Page 7 of January (New Orleans #1)

W hat exactly had she agreed to? A private tour with a complete stranger of a woman who was also incredibly attractive and had that slight Southern accent that had Kyle listening intently to every word she said? The woman she’d seen and smiled at one night at a bar because she couldn’t not do it? Kyle’s mouth had turned up ever so slightly when the woman she now knew as Melinda had walked by their table. Had Jolie not been there with her, Kyle was certain she would’ve stood and maybe followed after Melinda. Not in a creepy way, of course, but maybe to see if she went to the bar to get a drink, and Kyle could walk up next to her. She’d thought about that as she and Jolie had continued their conversation about their grandmother and mother that night at the bar, and since she always tried to be honest with herself, Kyle had to admit that she’d been thinking about the smile that had been directed back at her ever since.

She’d been surprised or, really, shocked to see the same smile while standing in the middle of the street, waiting on the food tour her sister had set up for them to start. Kyle hadn’t been resistant to good food. She’d just not spent enough time in their grandma’s house to get a feel for the woman and what had happened between her and their mother. The bedroom that had been left as a shrine had been tempting for Kyle to dive into, but she’d wanted Jolie to be there for that. They’d agreed to meet Melinda in Jackson Square, and she’d walk them to the water and show them around a bit between the two tours she was leading that day, and then Kyle and Jolie would go back to the house to see what they could find so their real search could finally begin.

“So, this is the Riverwalk,” Melinda said when they joined her on a platform of sorts that overlooked the Mississippi River .

Behind them now was the famous Jackson Square and St.Louis Cathedral, which Kyle had seen in thousands of pictures over the years. Jolie pulled out her phone and began snapping shots of the hustle and bustle of the artists displaying their work, the café serving up beignets and coffee, and the riverboat to their right.

“How did you sleep?” Melinda asked.

Kyle looked at Melinda and said, “Well. You?”

“Yeah, good,” Melinda replied.

Clearly, they were both great at small talk.

“So, thanks for squeezing us in. This is great. Are you sure we can’t pay you for this?” Kyle asked.

“I would’ve been over here anyway. I just dropped my tour off at the Square. So, for the tenth time, no, you don’t have to pay me,” Melinda replied, smiling wider.

“Remember that joke I made yesterday that my sister isn’t polite, and I’m the polite one?” Jolie asked, joining their conversation.

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s kind of the opposite: she’s the extra polite one. I think it’s a first-born thing in combination with the massive guilt our mother laid on her, but she’s not great with favors or free things. Don’t be surprised if she offers to translate something for you later to help pay you for this.”

“Translate?” Melinda asked, returning her gaze to Kyle.

“My job. I’m a translator. Mostly, instruction manuals, verifying website content, and I’ve done a few books.”

“What language?”

“French,” she replied.

Melinda laughed and said, “You speak fluent French? God, my pronunciation of everything on these tours must be really bothering you, then.”

“It’s not,” Kyle said softly. “Really. Your pronunciation is pretty good, actually.”

“It is? Even with my accent?”

“Your accent is very slight. I hardly noticed it at first,” Kyle said .

“My parents weren’t born here; maybe that’s why. They moved here before I was born, but they’re from Chicago, so they didn’t have an accent. I picked it up around here growing up, but at home, I was surrounded by Yankees.”

Kyle laughed and asked, “Why did they move here?”

“Oddly enough, my grandparents were from here originally, but when my grandpa got a new job, they moved to Illinois. When my parents met, it was like fate because my dad got a job down here, and they moved.”

“So, should we get beignets now or later?” Jolie asked.

Kyle turned to her then, wanting to roll her eyes because she knew Jolie could tell that Kyle was trying to get to know Melinda and didn’t exactly care about a tour of the city.

“It’s always busy there, but it’ll die down in a bit. If we walk for about an hour and come back, there will be a good enough lull that I can sneak us in.”

“Sneak us in?”

“I know just about every business owner in the city. Perk of the job. We don’t usually visit during the food tours because it’s too busy, and I can’t sneak a group that size in, but just the three of us, I might be able to manage. Easier if it’s in a lull, though.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Kyle replied. “We can wait for donuts.”

“Did you just call them donuts ?” Melinda chuckled. “So, first lesson of New Orleans: beignets . I would’ve thought a French translator would be able to get that right,” she teased.

“Oh, I like her,” Jolie said, laughing at Melinda’s joke.

