At least maybe she could sleep. The orgasm had lessened some of the tension in her body. Drying off with a towel around Ciara was always a game. It started out with playful snaps and tussles and ended up with a full fledge tug of war. “Hey! You’re feeling good, aren’t you?” Naked, she padded into her room and found a t-shirt to wear to bed. A buzzing from her purse startled both her and the dog. Making a dive for it, she wondered if it was Harley or Tammany or one of the other girls. They were the only ones who ever called – except Revel. He checked oh her regularly. Not taking time to check the caller ID, she just answered. “Hello?” Static. “Hello?”
“Savannah?”
She would have recognized his voice anywhere. After all, she had heard it often enough in her dreams. “Patrick?” she whispered hoarsely. She strained to hear more. “Patrick, Honey – where are you?”
“Savannah, Baby. It’s been so long. I’m coming home, Savannah. Am I welcome?”
“Yes, of course. I want you home.” The connection was so poor. “Patrick can you hear me? Where are you?” She was almost shouting. “Answer me,” she pleased. And there was nothing. The line went dead. Pulling the phone away from her ear, she stared at it. Was this real? Was she going crazy?
Chapter Nine
Savannah was completely unnerved by the email and the phone call. The only thing she could think to do was call Revel. And she would. And he would come to see her. She had no doubt of that. Revel had been so attentive and so faithful. Since she had become pregnant, he had proposed three times. There were even flowers sitting on her hall table and the card next to them said, “Marry me. You don’t have to do this alone.”
The first time he had asked her to marry him; she had just sat at him and stared. He loved her because he loved Patrick, she knew that. But marry her? “I know you don’t have insurance, and you’ve used all of Patrick’s money and your money trying to get pregnant. Let me take care of you. Patrick charged me with the task of caring for the most precious thing in his world – and I take that seriously.”
“But you don’t love me,” she had protested.
“I do love you, as a friend,” he had qualified. “The woman who owns my heart doesn’t want me. I don’t know if she ever will. So for now, let me take care of you and Patrick’s baby.”
He had almost persuaded her, but she couldn’t do it. She loved Patrick – for always and forever and she could never wear someone else’s name – not even to make it easier on herself. But she did need to talk to him.
Today, however, she had something else to take care of. She was going to Carville. Carville was located on the banks of the Mississippi about sixteen miles south of Baton Rouge. Through the years she had read countless accounts of those who had lived their lives behind the gates of the only leper colony in the continental United States.
It had begun in 1894 when a New Orleans physician and several Sisters of Charity had smuggled a few patients with leprosy down the river on a coal barge to the rundown Indian Camp Plantation. Local residents would have been vehemently opposed to the idea, but the nuns had purchased the property and spread the word that they had plans to start an ostrich farm.
When they had climbed ashore, they found the main house falling down and home to snakes and rats and weeds. It was in no shape to house patients, so they and the staff lived in former slave quarters until extensive repairs could be completed. The Daughters of Charity stayed on and devoted their lives to care for people with a disease so misunderstood and feared that nobody knew the cause, how to treat it or if there would ever be a cure. And they did this for y a hundred dollars a year.
In 1916, Congress passed a law that put Carville under the US Public Health Department, but the Daughters of Charity stayed on. Savannah couldn’t help but wonder what kind of life her mother and father had there – and today, perhaps she would find out. So many possible stories had come to mind. Were they dead? Were they buried there? Did she have any living relatives? Lord, she even wondered what her last name was. Savannah, she had been told, was given to her by her mother. But Doucet had been chosen arbitrarily by her first foster parent when she was only weeks old.
She had made up stories in her mind about how they had lived, what they ate, what they had looked like and how much they had missed her after she had been given away. Not too long ago she had found out something that had given her pause. She had known that marriages between patients had been discouraged, but still it happened. And she knew that children born to these patients had to be placed in foster care. What she hadn’t known was that it could have been possible for her to visit her parents. Some children, even though they were in orphanages or foster care, were allowed to come on Sundays and visit through the fence. So why hadn’t she been allowed to do that? Something else had kept them apart – unless they just hadn’t wanted her, but Savannah had rejected that idea. She wanted to be wanted – even by parents she would never meet. Patrick had wanted her and for that she would always be thankful.
For over a hundred years, it was the place of last resort and little hope for those that suffered with the disease. Things were different now, after
