French Silk(47)

The first sip of cognac seared her esophagus. The second spread a soothing warmth through her, starting with a slight sting to her lips and ending with a tingle in her toes. "At times like this, I wish I smoked," she remarked.

"Pardon?"

She listened to his footsteps as he approached her. "I said sometimes I wish I smoked. This is one of those times." Turning, she found him standing closer than she had expected. His eyes were the same color as the rain slashing the windows, and they were focused on her with a breath-stopping intensity.

"Smoking's bad for you."

"Yes, I know. I guess I envy the immediate relaxation it gives the smoker." She ran her fingers up the bowl of the snifter. "Have you ever seen a cigar smoker blow smoke into his brandy snifter before taking a sip?" He shook his head. "It's pretty, the way the smoke swirls around inside the crystal. The smoke is inhaled when the liquor is swallowed. It's provocative, sensual. I think it must make the brandy taste better. Or maybe the cigar. I don't know."

"Who have you seen do that?"

"No one, actually. I saw it in a movie about Sir Richard Burton. Maybe that was a habit unique to him. Maybe it was the vogue in the nineteenth century."

His disturbing gaze remained fixed on her face. "What made you think of that, Claire?"

She shrugged self-consciously. "The rainy night, the cognac."

"Or were you just trying to distract me?"

"Could you be that easily distracted?"

He hesitated a moment too long before giving her a curt no. Then he tossed back the remainder of his drink and returned his empty snifter to the sideboard. When he rejoined her at the windows, he was all business. "What went on tonight?"

"You were there. You saw."

"And I still don't know what happened. She flipped out, right?"

"Yes. She flipped out."

"Look, I didn't mean that to sound—"

"I know you didn't."

"How often does she… How often is she like that?"

"It varies. Sometimes there's a buildup. Sometimes it occurs out of the blue. Some days she's perfectly lucid. Others, like the first time you met her, she seems to be confused, senile." Her voice turned gruff. "Sometimes she's as you saw her tonight, completely detached from this world, living in another one."

"What triggers it?"

"I don't know."

"What do the doctors say?"

"That they don't know either. It's happened for as long as I can remember, and her lapses have gotten progressively deeper and more frequent the older she gets. The first I remember them, they were little more than bouts of depression. During her spells, as Aunt Laurel referred to them, Mama would retire to her room and cry for days, refuse to leave her bed, refuse to eat. Aunt Laurel and I catered to her."

"She should have gotten treatment when it started." Claire bristled and turned a glare on him. "That was an observation, not a criticism," he said.

Claire studied him for a moment. When she was convinced that he was sincere, she relaxed her hostile posture. "I know now that she should have been placed under a doctor's care immediately. A depression that deep is abnormal. But I was a child. And for all her good intentions, Aunt Laurel didn't know how to deal with mental illness. She didn't even recognize it as such. Mama was a young woman whose love had forsaken her. Her family had disowned and disinherited her. Aunt Laurel mistook her illness as nothing more than a broken heart."

"A broken heart that wouldn't heal."

Claire nodded. "One day Mama did what she did tonight. She dressed up and sneaked out of the house with a packed suitcase. I was very young, but I remember Aunt Laurel becoming frantic with worry until a policeman brought Mama home. He knew us, you see. He had spotted Mama walking along Canal Street, lugging her suitcase. When he approached her and offered assistance, he could tell she wasn't rational. Thankfully, he brought her home instead of taking her to the police station. She was spared that degradation."

"During these spells, she imagines she's eloping?"

"Yes. My guess is that before my father deserted her, he proposed that they elope. He must have gotten cold feet and left her stranded. Mama imagines that he's coming for her at the designated place. Tonight I'm sure she took a bus as far as the trolley, then rode it the rest of the way out St. Charles to the Ponchartrain."

"That's always been where they were to meet?"

"No. The meeting place changes. She's never quite clear on when or where she's supposed to meet her young man. Rather than facing what's obvious, she always blames herself for not getting the instructions straight."

Claire turned away from the windows and looked at Cassidy. "The night Jackson Wilde was murdered, Mama sneaked out and went to the Fairmont. Andre called and told me that she was in the hotel lobby waiting for her beau, so I went to fetch her. That's why I was there. After I learned what had happened, I asked Andre not to mention my being there. Since my presence there had nothing to do with Wilde, he agreed to safeguard my privacy. I'm sure that you and your colleagues got a thrill out of eavesdropping on our conversation, but you misinterpreted it."

Cupping the bowl of the snifter between her palms, she drained it. Cassidy took it from her and returned it to the sideboard. "Wouldn't it be easier on everyone if you had your mother institutionalized?" he asked.