Southern Ruby by Belinda Alexandra Page A

shirt cuffs. ‘We can eat at our place.’
    We moved back into the house, where Aunt Louise retrieved her handbag.
    â€˜I’ve stocked up the fridge for you,’ she said. ‘Momma has a maid, Lorena. If you want any specific type of food ask her. She does the shopping.’
    Grandma Ruby and I waved Aunt Louise and Uncle Jonathan off as they went down the drive. Then she turned to me with a mischievous smile. ‘You’ll see their house in Lake Terrace tomorrow, but I have a feeling you’ll like this one much better. Would you like me to show it to you now?’
    It was difficult to take my eyes away from Grandma Ruby. As she stood in the dappled light of late afternoon, her long neck and ivory skin gave her an ethereal beauty that transcended age. But I sensed a contradiction between her lilting Southern accent and the fiery glint in her eyes; I felt there was a complex duality to her.
    She lowered Flambeau to the floor to let him run free, and led me to a music room with a Baldwin grand piano that looked the same age as the house. An open-armed statue of the Madonna by the window and a painting of a saint with the Christ child on the opposite wall were at odds with the otherwise Victorian-period style of the house. But then I remembered that New Orleans was a predominantly Catholic city, which made it different from the rest of the United States.
    â€˜Your father used to play this piano,’ Grandma Ruby said. ‘My husband, Clifford Lalande, was a lawyer, as the men in thisfamily have been for generations. But I knew Dale would be a musician. Even as a small child, he would listen to something playing on the radio and then I’d find him in here, picking out the tune on the keyboard.’
    I stroked the yellowed keys of the piano and was again overcome with the feeling that my father was stepping out of the shadows. I imagined him as a small boy, his feet swinging from the piano stool as he intently worked out the tune in his head. I glanced up to see Grandma Ruby watching me.
    â€˜You’re more like your father than your mother,’ she said. ‘Paula was a firecracker, always ready to thrill us with her bright colours. Dale was quieter, more considered. The night they died, they say I screamed like a crazy woman and wouldn’t stop. Yet despite my sorrow, I’m thankful your parents died together. I don’t think one of them could have borne to go on living without the other.’
    I felt a catch in my throat and couldn’t bring myself to speak. The description of my parents’ bond moved me. Nan had always given me the impression that the marriage was a hasty infatuation that wouldn’t have lasted more than a few years.
    But if my father was so calm, considered and responsible, as both Grandma Ruby and my mother in her letters had described him, how come he’d driven drunk with his wife and daughter in the car? Despite Grandma Ruby’s vibrant personality, I heard the brokenness in her voice. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her about the accident — not yet. Let me get to know him better first , I thought, before I have to judge him.
    Grandma Ruby directed me to a sitting room that overlooked a circular lawn with a cottage on the left; and then to a grand dining room where the mahogany table was laid with Georgian silver and Waterford crystal.
    â€˜I like to leave the table set,’ she explained. ‘Although it creates more work for Lorena, it makes me feel that all the family are still in the house.’
    I tried to imagine what dinner must have been like when my parents lived here: the conversation, the laughter, the lavish meals. As I took in the splendour around me, I wondered what my mother had made of it all. It was so different from the house in Sydney we’d both grown up in with its comfortable but simple furnishings. Had she been as dazzled as I was now by the stained-glass feature windows and Venetian