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Authors: Emilie Richards
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noon.”
Dawn snapped one final photograph. Her father’s arms were folded, and his expression was supremely confident. Only rarely did anyone get the best of Ferris Lee. But in life, Aurore Gerritsen had been every bit as determined. And clearly, even in death, her determination had not faltered.
The only room in the cottage that was large enough to hold everyone was a screened porch, referred to as the morningroom, which looked over a patch of yellow chamomile rimmed with magnolias and oaks. Storm clouds were gathering, but the occasional shaft of sun light beamed brightly in protest.
The bucolic setting was a touch of humor in a situation that merited more. As a journalist, Ben had grown used to insinuating himself into situations where he wasn’t wanted. He could not recall a time, however, when he had been so completely uncomfortable. He couldn’t dredge up enough sanctimony to suit the occasion. The Gerritsens didn’t want him here, and their objection was fair. They didn’t know that he was here to claim more than whatever small token Dawn’s grand mother had left him.
From his wicker vantage point in the corner, he watched the others straggle in. He remembered Dawn’s theory about Aurore’s sense of the dramatic. Whether it was true or not, the participants in this odd event were players in a pageant of Louisiana history, and he knew enough about all of them to appreciate it.
Dawn’s mother took her place in an overstuffed chair in the corner. She was sugarcane and old Creole blood lines that rivaled Aurore Gerritsen’s own. Cappy was a thriving symbol of a way of life that had passed on al most a century before.
He lifted his hand to Nicky and Jake, who settled across the room from Cappy. He knew a little of Nicky’s background from things that Phillip had told him. She had spent her childhood years watching the birth of jazz from a house on Basin Street, near today’s Club Valentine. She had gone on to Paris and later New York, but it had been the New Orleans in her voice that made her a star. Phillip’s only claims to Louisiana were his mother’s heritage and his recent marriage to a New Orleans woman, a fact Ben had discovered last night.
Jake’s roots were nowhere near as exotic as Nicky’s. Borninto a family of sharecroppers, he had pulled him self from poverty by leaving Louisiana and venturing into a world where sometimes, at least, the color of a man’s skin was less important than what he was made of. But after his success was assured, he and Nicky had moved back to the state of their birth, with its deeply rooted culture and its enthusiasm for her talent.
Pelichere was a Cajun, descended from those brave souls, thrust from their homes in Acadia, who had found their way to the Louisiana bayous and a way of life rich in color and tradition. Ben liked her. She was as down-to-earth as the life she led. She, along with Spencer St. Amant, seemed perfectly willing to cut through the bull shit the rest of them wallowed in.
Finally there were Ferris Gerritsen and his daughter, the last to arrive. The senator was a mixture of his mother’s Creole blood and his father Henry’s perversion of it. From the distance of half a century, it was difficult to understand what Henry Gerritsen had offered a woman like Aurore Le Danois. He had been descended from a “Kaintuck” who floated a flatboat down the Mississippi, sold it for lumber in New Orleans, then started a business brokering boats for others. Somewhere on the trip, at some saloon or floating whorehouse, he had picked up Henry’s grandmother, and nine months later, Henry’s father had been born.
Ben had heard that story from Father Hugh. Apparently Henry had enjoyed telling it to his children, per haps because his lack of breeding humiliated his wife. The story had given Ben a certain understanding of Ferris. If anyone could understand Ferris.
And what of Ferris’s daughter? What was there to understand about Dawn? She smiled at
Dawn snapped one final photograph. Her father’s arms were folded, and his expression was supremely confident. Only rarely did anyone get the best of Ferris Lee. But in life, Aurore Gerritsen had been every bit as determined. And clearly, even in death, her determination had not faltered.
The only room in the cottage that was large enough to hold everyone was a screened porch, referred to as the morningroom, which looked over a patch of yellow chamomile rimmed with magnolias and oaks. Storm clouds were gathering, but the occasional shaft of sun light beamed brightly in protest.
The bucolic setting was a touch of humor in a situation that merited more. As a journalist, Ben had grown used to insinuating himself into situations where he wasn’t wanted. He could not recall a time, however, when he had been so completely uncomfortable. He couldn’t dredge up enough sanctimony to suit the occasion. The Gerritsens didn’t want him here, and their objection was fair. They didn’t know that he was here to claim more than whatever small token Dawn’s grand mother had left him.
From his wicker vantage point in the corner, he watched the others straggle in. He remembered Dawn’s theory about Aurore’s sense of the dramatic. Whether it was true or not, the participants in this odd event were players in a pageant of Louisiana history, and he knew enough about all of them to appreciate it.
Dawn’s mother took her place in an overstuffed chair in the corner. She was sugarcane and old Creole blood lines that rivaled Aurore Gerritsen’s own. Cappy was a thriving symbol of a way of life that had passed on al most a century before.
He lifted his hand to Nicky and Jake, who settled across the room from Cappy. He knew a little of Nicky’s background from things that Phillip had told him. She had spent her childhood years watching the birth of jazz from a house on Basin Street, near today’s Club Valentine. She had gone on to Paris and later New York, but it had been the New Orleans in her voice that made her a star. Phillip’s only claims to Louisiana were his mother’s heritage and his recent marriage to a New Orleans woman, a fact Ben had discovered last night.
Jake’s roots were nowhere near as exotic as Nicky’s. Borninto a family of sharecroppers, he had pulled him self from poverty by leaving Louisiana and venturing into a world where sometimes, at least, the color of a man’s skin was less important than what he was made of. But after his success was assured, he and Nicky had moved back to the state of their birth, with its deeply rooted culture and its enthusiasm for her talent.
Pelichere was a Cajun, descended from those brave souls, thrust from their homes in Acadia, who had found their way to the Louisiana bayous and a way of life rich in color and tradition. Ben liked her. She was as down-to-earth as the life she led. She, along with Spencer St. Amant, seemed perfectly willing to cut through the bull shit the rest of them wallowed in.
Finally there were Ferris Gerritsen and his daughter, the last to arrive. The senator was a mixture of his mother’s Creole blood and his father Henry’s perversion of it. From the distance of half a century, it was difficult to understand what Henry Gerritsen had offered a woman like Aurore Le Danois. He had been descended from a “Kaintuck” who floated a flatboat down the Mississippi, sold it for lumber in New Orleans, then started a business brokering boats for others. Somewhere on the trip, at some saloon or floating whorehouse, he had picked up Henry’s grandmother, and nine months later, Henry’s father had been born.
Ben had heard that story from Father Hugh. Apparently Henry had enjoyed telling it to his children, per haps because his lack of breeding humiliated his wife. The story had given Ben a certain understanding of Ferris. If anyone could understand Ferris.
And what of Ferris’s daughter? What was there to understand about Dawn? She smiled at
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