To which Charmaine added, “Someone ought to tell her that her little girl has grown up.”
Oh, to be making such a spectacle of herself! Sylvie felt her palms begin to sweat, and a wave of cold shivers passed over her. Next, she would be hyperventilating.
No, she was a new Sylvie. She was not going to crumble under her mother’s condemnation, or from fear of ridicule.
Meanwhile, Valcour LeDeux, wearing a rumpled suit and a dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, took Tee-John by the nape and pulled him out of his chair. “I ought to whup you good, boy.”
“I dint do nothin’ wrong,” he wailed. At the same time, Tee-John gave Sylvie a look that promised he would disclose none of the secrets he’d learned from her and Luc at the bayou hideaway. Remy had already taken care of hiding the water and soil samples. She had the Cypress Oil papers stored in her own secret place.
“Nothing wrong? I’ll show you ‘nothing wrong,’ Tee-John.” His father shook him, hard.
“Uh, I don’t think so,” Remy said, rising to his feet. “The beatings in this family stopped a long time ago, Dad, and they aren’t going to start up now.”
René and Sylvie joined him in standing, and they all glared at the man.
“Don’t interfere in my bizness,” Valcour said icily, still holding a squealing Tee-John by the neck so that he had to stand on tiptoe. “He’s caused a lot of trouble to a lot of folks. He deserves to be punished.”
“Not with physical abuse,” Sylvie declared.
“Stay out of this, missy. You’re in enough trouble yourself.”
“Don’t speak to my daughter that way,” Inez Breaux-Fontaine surprised Sylvie by saying. To Sylvie, she said, “Come home with me where we can discuss this… uh, matter, in private. With a little creative PR, we can still avoid a scandal, I’m sure.”
“I’m not going anywhere till Luc is out of jail,” Sylvie said. “And frankly, at this point, scandal be damned.”
Her mother sucked in air like a puff fish.
“Way to go, Sylvie,” Remy said with obvious surprise.
Inez gave Remy a once-over that included an unkind pause on his damaged face.
Remy stared back at her, unwavering.
Claudia looked as if she’d like to leap over the table and strangle Inez for her rude assessment.
Inez turned her attention back to Sylvie. “Lucien LeDeux has nothing to do with you.” She said his name as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.
“I beg to differ.”
Her mother went bug-eyed, and everyone in the room turned to stare at Sylvie questioningly.
Sylvie declined to elaborate, which caused Tante Lulu to narrow her eyes as she studied her. Tante Lulu was probably picking out wedding colors in her head, or ordering a few more chickens.
Remy grinned and winked at her. René pumped his fist in the air in celebration of some victory.
Claudia and Charmaine exchanged a sappy look that pretty much said, “Ain’t love grand?” Valcour LeDeux’s face turned practically green; he could probably use a stiff drink.
“Sylvie Marie, we are talking about The Swamp Solicitor,” her mother hissed. “A man who takes great delight in being called ‘the bad boy of the bayou.'” To her credit, she relayed her message in an undertone, so as not to offend his family.
“So?” Sylvie asked. “What’s your point?”
Her mother slitted her eyes in a way that would have intimidated Sylvie into cowering compliance as a child. “Exactly what happened between you and that man while you were gallivanting up and down the bayou?”
“I would hardly call running for our lives gallivanting, Mother. And nothing happened between me and Luc that should concern you, except that I got to know him a little better. And it’s my opinion that behind his bad-boy image is a different person. He’s a good man trying to help his family and a lot of mostly unrepresented people.”
“Young lady, I can take care of my own family,” Valcour proclaimed in a seething tone. “I don’t need any uptown bite—lady interfering in LeDeux business. And you don’t know Lucien as well as you think if you believe he’s anything more than bad to the bone.”