The Unmasking Read online

  “It’s a terrific idea. You’ll have to watch her carefully, Lamar.” She flashed a bright smile at his scowl. “Yes, I know you will.

  “Quoiy’a? You think I’m going to let her run out in the street or dive off Andrew Jackson’s statue?” Lamar was pretending to be offended, but Bethany knew it was an act. The big man was almost impossible to ruffle.

  “Cajun men are very sensitive to children,” he continued in the same offended tone, his accent thickening. “There was always plenty of little ones to practice on at home on the bayou.” The way Lamar said it, “there” became “der,” “the” became “de” and “bayou” became “bye.”

  “Teaching them to ride alligators bareback is not the same as watching them in crowds of people.”

  “Me, I feel safer with the gators. I’ll be careful.”

  “I know you will.” She leaned forward to plant a kiss on his cheek.

  “I’ll take care of p’tit zozo here and you take care of yourself. Maman Robicheaux would say you’ve been working too hard.” Effortlessly Lamar swung Abby around to ride piggyback on his broad shoulders.

  “Thanks. Abby will have a better time with you than she would here.” She watched them as they began to disappear into the crowd.

  “Lamar!” He stopped to look back over the heads of the people surrounding him. “If it rains. . .”

  “I’ll take her back to the shop.”

  “She hasn’t eaten any lunch yet.”

  “I’ll buy her a po’boy.” Turning, they were gone.

  The crowds in the flea market had picked up considerably since early morning, and as the day wore on Bethany found she was busy enough for two. Tangles of humanity wove in and out of the walkway, chatting, asking questions, tentatively trying on masks. In a few weeks the trying-on stage would almost always be followed by a sale. But Mardi Gras was five weeks away, and browsers today knew they still had time to make up their minds.

  The dark clouds continued to hover, threatening but withholding rain. A young couple approached her stall to admire the colorful display. As Bethany watched they chose matching masks made from a simple form covered with sequins and silk flowers. She remembered a time in her own life when she, like the young girl in front of her, had used every opportunity to touch the man she adored. Watching the lovers, she stood rigid with longing, wishing her own fingers were tracing the lines of the delicate mask, dipping to linger on the cheeks and the earlobes below the mask’s boundaries.

  Their absorption in each other was not uncommon. New Orleans was nothing if not a city for lovers. The sultry days and nights seemed to hold desire suspended like droplets of water in the heavy air. It was a difficult city to be alone in, to be unloved in. In her four years of residence, Bethany usually kept herself too busy to think about her own enforced isolation. But today even hard work couldn’t make her forget, and watching the young couple, loneliness weighed on her with the smothering pressure of the air.

  A clap of thunder brought her back to reality, and she silently wrapped the masks in tissue paper, made change and presented the man and woman with their purchases. “Happy Mardi Gras,” she said, as they walked away, oblivious to anything except each other.

  The rain followed the thunder by minutes. Vendors in the parking lot consolidated merchandise under their shelters, and some scurried to cars and vans. Those customers who had been in the lot descended on the covered areas, and by the time the rain let up, Bethany had sold three more masks.

  As the crowd thinned out again, she sank into her folding chair, grateful for the respite. A small box of masks she hadn’t had room to display lay under the table, and she searched through it to decide which ones she should put out to replace those she had sold.

  Perhaps if she had been on her feet and alert to the sights and sounds around her, she would have known that the man walking toward her stall was out-of-control. As it was, the only inkling something was wrong was the loud thump, then a crack above her.

  Pulling her head from under the table, she moved too quickly, slamming her forehead into the sharp metal edge when she struggled to stand. As she blinked to stop her head from swimming, she took in the sight of an old man lying face down across the table, passed out cold. The worst news was that he had chosen to pass out on top of her most expensive mask. Crushed underneath his limp body was the creation of black and white Lady Amherst pheasant feathers that Abby had displayed so lovingly.

  “Get off there this minute,” she said loudly to no one in particular, because the man was obviously past understanding and obeying. Helplessly she looked around, cold fury vanquishing common sense. “Get off of there!”

  “Wait a minute, please. I’ll get him.” A pleasant-looking man in a brown suit stepped over to her table. “Justin,” he called, “come here, we’ve got a problem.”

  Too upset to pay attention Bethany took the heels of both hands and pushed the old man’s shoulders, trying with all the force of her one-hundred-three-pound body to shove him off the table. The man was obviously drunk, and that fact alone was enough to enrage her.

  “Just a minute, lady. I promise, we’ll have him off there in just one minute. Justin!”

  Justin looked up from a table where he had been examining calculators. Following Paul’s voice, he pushed through the gathering crowd. With a curse he took in the sight of Mr. Perkins, sprawled and unconscious on a table filled with delicate feather masks.

  “Damn, I told you he was too drunk to walk through here.” Silently he cursed the rain that had forced them inside a Decatur Street bar, giving Mr. Perkins yet another excuse to down additional drinks.

  Bending over the limp body, he missed the soft gasp of the young woman standing behind the table. The two lawyers lifted the dead weight that was Mr. Perkins and heaved him off the devastated mask. Miraculously the movement jarred the old man awake, and he stared bleary-eyed around him as if to ask what the fuss was about.

