But all through lunch, it’s like I’m not really there. I’m hovering above myself, watching some other girl eat my food, while I can only wonder what it tastes like. I hear myself say things, but I couldn’t tell you what. And I manage to make my arms and legs work, but I couldn’t tell you how.
Because the whole time, I keep thinking about those eyes.
Dempsey Fontenot’s eyes.
Zale’s eyes.
On the ride back down toward La Cachette, I finally ask.
“Why didn’t people like Dempsey Fontenot? I mean before.”
Honey sighs, and at first, I think she isn’t going to answer me. But then she does.
“There were stories. That’s all it takes, sometimes, to get people riled up.”
“What kind of stories?”
“It’s been a long time, Grey.” Honey slows the boat so we can hear each other better. “But people said he could . . . do things.”
“Everybody down here can do things.”
“What they said Dempsey Fontenot could do was beyond anything we’d ever seen.”
“What do you mean?” I press.
She sighs again. And hesitates. “They said he had the power of the sea and the sky. That he could bring storms. Lightning and rain. Hail.”
“Was it true?” I ask. It sounds so unbelievable.
Or at least it would in Little Rock.
“I imagine there might have been some truth in it,” Honey says.
“And people didn’t like that?”
“Even in La Cachette, there are things beyond imagining. That kind of power frightened folks.”
“Why?”
Honey shrugs. “People fear what they don’t understand. That’s human nature.” She glances at me, then she shifts her attention back to the water again. “He didn’t come to town much, but when he did, he made people uncomfortable. That was the real truth of it, Grey. He had these strange eyes. He made people nervous, the way he watched them. And that was enough to put folks on edge whenever he came around.”
“Did he have a family?”
Honey nods. “I knew his mama and daddy a little. They were bayou folk. Good people. Kept to themselves. But they both passed on a lot of years before that business with Ember and Orli.”
“Did he have anyone else?”
“What does it matter?” Honey asks. “He’s been gone a long time now.”
I’m trying to make sense of that photo. Those familiar eyes.
“What about a wife?”
“Not that I knew of.” Honey keeps her focus on the river.
“Kids?”
She shakes her head. “Let it go, Grey. No sense in dragging all that hurt up.”
Honey slows the boat to a crawl as we creep out of the bayou and skirt along the edge of the river toward the dock.
“You don’t believe Dempsey Fontenot killed Ember and Orli,” I say. She’d told me as much on my first afternoon home. Hadn’t she? Why hadn’t I paid more attention?
“I never believed he did. No.” Honey pauses for a second as the waves from a passing tug rock our tiny boat. I listen to them slap against the muddy shoreline. “And he didn’t kill Elora, either, if that’s what you’re really wondering.”
“Is that what you think?” I ask her. “Or what you know?”
She motions for me to toss her the docking rope. “That’s what I know.”
Once we get the boat tied up, Honey sends Bernadette home and asks me to watch the store for the rest of the afternoon, so she can go lie down. She says the heat is getting to her. Making her light-headed. But Honey’s lived here her whole life. She doesn’t notice the heat. I’ve never even seen her break a sweat.
I wander into the kitchen for a glass of water, but I end up trapped by my mother’s haunted eyes. I can’t stop thinking about them lately.
Her green eyes.
My green eyes.
Zale’s blue ones. Like ice on fire. And Dempsey Fontenot’s. Staring out at me from that newspaper article.
I spend the rest of the day waiting on customers and trying to read The Tempest. But I don’t get anywhere. The story just doesn’t hold my interest.
How could it?
Prospero’s magic island has nothing on La Cachette.
Honey makes smoked sausage and corn bread for dinner, and she says she’s feeling better. But she keeps looking at me like there’s something she wants to say. Or something she wants to ask. She never gets around to it, though. The two of us spend the whole meal treading silence like deep water.