a couple of weeks here. Six at the most. Maybe two months. Then he would be on the road again, seeing the country, doing odd jobs. What did he have to offer a single mom who should be looking for someone to take care of her?
Of course, care didn’t mean cash. It didn’t necessarily mean a life of ease. No one really got it easy. Life was about how a person handled the tough times. For his family, taking care meant being around when times were tough. His father hadn’t had money most of the time, but he’d had a hand his mother could hold.
“That’s a good thing because my mom would throw a fit if she even thought you were interested in her,” Cal said, seeming to get his appetite back. “Besides, she’s going to have her hands full. They read the will earlier today and it turns out Old Irene didn’t leave that decaying mansion of hers to the cat sanctuary like she said she would.”
“Mom’s been trying to get that place condemned for years,” Angie explained. “I think it’s beautiful, but Mom thinks it’s an eyesore. Personally, I think Mom just wants the land. It backs up to our property and has way better water access. The rumor is back during Prohibition, the Guidrys were bootleggers and there’s secret rooms all over the place. No one’s been in it for years except Irene and her family, and from what Sera’s told me, a whole lot of the place is boarded up. Who did she give it to? Tell me she left it to the historical society. Mom’s the head and she’ll find a way to snap it up. She might be able to get it for cheap.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Cal replied. “That house has been in their family for a hundred and fifty years. They weren’t always middle class. Mom forgets that from time to time.”
“Aunt Celeste wasn’t always rich. She forgets that, too.” His aunt could be kind to him, but he didn’t like how she talked about Seraphina’s family. It wasn’t his place to correct her, though, since he barely knew the woman.
“Yes, she likes to forget that entirely.” Cal nodded his way. “She doesn’t ever mention that when she met our dad, she was a stewardess.”
“Flight attendant,” Angie corrected. “They’re called flight attendants these days.”
“Well, in those days she was a stewardess and she had an affair with a businessman who married her when she got pregnant with me, so she was merely luckier than Sera,” Cal pointed out. “Don’t tell her I know that, by the way. She always tries to tell me I was a preemie. Grandmother Beaumont slipped that story in whenever she wanted to let me know I was half poor. Like that came in my DNA or something. You know, now that I think about it, Sera’s the lucky one since she’s the new owner of Guidry Place, all the land, and according to whoever Josette was talking to this morning, a crate of Confederate gold.”
Angie rolled her eyes. “You listened to the rumor mill? You know by the time it gets to anyone willing to talk to that mean girl that it’s likely all crap.”
He shrugged slightly. “Yeah, there was also something about a bunch of dead bodies and having to hide Irene’s serial killer past in order to take possession of the house, but I just figured it had already gone through Gene.”
Papillon was an odd place. “So Sera’s inheriting a mansion?”
“It’s a mansion in name only,” Angie explained. “It was a mansion back at the turn of the twentieth century. Sometime in the fifties, most of the family moved into town and bought the house Delphine and Sera still live in. They founded the restaurant, but Irene wasn’t interested in it so she took care of the ancestral home. When the grandparents passed, they left Sera’s side of the family the restaurant and Irene got the old property. Everyone assumed she would sell it off at some point or leave it to charity. I’m surprised she bequeathed it all to Seraphina.”
“Sera’s the only one who ever gave that old woman a moment of her time,” Cal replied. “I’m not all that surprised.”
“I wonder if that’s why she did it.” Angie pushed her chair back. “I’ve got to go change shoes. I’m not going to be the one to tell Mother that Seraphina is now our neighbor. She can find that out on her own. I