  “Get him walking again, and for God’s sake, get him out of here. I’ll catch up with you in a minute,” Justin said.

  For the first time since the beginning of the brief encounter, Justin looked directly at the woman whose merchandise his client had destroyed. His eyes widened as he took in the pink-and-scarlet headdress, its slash of feathers partially covering one side of the heart-shaped face. But the feathers weren’t responsible for the pounding of blood through his veins. It was the sight of the once-familiar features: the rich dark hair, shorter now; the fragile bone structure that still gave form and substance to the skin stretched tightly over it; the generous mouth that he had once felt under his.

  “Bethany?”

  As he watched, the dusky-rose cheeks drained of color. Enormous blue eyes stared back at him, and lips, seemingly unable to form a greeting, lay softly parted. He saw her tongue flicker across their surface as though to moisten and offer encouragement. Reaching across the table, he carefully lifted the flamboyant headdress off the shining hair, to assure himself he was correct. He watched her fingers, spread wide apart, as she ran her hand slowly through the strands. The gesture was familiar and it, more than anything else, tore at his heart.

  “Justin,” she finally managed. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes.” There must be something more that could be said. His mind ran through the possibilities. Idle chatter wasn’t a skill he had cultivated; pouring his heart out in front of the curious vendors and milling customers was unthinkable. He waited for her to take charge.

  “Five years.” Bethany examined him carefully while she chastised herself for wanting to. The years had been good to Justin. He was still slim. The coal-black hair was not yet touched with gray, and the olive skin was creased with only a few lines that gave his face a new and pleasing maturity. The taupe suit and crisp shirt gave him the appearance of a competent, powerful professional. But more about Justin than his physical appearance cried out to be examined. The expression on his face revealed nothing except surprise, and she found herself searching for so
me clue to his feelings. It was a game she had played many times in the past and never won. She saw that today would be no different.

  Their silent investigations were interrupted by Paul’s voice somewhere in the crowd beyond them. “Justin!”

  “I have to go.” He picked up the shattered mask and watched as the feathers drifted to the table below. “This should have been under your display case.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to sue.” She wasn’t surprised she sounded bitter, but for her own sake, she was sorry.

  A flicker of response shone in the nearly impenetrable eyes. “We’ll pay for it, of course.” He reached in his pocket and withdrew a kidskin wallet. “Here’s my card. Assess the damages, and send us the bill.” He waited for her to answer, until it was apparent she wasn’t going to. Paul’s summons echoed through the crowd again. “Be sure you include everything.”

  Bethany watched him lose himself in the multitudes. Convulsively she clenched and unclenched her fingers around his business card, molding it like papier-mâché until the moment when she balled it into a wad no larger than a teardrop. Palm down, she moved her thumb a fraction of an inch, and the card fell neatly into the box of trash beside her table. Then she felt carefully for the arms of her chair, collapsing backward as she felt the seat beneath her.

  “Beth—” she heard Mrs. Hastings’s voice “—put your head down, darlin’. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Obeying the other woman, Bethany rested her head on her hands as Mrs. Hastings clucked over her, cleaning up the remains of the mask. She felt the woman’s hand stroking her hair, and in a few minutes she had recovered enough to sit up again. “I must have hit my head harder than I thought,” she said by way of apology.

  A frown carved new wrinkles in the older woman’s face. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think so.” She waited a second, as if deciding whether to mind her own business. Finally she sighed. “It was more likely seein’ your old friend. Surprises can do that.”

  Bethany’s hair tickled the back of her neck as she shook her head. “That man is not my friend,” she said.

  Mrs. Hastings patted her hand softly. “I’m sorry he’s not,” she said sadly. “Because it is apparent, darlin’, what else he is to you.”

  Bethany lifted her eyes. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Mrs. Hastings nodded. “If you didn’t think anyone could tell, I’m sorry to disappoint you. But that man is obviously your baby’s father. They’re as alike as any two people I’ve ever seen.” She continued at Bethany’s slight shake of denial. “And I’m sorry, but there’s no way you’ll ever be able to hide it. No way in the world.”

  Bethany knew better than to protest. “Right now, Mrs. Hastings, you and I are the only two people in the world who are aware of that fact.” She paused, as if the next sentence was too exhausting to utter. Finally she continued so softly that Mrs. Hastings probably only saw her lips move. “And I intend to be sure it stays that way.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  CLOUDY SKIES, CLOUDED memories, vision clouded by unshed tears—Bethany would never think of that gray New Orleans afternoon again without that image in her mind. There had been a popular song about the time she reached adolescence that explored the different ways of looking at clouds, at life and love. Clouds had been compared to angel’s hair and ice cream castles. But there had been another observation, too. Clouds could block and twist reality.

  Life’s illusions.

  Now Bethany remembered that Madeline had taken the name for their shop from the same song. And as she thought about the lyrics, memories she had tried to obscure behind a cloud of denial came into focus.

