Free Always Friday by Jan Hudson

pudding. Do you prefer banana, vanilla, or
tapioca?”
    “Chocolate.”
    “Chocolate it is.” She plunked a bowl of chocolate pudding
on his tray and banana on hers, then selected milk for him and iced tea for
herself. When he opened his mouth to protest, she gave him her sternest look.
    “Yes, Mother,” he said and grinned.
    They took their trays upstairs to a large, informal dining
room with walls of windows overlooking the dark outlines of the shrimp and
fishing boats docked at Pier 19.
    “This has always been called the ‘Mosquito Fleet Berth,’“ Tess
said, pointing out the insectlike profiles of the small boats along the wharf. “It’s
the same area Jean Laffite’s pirate ships used for docking.”
    She could have bitten her tongue off the moment the words
were out of her mouth. Things had been going so well between them.
    Right on cue, Dan asked casually, “What about this map you
mentioned?”
    Tess sighed and put her fork down. “I know it sounds bizarre
unless you know the family history.” She leaned closer and said in a low voice,
“It’s not something that’s widely known, but Jean Laffite was my
great-great-great-great-great—is that five or six?” she asked as she counted
the “greats” on her fingers. “Anyway, he was my grandfather several generations
back.”
    Dan raised a skeptical eyebrow.
    “It’s true!” she said, exasperated. “Our branch is descended
from the daughter, and only child, of his second wife, Contessa. I’m named for
her. She was a young woman from South Carolina, and she died in childbirth in
1826. Their daughter’s name was Violet and she grew up on her grandparents’
plantation near Charleston. She stayed with them even after Laffite married
again a few years later, moved to St. Louis, and changed his name. I gather
that there was some animosity between her grandparents and Laffite. When Violet
married in 1843, her father gave her a deed to property in the newly formed
city of Galveston and a Bible with the treasure map inside.”
    He continued to eat his fish as if he didn’t believe a
single thing she said. Refusing to look at him or to utter another word, Tess
picked up her fork and attacked her own food with a vengeance.
    When he had scraped the last drop of pudding from his bowl,
Dan leaned back and laced his fingers across the green frog on his chest. “Tess,
as a boy I was fascinated with pirates and privateers. I used to have quite a
collection of books about them. As I recall, Jean Laffite died shortly after he
was run off Campeche and Galveston island by the United States government. That
would have been some time in the eighteen-twenties.”
    “Nope,” she said, pushing a slice of banana to the side of
her bowl, where she had deposited several others. “He died in 1854.”
    “Tess—”
    “What?” Irritated, she looked up, ready to do battle. He was
staring at her bowl.
    “Why didn’t you get vanilla pudding if you’re not going to
eat the bananas?”
    “Because I like banana pudding. I just don’t like the
bananas.”
    Dan shook his head and gave a mirthless chuckle. “I suppose
that makes as much sense as anything else you’ve said.”
    She put her spoon down and looked up at him. “You don’t
believe me, do you?”
    He shrugged as a smile began to play around his lips. “I
guess you should know if you like bananas or not.”
    “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
    He leaned forward and took one of her hands in his. “Tess, I
promised I wouldn’t jump to any more conclusions without all the facts. And
right now I don’t want to argue with you. I can think of at least ten things I’d
rather do.”
    His thumb brushed back and forth across her knuckles and his
eyes were on her lips.
    “Oh?” A slow smile came as she began to imagine what some of
those things might be.
    He nodded. “Let’s go.”
    As the horse’s hooves clip-clopped along the asphalt street,
Tess and Dan sat snuggled close together in the