"Are you sure you want to go back there and check it out today?" Lucky wiped her mouth with a paper towel. "I don"t know if a certain person has vacated the guesthouse yet. I"m guessing he has since Betts diva-ed him, but other than driving by, I don"t know of a way to find out."

"I"ll call Sharon Gillery. Y"all remember her from school. She"s a real-estate agent now." Charlie grinned as Betts rolled her eyes.

Lucky groaned. "Does she have to come with us to the house? She was such a b.i.t.c.h in high school."

"I don"t think she has to be with us." Charlie really didn"t know. "And she"s still a b.i.t.c.h, but according to her she"s one of yours and Betts"s best friends." She shook her head. "Fame always comes with a price."

"If she"s part of the deal, I"m not feeling well." Betts put the back of her hand to her forehead and swooned like a 1950s film star. "I think it"s a case of acute onset I"m-faking-because-I-can"t-stand-that-b.i.t.c.h-itis."

Lucky fake coughed up a lung. "It"s very catchy."

"Fine, I"ll come up with a way for us to see the house on our own." What would happen if she ran into Wagner? Her heart went all pitter-pat at the thought of seeing him. She was mad at him, but she still wanted to see him. Love sucked.

"Before we go to the Duplantis House, I think we should stop by Marie Laveau"s grave and triple-X it in Wagner"s honor." Lucky took another bite of her waffle.

Charlie wiped her mouth. "You can"t do that anymore. A few years back, the city cleaned off the X"s and now you can only get into St. Louis"s cemetery if you have family buried there or are with a tour guide."

"Well that just sucks," Lucky said around a bit of waffle. "How am I going to curse the people I hate if I can"t ask for Marie Laveau"s help?"

"Don"t you have family buried there?" Betts pointed at Charlie with her fork.

"Yes, but we"re not triple-X-ing her tomb. There"s a huge fine, and plus voodoo pract.i.tioners say that there"s no basis for it in the religion. It doesn"t work." Charlie wasn"t into desecrating tombs.

"Fine." Lucky rolled her eyes. "No one"s triple-X-ing Wagner."

"I"m really happy y"all are here, but I know you need to get back to your lives. I"d love it if y"all could stay until the day after tomorrow. I"m going to need emotional support for the Brain Aneurysm Bachelorette Auction tomorrow night. It"s really the only thing I can"t cancel." She"d cleared her schedule of every other social function, but this one she did in memory of her mother. Heartache and falling-apart life or no, she was going.

"We"re here for as long as you need us." Betts glanced at Charlie. "But we do have to get back to the real world. Of course we can stay until after the auction, and then we were hoping you"d come home with one of us."

They didn"t want her to be alone. It was sweet, but she had to find her new place in the world alone. "I"ll think about it."

"Good." Lucky sipped her orange juice. "So, can I bid on you tomorrow night? I was thinking we could rock this town by bringing you out of the closet."

"That would certainly distract the gossips for a while." Charlie really hadn"t thought out the logistics of tomorrow night. "Since my family name is now tarnished, to say the least, you may be the only one who bids on me."

"Nah, I plan on bidding too." Betts grinned. "I could use a little gossip to spice up my life."

If her life had to fall apart, at least she had friends who were willing to help her pick up the pieces. Going back out in society after everyone knew that Jerome had hired someone to break her heart was bad enough, but add in her father and the uncomfortable situation just got ten times worse. But she wouldn"t back down. She wasn"t going to run away. This was her town and she wasn"t going anywhere.

"They won"t let me see her." Five hours later, Wagner was holding up a bar stool at Voodoo Gumbo"s. Mama was behind the bar with a dish towel in hand, drying the gla.s.ses she"d just hand washed.

"Honestly, I don"t see how your situation could be any worse." Mama set a gla.s.s upside down on the shelf of clean gla.s.ses behind her.

"You"re a terrible bartender. You"re supposed to offer me sage advice." He sipped his scotch.

"You"re a terrible drunk. You"ve been nursing that same scotch for the last two hours." She set another dried gla.s.s on the shelf.

"Here"s the thing, I"m not much of a drinker. Liquor tastes awful, if I have more than one gla.s.s it gives me a headache, and I"m not much into escapism." He was a realist and hated the way alcohol numbed his senses.

"Then why are you at a bar?" Mama gestured with a gla.s.s.

"I"m here for the sage advice." He toasted her with his mostly full gla.s.s.

