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nowhere? I think the chances of that happening are remote.”
    Did he have to take her literally? “Either way, the committee won’t want to sink any more time or effort into something that might not be there in three months, or six. And you are a Valois, and to the committee, having a Valois on the deed is vital.”
    “Why? As far as I know, none of the Valois family has been down here in years. I wasn’t even sure the place really existed, that it was just a family tale, until it popped up in my uncle Neil’s will. An uncle I’d rarely seen, I might add, and who’d never shown up at a Sunday dinner to boast about this ‘treasure.’ To most people in the family, this place was a good story for Sunday dinners, nothing more.”
    “Your uncle remembered it,” she said. “He was here once, in the early fifties. Though he never had the money we needed to restore it, I think he wanted to make sure the property stayed in the family.”
    Paul sat back in his chair. “My uncle was here? In Indigo?”
    “I never met him, but Hugh, the town historian, told me Neil came into town long enough to pay a visit to the opera house. He didn’t stay long. Hugh said he got the feeling Neil was the kind of man who liked to be alone.”
    “He was the family hermit. We rarely saw him.”
    “Either way, after his visit, he wrote to Hugh once in a while to see how the place was doing. For the last thirty years or so, a woman named Maude Picardrented the opera house and turned it into an antique store. She dealt with a lawyer in New Orleans, and when she died last January, we tried to contact Neil but never heard back.”
    “He was quite ill. Cancer.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said with sincerity. She clasped her hands on her lap, praying she could get her message across to him. This moment might be the only one she had to convince Paul not to sell. “You need to understand something about Cajuns. If there’s one thing that’s important to the people of this area, it’s their heritage. Their traditions. Their customs. The opera house is a part of that heritage.” She lifted her hand and toyed with her spoon. “This area is…unique, just like I hear Nova Scotia is. It’s filled with people who are fiercely protective of their heritage. We have our own dialect. Our own type of food. You won’t find what we have here anywhere else in the world, and because of that, a lot of us are fighting to preserve our heritage.”
    “Even as the world around you changes.” He spooned up some gumbo.
    “Yes.”
    “Fine. Then I’ll sell it to someone who promises to keep the building as it is. Maybe I’ll even name it The Valois or something. That should make you happy and honor my uncle’s wishes.”
    Again, he was trying to wash his hands of the building, as if it were bothersome dirt. “That’s not enough,” Marjo protested, ignoring her gumbo,which was quickly growing cold. “To keep it truly the Indigo Opera House, it has to be owned by a Valois, because they’re the ones that founded it, and to people here, nothing can replace generations of ownership. If you knew the history—”
    “I know enough. If there’s one thing my uncles and aunts like to do, it’s talk about where they came from. They rehash several hundred years of history and make it sound as if we were still trying to get out from under the English. Just because my relatives are like that doesn’t mean I am. I like feeling disconnected—unattached to anyone or any thing. I live out of a backpack and I don’t worry about being home for supper for anyone. I come and go as I please, and thankfully, I get paid to do that.”
    Marjo shook her head, unable to believe anyone would prefer to live their life free of family ties and roots, particularly someone who had grown up in an area so entrenched in its history. She’d always been such a part of this community and found it inconceivable that someone wouldn’t have a place to call home, a place that surrounded