Southern Hearts Read Free

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    “Oh, my baby’s home, come give your Marney some sugar.” Before I could even react to the voice, bare caramel arms squeezed around me and I was grabbed into a tight lock.
    “Marney, I missed you!” Marney had been my nanny growing up and more of a mother than the woman who actually bore me. I smiled at her as the ties of her familiar braided locks twisted from side to side and the fringe around the hem of her thin dress twirled lightly in the whirling breeze.
    She had been my father’s secretary for many years at his law firm of Bossier & Belisle. Soon after he gave up his practice and took an early retirement, she sank into a deep depression after her husband Gene and daughter Maybell disappeared one night, and at my father’s urging joined our family. She had been my mother’s friend for many years, so it seemed only natural that she would become a welcome addition to our home.
    It had taken four months from the time her husband and daughter first vanished until they were found trapped below their ’54 Oldsmobile Holiday in the muddy sand at the base of Crooked Creek along the rural back roads of Evangeline County. It had been ruled an accident—death by asphyxiation had been the official finding. A spark near the fuel tank had ignited a fire that charred the car into a twisted, melted shell.
    The thing that remained hard to understand was how the car had wound up on top of them, pinning their burned bodies in the slush of the bog. Many found the whole thing odd and thought that there had to be more to the story. The local arm of the law during the late sixties and early seventies was composed of good ol’ boys, more bungling then believable. I could tell by my father’s ever-widening eyes as he first informed us of the police’s conclusions about the events of that night that he had his own doubts. As he demonstrated the position of the car, its proximity to the road, the lack of skid marks, and the unexplained removal of heavy thickets of dense underbrush that lined both sides of the highway, I knew that he had drawn his own conclusions, though he never dared share them.
    I cared deeply for Marney, and seeing her stand before me, feeling her warm hugs that took the air out of me, warmed my heart and brought a beaming smile to my face.
    “How are you, darlin’? Ooh, girl, you are looking thin, don’t they eat out there in the west?” She laughed, pulling me back toward her.
    “Maybe it’s the rain,” I joked.
    “Well you’re home now, baby, and I guess I’ll just have to fatten you up with some of my good old Southern fare this summer.” She put her hands over her stomach, wiggling it like St. Nick’s jolly tummy once it had been filled with eggnog.
    “You know I look forward to that!”
    “Is that you, chèr?” my mother’s voice called from just outside the French doors, which were parted as if in anticipation of my arrival.
    “She’s been waiting for you, honey, she can’t wait to see you,” Marney whispered.
    “I’ll bet!”
    “You know she missed you. Now get out there!” Gently, Marney shoved me from behind.
    “Yes, Mother, it’s me.”
    “Well, come on out here and have some lunch. It’s tuna salad with walnuts, your favorite.”
    My favorite. I hated tuna salad, particularly with nuts floating around in it. Reminded me of the wrinkled raisins suspended in the tofu Jell-O mold that my mother’s friend Ethel used to bring to Christmas dinner and the way the slimy bean curd tasted as I choked it down at my mother’s urging. But again, where I was concerned, my mother approached things with the cluelessness that had become her trademark.
    “I ate on the plane, Mother.”
    Without turning her attention from the lines of text folded out in front of her, she asked, “How was the flight?”
    “Fine,” I said with little expression.
    That was my mother’s best attempt at conversation, and her ability to express emotion was defined in a single action—the slight eye