The Taste of My Husband's Brother (A Wife's Revenge) novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Red Day

Etienne covers for them, the first basket is blessed with the lovers side by side, and Mémère says she knows about the affair and will sign the sale anyway, because Luc told her it was Josette's idea.

Etienne didn't let go of me fast.

He let go of me slow.

Then he bent, tore a leaf off the nearest plant and held it up to the light.

"See the spots?" he said, loud. "Bacterial. Whole end of this row's got it."

I looked at the leaf.

It was perfect.

"That's bad," I said.

"That's real bad."

The truck door slammed.

Luc came down the row in his navy suit and his good loafers, stepping around the mud.

He looked at me, then at his brother, then at the leaf.

"What's wrong with it?"

"Leaf spot," Etienne said. "I wanted the taster to see it before I burn the row."

Luc took the leaf between two fingers and dropped it.

"You've got dirt on your hands, Etienne. Every time I see you, you've got dirt on your hands."

"It's a farm, Luc."

"It's a brand." Luc wiped his fingers on a white handkerchief. "The farm is the part nobody pays for."

He turned to me and smiled his board-meeting smile.

"Jo. Mémère wants you up front for the blessing. Try to look like an Arceneaux, not a Guidry."

My mouth still tasted like his brother.

I smiled back.

"I'll fix my face."

He walked away whistling.

Etienne watched him go.

"Bacterial," I said under my breath.

"Best I could do on short notice."

"You're a terrible liar."

"I'm out of practice," he said. "You might have to teach me."

The blessing is at seven, at the end of row one, where the oldest plants grow.

The whole island comes.

Pickers in straw hats, the bottling crew in their blue shirts, kids with buckets bigger than they are.

The priest stood at the front with his holy water and his sleeves rolled up.

Mémère sat in a folding chair beside him, tiny and straight, with her pearl earrings on.

I stood at her left.

Luc stood at her right.

And Mireille stood next to Luc, in a fresh white dress, close enough that their arms touched.

She was chewing.

I could smell the cinnamon from where I stood.

"Morning, baby," she said to me, and blew a small pink bubble and popped it.

"Morning."

"You look tired. Did you sleep?"

"Like a baby."

The priest lifted the first basket.

It was full of red peppers, the first ones picked, still warm from the sun.

He blessed the seed, the soil, the hands that worked it and the family that kept it.

When he said "the family," Luc put his hand on the small of Mireille's back.

Just for a second.

Nobody saw it but me.

Then the bells on the bottling house rang, and two hundred people went into the rows.

I picked until noon.

I picked so hard my fingertips burned red through the gloves.

Lise found me at the end of row six with a cold Coke and a face.

"What happened? You look like somebody died."

"Tonight," I said. "Not here."

She looked at me for one long second.

"Tonight," she said, and walked away without asking another thing.

That's why she's been my best friend since kindergarten.

The boil was on the big house lawn.

Crawfish, corn, red potatoes, sausage, poured out on newspaper down three long tables.

Somebody's uncle played the accordion.

Luc gave a toast about a hundred and twelve years of family, and his voice cracked at the right spot.

People clapped.

Mireille clapped loudest.

Etienne sat at the end of the far table with a beer he didn't drink, and he didn't look at me once.

I knew because I kept checking.

At sundown the island went home, and Mémère sat on her porch with her one cigarette.

I brought her a plate of the pecan pralines she pretends she doesn't eat.

She took two.

"Sit, chère."

I sat on the step below her chair, the way I did when I was nine and she first let me taste mash off her paddle.

"Mémère, I need to tell you something, and you're going to hate it."

"I hate most things. Go ahead."

"Luc is sleeping with Mireille."

She blew smoke at the moon.

"Since Christmas," she said.

I stared at her.

"You know?"

"I'm eighty-one, not dead. She chews that nasty gum and he started smelling like a candy store."

"And you're not going to do anything?"

"What do you want me to do? Spank him?" She tapped her ash over the rail. "Men stray, chère. Companies don't. I can't run a company on who's sleeping where."

"It's not just that. He's selling us to Houston."

"I know about Houston."

"They're going to close the island. Eighteen months. They want the seed for a lab in Texas. I heard him say it."

I took out my phone.

Mémère put her hand over it.

"I am not watching my grandson's behind on a telephone."

"Mémère."

"I know what I'm selling." Her black eyes were steady. "I'll sign on my birthday. Christmas Eve. It's done."

"It's not done until you sign."

"Then it's done on Christmas Eve."

She stubbed out her cigarette on the rail, carefully.

Then she looked down at me, and for the first time all day, she looked sorry.

"Luc says it was your idea, chère. He says you want a house in Houston."

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