They Gave Me a Check at Twelfth Night, So I Took Their Mardi Gras novel · Chapter 27 of 32
Chapter 27: Ash Wednesday
On Ash Wednesday morning Auguste knelt on my mother's porch in the same navy blazer he had worn to give me the letter.
I found him when I opened the door for the newspaper.
He was on both knees on the boards, with his hands open on his thighs.
His hair stuck up on one side from sleeping in a car.
There were smudges of ash on his forehead.
He had been to the seven o'clock Mass at St. Louis and then driven straight here.
"Clem," he said.
"Get up."
"I can't."
"You can. You're thirty-four."
"I've got nothing left," he said.
"Dad's in Touro with a monitor on his chest."
"They've taken the Villere name off the board at the brokerage."
"Mom locked herself in her room."
"I went to the house and the cook was gone, and the maid, and the driver, and nobody had made coffee."
"I stood in the kitchen and didn't know where they kept the filters."
I almost laughed.
It was not a kind laugh, and I swallowed it.
"Blythe left," he said.
"She went to her father's in Lafayette on Tuesday night."
"She won't take my calls."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of They Gave Me a Check at Twelfth Night, So I Took Their Mardi Gras are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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