Chapter 1

There were very few days that year that May Alice Culhane would remember as good. In part, because she drank so heavily that remembering anything was its own challenge, and in part, because she simply didn't want to remember. On a cold day in mid-January that year, 1992, at 40-years-old, she had been involved in a traffic accident that forever changed her life as a fully functional woman. Two foggy weeks of medications and surgeries had followed, before she first learned the clinical meaning of, "complete T-10 paralysis." In the months, and years to follow, she would be forced to also learn the practical meaning behind those offending words. Not that anyone would be good with such a diagnosis, but for May Alice, it was a death knell, except she didn't die. Not for many days following the accident did she cease to be disappointed when she'd awake each morning after every evening prior having willed herself not to.

Being hurt in New York City had been about her only advantage; if ever there was thought to be an advantage to such an injury. The medical facilities afforded her in the city were top notch, and she had suffered few of the complications generally experienced by paraplegics in the immediate months of recovery. She'd had access to the very best surgeons and rehabilitation hospitals available at the time. By the end of March, the therapists and physicians deemed May Alice strong enough for home adjustment. In truth, she'd basically stopped trying by mid-month and the staff simply did not know what else to do for the woman. Depression was common with paralysis victims and returning to familiar surroundings often aided patients over their plateau. Everyone who knew her assumed she'd return to her apartment in New York City but she surprised them all by disappearing instead.

Prior to the abrupt end of it, May Alice had a prosperous acting career as a soap opera star in New York City. With her prognosis and recovery, it was a given that her career was essentially over, but her friends knew she had family money, as well as money from her lucrative career, so, her remaining in New York had been expected. What shouldn't have surprised them, however, was her ego. It, too, had been paralyzed by the accident, and there was no way she would remain where she could be seen in her diminished capacity in that beautiful city. Later on, friends would learn she'd quietly returned to her childhood home outside of Lafayette, Louisiana.

May Alice had been content to return to her family's home to learn how to manage her new, immobile lifestyle in solitude. Although she had been well known in the parishes both before and after her success in television, she believed that southerners were just so much more polite when leaving one to oneself than New Yorkers were. Her family being long gone, and she, so far removed from the ways of life there, had fully expected, and liked, the idea that no one would drop by. She was only slightly correct in that assumption. Two of her very polite, very annoying, former classmates from high school did happen upon her one day, and there was her old crush, Rennie, and her dear uncle, Reeves, who'd all shown up in the early weeks. The latter two, were always welcome.

Having also gone through a colorful cast of caregivers in the first week being home, she had all but given up on keeping one. She wouldn't have wanted one at all by the end of the week, fully beaten by her ordeals and resigned to just die in peace, but she'd decided the most desirable way, to more actively encourage death, might be through drinking herself to it and for that, she needed someone to buy her alcohol. Truth be told, she might have one day drank herself to death regardless of the accident, but because of it, she really felt justified. Still, her vanity had not fully hit rock bottom with the rest of her, and she just wouldn't stand for the added indignity of dying in soiled clothing.

Chantelle Blades was the last in that colorful cast of replacements, and why she stayed, May Alice was too drunk to care. Chantelle had her reasons, not the least of which might have been that she was not about to let some drunken, southern white woman break her. There were many other, less arrogant reasons, but the bottom line, ultimately, was they needed one another. Chantelle was fighting her own addiction to drugs, and a bad man who introduced her to them. She needed the job, or more accurately, she needed the pay. It was her best chance to get her life back on track, and the best way to show her father that she could be a mother to her child again. She needed to break May Alice, not vice-versa. If it were even as easy as misery loving company, the women took turns exhausting one another into compliance.

May Alice learned, early in their tenure together, that Chantelle had her own struggle with addiction and that had led, not to outrage, but welcomed, common ground. The knowledge helped her cope when Chantelle blackmailed her into sobriety by refusing to provide her alcohol. She also learned Chantelle had a little girl, and that her past troubles had resulted in her having lost custody of the child. Subsequently, Denita, was living in Chicago with Chantelle's father and with little hope in sight for her to reunite with her mother.

When Chantelle's father had called and offered to bring Denita for a visit over the Easter weekend, both women understood the significance. They'd prepared for, and welcomed the pair. A Cajun-inspired Easter festival was in full swing in Lafayette that weekend, and they had all packed up and gone to enjoy the festivities. May Alice, being bound to the sleek wheelchair that had become her new appendage, was still apprehensive about her "misfortune" as she called it, and about being seen in her childhood town so soon after her accident so, she'd requested to be set up away some, from the festival ground. Close enough to enjoy the music, but far enough from the crowd. They'd found a shady tree that served both purposes and, once settled, the family trio headed down the hill to the festival. As May Alice enjoyed the zydeco sounds, she was surprised by the presence of Rennie Boudreaux at her side.

Rennie had been nothing more than a girlhood crush to her, someone she'd all but forgotten in the years between. But when he arrived on her porch one day, late in March, memories of him flooded her mind leaving her absolutely as smitten by the innocuous encounter as she had been as a teenager. During that first reunion, she'd learned he was married and had five kids and, obviously, still lived in the same area. It pained her to hear it then because it was just about the time in her recovery that she was realizing how much she was going to miss sex. Not that she necessarily wanted him, but she thought she'd have liked the option. The combination of her remembering her teenage crush, and knowledge of his producing five children, was a bit much for her to take then. She'd hid it well, though, and she'd enjoyed that he'd return often, contracting to help make her home a little more accessible for her chair, fixing her father's derelict boat, even taking the women out on the bayou; all the things that took her mind off of herself. She began to really appreciate that her handicap seemed completely lost on him right from the start. It never seemed to deter him from doing things with her. If they were going out in his boat, he simply lifted her from the chair into the boat, without missing a beat, without asking, or treating her like a child.

Even that day on the hill at the festival, he'd sidled up beside her, tapping his fingers on her wheelchair as though it were just another part of her. It made her laugh to herself. His attitude helped her think less about her limitations, but in doing so she also found she thought more about Rennie. He was different that day. He was confident, happy. In the months past, they would talk and revisit their pasts and, in his, she thought there always seemed to be some sadness there. Not over her, certainly – she fantasized that it was over his wife. He didn't seem to have much in common with her, and he rarely spoke of her, save when it was to say what she disapproved of in him.

She was happy that day too, even before Rennie had arrived. Maybe it was having had Denita in the house that weekend that lightened the mood and provided a distraction from the routine May Alice and Chantelle kept. Whatever it was, it was bolstered by Rennie's joining her, and she found the courage to tell him something she'd been wanting to for several weeks.

"Rennie?"

"Yeah?"

"You don't have to have a job to do, or something to fix to come over and visit" she said.

"Yeah?" She nodded at him and smiled. Then he continued, "Well, maybe I'll do that then."

She was encouraged. Maybe he understood what she was saying, but she still couldn't quite just say it. Instead she replied, "Do it soon, okay?"

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