A hand-carved chest sat at the bottom of the stairs with a marriage quilt over it. Two more chests were lined up, both with marriage quilts over the top of them. The fourth – his brother Gator’s – was gone now. He remembered how his brother’s wife, Flame, had cried and clutched the marriage quilt to her that Nonny had made long ago. Each of the boys had one on top of their ornately carved chests. So, okay, his sister-in-law was the exception to the women-weren’t-worth-it rule. They’d keep her in the family.

He knew Nonny longed for babies. She’d hoped Flame and Gator would provide them for her, but Flame couldn’t have children. Nonny loved her dearly, but she prayed for a miracle and wasn’t quiet about her praying. Often, she glared at Wyatt as if he needed to pull babies out of a hat for their family. He avoided the subject at all costs. He glanced back at Malichai and Ezekiel. He should have warned them what a force Nonny was and how she could get you promising things you never considered.

Both men were looking around the house with wide, almost shocked eyes. Wyatt looked too. He knew what they saw. When they were growing up, the Fontenots weren’t the richest family in the bayou, not by a long shot, but there was love in the house. You couldn’t walk indoors without feeling it.

The smell of fresh bread and gumbo permeated the house. He lifted his head and found himself smiling. She’d made his favorite dessert as well. That was Nonny, she did the little things that mattered.

“I called ahead, but you didn’t tell me you felt so threatened you needed to sit outside your home with a shotgun,” Wyatt said, heading toward the kitchen.

“Best not to mention things like that right off,” Nonny replied with a shrug of her bony shoulders. “You might not have been able to come and then you woulda felt bad. There’s no need of that.”

Of course there wasn’t. Grand-mere would never want one of her boys feeling bad for her or even feeling concern. She humbled him sometimes with her generous spirit.

The pot of gumbo was right there where it always was. He couldn’t remember a time when he had come home and not found something simmering on the stove. He reached up into the cupboard to pull down the bowls.

“You’re in for a treat, boys.”

“You’re not goin’ to show them around the house first?” Nonny asked. There was laughter in her voice.

“Eatin’ is on our minds, Grand-mere,” Wyatt admitted.

“He’s been talking so much about your cooking, ma’am,” Malichai added, “that all we’ve been thinking about is food.”

“That’s good,” Nonny said, and sank into her familiar chair at the kitchen table.

Wyatt couldn’t help but think about all the times he’d sat at the table with his brothers as laughter and conversation had flowed. There was a part of him that wanted to go back to those carefree days when living on the bayou was enough – was everything.

When all three men had a bowl of gumbo, warm fresh bread and hot café, Wyatt glanced at his grandmother.

“Tell me what’s going on around here that has you packin’ a shotgun, Nonny.”

She leaned back in her chair and looked at him with her faded blue eyes, eyes still as sharp as ever. “There’s been a coupla strange things happenin’, Wyatt. I know you don’ believe in the Rougarou, and in truth, I never much believed either, but there’s been things in the swamp there’s no accountin’ for.”

She paused dramatically. Malichai and Ezekiel both paused as well, the spoons halfway to their mouths. Wyatt kept shoveling food in. He was used to his grandmother’s storytelling abilities. She could hold an audience spellbound. She’d used it more than once to keep the boys from wolfing their food.

“Food disappearin’, clothes stolen right off the line.”

“Sounds like someone hungry, Nonny, a homeless person maybe.”

At the word “hungry,” both Malichai and Ezekiel resumed eating.

“Maybe,” Nonny conceded. “But the food was taken from inside the houses. Sometimes the clothes as well. The houses were locked.”

“No one locks houses on the bayou,” Wyatt said.

“They do now with all the thievin’ goin’ on. I keep a pot of somethin’ simmerin’ on the stove at all times, Wyatt. You know that. Neighbors drop by. Sometimes Flame comes unexpectedly when Gator’s out doin’ whatever it is he does. I lock up, and I’ve got the dogs. Twice I let them in the house with me, but every third or fourth mornin’ the food was gone out of that pot, even with the dogs inside.”

“Someone entered the house while you were sleepin’?” Wyatt demanded, his temper beginning to do a slow boil.

Nonny nodded. “Yep. I couldn’ even figger how they got in. When food disappeared here, I started puttin’ a package out with little bits I thought might help. Food, clothes, even a blanket or two. Each time I put somethin’ out, it was gone the next mornin’, but three mornin’s in a row after that, I had fresh fish on my table waitin’. Dogs didn’t bark. The doors were locked. I couldn’t tell how they got in, but it made me a mite uncomfortable knowin’ the Rougarou was in my house.”

“Why the Rougarou and not a person, ma’am?” Malichai asked.

“Delmar Thibodeaux seen it himself, with his own two eyes. It was movin’ fast through the brush, so fast he could barely track it.”

“Delmar Thibodeaux owns the Huracan Club, where liquor flows in abundance,” Wyatt explained to the others.