Read Chapter 7: The Jilted Bride

Julien led her through the garden, past the wrought-iron bench where the magnolia petals had begun to brown and curl. The afternoon light came slanting through the oak branches, dappling the flagstone path in coins of gold.

"The family legend," he said, not looking at her, "is that Clarisse was a bride."

Elodie followed a half-step behind. "A bride."

"A jilted one." He stopped at the edge of the fountain, its basin dry and choked with dead leaves. "She was supposed to marry a man from Baton Rouge—a cotton broker. The wedding was set for the last Saturday in May of 1859. The dress was ordered from Paris. The caterers were hired. The church was booked."

He turned. His face was unreadable, but something in his jaw had tightened.

"Émile never showed."

Elodie folded her arms. "Émile Fontenot? The one who took the loan from Marie Leveau?"

"The same." Julien's laugh was hollow. "He was the groom. He left her at the altar without a note, without a servant to carry word, without anything at all. Clarisse sat in the bride's room at St. Louis Cathedral for six hours, waiting in her white dress. They say she didn't cry. She didn't scream. She just sat, perfectly still, while the light moved across the floor."

"And then?"

"And then she came home." He gestured at the mansion behind them, its tall windows dark and shuttered. "She locked herself in the attic. She'd always played piano, you know—her mother insisted on lessons. After Émile left, she played. Day and night. Waltzes, mostly. The neighbors complained. Servants quit. Her father sent for doctors. None of them could get her to stop."

Elodie thought of the music box in her bag, the tiny silver dancers frozen mid-turn. "She played this waltz."

Julien nodded. "The same one you've heard. The same one the house has played every night since she died. She died in that attic, Elodie. She stopped playing only to die, and then she started again."

"Julien." She said his name carefully. "That's a ghost story. A sad one, but a ghost story."

"You think I don't know that?" He took a step toward her. "You think I haven't told myself the same thing a thousand times? I've had priests bless this house. I've had a medium come through and charge me two thousand dollars to tell me the attic was 'cluttered with residual emotion.' I've had structural engineers tear apart those walls looking for some kind of—" He stopped, exhaled. "Some kind of mechanical explanation. There isn't one."

"If it's residual," Elodie said, "if it's just a stuck record of her grief, then it's not malicious. It's not a curse. It's just... noise. Sad noise."

"That's what I told myself, too. For years." He looked past her, toward the oak tree at the far end of the garden. Its roots bulged above the soil like veins on the back of an old hand. "Then Bastien came to me."

"Your brother."

"The older one." Julien's voice dropped. "Étienne was the middle child. Bastien was the eldest—he was supposed to inherit all this, the house, the land, the family name. He loved it, too. Used to say you could feel the history in the walls, that the house had its own heartbeat. I thought he was being poetic."

"But he wasn't."

The word seemed to cost him. "He came to me one night—seven years before Étienne disappeared, it would've been about fourteen years ago now. He was shaking. Not scared, exactly. More like he'd seen something that had rearranged the inside of his head. He told me he'd been in the attic, looking for—I don't remember what. Old books, maybe. He said he heard the piano start, like it always does, at midnight. And he decided he was going to stay. He was going to watch it. He wanted to see."

Julien's hands were trembling. He noticed her noticing and shoved them in his pockets.

"He saw her."

Elodie felt a coldness move up her spine, thin as a blade.

"He said she was there at the piano, in her wedding dress. He described it in detail—the lace, the seed pearls, the way the fabric moved even though there was no wind. She was playing. And she turned to look at him, and she smiled, and she said, 'Tell Émile I'm still waiting.'"

"Julien—"

"He left that night. Packed one bag, took his car, drove to Baton Rouge and caught a Greyhound to somewhere. I got a postcard from El Paso six months later. Then nothing. My mother never forgave herself. Bastien was her favorite. She used to say the house ate him, that it had been hungry since 1859 and it was finally getting its meal." He held her gaze. "She died thinking that. I buried her thinking there might be a version of it that was true."

Elodie studied his face. His eyes were dark, the same darkness she'd seen in the portrait of Clarisse—the same high cheekbones, the same stubborn set of the mouth. The resemblance was more than striking; it was uncanny. But right now, what struck her wasn't the resemblance.

It was the word.

*Ghost.*

When he'd said it, his gaze had flickered. Just a fraction. Just long enough for her—a woman trained to read the smallest tells in a deposition—to catch the lie underneath.

"Julien," she said softly. "You don't believe that."

"I believe—" He started, stopped. Ran a hand over his face. The magnolia shade had moved; the afternoon was sliding toward evening. "I believe something happened to my brother. I believe something is happening in that house. I don't know if it's a ghost. I don't know if it's a curse. I don't know if it's my mother's grief or Bastien's fear or my own stubborn refusal to let go of a property that has cost this family more than it will ever be worth."

He looked at her, and for a moment his guard came down—she saw the exhaustion beneath, the long years of sleepless nights and unanswerable questions.

"But I didn't call you here to tell you ghost stories."

"You didn't call me at all," she said. "You told me to leave."

A ghost of a smile crossed his mouth. "And yet here you are."

"Answer me one thing."

He raised an eyebrow.

"When you said Bastien saw her ghost—that wasn't what you actually think happened, was it?"

Something shifted in his face. The eye contact broke, just for an instant, before returning. He was practiced at this, she realized. He'd been lying about this for years—to his mother, to Étienne, to himself.

"Tell me what you really think," she pressed. "What you *know*."

Julien was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.

"I think my brother lied to me." He looked at the mansion, and there was something raw in the set of his shoulders. "I think he saw something that night, but it wasn't Clarisse. It was something wearing her face. And I think it's been wearing her face for a hundred and sixty years, waiting for a reason to stop pretending."

Above them, the clouds had begun to gather, gray and heavy. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled.

"I think," Julien said, "that Odette knows more than she's telling you, and I think that tree—" He pointed to the old oak, its shadow now stretching long across the lawn. "—has been keeping a secret that's about to come out."

The wind picked up. The mansion's windows reflected the darkening sky like empty eyes.

Elodie reached into her bag and touched the gris-gris, its small weight a comfort she hadn't expected to need.

"Then we'd better go look at that tree before the light fades," she said.

Julien looked at her for a long moment, and something in his face changed—a crack in the skepticism, a glint of something warmer beneath.

"You're not going to leave, are you?"

"I'm an estate lawyer," she said. "I don't leave until the paperwork is done."

For the first time since she'd met him, he almost smiled.