Thiago finished with Gerald and turned toward me. He read something in my expression and lifted one eyebrow a fraction.
I shook my head.Nothing.\
Movement in my peripheral vision drew my attention. I saw my mother before she saw me.
She stood near the refreshment table with my father, a champagne flute in hand. My father was talking with his hands, likely sketching out the details of the latest building he had salvaged.
I crossed toward them, and Thiago joined me, falling into step at my side.
“My parents,” I whispered as we approached.
“I see the resemblance.”
“My mother will read you in thirty seconds. Don’t perform.”
A beat. “What does that mean?”
“It means be yourself. She’ll uncover anything you try to hide.”
Jean-Paul Moreau, my father, was a big man, wide through the shoulders, and increasingly thick in the middle. He had hands that had handled forty years of iron, cypress, and brick.He folded me into a hug that compressed my spine and then extended a hand to Thiago, asking where he was from.
When Thiago said New York City, my father nodded and immediately offered him boudin from the back table. I said he’d eat later. My father said that the man could speak for himself. Thiago said he’d find it. My father approved of that answer.
While Thiago engaged my father about his current salvage project, a double-gallery Creole cottage, my mother moved to stand by me. Solange Baptiste Moreau was short and slight, with dark eyes sharpened by thirty years of handling the logistics of grief. She hugged me tightly and kissed my cheek.
“He works for Dominic,” she said.
“Security.”
She sipped the champagne. “There was something on the news. A neighborhood disturbance. That must have been you.”
“We’re managing it.”
She placed a hand around my waist. “He’s watching the door behind your father’s left shoulder while they talk. He’s careful with people he doesn’t know yet. That’s different from being cold. I like that.”
She studied my face for a moment longer. “You trust him already,” she said quietly.
“He’s a professional.”
She glanced at me. “Is Dominic safe? Are you?”
“We’re working on it.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s the only answer I have.”
My father completed his conversation with Thiago and squeezed my shoulder with one large hand. “Good one,” he said, tilting his head toward Thiago, who had stepped back to check his phone.
“He works for Dominic, Papa.”
“So do you.” My father headed for the boudin table with the urgency of a man who had been patient for long enough.
Thiago returned to my side. “Your mother looked at me as if she were reading a report.”
“She was.”
“What did it say?”
