Written by Stephen F. Moloney
“They didn’t!” gasped Jeanie, sounding as shocked as Ray had when he first heard the news but endeavouring to keep her voice down so as not to be overheard by the other customers.
“That’s what Tess told me,” replied Ray, looking across the diner counter at Tess.
“So they actually said they didn’t want to be Oscar’s foster parents anymore?” she asked, eager to nail down the exact details of the situation before allowing herself to reach the same level of annoyance Ray had been occupying since he barrelled in through the door of the diner five minutes earlier with a face like thunder.
“Well … in so many words,” he answered, rather unconvincingly, as he idly played with the cup of coffee Jeanie had been quick to give him after making him take a seat on one of the stools fronting the counter as opposed to just pacing back and forth in front of it like a caged tiger.
“Ok, well, what were the actual words then?” said Jeanie, now thinking there was a chance Ray’s temper might be causing him to exaggerate matters slightly.
“Aw, you know … somethin’ about them not thinkin’ they were the ‘best fit’ for a kid with Mustang’s needs,” he replied, sarcastically adding in air quotes. “But you know that’s just a fancy way of sayin’ we quit – like bein’ told in the army you were gonna be ‘droppin’ into a hostile environment’ really just meant ‘yeah, you ‘bout to be shot at – like, a lot’!”
With Ray’s voice after climbing to slightly too high a decibel, Jeanie moved quickly to reassure the other customers dotted further down the counter and in the booths around the diner, who had, naturally, found what Ray had just said somewhat alarming, “It’s alright, everyone!” she announced, scrambling to plaster as relaxed a smile as she could muster across her face. “We’re just … rehearsing for a play! A ‘Rambo’ remake! Except … it’s a musical! Either way, tickets coming soon!”
Though not looking overly convinced by her excuse, the other customers gradually shifted their wary gazes off of Ray and Jeanie and returned to their meals.
“Smooth,” muttered Ray dryly.
“Well, I wouldn’t have to be smooth if you could just keep your voice down, now would I?!” hissed Jeanie, shooting a dagger of a look at him as her smile instantly vanished.
Ray held up his two hands in front of himself like he was surrendering – he knew she was right.
“So, taking Louis and Rachel out of the equation,” said Jeanie, looking to move their conversation along to the actual problem she assumed Ray had yet to tell her about. “What does all this mean for Oscar?”
“Well, he’s been staying with Tess for the last couple of days …” answered Ray, keeping his voice down so as not to draw anymore unwanted attention for Jeanie’s sake. “But come Saturday he’ll be headin’ into some … she called it a ‘residential facility’ for kids waitin’ on a new foster family.”
“So … like a ‘home’ or something?” asked Jeanie, the words sounding as though they tasted bad in her mouth.
“She didn’t go into any details, but it sure sounds like it, right?”
“Man, that’s rough,” said Jeanie, the sigh the words came out with causing her cheeks to momentarily puff out. “And after everything he’s been through as well? The poor kid can’t catch a break.”
“He really can’t,” agreed Ray, placing his two hands on either side of his cup of coffee he’d yet to take a drink from. “And do you want to know what the worst thing is? After he’d come ’round to the idea of going back to Florida on Sunday night, he heard Tess talking on the phone to Louis, and you know what he said? ‘I just hope things won’t be weird when I get back’.”
Jeanie’s head fell empathetically to the side. She could only imagine what it must be like for a kid so young to have to deal with such problems; to constantly be wary of “something” happening that would just come in and rip the rug from beneath from your feet. No kid should have to go through that, she thought.
“But what did I say back to him?” continued Ray, asking the question in an almost accusatory manner. “ ‘Oh I’m sure they’ll be fine’ and ‘They’ll just be happy to have you back safe and sound – you’ll see’. I mean, what an idiot!”
“Nope, no way; I’m not letting you do that to yourself – uh-uh,” replied Jeanie, firmly derailing that particular train of thought before it could even leave the station that was Ray’s, obviously, guilt-ridden mind. “Ok, you are not to blame for the situation Oscar is in right now. Alright, you had no way of knowing how Louis and Rachel were thinking, and when you said what you did to him? Anyone in your position would have said the exact same things – I would’ve.”
“Yeah, but if I’d just known what was gonna happen …” said Ray, not willing to let himself off the hook that easy. “Then maybe I could’ve … I dunno … done somethin’.”
“But you couldn’t have known what was gonna happen, could you?” argued Jeanie, reiterating her firm stance on the matter. “And, even for argument’s sake, let’s say you did somehow manage to learn what was gonna happen – realistically, what could you have done? Like, asked him if he wanted to stay with you?”
