The Shattered Line

Excerpt from The Shattered Line

“What did you need from me?” The front door slams shut behind Jack. He drops his suitcase on the floor and folds his arms, creasing the front of his white button-up shirt.

“Help with the estate, like I said on the phone.”

“That’s precious little information to base fifteen hours of travel on.”

“It’s all I’ve got. Glad you could make it.”

His face scrunches, creating deep wrinkles around his mouth while discomfort beams from his laser green eyes. “I’m not. Glad, that is. I’m here. But I’m not staying.”

I regard my brother coolly. “Sure. What hotel should I look for you at?”

Jack narrows his eyes. “I couldn’t get a hotel to save my life. They’re all booked up for months. I meant I’m not staying in this house—or this town—once the estate is settled. It took me too long to get out of this godforsaken swamp and I don’t intend to get sucked back in. I’ll crash upstairs until the paperwork is settled. Then, I’m out.”

I don’t know what he means by too long. We left when we were like six and he never came back, but whatever. “Don’t recall anyone asking you to, so that’s fine by me. Won’t you come in?”

The wind chimes hanging outside the front door tinkle.

I looked up sharply, expecting to see Maw Maw leaning on her cane and stretching up as high as she can with one hand to sweep the dangling chrome tubes. It’s the farthest outside the house I’ve ever seen her go.

The image hovers just beyond my vision, while a younger, stronger woman steps forward, lowering her arm.

The door swings open and a willowy lady with brown skin and long box braids steps over the threshold. “Oh, my Lawd, it’s hot,” she complains, her voice as richly southern as cane syrup. I stare in fascination as she continues, and her accent reduces to a faint sweetness. Much to my disappointment. “Four years in Europe has thickened my blood. Jack, your family owns this place?” She scans the entryway and her awed expression fades as the overwhelming image of a gracious French Quarter home gives way to reality.

Yes, the door opens into a white entryway with a fancy table and a gilt-framed mirror hanging on the wall that encloses the staircase, but the wallpaper has begun to peel, and the image in the mirror has faded through years of fingerprints and dirt.

To the left, the door to the parlor stands open and a waft of old lady odor—roses, joint cream, and dainty BO—blows out on a mildewed draft from the open window. A window I replaced after the storm.

The lady wrinkles her nose. “This is your family home?” she repeats, and she doesn’t sound awed anymore.

“That’s right, ma’am,” I inform her, extending my hand. “I’m Adam Landry. Welcome to the Landry house.”

“Britayne Cormier.” She shakes firmly like a confident man. No limp brush of fingertips. Her palm feels warm and dry in the humid afternoon.

A pleasurable tingle shoots up to the base of my skull. What a beauty. “Pleased to meet you, Britayne,” I say, laying on the Southern charm thick.

A throat clears and I turn to my once-mirror image. Jack has lifted one eyebrow and is frowning at me.

“Adam!” a loud voice drawls, drawing my attention to the hallway, down which I can see Courtney popping out of the closet under the stairs, dust hanging from her pile of yellow hair.

Jack jumps like he’s seen a ghost, as though her generous rump hadn’t been visible in the doorway all this time.

“Did you find a treasure?” I quip.

She snickers. “Only if empty wine bottles have greatly increased in value. Either Miss Emmaline was quite a lush, or she’s been hoarding them for years.”

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Courtney’s habit of talking fancy to compensate for her backwater upbringing annoys me more now that Jack and his lovely friend have arrived. “Most likely she didn’t have the strength to roll the recycling bin out with them in it, so she just stashed them to deal with later.”

“Sounds right,” Jack agrees. “She used to stash things away ‘to deal with later’ when we lived here too, as I recall.”

I glance at the woman my brother has brought. Her eyes are pinched and uncertain. “You lived here?”

“Briefly,” I jump in, not wanting Jack’s sour expression to color her view of the house… or our family. “We were born here. Our father was drafted to go to Vietnam while our mom was pregnant with us—before they could even get married. We lived here until we were in first grade. Then Mom took off and we went with our dad, who was stationed at Fort Sam Houston.”

Britayne turns her face to me. The light falls on her eyes, and I notice they have a flash of green in them. Wow, she’s striking.

“You never told me you lived here when you were little,” Courtney whines. “I thought it was only when you were in college.” She flutters one hand, seeming to gesture but really turning her dainty diamond ring so it catches the afternoon sun.

Before I can argue that it didn’t seem important enough to bring up until this moment, she turns to the new arrivals. “Hi. I’m Courtney Dickinson, Adam’s fiancée. You must be Jack, and I sure can see y’all are twins! Are you Jack’s girlfriend?”

“Something like that,” Britayne mumbles, her eyes full of questions as she looks at Jack.

He turns his head fast, the vertebrae popping with the movement, and lowers his eyebrows.

“Well, okay!” Courtney gushes, breaking through the sudden tension. It seems Britayne’s beauty has intimidated her—as beautiful women always do—because she turns on her teacher face so fast, I could have sworn I heard a dial clicking somewhere in her head.

