In Shining Whatever (Three Magic Words Trilogy #2)(31)

"Just put it in the other bedroom," Maw Maw said.

Kate carried her things through the small living room furnished with an orange floral sofa bought the same year Kate was born. Maw Maw said a person didn't throw away good stuff because it was outdated or had gotten old. If so, they'd have done put her in the trash heap long ago. There wasn't a bit of dust on any of the shiny wooden tables or the hardwood floor. Maw Maw said a body never knew when they'd drop right down dead on the spot, and if the neighbors came to help the family, they weren't going to be talking about how she didn't keep a clean house. Even in the damp, swampy area of southern Louisiana, bugs simply did not take a chance on showing up in Maw Maw's house. According to her, roaches were the devil's spawn, and no self-respecting home would abide such varmints. If one had ever crossed her doorstep, it had to have been back before Kate's time.

The house was square, with a living room and kitchen/dining room on one side, two bedrooms on the other. Maw Maw's bedroom was always the same. White chenille bedspread covering a full-sized bed with mosquito netting around the sides because she liked the windows open and, unlike roaches, the mosquitoes weren't convinced of how mean she could be. A mirror so old that the silver on the back side had as many wrinkles as her face, hung on the wall above a dresser. Pictures of her late husband and eight sons hung on the walls.

She'd raised all eight sons in the second bedroom. The room had looked huge when Kate was a little girl and they'd come to Louisiana a couple of times a year to visit Maw Maw, but now that she was grown, she wondered how the single room had endured the testosterone levels of eight boys.

Four double beds lined the back wall, with just walking space between them. The white paint on the iron bedsteads had chipped in places. She chose the bed against the wall next to the window. Multicolored piecework quilts covered the tops of the beds, and not even one little dust bunny cowered in the corners under the beds.

Four mismatched dressers sat against the north wall. Doilies now graced the tops, but Kate couldn't imagine them being there when the Miller boys were all at home. A Bible and pictures of the grandchildren covered the dressers.

Kate unpacked her suitcase quickly into the empty drawers of the dresser nearest her bed, hung her clothing in the empty closet, and left her cell phone lying on the bed along with her purse.

Maw Maw had finished the cleanup in the kitchen and was sitting on the back porch with her crocheting when Kate joined her in the second weathered rocking chair.

"What are you making?" Kate asked.

"Dat Minnette, your cousin. Already she knows it's a girl she'll be having. Fall baby will need a blanket, yes?"

Kate remembered as a child listening carefully the first day she was in Louisiana. The dialect was strange to her Texan ears, but after twenty-four hours her brain adjusted, and she could understand the old Cajun way of saying things.

Maw Maw eyed her. "Mais, you?"

"I'm just thirty-one. There's still time for men and babies."

Maw Maw grunted and spieled off something under her breath in French that Kate definitely could not understand. The tone said that Kate had already wasted too much time.

"Me, I had eight boys when I was thirty-one," Maw Maw finally spoke in words Kate could understand.

Kate picked up a bamboo fishing pole and the rusted coffee can filled with worms from the edge of the porch. "Maybe I'll have eight boys when I am forty-one."

"Better get busy, yes?" Maw Maw didn't look up or miss a stitch.

Kate let her have the last word. She carried the bait and pole in one hand and an aluminum folding chair in the other. It was only the length of a football field to the bayou, where she set up shop under a cypress tree older than God and drooping with moss that swayed gently in the humid night breeze.

Somewhere to the south, she heard the plaintive cry of a nutria. Closer by a tree frog set up a soliloquy. A squirrel added his chattering to the mix, and one lonely old duck put in his two cents' worth. Whoever said a bayou night was as quiet as a tomb must have been deaf. But whoever said it was as peaceful as Heaven itself was a prophet.

She baited her hook and tossed the line out into the bayou, sat down in the chair, and watched the red and white bobbin by the light of the full moon. The breeze ruffled the water slightly, and the bobbin danced. She didn't know how long she'd been sitting there or when Maw Maw had brought a chair and pole and joined her, until the familiar ring of the phone jerked her from that pleasant plane where worries weren't allowed.

She jerked her head around to see Maw Maw handing the phone in her direction across three feet of space. "Mais, dat thing has howled worse than a loup-garou every five minutes. Thought it might be important."

"Hello," she answered on the fourth ring, just before it went to voice mail.

"Kate, where are you? I've been calling all day and I was worried. Why haven't you picked up the phone or returned my messages?" Hart asked.

"I'm in Louisiana at my grandmother Miller's house. I'm on the bayou fishing," she said.

"You are where? Good God, what are you doing in Louisiana? Did she die?"

"Sitting right here beside me with a fishing pole in her hands. Made me supper, so I guess the answer is no. My old boss at the force in New Iberia offered me my job back. I'm here to think about it."

Heavy silence filled her ears.