Maybe it had been Landry’s influence. He’d loved Big Swamp. Had spent part of his childhood in a community not too far from here. Being here made her feel closer to him.
“Who’d have ever thought you’d get me out on the bayou in a boat, all by myself, just to get to work?” she countered, as she took her seat and started the engine. “But never say never, right?”
“Being a Doucet, I guess this really wouldn’t be normal for you, would it?” he said, setting down the bowls of food in the bottom of the boat.
“Being a Doucet, nothing’s normal. We’re an … I guess the best way you can put it is an unusual family. Seven girls … My poor daddy. I know he wanted a son, but he turned out to be quite prodigious in the daughter department. And at times I think it simply overwhelmed him. Then he held out such high hopes for a grandson when I was pregnant, and got another girl.”
“Whom he loves, I’m sure,” Justin said, sitting back as the thrum of the boat’s engine settled into a gentle cadence while they wound their way through Big Swamp trees.
“He adores her. In fact, Daddy’s retired now—he was an anesthesiologist—and he’s the one who watches Leonie most of the time. Spoils her rotten. But I do hope that someday one of my sisters gives him a grandson.”
“Leonie’s his only grandchild?”
“So far. I’m the only one who’s married. My sisters Sabine and Delphine, twins, are dedicated doctors, and Magnolia’s a legal medical investigator. Then there are Ghislaine, Lisette and Acadia, all of them in various stages of their medical education or careers.” She smiled. “We’re close in age. My mother didn’t want to interrupt her medical career for too long, so she popped us all out pretty quickly, about a year apart. And so far I’m the only one to take the marriage plunge. But it’s Daddy’s biggest fear that the rest of them will fall in love at the same time and he’ll have to spring for six weddings in rapid succession.”
“I can’t even imagine having that many brothers or sisters,” he said.
“Eula never really told me much about your family situation.”
“There wasn’t much to tell. I was an only child. Didn’t come from Big Swamp, although my father did, obviously, as Eula was his mother. But my grandfather took my dad out of here when he left my grandmother to seek fame and fortune or whatever it is he wanted to do, and never looked back. He pretty much poisoned my dad to Big Swamp, and the people who lived here. Including my grandmother. Anyway, my parents raised me in New Orleans, then after they were killed—plane crash—I ended up with my grandmother in the place where my dad had refused to go.”
“And you forever hated it here?”
“That’s what she told you?”
“Not in so many words, but it makes sense. You left here when you were a kid, hardly ever came back to see her. Probably under your father’s influence in some remote way. It only stands to reason that you didn’t want to be here, given the history. Still don’t, I suppose.” She steered around a clump of low-hanging moss, then slowed down as a meandering nutria swam by the boat, not at all concerned about being disturbed. It was his domain, she supposed, and he was simply asserting his place in it.
“Still don’t on a permanent basis, but I’ve been back plenty of times to visit my grandmother,” he said, but without much conviction in his voice. “Look, earlier when you said we need to talk … you’re right. I really do want to sit down and talk to you about what I’m going to do here to take care of these people.”
“Why do you care?” she asked as she veered to the left and puttered her way up a shallow inlet.
“Because my grandmother cared.”
“Then that leads me to the obvious question.”
“Let me save you the trouble of asking. The reason I didn’t move back here, not even to New Orleans, to be closer is … complicated, and I’m not even sure I can explain it to myself, let alone someone else. It’s just the way things were with me. I ended up in Chicago, liked it and stayed. And, yes, I did have opportunities here. Could have gone to New Hope, actually. But coming back here, being so close …” He shrugged. “I like my practice, like Chicago. Like the life I have there.”
“And you were afraid that coming back to Big Swamp, even for visits, would overwhelm you with all kinds of guilty feelings.”
She slowed the boat alongside a rickety old dock, then pointed to a shanty about two hundred feet off the water. It was wooden, painted red, with blue shutters. All the paint chipped and faded. In the yard lay three good-size alligators, looking lazy and not particularly interested in the meddlers coming around to bother them.
“Or I was afraid that coming back to Big Swamp would overwhelm me with all kinds of responsibilities I can’t handle. Which is turning out to be the case.”
“Look, I’m not working tomorrow evening. If you can get to town, come by the house for dinner, around seven. Not sure you’ll want to travel these parts at night to get home, so you’re invited to stay. It’ll be at my parents’ house, by the way. I don’t live with them, but I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to extend their hospitality. That is, if you make it through the gators tonight.”
“And just how am I supposed to do that?”
“Very carefully,” she said, handing him one of his bowls of food. “They have short legs, so I think you’ll be able to outrun them.” She laughed. “But they do have that one fast burst of energy at the start, so if you don’t make it to dinner tomorrow night, I’ll know what happened.”
AS THE DAY dragged on, Justin found himself more and more anxious to go to town and have dinner with Mellette and her family. It was a kind invitation, and the idea of being around real medical people again excited him because the longer he was away from his practice the more he missed it. The most appealing part of the evening, though, was the prospect of getting to know Mellette. Even though she’d made it perfectly clear she wasn’t ready to move on from her husband.
All that was fine with him, as there was no time in his life for a relationship outside a professional one. He had too much ambition wrapped up in his fast rise to where he was, and that was important to him. Maybe the most important thing. Not that he had anything in mind for Mellette other than trying to convince her to work in Big Swamp full time. Because he didn’t. She was his means to an end—he hoped. The person who could put things right for a lot of people. Himself included.
And he’d done some predawn soul-searching on just how to accomplish what he needed. Tried coming up with an incentive that would work for everyone involved, but especially for Mellette, because he wanted to make this offer something that would benefit her in ways that mattered. So by the time dawn began to awaken the bayou, and all the otters and raccoons outside were taking their first morning stretches, he was fairly certain he’d hit upon the perfect plan.
Although he wasn’t convinced enough to be smug about it, since he was fully aware that what he was about to offer Mellette could well fly in the face of her close-knit family and cause some blaring divisions there. Big life changes had a way of making that happen—something he knew from firsthand experience.
Still, he was keeping his fingers crossed that this plan would work out; the more he thought about it, the more he knew Mellette was his only strong answer. And a strong answer was the only thing that could work, owing to all the obstacles Big Swamp presented.
“I’m working on the book,” Justin told his literary agent in a just-after-dawn phone call. “But I’m pretty busy here, taking care of all my grandmother’s