The Taste of My Husband's Brother (A Wife's Revenge) novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Pact

At Etienne's bayou camp, Josette, Etienne and Lise make a plan and a set of rules, and Josette comes home at one in the morning to find Luc waiting on the stairs in the dark.

"A house in Houston," I said.

"That's what he says."

"Mémère, I've never been to Houston. I get carsick on the causeway."

She almost smiled.

"I'm only telling you what I was told."

"He's lying to you."

"Everybody lies to me, chère. I'm the one with the pen." She stood and picked up her pralines. "Go home. Kiss your husband. Be smart."

The screen door shut behind her.

I sat on her step until the porch light clicked off on its timer.

Then I drove to the bayou.

Etienne's camp sits on stilts at the end of a shell road, past the last of the cane, where the marsh opens up wide and black.

It's one room, a porch and a dock.

His shrimp boat was tied at the dock, rocking a little.

His truck was there.

So was Lise's café van.

She was on the porch in a lawn chair with a bottle of wine between her knees, already talking.

"I brought wine, boudin, and a shovel," she said. "Tell me which one we need."

"Who told you to come here?"

"He did." She pointed her bottle at Etienne. "He drove to my café at ten o'clock and said, 'Josette's going to need you tonight.' About five words in all, and that's the most he's said to me since high school."

Etienne came out with three coffee mugs.

"Six."

"See? He counts."

I sat on the top step and told Lise everything.

The gum. The barn. The video. Mémère.

She watched the whole video with her hand over her mouth.

When Luc said "rubber boots," she said a word in French her grandmother would have slapped her for.

When it ended she poured wine into all three coffee mugs.

"Okay," she said. "So we kill him."

"We are not killing him."

"We hurt him a little."

"Lise."

"Fine. What's the plan?"

I looked at the water.

"Mémère doesn't care about the affair. She cares about the company. So we prove the sale kills the company. Not tell her. Prove it. On paper, in front of people."

"Before Christmas Eve," Etienne said.

"Before Christmas Eve."

Lise counted on her fingers.

"That's four and a half months to beat a man with a law degree, a hundred and forty million dollars, and great hair."

"His hair's not that great," Etienne said.

"It's great, cher. I'm sorry. It's a fact."

I laughed for the first time all day.

It came out cracked, but it came out.

"Rules," Lise said. "Every good crime has rules."

"It's not a crime."

"Rule one," she said, ignoring me. "No lies between the three of us. You lie to them all you want. Not to us."

"Fine," I said.

Etienne looked at the water.

It was a second, maybe two.

"Fine," he said.

"Rule two," I said. "Nobody touches the 1898 seed. Whatever we do, the seed stays in the vault and stays safe."

"Agreed."

"Rule three." Lise pointed her mug from me to Etienne. "Nobody falls for anybody."

The porch went very quiet.

A frog started up under the dock.

"Lise," I said.

"I saw your chin, Josette. You've got beard burn. You think I'm blind?"

My face went hot.

Etienne rubbed the back of his neck.

"It was a one-time thing," I said.

"It was a two-time thing," Etienne said.

"You're not helping."

"I'm not lying. Rule one."

Lise threw her head back and laughed so loud a heron took off from the marsh.

"Rule three," she said again. "I'm serious. You two get stupid over each other, they'll see it a mile off, and Luc wins. Promise me."

"I promise," I said.

Etienne didn't say anything.

"Etienne."

"I heard you."

"That's not a promise."

"I don't make promises I can't keep," he said. "Ask anybody."

Lise looked at him a long time.

Then she looked at me.

"Mon Dieu," she said. "We're in trouble."

Later, when she went inside to find a corkscrew for the second bottle, Etienne sat down on the step beside me.

Not close.

Close enough.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

"Go ahead."

"You didn't look surprised. In the field. When you saw them."

He was quiet for a while.

"My marriage has been dead two years, Josette. I sleep on this porch more than I sleep in my bed. When your wife stops looking at you, you stop being surprised by anything."

"Two years?"

"She married the last name. It took me three years to figure that out. It took her about a week."

"Why didn't you leave?"

"Same reason you didn't," he said. "You think if you're good enough, long enough, it'll turn back into what you thought it was."

I didn't answer.

He'd said it exactly.

"For what it's worth," he said, "my brother's an idiot."

"For what it's worth, so's your wife."

He laughed, low, and our shoulders touched.

Neither of us moved away.

Lise came back out with the corkscrew and looked at our shoulders and said nothing, loudly.

I left at a quarter to one.

The company house was dark when I pulled in.

Luc's truck was in the drive.

I took my boots off on the porch and opened the front door without a sound.

I was three steps into the hall when I saw him.

He was sitting on the stairs in the dark in his undershirt, his phone face down on his knee.

"Where were you?"

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