As soon as the words left Jeanie’s lips, a look of realization suddenly dawned across Ray’s face. Ever since the previous Sunday when he’d watched Tess lead Mustang towards Malcolm’s squad car and the pair of them then drive off into the night, Ray had felt what he could only describe as being just that little bit “off”. He’d put it down to the hectic nature of the previous week, of course, coupled with the commotion of then trying to actually find Mustang once he’d gone missing – a situation which, for the time it lasted, resulted in him becoming the most wanted person in Marais des Voleurs since infamous bank robber, Ronnie ‘Trigger’ Hutchins, and his equally as infamous getaway driver, ‘Turbo’ Tammy Trinder, had led a trail of police cars on a high-speed chase through the town in the late ‘60s after pulling off a heist in New Orleans.
But to hear Jeanie raise the proposition of Mustang living in Marais des Voleurs with him – even if she’d done so in a manner which expressed she didn’t think it would have been an actual viable option – that niggling feeling he’d been experiencing all week; the knot in the pit of his stomach; the faint, but persistent, headache – they were suddenly gone; evaporated in the smell of frying bacon and close-to-burnt coffee grounds wafting out from the kitchen of the diner.
“Woah, wait, what are you thinking?!” asked an immediately worried sounding Jeanie, as she’d seen the expression currently plastered across Ray’s face when looking at her own reflection enough times in the past to recognize that it only ever led to trouble. “I know that look – and it’s not a good one.”
“No, this is definitely a good look …” replied Ray, the look of realization now melting away into a big, wide smile as he looked at Jeanie. “Cause you’re right – I’m gonna have Mustang come stay with me.”
With that, Ray spun around in his stool and began to make for the front door of the diner, his hand already reaching for his cellphone.
“You’re gonna what?!” called out Jeanie, not caring in the slightest how loud her own voice now was. “Ray?! … Ray?!”
“Sorry, can’t hear you …” he replied, cheekily spinning back around as he brought his already-dialed-cellphone up to his ear. “I’m on the phone.”
“Ray! Don’t you dare go out that door!” replied Jeanie, attempting to sound as stern as she could manage whilst at the same time lowering the volume of her voice after hearing a disapproving cough aimed in her direction from Maurice the cook. “We are not finished talking about this!”
“Tess, hey!” said Ray, grinning like a Cheshire cat at Jeanie as he backed out through the door of the diner. “Ray Thackett, again.”
The door swung shut behind him, leaving a frustrated Jeanie with no other alternative but to look on helplessly through the windows of the diner as Ray went about making his pitch to Tess from her post behind the counter.
“Because it won’t be as easy as just asking …” she sighed quietly, lifting her hand up to her chest and gently feeling the outline of the necklace beneath her uniform. “Believe me …”
*
“This one?” asked Maggie, gesturing at the door in front of her, its surface – like every other door she’d encountered on her tour of the clubhouse – covered in layers of thick, white paint that had begun to chip in places.
“Yep, just in through there,” answered a somewhat grimacing Ray as he finally reached the top of the staircase, one of two that splintered off either side of the grand central one that served as an impressive sight as soon you entered the clubhouse through the main doors downstairs. “You may have to wiggle the doorknob a bit, though – it tends to stick a little.”
As advertised, the slightly scratched, brass doorknob did, indeed, catch, but after the requisite ‘wiggling’, Maggie finally heard the click she was looking for just as Ray reached the door after traversing the exposed wooden floorboards that made up the landing of the second floor.
“Now, I’m not sure what you’ve heard …” said Ray, dryly, after a few moments of watching Maggie hold onto the doorknob but not then pushing the door itself open. “But doors do actually work the same way down here in the south as they do in New York.”
“Huh?” mumbled Maggie, suddenly turning to look at Ray as if she’d just been woken from sleepwalking.
“The door,” repeated a smiling Ray, pronouncing each syllable for extra emphasis.
“Oh, yeah … sorry,” said Maggie, shaking her head in an attempt to refocus herself. “I was miles away.”
“You ok?” asked Ray, now sounding ever-so-slightly concerned as, even in the few hours he’d been speaking to her, he’d grown accustomed to Maggie being constantly clued-in to whatever was happening – a result, he imagined, of her training as a journalist.
“Yeah, I’m good – really. I was just taking a minute to prep myself, you know?” She gestured at the door. “I mean, this is the ‘LaFleur Suite’ at Crescent Creek,” she announced reverently, sounding awe-struck at even saying the words. “A room that, in its pomp, was widely recognized as being one of the most exclusive places in Louisiana. A room that, to my knowledge, there exists not one single photograph of. And a room that, in the hundred-plus years that this place was a clubhouse, there were only four ways you could get to step foot inside it – and they were, in order: be a LaFleur; be married to a LaFleur; be invited by a LaFleur; or be a Major champion.” After counting off each of the four on her hand whilst looking at Ray, Maggie turned her attention back onto the door. “And now I’m about to go in there …” she said, sounding quietly stunned at the prospect.