She flutters her hand again, making her solitaire sparkle. “And now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna go get a drink. It’s damned dusty in that closet. And y’all just got in? It’s so hot and muggy. I bet you’re thirsty too.”

I’m not sure which is worse, her fake fancy talk or the way she babbles when she feels insecure. Without a word, I trudge into the kitchen after her, my mind on the bottle of tequila in the freezer.

“I made up some limeade,” Courtney chatters on as we walked, “so we can have margaritas if you’d like.”

“Sounds nice,” Britayne agrees, “though I’d just kill for a glass of water. It was so dry on that looooong series of flights from Brussels and then a hot taxi ride across town. Is the water drinkable yet?”

I shrug. “They say it is, but who knows? I don’t want water with bits of someone’s Great Aunt Bessie floating in it. We brought bottled from Baton Rouge, just to be on the safe side.”

“Is that where you live?” Britayne asks. “I mean, it sounds like you do…” she trails off.

I glance in her direction and see her green-brown eyes half close, thick lashes falling demurely over them.

Jack glances at her, confused, but he doesn’t say anything.

What is up with these two? “Yes, ma’am. We teach at McKinley High School.”

Her eyes light up. “Teachers? I’ve thought about teaching. What subjects?”

“P.E. and health,” I flex my pecs, “and I’m an assistant football coach. “My lovely fiancée teaches home economics: interior design, apparel design, and sewing.”

Britayne smiles and then breaks eye contact again, her attention turning to Jack, who sails down the dusty hallway with the confident stride I remember from high school. We looked more alike then, but people could still tell who was who, just by the way we walked.

I saunter after him. We pass the parlor Maw Maw used as a bedroom and the closet Courtney just left before entering the long galley-style kitchen—once a formal dining room but now equipped with a 70s-style lentil yellow stove that clashes horribly with the original 1790s hutch and sideboard. A brand-new, huge stainless-steel refrigerator gleams in one corner.

Courtney frowns again at the mismatched styles, but it’s Jack who asks the question. “What the hell is up with that monstrosity?” He waves at the fridge.

“The house was unattended for six weeks,” I explain. Six weeks with Maw Maw lying dead on the upstairs balcony in the shade of the third-floor balcony roof. A deep shudder runs up my body. I will never forget that smell. “I tried to get here sooner, but there was no way in. The roads were blocked… or underwater for the longest time. Even when the water receded, there was so much trash lying around that I couldn’t get through. I tried three times before I actually made it here.”

Shit. Now I’m babbling, but… I shudder at the memory of my once-dignified grandmother lying putrid and leaking on the shaded floor of the balcony, her body crawling with insects.

Then, I shudder again. “Can you imagine what the fridge and freezer were like after six weeks with no power? It was a total loss. Everyone’s was a total loss. For months we saw the damned things lined up on the curb waiting for the city to come back to life and collect them. Some neighborhoods even hung lights on them for Christmas.”

I pause to chuckle, but the sound lacks conviction… and humor. “Court and I have been out most weekends since October to look over the place. We needed a fridge.” I take a deep breath. I forgot how Jack’s intensity can make me nervous. Like I need to justify my use of oxygen.

“Sounds bad,” Britayne murmurs, eyes on the table in the corner of the room between the fridge and the sink. The light beaming in the back door of the house makes her skin gleam.

I tear my gaze away from her. “It was, and I only saw the edges of it. It’s been a whole big thing.”

Courtney compresses her lips and sighs through her nose. She opens the freezer and removes the tequila. Then, she takes a bottle of water from the fridge, which she tosses to Britayne. She grabs the pitcher and plunks it on the counter, dumping half the tequila in.

Oof. That’s gonna be a stiff drink… and when she drinks, she chatters even more. I roll my eyes even as something inside me protests the unkind thoughts I keep having about the woman I love.

Britayne opens the water with a soft cracking of the plastic seal and takes a sip. An awkward silence closes over the kitchen, broken only by the soft glug of spiked juice flowing into tumblers.

“So, Britayne,” Courtney says, sounding way too cheerful—and thus nervous, “what do you do? You mentioned not teaching, so…”

“I’m in computers,” Britayne answers in her soft, shy voice.

I wonder if she’s timid or just a bit antisocial and trying to discourage too much conversation. It clashes with her confident handshake. The mystery intrigues me even more. What are your secrets, pretty lady?

Jack glances at her again, his expression unreadable.

She waits, but no one says anything, so she continues. “I make websites. At the moment I have a contract with the airline’s marketing department. I format and upload travel blogs. Jack does the writing and has now branched into short promotional videos. I film them and upload them to the website.”

“How cosmopolitan,” Courtney gushes. She carries the four cocktails to the table and sets them out, returning to the counter to set the pitcher back in the fridge and the remaining liquor in the freezer.

Silence falls again, and this time, no one seems willing to break it.

It’s so weird. I haven’t seen Jack in years, and yet, none of the awkwardness between us has gotten better. We’re thirty-five, not seventeen, but somehow, we still can’t be comfortable together.

