Chapter Six

six

JEMMA OPENED HER EYES THE next morning, the sight of medallions on the ceiling pulling forth tears. So it wasn't all a nightmare. Except it was, if any of it was true. As she lay there, she tried to recognize anything of any of the Duchons in herself.

Physically, there was nothing, from the color of her skin, to the texture of her hair, to the shape of her nose. Wouldn't she know if she were related to them? Wouldn't she feel a connection? Noting the quiet, from outside and in, she checked her watch. Six twenty. She swung her legs out of bed and looked for a telephone in the room, already knowing there wasn't one. In the light of a new day, the fright that had gripped her the night before receded. She dressed, checked that she'd packed everything and carried her shoes in her hands as she tiptoed downstairs.

She was breaking the promise she'd made to Fosette the night before, but she couldn't stay with these unhinged people. Just as she turned the crystal knob on the front door, she spied a telephone table to the side of it. Was there anyone she could call?

Glancing around and seeing no one, Jemma picked up the phone receiver and, with trembling fingers, dialed the operator.

"I need to make a person-to-person call," Jemma said, and recited Marvin's number in a whisper, the shame of wanting to talk to him instead of her friend Betty driving down her voice.

"Hold, please," the voice on the other end said.

When Jemma heard the phone ringing, she wanted to weep.

"Hello?" her ex-boyfriend's sleep-slurred voice answered.

"Marvin, it's me. You gotta help me."

"Who is this?"

"It's Jemma. Remember me?" When he didn't respond, she went on. "I'm in New Orleans and I need your help getting home."

"You must be out your mind, girl. You left on your own account."

"And why was that? Was it because I didn't want to play mammy to your baby?"

Behind Marvin's wall of silence, her ears picked up a woman's voice, similarly sleepy and asking what sounded like "Who you talking to?" Jemma's hand tightened on the phone, but she maintained a level tone.

"I'm in real trouble here. Are you going to help me or not?"

"You in jail or something?"

"No, but—"

An uneasy breeze sliced up Jemma's back and she turned to see Agnes in the dining room archway, watching her. Feeling caught but also not feeling like she'd done anything wrong, Jemma twitched her lips in a semi-smile. Would the maid get one of the Duchons? Jemma almost shuddered at the thought of Simone being the next one to come downstairs.

"I'm not in jail—"

"Look, you left. You never even thanked me for saving your life, and now you call first thing in the morning with some mess? If you're in New Orleans, stay in New Orleans. Don't call here again."

Click.

Jemma almost dialed the operator again, but the heavy press of Agnes's stare pushed her out the door. She'd call Betty from the nearest phone booth.

She had five dollars in cash, not enough for a bus ticket across state, let alone back to Chicago. But she also had six hundred dollars in checks. All she had to do was go to the bank. She had a walk ahead of her, and Jemma would use that time to think of her next move. Did she want to go back to Chicago, with its increasingly painful memories? There was clearly no future with Marvin—and there hadn't been, not after everything that had happened. The bastard wouldn't even help her when she called and told him she was in trouble.

As she descended the porch steps, she saw a man sawing a downed tree limb. His short-sleeved shirt was soaked through, his booted foot resting on one end of the branch as he made smaller pieces of it. Even from this distance, it was obvious she hadn't met him, as his skin was a dark brown, making it highly unlikely that he was a Duchon.

The gardener.

Her steps slowed, but she had no plans to stick around any longer than necessary. Jemma just wanted out. As she drew closer he paused his sawing, tipping back his planter's hat to wipe his forehead and standing up straight.

"Good morning," she said in a low voice.

"Morning. You must be Jemma." He smiled at her, giving her a light appraisal. Only the most subtle bit of slackness in his jawline and a few gray hairs along his temples signaled his middle age.

Jemma gave a short nod and stared at his offered hand for a moment before deciding it would be rude if she didn't take it. "Nice to meet you."

"You going somewhere?" He pointed to her suitcase. "How you getting where you going?"

Jemma hitched the case closer to her. "I'm just going to walk until I reach the bus line."

His eyes narrowed. "You're part of the family."

She didn't know how to answer that, although it hadn't been a question, and when she tried to shake her head, she succeeded only in half shaking, half nodding. He nodded back, his increased interest evident.

"You can try and go, I guess, but you ain't gonna get far."

Jemma took a step toward the gate before stopping and facing the man again. "Are you related to them?"

"Oh, no." He chuckled. "I'm Dennis, the gardener, handyman, runner. No, I ain't family. Can't you tell? But you are. And that's how I know you might be able to walk out them gates, but you won't get fifty yards up the road, where the property line ends. You'll be back sure as the sun rises in the east." He wiped his face with a wrinkled rag.

Jemma told herself this was some elaborate joke and now the Duchons had the gardener in on it.

"And what'll happen to me if I walk past the property line? I fall down dead?"

