'How I wish she hadn't,' Gladys Tate spit, her hating eyes trying to wish me into extinction.
'Yes, but she did,' Beau continued, undaunted by her venom. 'For better or for worse, your son offered to make a home for Ruby and Pearl.'
'It was for worse. Look at where he is now,' she said. Ice water trickled down my spine.
'As you know,' Beau said softly, patiently, 'theirs was not a true marriage. Time passed. I grew up and realized my errors, but it was too late. In the interim, I renewed my relationship with Ruby's twin sister, who I thought had matured, too. I was mistaken about that, but that's another story.'
Gladys smirked.
'Your son knew how much Ruby and I still eared for each other, and he knew Pearl was our child, my child. He was a good man and he wanted Ruby to be happy.'
'And she took advantage of that goodness,' Gladys accused, stabbing the air between us with her long forefinger.
'No, Mother Tate, I—'
'Don't sit there and try to deny what you did to my son.' Her lips trembled. 'My son,' she moaned. 'Once, I was the apple of his eye. The sun rose and fell on my happiness, not yours. Even when you were enchanting him here in the bayou, he would love to sit and talk with me, love to be with me. We had a remarkable relationship and a remarkable love between us,' she said. 'But you were relentless and you charmed him away from me,' she charged, and I realized there was no hate such as that born out of love betrayed. This was why her brain was screaming out for revenge.
'I didn't do those things, Mother Tate,' I said quietly. 'I tried to discourage our relationship. I even told him the truth about us,' I said.
'Yes, you did and viciously drove a wedge between him and me. He knew that I wasn't his real mother. Don't you think that changed things?'
'I didn't want to tell him. It wasn't my place to tell him,' I cried, recalling Grandmere Catherine's warnings about causing any sort of split between a Cajun mother and her child. 'But you can't build a house of love on a foundation of lies. You and your husband should have been the ones to tell him the truth.'
She winced. 'What truth? I was his mother until you came along. He loved me,' she whined. 'That was all the truth we needed . . . love.'
A pall fell among us for a moment. Gladys sucked in her anger and closed her eyes.
Beau decided to proceed. 'Your son, realizing the love between Ruby and myself, agreed to help us be together. When Gisselle became seriously ill, he volunteered to take her in and pretend she was Ruby so that Ruby could become Gisselle and we could be man and wife.'
She opened her eyes and laughed in a way that chilled my blood. 'I know all that, but I also know he had little choice. She probably threatened to tell the world he wasn't my son,' she said, her flinty eyes aimed at me.
'I would never. . .'
'You'd say anything now, so don't try,' she advised.
'Madame,' Beau said, stepping forward. 'What's done is done. Paul did help. He intended for us to live with our daughter and be happy. What you're doing now is defeating what Paul himself tried to accomplish.'
She stared up at Beau for a moment, and as she did so, the gossamer strands of sanity seemed to shred before they snapped behind her eyes. 'My poor granddaughter has no parents now. Her mother was buried and her father will be interred beside her.'
'Madame Tate, why force us to go to court over this and put everyone through the misery again? Surely you want peace and quiet at this point, and your family—'
She turned her dark, blistering eyes toward Paul's portrait, and those eyes softened. 'I'm doing this for my son,' she said, gazing up at him with more than a mother's love. 'Look how he smiles, how beautiful he is and how happy he is. Pearl will grow up here, under that portrait. At least he'll have that. You,' she said, pointing her long, thin finger at me again, 'took everything else from him, even his life.'
Beau looked at me desperately and then turned back to her. 'Madame Tate,' he said, 'if it's a matter of the inheritance, we're prepared to sign any document.'
'What?' She sprang up. 'You think this is all a matter of money? Money? My son is dead.' She pulled up her shoulders and pursed her lips. 'This discussion is over. I want you out' of my house and out of our lives.'
'You won't succeed with this. A judge—'
'I have lawyers. Talk to them.' She smiled at me so coldly, it made my blood curdle. 'You put on your sister's face and body and you crawled into her heart. Now live there,' she cursed, and left the room.
Right down to my feet, I ached, and my heart became a hollow ball shooting pains through my chest. 'Beau!'
'Let's go,' he said, shaking his head. 'She's gone mad. The judge will realize that. Come on, Ruby.' He reached for me. I felt like I floated to my feet.
Just before we left the room, I gazed back at Paul's portrait. His expression of satisfaction put a darkness in my heart that a thousand days of sunshine couldn't nudge away.
After the funeral drive back to New Orleans, I collapsed with emotional exhaustion and slept into the late morning. Beau woke me to tell me Monsieur Polk had just called.
'And?' I sat up quickly, my heart pounding.
'I'm afraid it's not good news. The experts tell him everything is identical with identical twins, blood type, even organ size. The doctor who treated Gisselle doesn't think anything would show in an X-ray. We can't rely on the medical data to clearly establish identities.
