Chapters (43)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Epilogue
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Readers Guide
- QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
He threw his head back and laughed, the sound deep and sexy enough to distract her from the fact that he was laughing at her. “Girl, a second line isn’t about actually standing in line.”
“Okay.” She gave his knee a little push, embarrassed but also pleased she’d gotten him to tease her again, a change from his strained thank-yous for her help when he left to find work each morning. “So stop being smug and tell me what it is.”
“It’s sort of like a marching band, but wilder. Less uniforms, more dancing. It started out as a funeral thing.” He put the truck in gear and pulled out into the wide, empty street. “You’d hire some musicians to lead the walk to the cemetery. After that, it would move to a bar, and people would tell stories and laugh and get drunk. So on the way between the cemetery and the bar, you needed the music to cheer people back up again, remind them they were alive. People had so much fun we started doing second lines for everything. We protest with music; we celebrate with it; we grieve with it. It’s our language.”
He shifted in his seat and smiled.
“Music runs in the family. First bunch of Delisles came from Saint-Domingue to Louisiana, running from all the violence of the revolution that changed the name of the island to Haiti. Best job for a free man of color back then was a musician for parties and such.”
“Of course it’s in your blood.” Andra smiled. “And a second line sounds exactly like the kind of thing you’d do. Go dancing and playing music through the streets, making folks forget they were supposed to be sad.”
“Oh! You said ‘folks.’” He grinned and squeezed her knee. “You’re going to sound like a regular southern belle by the time you go on home.”
She turned to look out the window, hoping he wouldn’t pursue the topic. They hadn’t talked about when she should go back, and she didn’t want to, because she didn’t like any of the answers.
She’d barely been a block from LJ’s house in the week she’d been here. Except for walking down to the corner store now and then, where the music was always loud and unfamiliar and the conversations sputtered out when she walked in the door. She thought he might have stalled about taking her out because he thought New Orleans was too different from the mountains and open skies of Montana for her to enjoy it.