“That you are,” replied Ray, not sure if Maggie was seeking clarification of that fact or not, but throwing it out there just in case she was. “So, shall we?”
“Yeah …” answered Maggie. “Let’s do it.”
She took a deep, cleansing breath to steady herself. She turned the doorknob as far as it would go to the left; slowly began to push open the door … and then closed it back out. “And you’re sure this is ok?!” she asked, sounding a touch squeamish as she turned sharply to look at Ray.
With his lower back now screaming at him to find a chair after showing Maggie all the way around the lower floor of the clubhouse and then scaling the two flights of stairs up to the second floor, Ray decided to take the bull by the horns. He firmly pushed open the door causing Maggie, who was still clinging onto the doorknob, to practically fall in through the doorway of the ‘LaFleur Suite’.
Once fairly sure that she wasn’t, in fact, going to dissolve into a heap of ashes after being deemed suitably unworthy by the famous room, Maggie – who’d done quite an excellent job of avoiding tumbling to the floor after Ray caught her completely unaware by opening the door on her – finally allowed her eyes to roam about the four walls surrounding her.
And she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.
Not because what lay before her was the vision of baroque opulence she had pictured in her mind for how the ‘LaFleur Suite’ would look – this ode to the Palace of Versailles in the middle of a swamp in Louisiana – but because it was the complete opposite to that.
There was a simple, round, wooden table in the middle of the room with a few equally simple-looking wooden chairs placed neatly around it, all of them made from the same dark-coloured wood as that of the table. Though the floorboards lay exposed just like they were out on the landing, there was the added addition of a circular rug placed underneath the table and chairs, itself richly patterned in shades of blue and green. The walls were covered in a very delicate looking, faded green wallpaper that appeared as though to touch it without a pair of white cotton gloves would see it disintegrate under your touch.
In the corner of the room directly across from where Maggie was standing, pressed up against the wall and just off to the right-hand side of the sparsely adorned fireplace, was a tall, glass-paneled cabinet neatly filled with the porcelain crockery that, no doubt, had been used time and again for the countless private dinner parties the room had seen over the decades. Dotted around the walls, smiling out at her from behind thin panes of glass, framed photographs of handsome men in suits and beautiful women in glamorous dresses lay forever frozen in time, permanent reminders, Maggie was sure, of laughter-filled soirées that lasted long into the small hours of the night – thoughts of ‘nothing good happens after 2 a.m.’ as far from their minds as one could imagine.
And then last, but more certainly not least, off to the very left-hand most side of the room – the opaque, white net curtains hanging in front of them filtering the warm afternoon sunlight outside and dispersing it around the room – were the two glass doors that Maggie knew led out onto a private balcony that overlooked the 18th green; the only facet of the ‘LaFleur Suite’ which had ever leant itself to being captured on film by the prying eyes of those who longed to see what secrets lay beyond the famous glass doors.
“Let me guess …” said Ray, after once again affording Maggie a quiet, undisturbed moment in which to just drink in her surroundings. “Not quite what were you expectin’?”
“No …” she muttered, distractedly, as she peered around the door and clapped eyes on a tidy-sized upright piano standing against the wall. “No, it’s not.” She looked at Ray and smiled. “But I think that adds to its ‘aura’, you know? I mean, for so long, people would have wondered what lay hidden inside here, right? All the secrecy surrounding it just fueling the sense of mythology it had?” Maggie cast her gaze back out onto the room. “And yet all that time … it was just this. This simple, almost ‘homely’ feeling room that’s actually less decorated than the others I’ve seen in here.”
She paused for a second as she attempted to make sense of the thoughts which had been stirred up by standing where she was. “I guess it just shows that ‘we’ are what make things special, right? Like, ‘People’? I mean, you look at everyone in these pictures …” She waved her hand at the collection of photographs hanging on each of the four walls. “All of them smiling, laughing … singing by that piano … they’re what made this room what it is. And it’s like you can still feel them here; just waiting for someone to crack a joke or burst into song. It’s incredible.”
“And that right there?” smiled Ray, himself now walking further into the room and placing his hands on the back of one of the chairs, a move that drew a slightly strained-sounding creak from the delicately carved spindles that made up the back of it. “That’s why I brought you up here – I knew you’d appreciate it.”