They walked down the other side of the platform, with Jolie taking more pictures of Jackson Square and the statue of the man on horseback. Melinda walked and pointed out things she thought they might be interested in learning about, and Kyle found that she was really starting to enjoy this city. Melinda had been right. Now that they were out of the Quarter more, Kyle could see it. It was beautiful. It was alive. That was the only way she could think to describe it. Where Kyle came from, and maybe it was because of her life growing up with a mother who seemed to always be wrapped up in chaos, but that place felt dead to her. New Orleans was a whole different part of the world, and it was alive with its art, music, food, and people who had all been so nice. None more so than Melinda, who was pretty cute in her tour guide polo shirt and khaki pants, along with white-and-green tennis shoes.

“I have to get going back to the office,” Melinda said once they’d returned to Jackson Square.

“We can walk you. We’re staying in the Quarter,” Kyle offered.

“You are? I thought you mentioned something about a house.”

“I thought we were getting beignets,” Jolie noted.

“I’m sorry; the walk took longer than I thought it would. But I can get you in another time. Either way, there is a lull now, which means a line only to the street and not all along it, too, but it’s better than how it was, at least.”

“I’ll go grab us some and meet you at the hotel,” Jolie offered. “I want to find out where my Cincy friends are, anyway.”

“Okay,” Kyle replied gratefully. “I can walk you back, at least,” she said to Melinda.

“You don’t want to wait with your sister?”

“She’s fine on her own. Honestly, sometimes she’s best on her own.” She turned to Jolie. “Can you get me a coffee?”

“Oh, it’s chicory coffee there. Thought I should warn you,” Melinda said.

“She knows. She’s weird. She actually loves it.”

“You love chicory coffee? Most people haven’t even heard of it.” Melinda smiled at Kyle.

“I had it years ago for the first time and liked it, yeah. I don’t usually buy it for myself or anything, but down here, it’s all over the place, including at our hotel, so I’ve been drinking it by the gallon.”

Melinda’s smile grew before it faded, while Jolie bounced on her feet, indicating that she was anxious to go.

“Go for it. I’ll see you back at the hotel. Then, we’ll go to the house,” Kyle said to her sister.

“Cool. Melinda, thank you. This was great. I really appreciate it.”

Jolie turned to walk toward the line, and Melinda and Kyle stood there, facing one another.

“So, chicory coffee?” Melinda began.

Yeah… Small talk was definitely something neither of them excelled at.

“Yes, I like it.”

“And you speak French?”

“Yes.”

“I might have to ask you to say something to me in French, then,” Melinda said.

“Do you not hear enough of it around here?”

“Depends on the day. And I doubt Creole French is the French you were taught.”

“True,” Kyle replied. “But I’d love to learn that, too. I know enough Spanish to get by, and I can speak some Italian and Portuguese – that’s mostly because they’re all Romance languages, so they have similarities – but I love learning dialects, too.”

“That’s pretty impressive,” Melinda said. “Should we go?” She motioned in the direction of the stairs.

“Yeah, I don’t want you to be late.”

They started down the stairs and continued walking across the street when there was a lull in traffic.

“So, how did you end up deciding to become a translator?”

“Honestly, it’s kind of weird, maybe. I don’t know. My mom would randomly say words around the house that I didn’t understand when I was a kid. She’d speak a full English sentence with one or two different words in it, and I had no idea what they meant. Eventually, she told me they were French, and I liked how they sounded, so when it was time to pick a foreign language in high school, I chose French. I loved it and kept going.”

“So, she picked it up from your grandmother? ”

“Yes, but she’d never admit it. From what my dad has told me, my grandmother spoke it fluently. Her parents came down here from Quebec before she was born, and she taught my mom some of it, but it seems like my rebellious mother might have resisted learning too much, and she left here when she was sixteen and pregnant with me, so I don’t know how much of it truly stuck.”

“Wow. Sixteen and pregnant?” Melinda said. “I cannot imagine. I’m twenty-five now, and I’m making ends meet okay, but having a kid to support while being a teenager? That’s a lot.”

“She did the best she could, I guess. Then, three years later, Jolie came along, and things were good for a while. When she and my dad split up, though, my mom kind of went off the rails. I think she’s been there ever since. Something happened between her and my grandmother, too, but she won’t tell us about it, so I came down here to see if I could figure it out for myself.”

“The family mystery?” Melinda asked as they walked by the grassy square.

“Does every family have one?” Kyle asked her.

