Page 4 of Home Again

2

Now, this is Louisiana hurricane weather, Sebastian thought with a grimace. He’d hoped that after spending the night stuck in the Atlanta airport that Hurricane Helen would have wound down a little bit more, but she was proving to be a bitch. The rain wasn’t hitting the rental SUV on the roof, it was hitting the passenger door and the wind was doing its damndest to push him off the freeway. He was debating whether or not to pull over when he saw the turnoff for Highway One. He went over a lane so he could take the exit. All in all, it wasn’t any worse than any of the sandstorms he’d experienced overseas. In fact, those sandstorms had kind of reminded him of hurricanes.

He tried the radio one last time with no results, then pushed the car into the lowest gear possible and continued on down the highway towards the place he’d been forced to live after his mother died. Under normal circumstances, it would have taken him a half-hour to hit Larose after hopping off the Ninety, but at this rate, it would take a couple of hours. Probably for the best; this way he’d have even more time to get in the right frame of mind. The old man’s letter had hit him like a bolt of lightning last week.

Sebastian gripped the steering wheel even harder. Mostly it had been the same old song and dance, Grandpère busy being the wily old puppet master. But this time the old bastard had thrown in the one thing he knew that Sebastian couldn’t resist.

Answers. Answers to questions that had been plaguing him for over twenty years.

He might’ve been a child at the time, but Sebastian knew what he’d heard. Back then, it hadn’t made any sense, but when his mother had been killed weeks later, he’d confronted his dad and his grandfather. They’d told him he’d misunderstood their argument and he should just forget it. But he couldn’t. Not then and not now.

After his mother’s death, he’d no longer had the respite to spend the weekdays at her house. Instead, he’d then had to spend every single day with his father, uncle, and Grandpère at the Durand family home. He’d hated it; he’d felt sad, empty, and lost. It had gotten a thousand times worse when months later, his dad’s car had ended up in the swamp.

It took another half-hour before he got closer to the Valentine Bridge and his hands started to sweat. He didn’t need this. Sebastian wiped the perspiration off on his jeans, before clutching his steering wheel again. He’d hated crossing this bridge every fucking time since his father’s death, but to do it in a storm was a whole new dimension of hell.

Sebastian squinted as the old lift bridge started to come into focus. Even through the pouring rain, he could make out the towers on the north side of the bridge. It’d been on a night like this that his dad’s BMW Z8 had missed the entrance to the bridge and sailed into Bayou Lafourche. They’d tried to keep Sebastian from reading the newspaper article about Sebastian Durand the Third, but the little shit Andy Beaumont had brought it into school for him to read. The words sailed over were burned into Sebastian’s brain. So were the pictures of his dad’s car being pulled out of the bayou.

Down to a snail’s pace, Sebastian started over the tiny bridge, remembering the hundreds of times he’d ridden with his father in his prized sports car as a boy. Now thinking back on those times from a man’s point of view, he knew damn good and well that his father was a good driver. Scratch that, an excellent driver. There wasn’t a chance in fucking hell that he wouldn’t have made it onto the bridge no matter how bad of a storm he’d been in.

For the thousandth time, Sebastian wondered if his father had been drinking or had been high that night. There’d been no mention of it in the papers, and of course, nobody was going to tell an eight-year-old kid that his father had been messed up when he’d crashed his car. After both of his parents were dead, his life at the Durand family home became a misery. It was a life that he’d longed to escape.

Sebastian forced himself to concentrate on the here and now, looking at the bridge in his rearview mirror. At most, he would be at the family home in an hour. He started to count in his head, a coping mechanism from his childhood. Something that would soothe him and remind him that time would eventually pass.

Sebastian snorted out a laugh, imagining what his teammates Gideon Smith or Keegan Harris would say to him if they saw his panties in such a twist. He needed to get his shit together. He wasn’t a kid anymore, nor was he the eighteen-year-old teenager who’d stormed out of Lafourche twelve years ago.

