“I was kidding Eden, you don’t have to prove anything, but you’ll have to excuse me if I seem a little skeptical. I mean something like that is hard to believe, let alone wrap my head around, but you have never given me a reason to believe you’d lie. I have no choice but to give you the benefit of the doubt—right?”
“Right,” I said, letting my anger defuse as the smile slid across my face. He still wanted me, hadn’t said anything about breaking up, much to my heartfelt relief.
Chapter Nine
Feeling and Intuition
The first part of New Orleans we decided to visit was nothing like what I’d envisioned. For an area that was established in the early 1700s, it had aged gracefully. The neighborhood had its French charms, but I was a fool to think that a place influenced by international trade for so long wouldn’t have flavors from other regions of the world. French, Spanish, Italian, African, and Irish influences were all alive and kicking in the melting pot known as the French Quarter, and that was just a few of the cultures I’d noticed. I didn’t get any glares of animosity from anyone here like I had at the gas station the day before. No one here seemed to give two craps that I was multi-racial or that I was with Drew, who wasn’t.
“I can’t get over how wide this street is, and look at those red and yellow streetcars! I feel like I just stepped into an era past,” I said, buzzing with excitement.
“I bet you, this street is crammed full during Mardi Gras. According to this,” Drew said as he read the tourist pamphlet, “Canal Street was actually like a line that separated the French and Spanish who first settled the French Quarter back in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Shortly after that, the newer American neighborhoods were added to the cultural areas this street kept segregated. But the cool part is that Canal Street itself was seen as neutral ground. Everyone would come here to shop, use transportation services, conduct business, or just mingle. That’s what I call progress in the face of diversity.”
“My understanding is that this is the center of New Orleans, Drew. So chances are your assumption is right.”
Drew was taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of the French Quarter as I contemplated how I was going to tell him that we were going to see a fortune-teller—a tarot reader—if I decided to tell him at all. I’d done a fair amount of research before we’d left Oklahoma and felt that Madame Clarisse was the genuine article where fortune-tellers were concerned.
“I love the architecture here,” Drew said in awe, and pulled me away from my inner thoughts. “Have you noticed that most of the buildings are made of stone? They’re so close together and the colors, so many different colors! Most of them have flat roofs. If we had flat roofs in Oklahoma the first good snowstorm would make them cave in under the weight.”
I laughed because I found his comparison funny. “Well then, I guess it’s good that snow is not a thing down here then, huh?”
We meandered down the center of Canal Street in between the streetcar tracks. It wasn’t long before we were told by a police officer to take our stroll to the sidewalk because where we were wasn’t a safe place to be walking in the first place. We passed many buildings, some big some small until we came to a narrow street. I pointed at the blue street sign nestled between two traffic lights. In white writing, it said Bourbon Street. I pulled him past the Drugstore on the corner to our left and down the one-way street that could have passed as a large alley. The sidewalks were made of red brick, and the gutters lining the rough, bumpy road were made from slabs of stone. It was a testament to just how old this section of town really was. The second story levels and up of these buildings had black balconies that looked like they were crafted from iron or some other equally strong metal.
“Where are we going, Eden?”
“You’ll see,” was all I said.
It was amazing to me how fast the scenery changed from Canal Street in the space of just a couple blocks down the one-way side of Bourbon Street. There were no traffic lights, and the cross streets were just as narrow, if not more so than Bourbon was. The cross-sections had square slabs of concrete rather than the run down asphalt of the roads themselves. One thing in particular that caught my attention was the street signs. Rather than large blue signs with blocky white writing, these were much smaller black signs with white borders, and the street name scrolled on them in fancy white lettering. Right above the largely printed street name was a white box that said RUE. I wondered if that was French for street or perhaps avenue.
“Seriously, Eden, where are you dragging me to?” This time Drew had a more demanding quality in his voice than before. I glanced back at him, and he widened his eyes then shrugged in question as we bustled along the moisture slicked brick of the sidewalks. I sighed and looked ahead again.
“Hopefully, it’s somewhere where I can get some answers to a question or two, Drew.”
“Answers to whether or not your biological father’s family had something to do with your mother’s death—those kinds of questions?”
That had me stopping in my tracks, and I slowly turned to face him almost four blocks into our journey down Bourbon Street. “So, I guess you heard more than I thought you had when I
