“Hush now and hear me out. Miss Perine thinks you’re an exceptional child.”

Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “I don’t set fires, Daddy. Honest.”

“I know you don’t,” he replied. “She doesn’t mean you’re exceptional like Buddy Dupond. She means you’re real smart.”

“I don’t like her.”

She turned away again. He gave her a little nudge to get her to look up at him. “How come you don’t like her? Is she making you work too hard? Is she putting too many demands on you?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Daddy.”

“Is the work too hard for you to do?”

She giggled as though he’d just made a joke. “Oh, no. It’s awful easy, and sometimes I get bored because I get it all done too soon, and I have to sit there and wait until Miss Perine can find something else for me to do. Some of the kids are just now learning how to read, but I’ve been reading since I was little. Remember?”

He smiled. “I remember when you started in reading the paper to me while I shaved. You pretty much taught yourself.”

“No, I didn’t. You taught me the letters.”

“But you put them together pretty much on your own. All I did was read to you. You picked it up quick. Took to it like a duck . . .”

“To water,” she ended.

“That’s right, sugar. Tell me why you don’t like Miss Perine. Is it because you have to wait on her?”

“No.”

“Well, then?”

“She wants to send me away,” she blurted. Tears flooded her eyes, and her voice trembled. “Doesn’t she, Daddy? She told me she wants to make you send me away to a different school where I won’t know anybody.”

“Now, you ought to know nobody’s gonna make your daddy do anything he doesn’t want to do, but this Miss Perine . . . well, now, she got me started in thinking.”

“She’s a busybody. Don’t you pay her any mind.”

Jake shook his head. His little girl had just turned one of his favorite sayings back on him. When her brothers teased her, he always told her not to pay them any mind.

“Your teacher says you’ve got a real high IQ.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“There isn’t anything wrong with being smart, but Miss Perine thinks we ought to figure a way to get you the best education we can. She thinks you can make something of yourself. I never considered it before, but I guess it isn’t written in stone that you’ve got to get married and have babies lickety-split. Maybe this family has been setting our sights too low.”

“Maybe so, Daddy.”

He knew from her tone of voice that she was attempting to placate him.

“But I don’t want anything to change,” she added then.

“I know you don’t,” he said. “You know your mama would want us to do the right thing.”

“Is Mama smart?”

“Oh, my, yes. She sure is.”

“She got married and had babies lickety-split.”

Lord, his girl was bright, all right. And how come it took a brand-new teacher to make him realize it?

“That’s because I came along and swept her off her feet.”

“’Cause you were irresistible. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“Maybe you ought to have a talk with Mama before you make up your mind about sending me away. She might know what you’re supposed to do.”

He was so shocked by what she’d just said, he jerked. “You know I like to talk things over with your mama?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How could you know?”

She smiled up at him, her eyes shining. “’Cause sometimes you talk out loud. It’s okay, Daddy. I like to talk things over with Mama too.”

“All right, then. Tomorrow, when we go visit your mama, we’ll both talk this over with her.”

She started splashing her feet in the water. “I think she’s gonna tell me I should stay home with you and Remy and John Paul.”

“Now, listen here —”

“Daddy, tell me how you and Mama met. I know you’ve told me the story hundreds of times, but I never get tired of hearing it.”

They had veered off the subject, and he knew his daughter had done it on purpose. “We aren’t talking about your mama and me now. We’re talking about you. I want to ask you an important question. Put your fishing pole down and pay attention.”

She did as he said and waited with her hands folded in her lap. She was such a little lady, he thought to himself, and how in thunder had that happened living with three lumbering mules?

“If you could be anything in the world, anything at all, what do you suppose you’d be?” She was making a church steeple with her fingers. He tugged on her ponytail to get her attention. “You don’t need to be embarrassed with your daddy. You can tell me.”

“I’m not embarrassed.”

“Your hair’s getting red and so are your freckles.”

She giggled. “My hair’s already red, and my freckles can’t change color.”

“Are you gonna tell me or not?”

“You have to promise not to laugh.”

“I’m not gonna laugh.”

“Remy and John Paul would maybe laugh.”

“Your brothers are idiots. They laugh at just about anything, but you know they love you and they’ll work hard to see you get what you want.”

“I know,” she said.

“Are you gonna tell me or not? It sounds like you’ve already got some ideas about what you’d like to be.”

“I do know,” she admitted. She looked him right in the eyes to make sure he wasn’t going to laugh and then whispered, “I’m going to be a doctor.”

He hid his surprise and didn’t say a word for a long minute while he chewed the notion over in his mind.

“Now, why do you suppose you want to be a doctor?” he asked, already warming to the idea.

“Because then maybe I could fix . . . something. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, ever since I was little.”

“You’re still little,” he said. “And doctors fix people, not things.”

“I know that, Daddy,” she said with such authority in her voice she made him smile.

“You got someone in mind you want to fix?”

Big Daddy put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders and hauled her into his side. He already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear her say the words.

She brushed her bangs out of her eyes and slowly nodded. “I was thinking maybe I could fix Mama’s head. Then she could come home.”

CHAPTER ONE

PRESENT DAY, NEW ORLEANS

The first one was a mercy killing.

She was dying a very, very slow death. Each day there was a new indignity, another inch of her once magnificent body destroyed by the debilitating disease. Poor, poor Catherine. Seven years ago she had been a beautiful bride with a trim, hourglass figure men lusted after and women envied, but now her body was fat and grossly bloated, and her once perfect alabaster skin was blotchy and sallow.

There were times when her husband, John, didn’t recognize her anymore. He would remember what she used to look like and then see with startling clarity what she had become. Those wonderful sparkling green eyes that had so captivated him when he’d first met her were now glazed and milky from too many painkillers.

