Page 19 of Lulu’s Recipe for Cajun Sass

“You did. I believe it was when you mentioned my being a dreamboat.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

She bit her bottom lip to prevent herself from smiling. Justin was way too charming. And full of himself.

“Speaking of your brother Frank, where’s his little girl?” he asked then.

Louise felt her face heat with color. She wasn’t ashamed of being Adèle’s mother, but it wasn’t something she shared with many people either. In fact, now that her mother was gone, and an old parish priest they’d confided in had been transferred, almost no one knew. “Adèle is playing with Anna Belle today.”

“Ah. So Anna Belle has recovered?”

“Totally. As I told you before, you did a good job with her.”

“Another compliment?” He bowed his thanks at her.

She cringed. “I haven’t been that bad, have I?”

“Mais oui! You have been hard on me. I must admit, though, that it has been well-deserved.”

“Meaning that you have naughty intentions?”

He laughed.

“So, we’re even?”

“Well, you may need to offer me a little extra incentive…to heal my wounded pride.”

“Hah! Your pride could take a few notches down. I haven’t met a man so biggity since I don’t know when.”

“Biggity?” He put a hand over his heart, as if wounded. “You think this…” he waved a hand between the two of them, “is about pride? Hah! When I’m around you, I get light-headed. My brain goes mushy. And I blurt out things I normally wouldn’t say…leastways, not this early in a relationship.”

She was stunned speechless, for a moment. “That is so much malarkey. And, just so we’re clear, you and I don’t have a relationship.”

He just stared at her.

Unspoken before them was the word “yet.”

“Anyhow, let’s get this show on the road…uh, bayou,” he said. “What exactly are we looking for today?”

She chastised herself silently for falling into the charmer’s sexy banter. Breathing in and out to calm herself down, she then explained, “There are three particular plants I need.” She sat down at the table and flicked carefully through one of her grandmother’s receipt books. The spine of the hard-backed book, the kind that had been used since the Civil War for small business accounts or rent tallies, was broken, and the stained, sepia-toned pages were mostly loose, the whole held together with a rubber band. “Burdock and dandelion and nettle, those I can find just by walking along the stream, but it’s these other more rare ones that I have to resupply.”

She showed him one page for lizard’s tail with its accompanying pencil sketch. The handwritten instructions…which must have been written by her grandmother, or maybe her mother—it was difficult to tell the difference—said, “For poultice on wounds, mash boiled roots. Also, for baby cutting teeth, put roots in glass of water with elm shavings, change water every day, add to milk or mix in honey for flavor.”

“Where did you get these?” He pointed to the books.

“My grandmother started them. Then my mother added to them. Now me.”

“These are fantastic,” he said. “They remind me of the Audubon sketches of birds here in Louisiana.”

She shouldn’t care that he approved, but she did. Darn it! “This is the other plant I’m looking for today.” She turned to a later page in the first book. “The mamou, or coral bean plant.” The drawing showed beautiful crimson flowers with red beans inside black pods. This particular sketch had been hand-colored. Although the colors were faded, they were still vivid enough to differentiate, in fact, more lovely because of the shadings. The directions said, Boil seeds. Drink liquid 3 x day for newmoanya, colds, bronkeyeyetis.

Justin scoffed at this one, whether for the misspellings or the cures, she wasn’t sure, and didn’t ask.

“I’d really like to get to a sweet gum tree I’ve visited in the past. You’re probably aware that healing herbs sometimes make use of all parts of a plant—the roots, the stems, the bark, the twigs, the flowers—and each has a different purpose. One part can even be poisonous, while another is beneficial. And the time of year they’re harvested can make a difference, too. Anyways, I use the sweet gum leaves for headaches.” She paused and asked, “Am I boring you?”

“Not at all.” He tapped one of the receipt books and remarked, “These are a treasure, you know. They probably belong in a museum or something.”

“Pfff! Museum people don’t care about anything lowdown like Cajuns.”

“Someday they will,” he predicted. “But I know what you mean. From the beginning, when the Acadians first fled France and Canada, they were considered a lower class, ignorant people. Little credit was given to the fact that they were survivors, willing to live in the swamps, do the grueling, dirty work of shrimping or trapping, eat foods no one else would touch, like possum or gator, and cook them in a simple style without fancy sauces, play music that to the more refined ear sounds raucous rather than melodic, and—”