'Mother Tate, I'm sorry about Paul. I . . . We'll come right out and help find him.'
'Help find him.' She laughed a chilling laugh. 'I'd rather ask the devil for help. I just want you to know that I know why my son is so brokenhearted and I will not sit by and let him suffer without you suffering twice as much.'
'But . . .'
The phone went dead. I sat there, my heart going thump, thump, thump, my mind reeling. I felt as if I were in a pirogue that had been caught in a current and was spinning furiously. The room did twirl. I closed my eyes and moaned and the phone fell from my hand and bounced on the floor. Beau was at my side to catch me as I started to lean too far.
'What is it? Ruby!' He turned and shouted for Sally. 'Hurry, bring me a cold, wet washcloth,' he ordered. He put his arm around me and knelt down. My eyes fluttered open. 'What happened? Who was on the phone, Ruby?'
'It was Paul's mother, Gladys,' I gasped.
'What did she say?'
'She said Paul's disappeared. He went into the swamps last night and still hasn't returned. Oh, Beau,' I moaned.
Sally came running with the cloth. He took it from her and put it on my head.
'Just relax. She'll be all right now, Sally.
I took some deep breaths and felt the blood returning to my cheeks.
'Paul's disappeared? That's what she said?'
'Yes, Beau. But she said more. She said she knew about us, knew what we had done. Paul told her every-thing. I never knew he had, but now that I think of the way she glared at me at the funeral . . .' I sat up. 'She never liked me, Beau.' I gazed into his wide eyes. 'Oh, Beau, she threatened me.'
'What? Threatened. How?'
'She said I would suffer twice as much as Paul's suffered.'
He shook his head. 'She's just hysterical right now. Paul's got them all in a frenzy.'
'He went into the swamps, Beau, and he didn't come back. I want to go right out there and help find him. We must, Beau. We must.'
'I don't know what we can do. They must have all their workers looking.'
'Beau, please. If something should happen to him . . .'
'Ail right,' he relented. 'Let's change our clothes. You were right,' he said with an underlying current of bitterness in his voice, 'we shouldn't have involved him as much as we did. I jumped at the opportunity to make things easier for us, but I should have given it more thought.'
My legs trembled, but I followed him out and upstairs to change my clothes and tell Mrs. Ferrier we would be leaving the house and might not return until very late or even the next day. Then we got into our car and drove through the night, making the trip in record time.
There were dozens of cars and pickup trucks along the driveway at Cypress Woods. As we pulled up to the house, I looked toward the dock and saw the torches being carried by men who were going in pirogues and motorboats to search for Paul. We could hear the shouts echoing over the bayou.
Inside the house Paul's sisters sat in the study, Toby looking as cold as a statue, her skin alabaster, and Jeanne twisting a silk handkerchief in her hands and gritting her teeth. They both looked up with surprise when we entered.
'What are you doing here?' Toby asked. From the expressions on their faces and their astonishment, I guessed that Gladys Tate hadn't told her daughters the truth. They still thought of me as Gisselle.
'We heard about Paul and came to see what we could do to help,' Beau said quickly.
'You could go down and join the search party, I suppose,' Toby said.
'Where's your mother?' I asked.
'She's upstairs in Paul's suite, lying down,' Jeanne said. 'The doctor was here, but she refused to take anything. She doesn't want to be asleep if . . . when . . . Her lips trembled and the tears rushed over her eyelids.
'Get hold of yourself,' Toby chastised. 'Mother needs us to be strong.'
'How do they know for sure that he went into the swamps? Maybe he's in some zydeco bar,' Beau said.
'First of all, my brother wouldn't go off to a bar the day after he buried his wife, and second, some of the workers saw him heading toward the dock,' Toby replied.
'And carrying a bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand,' Jeanne added mournfully.
A dead silence fell between us.
'I'm sure they'll find him,' Beau finally said.
Toby turned to him slowly and fixed her eyes on him in a cold glare. 'Have either of you ever been in the swamps? Do either of you know what it could be like? You make a turn and find yourself floating through overhanging vines and cypress branches and soon you forget how you got there and have no idea how to get out. It's a maze full of poisonous copperhead snakes, alligators, and snapping turtles, not to mention the insects and vermin.'
'It's not that bad,' I said.
'Oh really. Well then, march on out of here with your husband and join the search party,' Toby retorted with a bitterness that shot through my brain like a laser beam.
