues that she takes better care of these days.
Back then, there wasn’t the same awareness or care available so we just walked on eggshells a lot and tried not to upset her. ”
“That sounds like an impossible balancing act.” He remembered what she’d said about spending the whole day contemplating which candy to buy at the store. The story took on a darker cast as he imagined her and her siblings trying to stay away from their home. Avoid their mother.
“For her, too. I mean, she tried to keep herself together. I think that vacation was her idea so she could relax. But renting donkeys…” Erin shook her head.
“Total disaster. I was trying to distance myself from her and the screaming because the sound rattled around the canyon and amplified a thousand times over. There was no escape.”
She held the pillow tighter and he realized it hurt her to remember this. Remy sat up in bed and put a hand on her knee, rubbing lightly.
“That must have been scary.”
“Yes. But it got twelve times scarier once the screaming ended and I had no idea where any of them went.” She traced the red stitching on the pillowcase with her fingernail. “Logically, I figured they went up, right? But I’d strayed so far off the path, I couldn’t tell what was the path anymore.”
“How long before they found you?”
She forced a dark laugh. “That’s the thing. I found them two hours later. They never noticed I was gone.”
“How old were you?” He hadn’t met all of her family yet and right now, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“Nine. Heather swears she told Scott I was missing, but he was either too scared to process what she said, or Heather remembers wrong.” She shrugged and shifted positions so she sat cross-legged, leaning against the headboard.
“So yeah, it was just two hours of scariness, but it’s all nicely preserved in my dreams from seeing the rattlesnake to the pony’s refusal to move for about twenty minutes. ”
“You stayed on the pony the whole time?” He pictured Sarah when he’d first met her and how worried he’d been that he’d do something wrong as a parent because he had zero experience.
And he would have never forgotten her. She would have been scared to death.
“Yes, thank God. He knew the route even though I didn’t, apparently. And Dad explained later the tour probably took the same twenty-minute rest stop every time they made the trek, so the animal just followed the usual routine when he refused to budge all that time.”
“You were gone for two whole hours at nine years old?” He traced the pale network of veins on her foot, wondering how a whole family could overlook this vibrant woman.
“That really speaks to how much drama my mother is capable of creating.” Her obvious attempt to brush it aside didn’t come close to making him forget about it, but he sure as hell understood the need to ignore bad memories.
“You don’t deserve to be overlooked. Ever.” He squeezed her foot gently.
“It’s weird, though, because being overlooked is sort of what I strove for my entire childhood. If my mom didn’t notice me, I wouldn’t be the target of her next fury. So in some ways it was a victory that no one noticed I’d gone missing.”
He couldn’t believe that’s how she would rationalize it, although it certainly explained a lot about how independent she was. “Erin.”
She must have heard the concern in his voice because she hurried to interrupt.
“I know. I mean, obviously I realize as an adult that wasn’t cool.
Maybe it was one of those ‘be careful what you wish for’ moments.
” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, it was a long time ago. I haven’t dreamed about rattlesnakes for years, but I always hated the way I could practically taste the red dust of the desert on my teeth when I woke up afterward. ”
She’d only shared it to help him forget about his nightmare. He rubbed her arms and up to her shoulders, kneading away the tension there.
“You let me know if the rattlesnakes come back,” he drawled in her ear to make her smile. “I’ll show them what I used to do to the water moccasins.”
“Ew. I don’t think I want to know, but thanks just the same.”