Jack grabs his drink and downs it in three big swallows. The alcohol seemed to loosen his tense mood. “So, you told me to get home regarding the will. That you couldn’t do anything without me. I don’t want to be here, so let’s get on with it. What does it say and why did it take the best part of a year to get the ball rolling?”

I sip my margarita and blink a couple of times at the potent punch of the alcohol. “To answer the second question first, the delay was due to the hurricane itself. I know the French Quarter looks okay. It didn’t flood here. A few other neighborhoods—the rich ones—also got by with only minor damage and a loss of power, but much of the city was underwater for weeks. It will take years to clean it up, and some places may never be the same again.”

I pause, sip, cough, and continue. “The attorney was in one of those ruined neighborhoods. From what he told me on the phone, it took weeks for his office to be pumped out enough to assess the damage. All physical documents were a total loss. The CD-ROMs survived, but the computers didn’t. Months passed while they gathered their insurance money, rented a new space and bought new computers. Then he had to go through all his emails!” I stop, scrubbing my fingers through my hair and feeling the thin spot in the back that I pretend not to have. Damn it, Adam. Quit chattering. Be cool.

“Okay, so then?” Jack urges.

I sigh. Impatient. He never used to be. Either his personality has changed or being here is bugging him even more than he lets on. “So then, from what he tells me, all the marker-ink labels on the CD-ROMs had washed away, so they had to go through all the files one by one. Only then could they go ahead with contacting the heirs. They started treating it like an emergency room. Heirs who were desperate for money, who had young children, stuff like that, got priority. Us grown-ass men with jobs went to the end of the line.”

“Rightly so,” Britayne put in, her soft voice surprisingly firm.

I like this lady. I don’t get her, not yet, but I like her. “So, I got a call from the attorney two weeks ago saying we were joint consecutors, and he wanted to go over the documents with us together. Maw Maw demanded a formal reading with both her heirs and nothing else will do. They won’t even talk to me unless you’re here. So, I called you and now, here we are. Eager to see your inheritance?” My voice turns sharp.

Jack purses his lips. “I don’t give a damn about any inheritance. In fact, I don’t expect more than a token. Perhaps I’ll be the proud recipient of the old bat’s empty wine bottles. I’m here because you asked for my help.”

I have no idea how to feel about this.

“So…” Britayne trails off, looking from me to Jack and back again, as though not sure what she wanted to ask or who could answer. “So, um… now what?”

I shrug. “Our appointment with the attorney is tomorrow, so I guess we’ll find out then.”

“I hope I don’t get any portion of the house. A dead house in a dead city is no inheritance.”

“Now, hold on there, Mister!” Britayne protests, something steely rising up her spine. “This city is not dead. It’s survived worse than this and it will rise again, good as new. You’ll see.”

Jack lifts one reddish-brown eyebrow at her. I smirk to see it has a few white, wiry hairs threading through it. “I don’t give a damn about this city. Let it live or die. I just want to get out of here as fast as I can.” He turns to me. “In case I get a small percentage, will you prefer to buy me out or just sell?”

“I can’t make plans until I know the full picture,” I say. “I suppose I’ll sell. My home is in Baton Rouge, and I can’t say I love the school districts in New Orleans enough to want to teach here. Besides, the taxes on this place alone would gobble up my salary. But Maw Maw probably has some provision in the will to prevent the sale. Nuts as she was about it—I can’t even recall her setting one foot past the front stoop—there’s no way she’ll just let us let it go. Not to mention, who knows if real estate is even moving in the city at this time.”

“I can help with that,” Britayne offers. “I know how to access the MLS. I can see what all is selling around here—if anything—and for what prices. All I need is a phone jack.”

I wave at the wall behind her, where a phone with a long, curly cord sits on a small, decorative shelf.

Ignoring her cocktail, Britayne rises and steps out of the room, only to return a moment later, rolling her suitcase behind her. She unzips a pouch on the front, withdraws a laptop, unplugs the phone, and inserts the cord into the wall, adding a power cable at the outlet below the table.

The cutting-edge device hisses, gurgles, and beeps as it interacts with the local phone network. She falls silent, poking buttons with intense concentration.

I look at Courtney and find her staring into her margarita, a sulky expression on her face.

Jack rises, opens the fridge, and pours himself another drink, sloshing sticky liquid all over the floor. His hands are shaking. His eyes have narrowed to slits.

What the hell?

“Want me to take your stuff upstairs, Brit?” he asks after downing the entire margarita in big gulps.

Britayne looks up, blinking. “Yes, that would be great. Where will we be staying?”

“I’ll show you later.” His throat works as though he’s trying to swallow something hard and painful.

“Okay.” Her attention is already back on the computer.

He kisses her forehead and grabs the handle of the suitcase, carrying it out of the room.

I look back at Courtney and find her eyeing me with an odd expression. She looks like she has hundreds of questions.

I wonder if I know the answers to any of them.