The Legacy by Shirley Jump Read Free Book Online Page B

bayou. Then I can go to work.”
    Marjo looked at Paul, wanting him to take her side so she could get Gabriel home and make her way over to the funeral home.
    “Take one or two more, Gabriel, then do as your sister says.” Paul turned to Marjo. “It’ll only take a second.”
    Gabriel smiled again, then turned the camera on Paul, snapping the photo before Paul could voice a protest. Then her brother wheeled around and framed Marjo in the lens, depressing the button again.
    “Gabriel,” she repeated, her voice a warning.
    Her younger brother let out a sigh, then reluctantly returned the camera to its owner. “Can we do it again?”
    “Sure. Whenever your sister says it’s okay.” Paul sent a glance Marjo’s way, and Gabriel turned his hopeful eyes on her. Two against one.
    “All right,” Marjo said. “But only if you’ve finished your chores and—”
    Gabriel ran up and gave her a hug, his joy apparent in the tight squeeze and big smile. “I will.” Then he broke away just as quickly. “’Bye, Paul! I gotta go. See you soon!”
    Gabriel dashed away, faster than Marjo had ever seen him move before.
    “He’s a great kid,” Paul said. “So enthusiastic and friendly.”
    “Thanks.” She lingered a moment longer, feeling she should say something else. A crazy thought. All she wanted to do was to put as much distance between herself and Paul Clermont as possible.
    Dinner last night had actually been fun, when they weren’t sparring like Tyson and Holyfield. Maybe the tension came from their opposing views on the opera house, but every time she looked at Paul Clermont, he ignited a spark inside her that she’d thought had long ago gone out. “Well, I have to get to work,” she said, but her feet didn’t move.
    “Where do you work? There aren’t very many businesses around here.”
    “The Savoy Funeral Home. If you follow the road through town and up to the left, you’ll see it over by the church and the cemetery. It’s been in my family forever.” She shrugged. “Guess I just followed family tradition.”
    “Do you do the embalming?”
    It was a natural question, and one she’d been asked a hundred times before. “Not so much now. I’m the funeral director so I do most of the planning and oversee the services. Henry Roy is our undertaker and he does the embalming. Gabriel helps him. I learned how to embalm, even did it for a while when I was younger, then I got my degree in funeral administration. I mean, it was the family business, we just grew up with it. It was natural tohelp out. I remember when Gabriel and I were little, we’d help dress the bodies.”
    “Wasn’t that…upsetting?”
    “It was at first,” she admitted, and fell into step beside Paul as he began to walk along the edge of the water. “But, down here especially, you learn that death is simply part of life. There are a hundred different Cajun superstitions around death, but by and large, we see it simply as part of the cycle.”
    “Like the bayou,” he said, pointing toward the olive-green water, teeming with life, yet edged by dead trees that hadn’t been able to survive along the crowded banks. Together, life and death created a picture of beauty.
    “Yes.”
    “So, was funeral work your life’s ambition?”
    “No, not even close,” she said, laughing, enjoying this respite from a day that had been filled with the very detail work she hated. “When I was a kid, I had this crazy idea that I could be a singer. My mother took me to a professional teacher in Lafayette for years, and for a while, I performed locally.”
    “So why didn’t you do it professionally?”
    “It was just impractical. I had…” She glanced back in the direction that Gabriel had gone. “Responsibilities.”
    Paul looked at Marjo and saw the woman beside him with new eyes. Apparently there was a lot more to her than he had thought at first glance.
    That didn’t mean he was considering a truce,maybe more of a ceasefire as they walked