"Okay, here"s some advice. Go get your woman." She plopped another clean gla.s.s down. "Don"t stop until you see her."

"Don"t you think I"ve thought of that?" He shook his head. "Your daughter is ruthless, and Lucky is..." How did he say scary without sounding like a total wimp?

Mama smiled, pride glowing in her face. "I taught my girls right." She added another gla.s.s to the clean row. "Betts, Lucky, and Charlie aren"t speaking to me either."

"Because you vouched for me?" It was bad enough that he was hurting, but he"d driven a wedge between Mama and her family.

"Yes, but they won"t stay mad long." She dried the last gla.s.s and set it on the shelf.

"I know you said that grand gestures weren"t Charlie"s thing, but I did something today that"s pretty grand." The closing wasn"t until tomorrow, but he wanted to tell someone what he"d done, and she was his only friend in New Orleans. "I bought the Duplantis House. I sign all of the paperwork tomorrow, but I am the proud owner of a very expensive and falling-down creole cottage on Bourbon Street."

Mama stopped wiping down the bar and stared at him. "So you"re moving to town?"

"Permanently. Your daughter tried to throw me out of Louisiana, but it turns out that we live in a free country and I can live wherever I want." Going back to an empty guesthouse was going to be tough, but for better or worse, that was his home now until he could renovate the main house. He didn"t know the first thing about renovating anything. "Know any good contractors?"

"A couple. You do realize that"s a historic house and the parish historical society will have a say in how it"s renovated." She thought about it and a smile winked across her face. "Since Charlie"s on the board of the historical society, she"ll have to deal with you. Good one."

"That"s just a side benefit. I didn"t want anyone buying up our future home." He sounded very sure that it would be their future home, but he didn"t feel it. "How long do you think it will take for her to forgive me?"

What exactly was the statute of limitations on disappointing and betraying someone?

"It depends. Charlie"s levelheaded. She"ll come to see in time that your intentions might not have started out pure but they ended that way." Mama leaned on the bar. "Right now she"s dealing with a lot. She finally cut the ap.r.o.n strings and she"s given up on a relationship with her father. I"m glad she did it, but for her it must be h.e.l.l."

The knife in his heart twisted to cause even more pain. "I should be there for her. I should be at her side."

He needed to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be okay. He ran his fingers through his hair. If only he could just see her, he could explain. He"d never felt this powerless before.

"It hurts to sit back and watch your loved ones in pain, but she needs s.p.a.ce right now." Mama reached under the bar and pulled out an envelope. "But tomorrow night she might not need so much s.p.a.ce." She slid the envelope toward him across the bar. "You"ll need this."

He opened the flap and pulled out an engraved invitation to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation"s Annual Bachelorette Auction. Charlie"s name was on the list of bachelorettes to be auctioned.

"I called to make sure she was still attending-you know, what with her father under federal investigation." Mama winked at him. "Charlie"s mother died of a brain aneurysm. She never misses the auction."

"I know about her mom. She told me all about it." He still remembered the look on her face as she told him the story. She truly felt like it had been her fault. With time, he hoped he could make her see that it wasn"t.

Mama smacked him on the chest with her rag. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself and go get her."

Chapter 17.

The next night, Charlie leaned over the sink in her bathroom and applied cherry-red lip gloss. She was wearing a black vintage Yves Saint Laurent gown that had belonged to her mother. It was skintight and very Audrey Hepburn. This dress made a statement: it said that she wasn"t embarra.s.sed to show her face in public.

As she walked down the stairs, her mother"s opera-length Tiffany Diamond by the Yard necklace bounced against her waist. Add in the black rhinestone Loubies, and she was stunning, if she did say so herself.

"Wow." Betts clapped. She was wearing a milk-chocolate minidress that showed off her trademark red hair. "You look fantastic. Way to show the world you"re not hiding."

"Way to give the gossips and the snotty upper cla.s.ses the stiff middle finger." Lucky nodded her approval. She was wearing a fire-engine-red sequin dress that came to her mid-thigh.

"We all look fantastic." Charlie put an arm around each of her friends. "Thanks for doing this." No doubt tonight would be difficult, but she wanted to get it over with. She hadn"t done anything wrong. She wanted to show the world that she could hold her head high.

There was no denying that she"d had a tough week. But last night had been the icing on the cake. Someone had bought the Duplantis House before she"d even been able to put in an offer.

That stung. So much for her plans to reinvent her life. Now she was back to square one.