  She had been twenty-one years old, and unlike most of the other students that attended Florida State University in Tallahassee, she had stayed in the capital city the summer after her junior year to take a job to supplement the art scholarship she would receive in the fall. There had been other possibilities for jobs, and since she didn’t have a family to go home to, she had considered them all, free to make her own decisions. Some of the other art students had secured positions as servers and busboys at resorts in the Smokies or farther south on Florida’s own Gold Coast. Bethany had been invited to join them for a summer of flirtation, swimming and generous tips, but she had resisted.

  When a friend from high school invited her to become a counselor at a camp in the Adirondacks, she had been sorely tempted, but when she hadn’t been able to sublease the efficiency apartment she rented six blocks from campus, she had decided to stay in Tallahassee. The apartment was nothing special; it was one of several in a square concrete-block building, with no adornments for character. But it was hers. She had lived there for nine full months, as long as she had lived almost anywhere, and she was reluctant to lose it.

  Tallahassee without its full complement of exuberant students was a quiet town. And even in the first days of summer the temperatures were scorching. Bethany came home each day from job hunting to sit in front of her window fan until she found the energy to fix a snack. Evenings she spent at the campus library or student union, seeking relief from the heat in the air-conditioned buildings.

  After a depressing week of being turned down as a sales clerk everywhere she applied, she was called to an interview for a summer position as receptionist at the FSU law school. Her warm manner made a positive impression on the about-to-deliver woman she was to replace for the summer months, and she was hired on the spot.

  “Don’t get involved with the law students,” the other woman had warned as she cleaned her personal items out of the desk that was to be Bethany’s. “Fifty percent of them are already married, and the other fifty percent claim they won’t ever make that trip up the aisle.” She examined Bethany with humor, taking in the heavily fringed blue eyes, long dark hair and milk-and-roses complexion. “But I’ll bet I don’t have to tell you how to handle men. I’m sure you had to learn pretty quick.”

  Bethany, who had always handled men by not handling them at all, just smiled. She was certain that this summer would be no different from the rest of her life: busy, productive and a bit lonely. She wasn’t in the market for a boyfriend. She found most of the young men on campus to be shallow. Appalled by the drinking that accompanied fraternity parties, she had attended only one, refusing thereafter to go out with frat boys. Afraid of ruining potential friendships she’d made a firm rule not to date the other art students. Professors were off limits for obvious reasons, and graduate students in other fields rarely crossed her path. She had drifted through her three years on campus as friend to many, special someone to no one.

  But that summer the FSU law students seemed committed to proving that her life could change. Her predecessor’s warning rang clearly through her mind each time a different fresh-faced young man tried to convince her their destinies were inextricably entwined. She became humorously aware that somewhere during the course of the unbearably hot month of July she had gained the nickname “Snow White,” as much, she was sure, for her virginal refusals as for her unique coloring.

  In late summer all pretensions of appearing businesslike in the blazing heat vanished, and she took to setting the hearts of the young law students pounding by wearing a particular ruby-red sundress with thin straps and a revealing cleavage. Hair coiled high on her head she found herself holding court at her desk.

  Actually the students had long since given up any attempts to date Bethany. But she was friendly—up to a point—and she always made her refusals tactfully. In spite of her lack of cooperation with their plans, she was still well thought of. It was into this circle of admiring and mildly annoying young men that Justin Dumontier walked one day in late August. She raised her eyes to his and experienced the uncomfortable feeling that her life was never going to be the same.

  There should be music playing somewhere, she thought. Something terribly corny with a subtle crescendo that reaches a climax about now. “May I help you?” was all she said.

  “I’m looking fo
r Craig Williams. Is he here?” The dark eyes examined her casually.

  “He’s gone home for the day,” she answered. “Will anyone else do?”

  “You might,” he said. “In fact, you might do very well.”

  “We’ve been outclassed,” one of the perpetual decorations at her desk sighed, and she smiled ruefully at the parade that filed out her door.

  She attempted to keep the stranger at her desk a little longer. “Are you a friend of Mr. Williams?” She, who almost never paid attention to a man’s appearance, was busy memorizing this one’s features. She liked the height and strength in his lithe body, the tanned skin, black hair and eyes, the way his nose shot down in a straight line to shadow well-sculptured lips. When he smiled the picture was complete. And it was with a trace of amusement at her own vulnerability that she realized her stomach was doing flip-flops.

  “I’m Justin Dumontier. Craig and I went to Harvard law together, and I promised I’d conduct some seminars for his students while I’m in town. I just arrived.” His eyes were conducting the same tour of her features, and she hoped irrationally she was passing with flying colors.

  “He mentioned the possibility, Mr. Dumontier, but I think he was really expecting you tomorrow.”

  “I caught an earlier flight.”

  “Let me call him at home. He’ll want to pick you up right away.” She lifted the receiver.

  His hand covered hers to stop her. “Are you married, engaged, or otherwise committed for the evening?”

  “Are you always so quick to cut through the formalities?”

  “Only when it’s important.”

  She liked his voice. It was husky and musical, with the touch of an unusual Southern accent, and it sent a shiver down her spine. She surprised herself by saying, “No, I’m not committed in any way. And you?”