fix these.” He reached the top step and moved to the rocker. It was beautifully done, just a bit worn. “I can refinish and repaint. You can get some new cushions for cheap and it’ll look good as new.”
“Really?” Sera asked, her eyes wide. “You can . . . I mean, that seems like a good idea. I will consider that. If I can sell the place furnished, that would be good. Well, except for the owls. I’ll probably lose the owls.”
He liked when she got distracted. She forgot to put up her walls, and she let him see a hint of the woman under her protective gear. She didn’t like owls. It was good to know. Luckily he wasn’t partial to owls. He glanced up and saw that the ceiling was painted a soft bluish green. Or it had been at one point in time. It was a pretty color, but odd for exterior paint. “Huh. I’ve seen a couple of porch ceilings painted like that around here. Is it a tradition?”
Sera looked up. “It’s called haint blue. It didn’t start here in Louisiana.”
“It’s a tradition among the Gullah,” Sylvie explained. “When they were brought over as slaves, they brought their traditions, too. They believed this color would hold off the haints, or haunts as you would call them. Painting your porch a color like this would protect the whole house. It started in South Carolina and Georgia, and now it’s kind of a Southern tradition. You’ll see it all over town. My momma tells the story to anyone who moves in. Don’t believe her. She gets a kickback from Gil at the hardware store.”
“Momma told me they stopped doing that,” Sera said with a frown.
“They never stop,” Sylvie replied with a shake of her head. “Those two are going to be the terror of the nursing home one day. Sorry, Harry, Sera’s mom and mine are kind of the bane of the town. My mother runs a successful salon and Delphine’s family has the best restaurant in Papillon, but they’re not happy unless one of them is convincing a tourist she’s a voodoo priestess who put a whammy on him and the other is charging fifty bucks to take it off.”
Sera had gone a nice shade of pink. “They like to think of themselves as entrepreneurs. Anyway, that’s why many started painting their porch ceilings blue. My aunt did it for the other reasons Southerners use this color. She swore it kept the wasps away. She said they would think it was more sky and not bother to stop here. They would keep flying.”
“Wouldn’t they notice the overhang?” Hallie asked, looking up. “I would think they’d try to fly up into the ceiling and get confused as to why the sky stopped there. I would be.”
He liked these women. They were fun. “Well, now they would think the sky is broken or maybe that the cracks in the paint are a wormhole or something,” he said. “But only if the wasp is good at astrophysics.”
Sera laughed, the sound magical to his ears. “I wouldn’t want to confuse the wasps.”
He stood beside her and looked up at the ceiling again. The color was quite beautiful, and he liked that there was tradition behind it. “I think I prefer the story about it keeping out ghosts. Maybe the ghost sees the color and thinks that’s the way to heaven. You know sometimes the sky isn’t as pretty as that color. It’s nice to have something beautiful to look at. Maybe it helps the ghosts find their way home.”
She was quiet for a moment and then she looked to him, a sheen of tears in her eyes. “I like that, too.” She sobered and he missed the emotion on her face. “I should get inside and get to work.”
He had to make a choice. His aunt wanted him to stay away from her, but she needed help. He wasn’t the type of man who refused to aid a person in need and he had the prosthesis to prove it. Just because he lent her some advice on a subject he was well versed in didn’t mean he would fall at her feet and beg her to date him. Even though his dog was already madly in love. “I’ll help you.”
She had her hand on the door. “Oh, I can make a list. It’s easy. It’s pretty much everything that needs fixing.”
Hallie clapped her hands as she made it to the top