"No, nothing like that, but you won't get past it. It's like it's an invisible wall or something right there. It'll turn you around."

"But…but I didn't grow up here. If…if it's true that I was born here—"

"You was. I was here the day you was born. Right up there." He pointed to the second floor of the house.

"But obviously I left. Someone took me away, so I'm not bound to this place."

"You was just a baby then, Miss Jemma. And maybe you being carried away made a difference. I don't know how these things work. But you came back on your own and you're here now. And like the rest of your family, you can't leave."

She'd prove them wrong. Once she escaped, and she got far enough away, they'd realize how silly their stories had been, how wrong they'd been for trying to trick her.

"I'm going to try, though. Goodbye," she told Dennis.

Fear tingled its way up her body as she approached the gate, but she pushed it open, a heavy creak slicing the morning quiet.

As she looked down the empty road, the only sounds that reached Jemma's ears were blue jay and mockingbird calls. The heat settled on her shoulders like a wool shawl, drawing itself down her body.

Once she exited, Jemma released a thick breath. She wouldn't even chance a glance backward.

She hitched her suitcase once and walked, not going fifty feet before a black Studebaker nearly sideswiped her, sending her sprawling onto the grass, her suitcase flying away and snapping open. With shaking hands, she stuffed everything back inside. Despite what those lunatics at that house had told her— Your family; they're your family —she was not bound there. She'd make it into New Orleans, and the first chance she got to leave the city, she'd grab it with two desperate hands.

"Jemma!" a man called from behind her.

She pushed herself up, brushing the dirt from her palms, inspecting the runs at the knees in her stockings. A light drizzle had started, but she didn't open her case again to find her rain bonnet. She willed herself not to turn around, swinging her suitcase up.

Just take a step. Put one foot in front of the other. Just go.

"Jemma, come back!"

She turned to see Laurence standing just outside of the gate, one hand tight around a picket, as if he couldn't go any farther. Dennis stood to one side, his face a mask of horror at her near accident.

It couldn't be true. She couldn't be trapped here.

Fosette rushed down the porch steps, her lacy white dressing gown trailing behind her. She skidded to a stop behind Laurence, refusing to take one step out of the gates. The light rain threatened to expose her underneath her nightclothes, but she seemed not to care.

"Jemma, please. We're your family," she called out. "We can help each other!"

Jemma looked down the road, so still and quiet at this time of morning. All she had to do was walk. Against her will, she turned back to the house, to the three people staring at her as if she were about to step on a mine.

I'll stay and help, she'd told Fosette just last night. I promise.

She would have said anything last night, however, to bring a semblance of sanity to things. Inside the gates, Fosette made her careful way toward Jemma, grabbing each picket like it was a lifeline. She pressed her face between two of them, pleading with Jemma to return to the house.

"We need you. I don't want to die. I don't want anyone else in our family to die. Now that you're back, we can be a real family again, cousine. " Her trembling hand reached out.

Jemma looked down the road, empty and eerily quiet, before turning back to her cousins hanging on to the gate, clearly afraid to take another step. Maybe they'd tested the so-called curse before, tried to escape just as she was doing now. Whatever had stopped them had cowed them.

"Please. You promised me."

There it was. Fosette's brief reminder, thick as a rope around Jemma's waist, ready to snatch her back.

Jemma looked at the road once more before returning to the Duchon property, the rain falling steadily, Laurence closing the gates behind them.

—

LATE THAT AFTERNOON, JEMMA DRESSED for dinner.

No one had seemed surprised by her return. Everyone had simply watched as she tracked rainwater across the foyer and up the stairs to her room. She'd been in there all day, and hadn't let Fosette in when she came knocking. She didn't feel like dealing with the guilt of trying to escape. Agnes had left a covered tray of food, which Jemma ignored. But now that it was almost dinnertime, she was extremely hungry.

She still didn't believe that she was trapped there, not really, but it was clear that the Duchons believed they were. They wouldn't even set a foot outside of the gates.

She looked in the mirror above the dresser. The rain had completely ruined her hair. As she'd suspected, there were no hot combs to be found. When she'd asked the maid about one earlier, the woman had given a brief shake of her head, making Jemma feel stupid for asking, as if these people with their good hair had need of such primitive contraptions. All Jemma could do was rag curl her hair, and now, as she unraveled each scrap of cotton—torn from an old shirt she'd found in the chifforobe—dismay washed over her at the sight. A frizzy, uneven shape haloed her head, neither kinky nor straight, just a mixed-up wasteland of hair. She almost tied a scarf around her head, but she discarded the idea because it would make her look like she worked here. But she did, didn't she? Even Agnes didn't wear a head rag, Jemma thought, as she tossed the scarf aside and squared her shoulders before opening the door.

Dinner was much the same as it always was, with the conversation revolving around newspaper headlines. Jemma tried to shut the family out, much as she shut out the spirits she didn't want to see. She lost herself in her bowl of gumbo, the same slightly burnt taste there as always, as a realization washed over her.

