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interrupted, and I suppressed a grin as she went on, “He’ll understand, and so will the boys. I’ll call him as soon as we’re finished.” Her voice softened again. “Oh, do say you will, Paige. I’ll be in your debt.”
    “If you’ll handle Ryan, I’ll turn the car around right now,” I replied, feeling like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
Coward,
a voice sneered in my head.
    I ignored it.
    “Consider it done,” she said, and disconnected the call.
    I put the car in reverse, and changed directions, driving across and turning left to head back to the south shore.
    It was a reprieve— but all I was doing was putting off the inevitable yet again.
    I’d call Ryan when I got to his mother’s. I hated to disappoint the boys… and vowed to tell Ryan the truth the very next time I saw him. I couldn’t count on getting reprieves for the rest of my life.
    And besides, I rationalized to myself, wasn’t it better to tell him on my home turf? It would be much easier there.
    Not only that, there was no down side to having Athalie in my debt.
    I started whistling as I headed back the way I’d come.

Chapter Three
    The last person in the world I expected to see sitting in Athalie’s parlor was Rebecca Barron.
    It had taken me a lot longer to get back to the city than I’d thought it would. The wind had picked up and the rain was coming down so hard visibility was practically nonexistent. I could hear the waves crashing against the bridge, and every once in a while a wave would hit so hard against the pylons a spray of water would drench the car. I was shaking by the time I finally got off the bridge, but the storm was just as bad on land. The I-10 was under several inches of water, and my Forrester would start to slip into a slide every once in a while before getting traction again. Eighteen-wheelers would pass me going entirely too fast, the big wheels throwing up so much water on my windshield I couldn’t see at all before the wipers did their jobs.
    Needless to say, I had some choice words for those idiots.
    The drive didn’t get any easier once I took the St. Charles exit, either. The streets were flooding, and while St. Charles was navigable, I knew some of the lower streets were probably under several feet of water. I was tempted to just go home and tell Athalie I’d be there once the storm had passed. The line of cars heading uptown was only going about ten miles an hour, which was enormously frustrating, but there was nothing I could do about it. I was too afraid of getting flooded out to try another street. I just made sure I was taking deep cleansing breaths and tried not to let my frustrations get the best of me.
    The Tujague house is a gorgeous Greek Revival style house with upper and lower galleries running the length of the front of the house. I turned off the Avenue, and my tires splashed up the driveway until I was safely beneath the side carport. There was another car parked there, but the little red Lamborghini convertible didn’t belong to Athalie or any of her six children. I turned off the engine, retrieved my phone and nervously called Ryan.
    Ryan wasn’t happy, but he’d been dealing with his mother’s imperiousness his entire life. He knew only too well how futile it was to say no to Athalie. “The boys are sorry to miss you,” he said. “Maybe we can drive in later and stay at the apartment tonight? Maybe have dinner later?”
    “That would be great!” Ryan was a partner in a law firm in the city, so he kept an apartment in the Poydras Tower on Poydras Street in the Central Business District. He really preferred the house in Rouen, though, and so did the boys. He sometimes talked about letting the apartment go, leaving unspoken the implication he would just stay with me when he was in the city. He often spent the night at my place already, but when the hint would surface I always managed to change the subject. I also knew he wanted to retire early and move to Rouen