“I don’t think mine does, but maybe I’m just not asking the right questions.”

“Is this too much information for someone you pitied into giving a private tour to be sharing with their tour guide?”

Melinda laughed and said, “I didn’t pity you. I just love showing off where I’m from. If anything, you gave me something to do on my lunch break. Jill, my colleague, has a tour right now, so I probably would’ve been eating alone at the office or something.”

“You didn’t even eat lunch,” Kyle realized, stopping in her tracks. “Can you get something quick here?” She looked around the Square for a restaurant.

“I’m okay,” Melinda said, laughing. “But thank you. I have the food tour up next.”

“Oh, okay.”

Kyle didn’t know what else to say to keep the conversation going, so she just started walking again, and Melinda joined her.

“So, any other tours coming up for you?” Melinda asked. “If not, I can recommend some.”

“Jolie is really the tour planner.”

“Well, you can tell her, then,” Melinda said. “We could do my version of the food tour. There are some amazing places outside of the Quarter that I’d love to show you.”

“Oh, you meant another tour with you?” Kyle asked, surprised.

“If you want,” Melinda replied.

Kyle nodded and said, “That would be great.”

◆◆◆

“This was Mom’s room?” Jolie asked later, entering the room of a teenager.

“I think it still kind of is Mom’s room. It looks like it hasn’t been touched. It’s clean, but everything looks as though it hasn’t been used in about thirty years.” Kyle stood back and watched Jolie walk around the room. “Oh, and I found this book or journal thing in Grandma’s room.”

“A journal?” Jolie replied, turning around. “Mom’s?”

“I haven’t read it all the way yet. It doesn’t look like it, though. Grandma’s, I think.”

“Do you think Mom had a journal? That could tell us a lot,” she replied.

“I didn’t go through this room. I thought you should be here for that.”

“Yeah. Thanks. Hey, are you mad at me because I’m not as into this as you are?”

“No,” she replied, sitting on the end of the small twin bed. “I think it’s different.”

“Why?” Jolie ran a fingertip along the makeup table.

“Because I’m the reason she left. At least, that’s what she’s always told me: it’s my fault she ran from here. You came along later. ”

“I wasn’t exactly planned, either,” Jolie pointed out.

“But you’re not the reason she had to flee this house. I am.”

Jolie sat down next to her and said, “Ky, Mom is a bitch for putting that on you. Mom and Dad had sex as teenagers and likely didn’t protect themselves, so she got pregnant. Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad they did because I have a great older sister, but they made those decisions. You didn’t. I don’t know what happened here or why, but you weren’t even born yet, so none of it is your fault.”

“I feel like it’s still something I need to know.”

“I get it, but I hate that she’s blamed you for everything when none of her drama is on you.”

“Me too,” she replied, clearing her throat. “Oh, I found something in the journal thing. She had it tucked in the front cover.”

Kyle stood, left their mother’s old room, entered her grandmother’s bedroom, and found the journal where she’d left it on the dresser. She opened it and pulled out a piece of paper that she handed to Jolie, who had followed her into the room. Jolie unfolded it and read through it for a minute.

“Do you know what this says?”

“I read it, but you ’re the paralegal,” Kyle replied.

“This is just a piece of paper that says there’s more to it, but essentially, it says that she owns another house.”

“I thought so, but I was planning on calling the lawyer to see if he can explain all of this to us. I just wanted to show you first.”

“You think she left us two houses?”

“That’s assuming that the woman next door was even correct about her leaving us this one. There’s a key pressed in between a couple of pages there, though. I’m wondering if that goes to that house. It doesn’t look like a car key, and from what I’ve seen, she doesn’t have a car, anyway.”

Jolie pulled up her phone, went to Google Maps, and typed in the address.

“It’s in the Garden District. That can’t be right. ”

“Why not?”

“Those houses are huge, Kyle. That’s the rich part of the city. Celebrities live there.”

“Then, it can’t be right.”

Jolie’s phone buzzed with a text message, and she said, “That’s them, my new Cincy friends. They want me to go out with them tonight.”

“You should go.”

“You’re coming with me,” Jolie stated. “We’re going to have dinner first. It’s a meal, Kyle. And if you don’t want to stay out late, we’ll go back to the hotel. But maybe we should stop paying for the hotel and just stay here. It’s free.”

“Let’s make sure it belongs to us first, at least,” Kyle suggested. “The Garden District? Really?”

“What if it’s true?” Jolie asked.