The Duchons hadn't left this property in years. That explained the dowdy, old-fashioned clothes.

Simone was outfitted in a pale pink collared dress, wooden buttons trailing down the center, a string of pearls matching the globes in her ears. Before Russell had sat down, Jemma had seen his wide-legged trousers, cuffed at the bottoms, completely unlike the fitted slacks men wore nowadays. Laurence, in his slightly newer but still hopelessly outdated plaid blazer and linen pants. It all made sense. They hadn't been to the shop in years.

Instead of simply viewing them as her employer's family, now she couldn't help but think of them as her family. Fosette and Laurence, her cousins. Russell, her uncle. That nasty piece of work Simone, her aunt.

Jemma thought she'd feel more of a tie to them, but skepticism and bewilderment seemed to override any emotions. She didn't want to ask anything of them, wanted simply to eat and return to her room, but one thing bothered her enough to force the question out of her.

"Who does the grocery shopping if none of you can leave?"

"Dennis does it," Honorine answered.

"What about Agnes?"

"Agnes is busy enough with her duties here. Besides, Dennis likes doing it. Agnes hates going into town. People have…teased her in the past."

"About…?"

"About her being dumb, of course."

"And church?"

"We have an understanding with Father Louis. He comes out at the beginning of the month and holds Mass for us in our chapel."

By "understanding," Jemma assumed Honorine meant the family paid him. Those questions answered, she resumed her focus on her meal, doing her best to tune out the low buzz of their conversation.

After Honorine excused everyone, Jemma retreated upstairs, with Russell close on her heels. She stopped on the landing, looking at the framed family portraits on the wall. "Are any of these of my mother?" she asked Russell.

"No."

"Why?"

This was the first time she'd really studied him. She imagined his good looks twenty, thirty years ago, which even now held on with a steely grip. If Honorine was to be believed, he, like the rest of them, hadn't left the property in nearly three decades. Since Jemma had arrived, none of them had gone anywhere off the grounds. Not once. But holding on to a healthy dose of skepticism about what her employer had told her allowed her to imagine a way out of this mess.

"My mother was very angry with my sister for what she did."

"For the curse," Jemma whispered. "But why did she curse you?"

"Apparently she hated us."

"Why?"

He rocked back on his heels, hands in his pockets. "You're asking about ancient history. It's been years since I thought about why Inès did any of what she did. What matters now is that it's done."

Something about his offhand reply convinced Jemma that he had actually given a great deal of thought to why his sister had cursed them.

"But someone has to know. Your mother, maybe."

" Your grandmother, you mean?"

"So there are no pictures of my mother here at all? Not even a small one?"

He shook his head.

"But you knew her. What did she look like?"

An uncomfortable stretch of silence passed, and Jemma looked away from Russell's unblinking stare. "My sister…was very beautiful. She looked a little like Lena Horne. We've seen her in the magazines, you know, and on the television once or twice." A faraway look glazed his eyes for a moment before he cleared his throat. "Even so, Inès was very troubled."

Judging by this family, Jemma wasn't at all surprised to hear that.

"My sister saw things, could feel things."

"Saw things?"

"Ghosts," Russell whispered.

—

JEMMA STOOD AT THE WINDOW, looking out over the grounds. The half-moon gave off just enough light to make out the croquet pitch. A narrow path led from there to a small building a dozen yards away. Maybe that was the chapel.

The house was quiet at one in the morning. Jemma had been in her room since after dinner. Someone had knocked around ten o'clock, but she'd pretended to be asleep.

According to Russell, her mother had seen ghosts, just like Jemma. The tiny kernel of doubt that she actually was a Duchon seemed to shrink further with each scrap of information she gathered. Was it passed down, then, seeing ghosts? She'd asked him if he'd ever seen them, and her uncle had shaken his head, his voice rising from its usual low rumble into a harsh denial.

What she wanted more than anything else right now was to know what her mother had looked like. Was she even prettier than that horrid Simone? There had to be a picture here somewhere. Jemma found it hard to believe that even Honorine could be as heartless as to remove all evidence of Inès's existence.

Movement outside of the window caught Jemma's eye. Two people had emerged from the back of the house. At first, her breath caught; she was afraid ghosts were walking the grounds. But even in the dimness, she recognized their movements. Fosette and Laurence. When Fosette turned back, Jemma moved aside, her heartbeat quick and erratic. Surely her cousin had seen the drapes twitch. When Jemma chanced another look, the two of them continued across the lawn, disappearing off the path opposite the chapel into thick shrubbery.

Where were they going at such a late hour?

This house was full of mysteries.

Jemma had no idea where they'd gone or for what purpose. The only thing she knew for sure was that they couldn't have gone far.

Tomorrow, she'd walk the property, find out just how much leash she had.