LeOmi's Solitude Read Free Page A

to him. Everyone she had ever felt any
friendship for had simply gone away.
    As things worked out, time ran out for Henry.
He died from bone cancer exactly three months before her twelfth
birthday. She was there for him as much as she could be. His
family, long ago estranged, slowly having a change of heart and
coming back to him in the end.
    “I am alone again.”
    All she had learned, she kept close to her
heart, the good and the bad.
    * * *
    When she wasn’t at the gym or jogging five
miles a day, she was studying books in the local parish
library.
    Things were quite a bit different in New
Orleans from the chapel home at the Naval Base. Life seemed lazy
and laid back. As long as she kept her mind busy she was okay.
Thinking of home and the life that she had in Virginia was the
worst thing she could do.
    Everything was close in New Orleans. Not only
in walking distance—but also, everyone seemed to know what everyone
else was doing. Grand-Mère seemed to have her spies everywhere.
There was no need to talk about her day at the dinner table.
Grand-Mère already knew. Everybody knew everything about everybody
else, and every day seemed like the next. Mother must have had a
horrible childhood here.
    No wonder she was so prepared to run off
with my father—and then she just seemed to make a habit of it.
    LeOmi wasn’t surprised when her father
called. She knew that the phone was going to ring, she could sense
it.
     
     
     

Chapter 2
    To Make War is Life or
Death
     
    As LeOmi entered the house she heard, “There
are only so many ways to look at things but the thing I keep coming
up with is that nothing is ever easy.”
    Detective Sergeant Dominick Polaris was a
large man. The slogan “bear of a man” must have been invented for
him. He looked like he came by it naturally, mostly height and
muscle, but you could see just the beginnings of the middle age
roll forming on his hips.
    He had come to escort LeOmi’s father and
Grand-Mère to the morgue to identify her mother’s body, and to see
if any of them were suspects. It didn’t take Sergeant Polaris long
to find out that her father could not have had anything to do with
her mother’s murder. He came and left quickly barely even looking
at her. He was back in Virginia before the next morning.
    Hannah tried to console LeOmi but she cringed
away from Hannah’s attempt.
    “How could this happen Hannah, it wasn’t bad
enough that she had been taken away...but killed.”
    Grand-Mère just seemed to have expected it to
happen, as if it was inevitable. No one was saying or doing
anything about her mother’s death—it was almost as if they felt
that she had it coming to her.
    LeOmi heard Henry in her mind, “Did I get
you riled up yet? You seem to focus better when you’re
angry.”
    “I’ll find my own answers.” Her door slamming
was the only sound in the huge old house.
    LeOmi went through everything in the room.
Her mother’s scarf and old tattered book were all she had left of
her. That and LeOmi’s memories.
    * * *
    LeOmi had the freedom to do as she liked—just
as long as she was back every night for dinner—probably so
Grand-Mère could report to her father that she was still alive, if
necessary.
    Transportation to the other side of New
Orleans was the hardest part to manage. If she took a taxi or the
bus or even the trolley Grand-Mère’s spies would know. She would
probably find out no matter what.
    The address was an old crumbling brick
building, strangely out of place for the part of town that it was
in. It was down in a bog area. Nothing but dead trees and other old
boarded up warehouses, only a stone’s throw from modern townhouses
and new condominiums. The sign that hung from a pole out front read
The Celtic Wheel. A big ram’s head was painted on a plank in the
old saloon style on the threshold above the front door.
    LeOmi stepped under the crime scene tape that
wrapped around the building just as the sun was approaching three
knuckles