Free Loving Laura (The Cantrelle Family Trilogy) by Patricia Kay Page A

Laura and said, “It’s so good to have Neil home. I hope this time he’ll stay.”
    Laura nodded, but she didn’t agree. In fact, she fervently wished that as soon as Norman was better, Neil Cantrelle would go back to the Florida Keys . . . and stay there.
    * * *
    Well, at least she wasn’t a doormat, Neil thought as he got into Nicole’s car. The sad-eyed Laura had some spunk. Good. She’d need spunk to get through the weeks ahead. He wished he felt better about what she was planning to do, and that surprised him. If someone had told him yesterday that he’d be concerned because Laura was going to accept Norman’s offer of marriage, he’d have told them they were crazy. After all, that’s what he’d been hoping for, wasn’t it?
    Neil frowned. Everything had changed in the last twenty- four hours. Norman was still his first priority, which was why he hadn’t tried to talk Laura out of her decision, but Neil was afraid no good would come of it.
    Still, was it any of his business if she wanted to sacrifice herself? Did he have any right to interfere in her life? In Norman’s life?
    Still struggling with these questions, he drove to his parents’ home, gathered up his things, then made the five-minute drive to the office. His father had given him Norman’s keys, and Neil made short work of unlocking the outer gates, then Norman’s apartment, reached by an outside stairway. It took him less than ten minutes to hang up or put away his few belongings. The place was neat, but comfortable, reflecting his brother’s personality, Neil thought, as he looked around.
    The apartment also brought back memories. Neil had lived there himself, when, as a twenty-year-old, he first tested his wings and left his parents’ home. He smiled, remembering. His mother had protested, saying he was too young, but his father had backed him up.
    “Neil is a man, Arlette,” he said. “He don’ need to be under his mama’s eye all the time.” He winked at Neil.
    “Why? Is he going to do something he’s ashamed for me to see?” she demanded, black eyes flashing with temper.
    “That’s his business,” his father teased.
    “Neil Joseph Cantrelle! You just remember, okay? If you do anything bad, you have to confess it to Father Richard, okay?” his mother warned. She pronounced the priest’s name in the Cajun way –
Rhee-card
.
    Neil rolled his eyes, and his father laughed, slapping him on the back.
    The next day, Neil moved into the apartment.
    Now, as he remembered those exciting days when he was a rookie on the Baton Rouge Police Force and everything in his life seemed so new and full of promise, he sighed. He had lived in the apartment for four years, until he and Erica were married. He still hadn’t wanted to move; he’d liked the apartment but Erica wouldn’t hear of living over a roofing company office.
    “No way,” she said. She opted for a new, glitzy apartment complex in Baton Rouge. “I don’t want to be under your mama’s thumb.”
    Neil had succumbed. When they were first married, he would have done anything to make her happy. It took him eight years to discover the truth, that he could never make her happy. Their marriage was a mistake from the beginning. Erica wanted different things from life than he did. He guessed on some level he’d always known that, but with the blindness of youth, he’d ignored the signs and plunged on, his desire for her overriding his good sense. He’d tried for a long time to make things work, hanging on to his illusions, and in the end, that refusal to face the truth had cost him dearly. It had also cost other people dearly.
    Maybe it was time to right some of the wrongs he’d left behind.
    Two hours later, he stood on a small rise overlooking Lake Verret near Napoleonville. Under the benevolent branches of a twisted cypress tree dripping with Spanish moss, a gray granite headstone rested. It was the first time Neil had visited the grave site since the day of the funeral,