Well, Caroline Chandler had returned to Bayou Breaux from her buying trip, and she was surprised all right. She stood to Laurel 's left, a tiny woman with the presence of a Titan. Her black hair was artfully coiffed in a soft cloud of loose curls, makeup applied deftly and sparingly, accenting her dark eyes and feminine mouth. She seemed barely forty, let alone fifty, her heart-shaped face smooth and creamy. She folded the fingers of her right hand gently over Laurel's clenched fist and said calmly, "I'm sure it was looking lovely, darlin'."
Laurel attempted to draw in a slow, calming breath, the way Dr. Pritchard had taught her in relaxation therapy, but it hissed in through her clenched teeth and served only to add to the pressure building in her head and chest.
"I'll kill him," she said again, jerking away from her aunt's hold. Her anger trembled through her body like an earthquake.
"I hep you, Miz Laurel," Mama Pearl said, patting her stubby fingers against her enormous belly.
The old woman sniffed and shifted her ponderous weight back and forth from one tiny foot to the other, the skirt of her red flowered dress swirling around legs as thick and sturdy as small tree trunks. She had been with the Chandler family since Caroline and Jeff Chandler were children. She lived with Caroline not as an employee but as a member of the family, running Belle Rivière like a general and settling comfortably if testily into old age.
"Dat hound make nothin' but trouble, him," she declared. "All the time rootin' in my trash like a pig, stealin' off the clothesline. Nothin' but trouble. Talk about!"