After This Our Exile

Carol Morgan

Description

After the years of turmoil and tragedy, life at La Bonne Vie Plantation settled into placid contentment (or a semblance of such) … until Nicolas (Nicky) Fontenot, prodigal son of Angelique and her brother François, returns after years in a Texas prison, and Antoine Babineaux II returns to claim his father’s name. At the heart of the story, and the hearts of Antoine and Nicolas, is beautiful, incorrigible Desirée Fontenot, the image of her mother Angelique. Ghosts of the past rise up and the lurid whispers and innuendos come to life once again. Then Uncle Virgil Leveque, the catalyst of the earlier tragedy, returns home after thirty years in an insane asylum, and unwittingly becomes the agent provocateur that sends the story hurtling toward its conclusion and closure at last. But is there truly closure?

Sujets

• Carol
• Idea
• Morgan
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 29 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669864394
• Langue: English

Extrait

AFTER THIS OUR EXILE
 
BOOK II OF THE DUVAL/ LEVEQUE TRILOGY
 
 
 
 
Carol Morgan
 
Copyright © 2023 by Carol Morgan.
 
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023901601
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-6441-7

Softcover
978-1-6698-6440-0

eBook
978-1-6698-6439-4

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Rev. date: 01/26/2023
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
850542
Contents
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
PART TWO
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
PART THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
PART FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
PART FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
PART SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
PART SEVEN
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
PART EIGHT
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
CHAPTER SEVENTY
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
CHAPTER EIGHTY
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
 
 
 
 
 
For my beloved son,
Anton Joseph M azur,
With all my love
PART ONE
 
CHAPTER ONE
A T THE END of the oak-lined drive the white house with lighted windows glowed like a beacon in the purple twilight, with tall columns and a wide verandah across the front. Some of the windows were open and the curtains fluttered in the warm breeze. Beside the carriage block a car was parked at a rakish angle as if the driver had been in a hurry and simply abandoned it there.
The gravel crunched beneath Nicolas Fontenot’s feet as he walked slowly up the drive, savoring the sight of the house. Along the front verandah giant fern grew in verdant profusion, lightning bugs twinkled and darted helter skelter, and the song of a myriad of insects pulsated through the summer dusk.
He paused at the bottom of the steps. He heard laughter from beyond the closed door and remembered, as if from a distant dream, the way the house had always seemed brimming with life, and a barrage of memories assaulted him.
It crossed his mind to leave again, to walk back down the driveway and disappear just as he has thirteen years ago, for the memories begat a deep and painful yearning that he perceived as weakness. He had moved beyond the world of La Bonne Vie and was not a part of the house or its life anymore.
He turned away, then hesitated, remembering the cemetery, the tombstones encrusted with lichen, the names as familiar as his own, the faces that had looked out at him from old photographs forever engraved in his mind. There was always a brooding sense of timelessness, an aura of peace there, as if the dead ancestors knew they belonged and were content to be there. A burning envy rose in him.
He looked back once at the lighted windows, then skirted around the side of the house under the shadows of the Bois d’Arc trees to the path through the woods to the cemetery. Moonlight dappled the path with milky light. He longed to take off his shoes and socks and feel the pine needles beneath his bare feet as he had in childhood.
The cemetery’s low iron fence gleamed with fresh black paint. As he was about to hoist himself over it, he saw his mother kneeling beside two small graves, her figure still as slender as a young girl’s, and the moonlight lit her honey gold hair like a halo. He drew in his breath and held it lest he make a sound, and took a cautious step backward. She seemed to sense his presence and turned her head.
“François?”
At the sound of her voice a wave of longing washed over him even though it was not his name she spoke.
“It’s me, Maman. It’s Nicky.”
He had said the words. The deed was done. He could not walk away now as if he had never come back home at all.
“Nicky?” Her whisper carried in the stillness. “Is it really you?”
Her dark eyes widened in disbelief, then lighted in wonder and joy, and she was running toward him, her arms outstretched. Nicky hoisted himself over the fence and caught her in his arms.
“I thought you were dead,” she sobbed, clinging fiercely to him. “Oh Nicky, Nicky I thought I would never see you again!”
“It’s alright.” He stroked her hair tenderly. “I’m home now.” How good those words sounded, yet how they frightened him. “I’m home,” he said again.
Angelique stepped back, still holding on to him as if she was afraid to let go, and her eyes moved over him, taking in every detail – the long dark hair that curled below his collar, saturnine dark eyes, the stubble of beard, the black T-shirt and low-slung faded jeans with one knee patched in a darker shade of denim, and the crudely drawn tattoo of a snake coiled around a dagger on his left forearm.
“Where were you?”
“Texas Department of Criminal Justice,” he said lightly. “Ellis Unit One.”
“And you never let us know? All these years of worry and heartache, and you never let us know?”
“I wasn’t ever going to come back.”
“Don’t say that!” Her voice was harsh, then gentle again. “Of course you had to come home.”
He grinned sardonically and put a cigarette between his lips to light it. “Well, I did, didn’t I?”
“Have you seen your father?”
“No. I wasn’t gonna stay after all. But I wanted to see the old cemetery again. Then I was gonna leave just as quietly as I came.” He touched her cheek tenderly. “I didn’t expect to find anyone down here in the dark.”
He saw the pain in her eyes and it hurt him to know that he was the cause of it, just as he had always been the cause of it – the wayward child, the rebellious one, his mother’s greatest heartache and the child she loved best.
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you anymore.” He uttered a snort of self-contempt. “I’ve been here all of five minutes and I already have. Some things never change, do they?”
“I’m afraid to ask if you’ll stay?” She looked up at him imploringly.
“I don’t know.” He saw her lips tremble. “Do you want me to lie to you?”
“No.” She caught his hands and held them. “Nicky, promise me that if ... if you must go away again, you’ll let me hear from you, let me know you’re alright. I can’t bear to lose you that way again. Promets -moi ?”
“ Je te promets .” He sounded weary, as if it was an effort to say those words.
“Let’s go to the house.” She started toward the gate, then turned to look up at him. “Nicky, what happened? Why were you in prison?”
“I killed a man.”
“Let’s go to the house,” she said again.
How like her it was to disregard the fact that her beloved son was a murderer. No questions asked, no reproach, only joy that he was home again in spite of it all. He had not told her the worst. Before the night was over, he would tell them all that he had killed a police officer and spent five years on death row before the death sentence was overturned and sent back to the trial court where he pled guilty to a lesser charge and spent six more years in prison – eleven years in all. This newly found freedom still seemed unreal, as if he might awake to find himself back in his cell again.
“Let’s go, Nicky. We have to let your father know you’re home. He’ll be so glad.”
“Which one?”
“What do you man?”
He lifted her up and set her down on the other side of the fence. He jumped over, landing with a soft thud beside her.
“Which one will be glad?”
“You’ve only got one father, Nicky.”
“Yeah, I know. Which one?”
She looked up at him in contemplation for a moment. “Does it rea