Bayou Baby - Lexi Blake Page 0,3

and getting them to a good place.

She didn’t have time to date. She needed to build a life.

She might even need to build that life somewhere else.

The priest began to speak and Zep began to snore.

Some things never changed. She needed to make sure she wasn’t one of them.

* * *

***

Celeste Beaumont sank into her place on the pew beside her older son.

Her only living son.

It hadn’t been so long since she’d been in this very church for Wes’s funeral. Her husband’s funeral had been even more recent, but it was Wes’s service that haunted her. Ralph’s death had been . . . she hated to call it a relief, but it was an honest word. Thirty years she’d spent with that man and not once had he told her he loved her.

But Wes, oh, her Wesley had said it all the time. Her sweet boy had loved her with an open heart.

That same heart was the reason he was dead.

It was odd since she’d had so many nightmares about burying Wes young. Ever since that moment she’d been bathing him and found a lump under his armpit. That had started years of worry, treatment, certainty she would need a small coffin for her baby boy.

The worry had never gone away, even after he’d been cancer-free for years.

And he’d still ended up here.

“You managed to talk to Seraphina Guidry and the church didn’t explode.” Calvin looked perfectly respectable in his thousand-dollar tailored suit. He knew how to dress his best. Her older child was heartbreakingly handsome, but there was a devil-may-care glint to his eyes that always worried her.

She stared forward. She could see the back of Seraphina Guidry’s light blond hair. She truly did have the look of an angel, but she had been poorly named. An angel wouldn’t have led her baby boy into hell.

“I wasn’t talking to her,” she replied quietly. “I was giving my condolences to Delphine.”

“I thought you hated Delphine, too.”

“I don’t hate anyone.” Hate wasn’t ladylike. Disdain was acceptable as long as it was for moral or societal reasons and not based on emotion. It was a lesson she’d learned well from her husband and mother-in-law. “Delphine and I don’t run in the same circles or see eye to eye on many important things. That’s all. You know I never approved of the way her daughter kept trying to force her way into our family. She took advantage of your brother.”

“She didn’t take advantage of my brother, and that was the problem,” Cal said under his breath.

She turned and gave her son a look she’d perfected over her thirty years as a Beaumont.

It was enough to make Cal sit back. “Sorry, Momma. Hey, is there a reason I’m the only one forced to come to this thing today? And honestly, why are we here? You might not hate the Guidrys but you sure don’t like them.”

Her son needed to understand that they had a duty to the community around them. She’d been lax in the last decade. Since her mother-in-law had gone on to her reward— the fiery depths of hell if there was any justice in the universe—she’d relaxed many of the normal rules and the motherly lectures. And then Wes had died three years ago and she hadn’t found the will to do anything but go through the motions. “It’s our duty to be here, to be seen. You’re a Beaumont. We’re one of the most important families in Papillon. Beaumont Oil employs much of this town, and being good stewards means showing our faces at events like this. We give comfort to the families.”

At least that was how she saw it. Her husband had put it differently. He’d believed they had to show their faces so no one forgot how important they were. In Ralph Beaumont’s mind, they had always been the royal family and no one should question their place.

“I don’t know that Sera gets a whole lot of comfort from you,” Cal said wryly. “Do they need comfort? It wasn’t like Irene was all soft and cuddly. That woman was mean.”

“She was family so I assure you they feel the loss.”

Cal’s hand came out and covered hers. “You’re right. You always miss family.”

He was such an irritating boy, and then he would be sweet as pie and prove that he understood her. She squeezed his hand. “And Angie has an appointment. Weddings trump funerals. Everything has to be perfect for your sister’s big day.”

The wedding of her daughter to