“Well, thank you for doing it,” said Maggie earnestly, her eyes still roving hungrily around the room in order to take in every minute detail. “Because before I left New York? I never for a second thought I’d even step foot inside the clubhouse, nevermind in here – so, this is amazing.”
“Well, you’re very welcome,” replied Ray. “And I’m sure if François LaFleur were here right now he’d be delighted to see his vision for this room, even after all this time, can still pack a punch.”
Maggie began to venture slowly away from the door, the floorboards creaking and groaning beneath her feet as she moved, and allowed her eyes to just linger over the pictures hanging on the wall alongside her; each one a vision of effortless elegance captured in a second-long flash and then permanently preserved in black and white. As easily as she could have spent the next hour carefully perusing over each individual photograph, however, Maggie suddenly remembered that she hadn’t travelled all the way to Crescent Creek to be a tourist. She’d come there to be a journalist. A writer.
So she refocused.
“So, how exactly did that phone call with Tess go?” she asked, throwing the question back over her shoulder as she admired a black dress being worn by this gorgeous sallow-skinned woman holding a cocktail glass and laughing at someone off behind the camera, the air thick with cigarette smoke around her. “You know, where you were going to ask her if Mustang could just come to live with you?”
“Oh, just … terribly,” said Ray, cringing at the memory of just how bad the phone call had actually gone.
“Really?” said Maggie, immediately turning around, as Ray’s animated reaction had proved to be more than enticing enough to warrant garnering her full, undivided attention. “I thought she would have been delighted to hear you wanted to take him in.”
“So did I,” said Ray, agreeing, as the last of his ‘cringe’ dissipated. “But, apparently, it wasn’t as simple as that. She said that you can’t just suddenly decide to become a foster parent and expect to have a child released into your custody; that it can take anywhere from three to six months of checks and classes and … basically, a whole mess of stuff you can’t not do if you want to be legally accredited.”
“Which – given you were anxious to avoid Mustang having to go into that residential facility – made things … problematic.”
“That they did.”
“So how did you get around it?” asked Maggie, herself trying to figure out the answer before she’d even fully finished asking the question.
“Well, after she’d finished goin’ through the, seemingly, endless list of reasons for why I couldn’t take care of Mustang,” replied Ray, leaning away from the chair he’d been propped against before beginning to move slowly in the direction of the doors which led out to the balcony. “Tess paused – like, for so long I actually started to wonder if we’d been disconnected or if she’d just straight up hung up on me. When she finally started speakin’ again, though? Well, let’s just say I wasn’t expectin’ to hear what I did …”
*
“Now, while I understand that all that might be disappointing to hear,” said Tess, her tone of voice, even through the speaker on Ray’s phone, sounding undeniably different – as if she were trying to say something without directly saying it. “I’m just trying my utmost to respect the wishes of Oscar’s grandfather, Travis Peyton, who, despite still being Oscar’s legal guardian, felt as though foster care would be the best option for his grandson – you understand that, right?”
“Sure …” replied Ray, a touch warily, as he was trying to decipher if he was correctly picking up on what Tess was possibly laying down or if he was just imagining things.
“Now, that being said, of course …” continued Tess, her tone now sounding even more loaded. “If Travis were to be somehow made aware that there was another potentially viable option for Oscar’s care? One that might serve to change his mind about what he thinks would be best for Oscar’s needs? Well, then I guess – and this is, obviously, ‘hypothetically speaking’, of course?”
“Of course …” repeated Ray, getting more and more confident that he was, indeed, in on what Tess was doing.
“Then, in that case, there is precedent for a legal guardian to transfer the care of a child they have responsibility for over to another guardian of their choosing on an ‘ad hoc’ basis; assuming, of course, said guardian would be deemed appropriate to take care of a child by the relevant authorities; like, for instance – and I’m just spitballing here, obviously – a distinguished, former high-ranking member of the military with a perfectly clean criminal record.”
Though he found the fact she’d, clearly, done quite a thorough background check on him equal parts understandable, yet jarring, Ray was more than willing to look past Tess rummaging into his past if it meant that, as appeared to be the case, she was giving him insider information as to how he could bypass the labyrinth of red-tape entailed in becoming a foster parent in order to allow Mustang to live with him.
“The only problem with this hypothetical scenario, however …” continued Tess, her voice refocusing Ray’s attention back onto her and away from the swirling mass of thoughts which had engulfed his brain. “Is that even if such a potential guardian existed, and if they managed to actually convince Travis to agree to let them take care of Oscar, then they would still need to get form GR-191 signed by Travis and then hand-deliver it into my office by close of business tomorrow if said guardian wanted to prevent Oscar from needing to enter a certain residential facility on Saturday, as is planned.”
