It didn’t bear thinking about. He shut his eyes as his lungs pressed weakly against his ribs. His asthma got bad the year of Mary Beth’s death, and only got worse as time passed. Illness crept in around the edges of his life, tethering him indoors. He bore it quietly. It was better than being dead.

II.

Eugene had never known any town besides Chanlarivyè. His mother hailed from New Orleans’ Garden District and had spent her youth in the French Quarter—she came from old money, old houses, old blood. Delicate and soft-spoken, she was long-skirted with her hair done up just right, even after times got hard. She had never really left the old majesty of the Garden District behind, and Chanlarivyè’s small-town atmosphere, with its single church two steps from the bayou, wilted her like an August bloom. Exhaustion lined her eyes and the backs of her hands.

As he got older, Eugene understood that she missed her city: its stately buildings and the grand old magnolia trees that lined the streets. Chanlarivyè wasn’t far from the city, but she had married young and was determined to put down roots and raise Eugene properly, self-sacrificing even after her husband died. But when he was young, all Eugene knew was that she harbored a quiet sadness through which nothing he did could cut.

Eugene’s father was Cajun and spoke drawling French like molasses, but he was gone before Eugene ever got much chance to know him. His few surviving memories were hazy and unfinished, and he could never be sure they weren't inventions of his own imagination. His father was by all accounts a charming man, quick with cards and quick to laugh, moonshine on his breath and other women’s perfume clinging to his clothes, yet he always came home again, and Eugene’s mother never turned him away. Eugene couldn’t imagine a man less like himself, and a secret part of him was grateful his father had died before he could see what Eugene had grown into.

He died when Eugene was four—a car accident, and he had been drinking, of course—and Eugene’s mother found full-time work waiting tables, leaving Eugene to his own devices. He didn’t have many friends, but every Sunday he played with Mary Beth Byrne after church. Mary Beth was a pretty girl, with dark wavy hair and large gray eyes that seemed to change color depending on the light. Their parents left them to play in the courtyard while the adults mingled, and they settled in side by side in the shade of the rose bushes. Father Latimer dropped in every so often to check on them, but by and large they were left alone, which was how Eugene preferred things. Mary Beth too seemed to enjoy the solitude, but then, she was never truly alone.

Mary Beth was everyone’s favorite, and bore it with sweet-mannered indifference, turning her head demurely to accept the adults’ kisses on her rosy cheeks. Their angel, they called her, a perfect picture in her silk bows and cotton dresses. But there was something in her gaze that only Eugene noticed, as if she knew something no one else did.