One Blood

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

 

September 28, 2002

Saturday

Lake City, LA

 

Coral Lafitte shot straight up in the bed like she had a lever attached; Randy moaned loudly in his sleep beside her. Frightened and a bit peeved at having been awakened, Coral tried to shake Randy out of his nightmare—with no results. She hadn’t seen her normally stoic husband in this condition since before Kristopher died.

Thoughts of Kristopher brought her daughter’s image to the fore. Coral was desperate to speak to Karen. Karen was her baby, and she’d give anything to see her roll over and smile her father’s brilliant smile as she tried to retract her feet from her mother’s tickling. But her baby was in Cancun. Cancun? Coral was still amazed Randy actually permitted Karen to go so far away, on today of all days. Maybe he was learning some new tricks.

Randy was finally still. She reached for his cell phone and punched in Karen’s number. Karen would answer Randy’s call for sure.

Except she didn’t. The line went directly to voicemail, just like it did with the thirty or so calls she’d made over the last twelve hours.

Coral glared at her husband’s motionless form. Being married to Randy Lafitte was an exasperating existence. She was used to his controlling nature, but his behavior of late was just...strange. Not only had he refused to give her Karen’s hotel information (explaining they needed to “respect her privacy”), but he’d also left the house at 10:30 p.m. to go God knows where. He’d returned sometime after midnight without a word about where he’d been, leaving her in the dark, tossing and turning, unable to shake the feeling that something was very, very wrong.

Now her anxiety was back and worse than ever. To rid herself of the Girls Gone Wild commercials playing on repeat in her mind, she went to the bathroom to take a Xanax. Then she headed down the hall to the spiral staircase.

Halfway down the stairs she tripped on the shift of her robe and almost tumbled the rest of the way down. Descending with more care, Coral was reminded of how much she loathed all ten thousand square feet of this residence, which she’d come to think of as “the fortress.”

That home architecture critic had nailed it when he’d concluded, “The Lafitte Mansion is less of a home and more of an ill-devised plan of a young man with too much money and not enough taste.” He’d rebuked their abode as “unnecessarily ostentatious” for the eighteen massive square columns, marble fountain, and antebellum staircase on the exterior, as well as the interior’s six bedrooms, ten bathrooms, two libraries, den, movie theatre, bowling alley, and connected boathouse for Randy’s yacht. All this space for three people orbiting each other like planets drowning in the ink of the cosmos.

Gazing upon Lake Francis through the large bay windows in the great room, Coral reminisced about the one-story, middle-class home in Iowa, LA that she grew up in. She almost missed the cracks in the walls and water damage that gave her parent’s house so much character. This place was so immaculate it was practically sterile, with more than enough space to amplify the emptiness.