Though Tess’ voice suddenly became a lot more hushed, as if someone had just entered her office who she didn’t want overhearing what she was saying, it also became incredibly serious – like she really wanted the gravity of what she was about to say next to hit home with Ray.
“Because once he goes in there? Then he automatically ceases to be under the care of me and my office here in Orlando and moves into the State system – at which point there’s no way I can guarantee that they would consider Travis’ wishes for where he wanted Oscar to go. So, if I were someone looking to avoid that happening? Well, then, I’d be looking to get to Dayton, Texas as quickly as I could; head south on route 1409 for about twelve minutes until I reached the turnoff for route 417 and Parkway; then follow that road for about two miles until I saw a beat-up, red mailbox on my right with Hartstone Farm written on it, and try to talk to Travis.”
Tess fell silent on the other end of the line for a moment as she allowed Ray to commit to memory the detailed directions she’d just given him for where to find Mustang’s grandfather. He locked them in.
“But, hey …” she finally said after giving Ray his allotted time. “Given we shouldn’t even be having a conversation like this – as hypothetical as it is – I think we can both agree that it never happened, right?”
“Right,” agreed Ray, unable to curtail a smile.
“Alright then …” replied Tess, sounding as if she, too, were smiling all the way over in Orlando before purposefully lowering the volume of her voice, once again, to just above that of a whisper. “Just remember, though: five p.m tomorrow, ok? That’s your deadline; if you’re not here by then, it’s outta my hands.”
“Got it,” confirmed Ray. “And thank you for doing this.”
“For doing what?” said Tess, affecting a deliberately confused sounding tone. “I haven’t anything, remember?” She paused for a second before whispering, “But good luck.”
And then, just like that, she hung up.
*
“So Tess did want Mustang to go stay with you!” smiled Maggie, leaning back against the rear of her chair, its narrow spindles proving oddly comfortable.
“That she did,” said Ray, returning Maggie’s smile with one of his own as he thought back on that moment he received Tess’ blessing – albeit in a roundabout fashion.
“And do you know how she ended up actually coming to that decision?” asked Maggie, intrigued as, from what she’d heard about her up until now, Tess had struck her as someone who very much did things ‘by the book’ as opposed to going ‘off-script’ as she had done in helping Ray when he’d called her. “I mean, I know you said she’d done a background check on you, so she clearly knew you were fine in that regard; but, for some reason, I don’t think that in itself would have been enough to convince her you were the right person to take care of Mustang.”
“Well, as it would happen, I actually ended up asking her that exact question myself a few months later,” answered Ray, taking a second to pick a tiny fleck of lint from off the polished surface of the table before letting it drop gently to the floor alongside where he was sitting. “And she said it all came down to something Mustang said to her when she was askin’ him about the time he’d spent with me.”
“And that was?”
“Well, she said to him that when me and her were talkin’ after I’d figured he’d probably hightailed it to Teddy’s garage to get his grandpa’s car after he’d ran away from the diner,” began Ray, as he zeroed in on yet another piece of flint. “I’d mentioned how he had asked if I would bring him to Houston on the night we first met. What Tess had been wonderin’, though, was why Mustang had never then actually gotten me to do that?”
“As in, bring him to Houston?” asked Maggie, wanting to make sure she and Ray were still on the same page.
“Exactly.”
“So what did Mustang say? Cause that’s actually a really interesting question,” followed up Maggie, a touch annoyed that she, herself, hadn’t thought to ask Ray that.
“Well, the way Tess told it,” said Ray, his attention now focused purely on what he was saying as opposed to scouring the surface of the table for stray pieces of lint. “When she finished askin’ him the question, Mustang went real quiet – not that he’d been doin’ all that much talkin’ anyway – but he just looked out the window of her car and didn’t say a word. After a few seconds, though, he finally comes back and just says … ‘I guess I just liked bein’ Mustang’.”
“Wow …” whispered Maggie, that particular sentiment not lost on her, as there were times when she, too, had wished she could be someone else when she was growing up as opposed to just ‘the girl whose father had died’. “And that was enough for Tess, huh?”
“Yep; as far as she was concerned, anyone that could make Mustang just feel like a normal kid again – even if it meant him going by a different name – was worth giving a shot to.”
“That’s crazy …” smiled Maggie, quietly blown away as she lined up her next question. “So, after Tess hung up and you were left standing outside the diner … what was going through your mind at that point?”
“I need to get Dayton, Texas – fast …” replied Ray, his eyes lighting up to match the smile on his face. “And I know just the car for the job.”