City of Masks by Daniel Hecht Read Free Book Online Page B

Maybe not much — everyone was constituted differently in those matters. She promised to be good.

5
     
    L ILA WARREN'S EYES WIDENED . "Oh, I don't think so. I can't go back. No, I really don't think I can go into that house again."
    "Even in the middle of the day? Even if I'm with you?"
    "You have to understand, I'm . . . i t has upset me badly. Very badly. It's been over three months now, I thought maybe I'd be getting over it, but I'm not. It's only getting . . . worse." Lila's speech carried only a moderate accent of the Deep South, the stretched and rounded vowels.
    They were talking across a low table and a pot of tea in the second-floor sitting room of Lila Beauforte Warren's house, on the northern end of New Orleans. From the windows, Cree could see over the grassy slope of the levee to the scattered trees of a shoreline park, and then to the vast flat blue of Lake Ponchartrain. The border between water and sky was straight as a ruled line and completely empty.
    Lila's house was not one of the lavishly ostentatious piles Cree had passed as she drove here in her rental car, but rather a contemporary, somewhat smaller copy of a Greek-revival plantation house. And that described Lila herself, Cree thought: a contemporary, miniaturized version of a Southern businessman's wife. The sense was reinforced by the minute watercolors hung here and there, neatly framed, that Lila admitted were her own. The hand-sized floral still lifes were tiny and unobtrusive, yet their rich hues and slightly ominous darker tints suggested that a great deal of feeling had been compressed to fit within those little frames.
    Perhaps Lila's diminution came from her current uneasiness. She was clearly struggling to cope with some recent, troubling experience. But there was also something habitual there, more deeply rooted. She had obviously lived with some kind of uncertainty and diminished sense of herself for a long time. Cree could see it in the rounded hunch of her plump shoulders, her small, uncertain hands, the tentative way she set the tray on the table and then rearranged the teapot and cups as if unsure she had put them in just the right places. Her eyebrows were uneven: One of them tilted up slightly at the center, enough to suggest a hint of alarm or doubtfulness.
    And yet she was still rather pretty, Cree thought. She had shoulder-length, graying-blond hair that seemed to rebel against the controlled hairdo she'd chosen, a face with full lips and a generous but nicely upturned nose. Her knee-length blue knit dress, her makeup, the simple pearl necklace and earrings - all were good matches for her natural coloring. From the photos on the mantel, Cree could see that though she'd always tended toward the plump, she was one of those women who carry their weight mainly in bust and hips, retaining an enviably narrow waist.
    The tea had had time to steep, and now Lila Warren poured a wavering stream into two fine china cups.
    "Mrs. Warren - "
    "Please call me Lila. I hate formalities. If we're going to get to know each other as well as you say we'll have to, we might as well start with that. Lemon? Sugar? I can get some milk if you'd prefer — how thoughtless of me not to have - "
    "Lemon is fine, thank you. Lila, this is a lovely house. If your experience has been so upsetting, why do you still want to move back into Beauforte House?"
    Lila sat with her cup hovering, saucer held beneath it. "That's a very good question. And it's one my brother has asked. He would be quite happy to sell the house. Before this all happened, I just thought it would be good to keep it as the family center, our historic home. My children all have the Beauforte middle name, there's a lot of family pride there.
    My youngest son just went off to college last fall, my last baby out of the nest, and I began to think, you know? About what a family is. About what it means to have a place where you all know it's home? Where everyone comes back to? I would very much like