Thirty minutes later, they walked into the grand ballroom of the JW Marriot on Ca.n.a.l Street. While the ballroom"s decor was a little tired, it was still grand and large enough to hold several hundred people.

A stage was set up at the back of the room where a band played watered-down jazz at a reasonable decibel level.

Charlie didn"t miss a single one of the stares as people tapped the arms of those with their backs turned so they could turn around and behold the spectacle that was Charlie Guidry, former princess of Louisiana.

She felt her smile falter, but both Betts and Lucky grabbed her hands.

Lucky leaned down and whispered, "Don"t let them see you sweat. Don"t give them the satisfaction."

"I think this was a bad idea." Charlie felt every eye on her, and none of them were friendly. She reminded herself that probably a good portion of the people in this room would have benefited from that oil and gas bill her father had been paid to veto.

"Shoulders back, chin up, b.o.o.bs out," Betts whispered. "Just remember, we"re your family. Your biological father is nothing but a sperm donor."

"And we really appreciate his contribution to making you," Lucky said around the blinding smile on her face. "None of these people matter. You"re a good person and we love you." She looked over Charlie"s head to Betts. "I expect for you to be in full diva mode. I want to see these people kiss Charlie"s a.s.s. Which looks amazing in that dress, I have to tell you."

Charlie smiled for real as she wiggled her a.s.s. "I know. All that CrossFit makes my a.s.s spectacular."

CrossFit reminded her of Wagner, but she kept her head high.

Anna-Julie Monseux Hornbuckle Dupree Givens Weinstein, wearing a dark-purple dress that looked like a fading bruise, made her way over to them.

"It"s so good of you to come." Anna-Julie managed to make that polite greeting sound nasty. "We all thought, what with your father-"

"Facing jail time, that I"d forgo the auction?" Charlie faced off against Anna-Julie. She was tired of grinning and bearing life. "If my father is convicted, maybe he"ll end up in federal prison in Texarkana. Want me to have him say h.e.l.lo to your father from you? How many more years does he have on his sentence?"

Betts joined the conversation. "I"d forgotten about Mr. Monseux. Was it seven million or eight that he stole from FEMA after Hurricane Katrina?"

"I think it was ten." Lucky didn"t want to be left out.

Anna-Julie"s face turned ashy green.

"You don"t look well. Maybe you should have another drink. Or-" Betts pointed to Anna-Julie"s latest husband, Frank Weinstein. "You should go see to your husband before he a.s.saults another teenaged girl."

Betts was in it to win it.

"Oh wait, he isn"t the pedophile-that was your last husband. This one only gambles heavily." Lucky waved bye-bye and they moved deeper into the room. "No one f.u.c.ks with a Marilyn."

"d.a.m.n, I"m impressed." Charlie looked around. "Who should we attack next?"

"I"m still getting over your use of the word d.a.m.n. This new you is so much fun." Betts grinned at her. "Wait, is that Milly Taylor?"

Charlie followed Betts"s line of sight. "Yes, and it"s Milly Taylor-White now. She married Judge White."

"He"s like five hundred years old." Lucky looked at Milly. "Christ, what happened to her face?"

"Face-lift." Charlie had found it hard not to stare at Milly at the last Garden District Garden Club meeting.

"Her face? What happened to her b.o.o.bs?" Betts"s mouth practically fell open.

Lucky squinted to get a better look. "Are they square? It looks like she stuffed two Puffs tissue boxes down the front of her dress."

"She had another b.o.o.b job at the same time as the face-lift." Charlie smiled and waved at Milly, who turned her back on Charlie. "Rumor is she got them both done in Costa Rica or Guatemala or somewhere like that. She got a buy-one-get-one-free special."

"I"m all for saving money, but plastic surgery isn"t the place where you want to clip coupons." Betts nodded toward the bar. "Let"s get a drink."

An hour later, Charlie walked out on stage after the emcee announced her. The master of ceremonies, a man she didn"t know, looked at his note cards and then at her and then back at his note cards. He shook his head like he wasn"t going to read what was on the card and instead announced again, "Gentlemen, Miss Charlotte Guidry."

Betts and Lucky clapped and whistled.

All of the men standing down front avoided eye contact with Charlie.

Fine, it looked like she was going home with Betts or Lucky.

The emcee gestured toward Charlie. "Let"s start the bidding at one hundred dollars."

A man in the back held up his hand. Something about that hand was familiar, but she couldn"t make out who he was.

"Do I hear two hundred?"