The Taste of My Husband's Brother (A Wife's Revenge) novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Cinnamon
Luc's good-morning kiss tastes of his brother's wife's gum; Josette films the lovers in the aging barn planning to sell the island, walks into the pepper field and kisses Etienne, and Luc's truck stops at the end of the row.
My husband kissed me good morning, and his mouth tasted like red cinnamon gum.
Luc doesn't chew gum.
He says it makes a man look like a cow.
I stood at the kitchen counter in my rubber boots with the coffee pot in my hand.
He was already at the door, knotting his tie.
"Big day, Jo," he said. "I'm going to walk the barns before the blessing. Don't be late this year."
"I've never been late."
"Then don't start."
The screen door banged behind him.
I put my fingers on my lips.
There's one person on Pointe Rouge who chews red cinnamon gum from sunup to supper.
She buys it by the case in Lafayette.
She snaps it during board meetings and calls everybody baby.
Her name is Mireille, and she's married to Luc's little brother.
It was Red Day.
The first picking of the year, when the whole island goes into the fields at dawn and the priest blesses the first basket.
I'm the company taster.
For six years no barrel of Arceneaux Red has been bottled until I passed it off my wooden paddle.
That morning I'd left the paddle in the aging barn.
That's what I told myself, walking down the shell road in the gray light.
The aging barn is three hundred feet long and smells like salt and peppers and old oak.
The big door was shut.
The little side door was open a crack.
I heard her before I saw her.
"Not on the barrels, baby. They leave rings on my dress."
Then my husband laughed, low.
I put my eye to the gap.
Luc had her backed against the 2023 row with her white dress pushed up her thigh.
His hand was in her blond hair.
She was smiling up at him, chewing.
I took out my phone and pressed record.
My hand didn't shake.
"Christmas Eve," Luc said into her neck. "Mémère signs on her birthday. Houston closes the same night."
"And then?"
"And then we're gone. They keep the name three years. Eighteen months, they move it all to Monterrey."
"The island?"
"Who cares about the island? It's a hill in a swamp."
"What about the seed?"
"The seed goes to their lab in Texas. That's what they're paying for, baby. A hundred and forty million for a jar of seeds."
She laughed into his shoulder.
"And your little taster?"
"Prenup. She walks out the way she walked in. In rubber boots."
"And Etienne?"
"Etienne gets his boat. He'll be happy. He's a simple man."
He kissed her again, hard, and she hooked her leg around him.
I stopped recording.
I stood in the wet grass and listened to two hundred people's jobs get kissed away against my barrels.
Then I turned around and walked into the fields.
The sun was coming up red over the marsh.
The pickers were gathering at the end of the long rows with their buckets.
Lise Fontenot was handing out boudin from the back of her café van, yelling at everybody to take two.
Up on the hill, the big house porch light was on.
Mémère would be out there by now with her one cigarette of the day.
Babette Arceneaux, eighty-one, who owns fifty-two percent of everything on this island.
Etienne was out at the far end of row nine, alone, checking leaves.
He's Luc's younger brother.
He runs the fields and the barns, and he smells like diesel and salt water.
He looked up when he heard my boots.
"You're early, Josette."
"I need you to watch something."
"Watch what?"
I held out my phone.
He took it in his big sunburned hand.
I watched his face instead of the screen.
His jaw went tight at the first laugh.
When Luc said "a hill in a swamp," Etienne breathed out through his nose.
When Luc said "a simple man," he smiled, and it wasn't a nice smile.
He handed the phone back.
"I didn't know about Houston," he said quietly.
"Neither did I."
"Who else has seen that?"
"You."
He looked at me for a long time.
"Why me?"
"Because she's your wife," I said. "And you're the only other person on this island who just lost what I lost."
He didn't answer.
"I'm not crying in a bathroom, Etienne. I'm not leaving in my rubber boots. I'm taking it back. The company, the seed, the island. All of it."
"How?"
"I don't know yet. I need you."
"You need me for what?"
I didn't plan it.
I reached up, took his face in both hands and kissed him.
For one second he was stone.
Then he made a sound low in his chest and kissed me back.
He tasted like black coffee and salt and the pepper leaves he'd been rubbing between his fingers.
Nothing like his brother.
His hand spread across my back and pulled me up off my heels.
I grabbed his shirt in my fists.
His beard burned my chin.
His thumb found the bare skin above my jeans and stayed there, and heat went through me.
I'd been married seven years.
Nobody had ever kissed me like that.
When he finally lifted his head, we were both breathing hard.
"That," he said, "is a terrible idea."
"I know."
"Do it again."
I laughed, and he kissed the laugh right off my mouth.
Then gravel crunched behind us.
A truck engine idled, then cut off.
I looked past Etienne's shoulder.
Luc's silver truck had stopped at the end of row nine.
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