Just like that, the tension bled out of his body, and he hadn’t even needed bourbon. Then, as if the weather caught onto his mood, the rain started to let up. Not a lot, but enough so that he could see a little bit better.

“Shit.”

Sebastian grinned when he saw the green neon sign of Jimmy’s Po-Boys off to his right. Trust Jimmy to be open in the middle of a hurricane. That meant the power was still on in their little town, unless Jimmy was running his restaurant off of a generator, which was possible. He wondered if a generator had been installed at the Durand residence. After so many hurricanes you’d think that would’ve been an investment they could’ve made. Of course, the only money that Sebastian Lazar Durand the Second ever wanted to spend was on something that would win him an election.

Before leaving Virginia, Sebastian had done an internet search to see what the old man was up to. He didn’t know why he was surprised to find out he’d moved from his position as a state representative to the president of the state senate and was now campaigning for lieutenant governor. Actually, he was surprised; he would’ve thought by now that his grandfather would be gunning for the Governor’s mansion. Then again, maybe he realized that at seventy-four, he was too old for the job.

Sebastian blasted the car’s air conditioner as he drove the last ten miles to hell. He tensed as he took the turn off of the highway onto the farm road. He sighed as he passed the sugarcane fields on his left and wondered if the devastation of Hurricane Helen was going to make any of the farmers go under. Finally, he could see the turn-off to the Durand farm up ahead. He knew the dirt road was going to be a muddy mess; thank God there had been an SUV to rent instead of some damned sedan.

After twenty minutes on the muddy drive, he finally spotted the house that had been built in nineteen-ten. There was only one car parked in front—a current-year Cadillac of course—the old man’s tastes hadn’t changed in the slightest. Sebastian pulled in near the side of the house. He ran up the stairs to the front door, thankful for the covered porch; at least he had a little bit of coverage while he hit the doorbell and pounded on the thick wood, hoping that his Grandpère would hear one or the other. After three minutes of nobody answering, he tried the doorknob and found the door unlocked. Hell, he should’ve tried that from the get-go.

Walking into the foyer after so much time was mind-boggling, and as soon as that scent of lemon hit him, Sebastian knew that Ophelia had to still be working for the family. She’d always insisted on using lemon oil when cleaning the maple floors. He wandered into the foyer and peeked into the drawing-room off to the right. It was empty of people, but the grand piano was still there. God only knew why his grandfather kept it, since the only person who had ever played it had been his grandmother, and she’d died forty years ago.

“Hello,” he shouted up the grand staircase. Nobody answered, but somebody must belong to the Cadillac. Then there was the fact that the house was lit up like a Christmas tree. His grandfather was too cheap to have all these lights on if the house was empty. Sebastian shouted again and still didn’t get an answer. He wasn’t going to check out the kitchen because he couldn’t imagine that Ophelia would be here cooking or cleaning during a hurricane; she had her own family to take care of. The old man was probably huddled away in his study trying to take over the state of Louisiana. Sebastian sauntered down the hall behind the staircase and knocked on the study door. No answer. He pushed it open.

“Daddy, what are you doing home? Aren’t you supposed to be at the capitol?” It had been so long since Sebastian had been home that it took a minute to decipher the drunken, Creole accent. But he finally understood what had been said.

Uncle Armand shoved himself up from the leather couch and tried to stand up straight, but he was missing the mark. He was drunker than a skunk.

“I’m not your daddy,” Sebastian responded easily.

Armand squinted then fell back onto the couch, kicking over the half-full glass that had been on the carpet beside the couch. The man didn’t even notice the mess he’d made.

“Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”

“Grandpère invited me for a visit. I would have thought a man who gets the senior discount at the movies wouldn’t call his father Daddy, or still be living with him for that matter.”

Armand squinted again, obviously trying to get Sebastian into focus. “Is that you, Bastian?”

God how he hated that name. Since joining the Navy he’d either been Sebastian or occasionally Seb. Never, ever Bastian. Of course, a couple of his teammates had found out his middle name and made one attempt to call him Lazar, but after a well-placed punch, that had immediately stopped.

“The name is Sebastian, Uncle.”