False Pretenses - Kathy Herman [112]
“About what happened with Cowen, yes. But you’re the only people besides the sheriff, the Langleys, and Pierce who know I lied to the reporter about my past. None of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t. Cowen was in Lafayette the weekend the feature story was in the newspaper. When he read it, the details all fit. He was convinced he had found the Zoe Benoit whose parents had owed him money.” Zoe shook her head. “Why did he have to kill Remy? It hurts me so much to think he killed Remy for nothing more than to distract the authorities.”
“You’re not responsible for anything Cowen did,” Tex said.
“I know that in my head. But my heart is broken. Remy would be alive if I hadn’t lied.” Zoe wiped a tear off her cheek. “How do I get past that?”
Hebert patted her hand tenderly. “Un jour a la frou.”
“Hebert’s right,” Father Sam said. “One day at a time. We’ll help you.”
She knew they would. Not that she deserved it. “Enough about me. This day is about paying our respects to Remy. How’s Emile?”
Hebert shook his head. “I tink he’ll do better after we get Remy’s funeral overwid. Later on, he’s going to carry his ashes down to da Roux River and let ’em go.”
Father Sam looked at his watch. “Which reminds me, I need to get over to Saint Catherine’s. I want to spend some time going over Remy’s eulogy. One o’clock will be here before we know it.”
At twelve-thirty, Zoe walked in the front door of Saint Catherine Catholic Church and took a memorial folder from the usher. She dipped her fingers into the holy water and crossed herself, then walked up the side aisle until she spotted Tex’s bald head in the third row. She bowed her head, made the sign of the cross, and moved into the center of the pew and knelt next to him.
Tex kept his eyes focused on something straight ahead. She wondered if this Texas Baptist felt like a foreigner in a Catholic church—or if he was just succumbing to the sobering heaviness of the moment.
Zoe bowed her head for what seemed a respectable length of time, and then looked up at the altar. So that’s what Tex had been staring at! In spite of Emile’s appeal that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Catholic Charities, the sanctuary was lavishly adorned with flower arrangements of every shape and size—all red flowers, the color of the cap Remy always wore. For a split second she pictured him standing there, smiling like an angel, his red cap backward on his head.
Zoe’s eyes burned with tears. That beautiful human being would still be alive if Cowen hadn’t come to Les Barbes looking for her. How many other people were thinking the same thing? She could almost feel the stares.
She turned her focus on her hands and didn’t look to her right or to her left. After a few minutes she eased back and sat on the pew.
God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
She heard a man coughing. Sounded just like Pierce. She’d already done a double take twice today, thinking she had seen him. Would she ever adjust to his absence? It was as though half of her had been stripped away and she was exposed and vulnerable.
She heard shuffling and realized everyone was standing. She rose to her feet just as the organ began to play a song she didn’t recognize. She waited as Remy’s relatives walked slowly down the center aisle and into the first two rows, not surprised to see Hebert with them.
Emile looked a decade older. Father Sam, dressed in white vestments, walked behind the cross bearer and up the steps to the altar. It occurred to her that she had never seen him outfitted for Mass before.
“‘I am the resurrection and the life.’” Her white-haired friend spoke with gentle authority. “‘Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.…’”
She felt Tex slip his arm around her. His show of tenderness so touched her that she could restrain the tears no longer. She took a handkerchief out of her purse, held it to her mouth, and quietly wept.
Pierce sat at the far end of the back pew