The monster was taking its time killing her, and for him there wasn’t a moment’s respite.

He dreaded going home at night. He always stopped on Royal Street to purchase a two-pound box of Godiva chocolates first. It was a ritual he had started months ago to prove to her that he still loved her in spite of her appearance. He could have had the chocolates delivered daily to the house, of course, but the errand stretched out the time before he had to face her again. The next morning the almost empty gold box would be in the porcelain trash can next to the king-size canopy bed. He would pretend not to notice she’d gorged herself on the sweets, and so would she.

John no longer condemned her for her gluttony. The chocolates gave her pleasure, he supposed, and there was precious little of that in her bleak, tragic existence these days.

Some nights, after purchasing the chocolates, he would return to his office and work until fatigue overcame him and he’d be forced to go home. As he maneuvered his BMW convertible up St. Charles to the Garden District of New Orleans, he’d inevitably start shaking as if he were suffering from hypothermia, but he wouldn’t actually become physically ill until he entered the black-and-white foyer of his house. Gripping the box of chocolates in his hand, he’d place his Gucci briefcase on the hall table and stand there in front of the gilded mirror for a minute or two taking deep, calming breaths. They never soothed him, but he repeated the habit anyway night after night. His harsh breathing would mingle with the ticking of the grandfather clock on the wall adjacent to the mirror. The tick-tick-tick would remind him of the timer on a bomb. A bomb that was inside his head and about to explode.

Calling himself a coward, he would make himself go upstairs. His shoulders would tense and his stomach would twist into knots as he slowly climbed the circular staircase, his legs feeling as though they were encased in cement socks. By the time he reached the end of the long hallway, perspiration would dot his brow and he would feel cold and clammy.

He’d wipe his forehead with his handkerchief, plaster a phony smile on his face, and open the door, trying with all his might to mentally brace himself for the foul stench hanging in the air. The room smelled of iron pills, and the thick vanilla-scented air freshener the maids insisted on spraying into the stagnant air only made the stench worse. Some nights it was so bad, he had to hurry out of the room on a false errand before she heard him gag. He would go to any length to keep her from knowing how repulsed he was.

Other nights his stomach could handle it. He’d close his eyes while he leaned down and kissed her forehead, then he’d move away while he talked to her. He’d stand by the treadmill he’d bought for her a year after they were married. He couldn’t remember if she had ever turned it on. A stethoscope and two identical, voluminous, floral silk bathrobes hung on its handlebars now, and its wide black vinyl belt wore a coat of dust. The maids never seemed to remember to clean it. Sometimes, when he couldn’t bear to look at Catherine, he’d turn and stare out the arched Palladian windows at the softly lit English garden behind the house, enclosed like all the other minuscule yards with a black wrought-iron fence.

The television would be blaring behind him. It was on twenty-four hours a day, turned to either the talk shows or the shopping network. She never thought to turn it down when he was talking to her, and he’d gotten to the point where he could ignore it. Although he’d learned to block the incessant chatter, he often found himself marveling over the deterioration of her brain. How could she watch such drivel hour after hour after hour? There had been a time, before the illness took over her life and her personality, when she had been an intellectual who could cut any adversary to the quick with one of her incredibly clever whiplash retorts. He remembered how she loved to debate politics — put a right-wing conservative at her impeccably appointed dinner table and there were guaranteed fireworks — but now all she wanted to talk about and worry about were her bowel functions. That — and food, of course. She was always eager to talk about her next meal.

He often thought back seven years to their wedding day and remembered how desperately he had wanted her. These days, he dreaded being in the same room with her — he slept in the guest quarters now — and the torment was like acid in his stomach, eating him alive.

Before she had taken to her bed out of necessity, she’d had the spacious suite decorated in pale green tones. The furniture was oversized Italian Renaissance, and there were statues of two favored Roman poets — Ovid and Virgil. The plaster busts squatted on white pedestals flanking the bay window. He had actually liked the room when the clever young interior designer had finished it, so much so that he’d hired her to redecorate his office, but now he despised the bedroom because it represented what was now missing in his life.

As much as he tried, he couldn’t escape the constant reminders. A couple of weeks ago he’d met one of his partners at a trendy new bistro on Bienville for lunch, but as soon as he walked inside and saw the pale green walls, his stomach lurched and he had trouble catching his breath. For a few terror-filled minutes he was certain he was having a heart attack. He should have called 911 for help, but he didn’t. Instead, he ran outside into the sunlight, taking deep, gasping breaths. The sun on his face helped, and he realized then that he was in the throes of a full-blown anxiety attack.

At times he was certain he was losing his mind.

Thank God for the support of his three closest friends. He met them for drinks every Friday afternoon to unwind, and how he lived for Fridays when he could unburden himself. They would listen and offer him solace and compassion.

What an ironic twist, that he should be the one out drinking with his buddies, while Catherine was the one wasting away in solitude. If the Fates were going to punish one of them for past sins, why her and not him? Catherine had always been the upstanding, morally superior one in the marriage. She had never broken a law in her life, had never even gotten a parking ticket, and she would have been stunned if she’d known all that John and his friends had done.

They called themselves the Sowing Club. Cameron, at thirty-four, was the oldest in the group. Dallas and John were both thirty-three, and Preston, whom they had nicknamed Pretty Boy because of his dark good looks, was the youngest at thirty-two. The four friends had gone to the same private school, and though they were in different classes, they had been drawn to each other because they had so much in common. They shared the same drive, the same goals, the same ambition. They also shared the same expensive tastes, and they didn’t mind breaking the law to get what they wanted. They started down the criminal path in high school when they found out how easy it was to get away with petty larceny. They also discovered it wasn’t very lucrative. On a lark, they committed their first felony when they were in college — robbery of a jewelry store in a nearby town — and they fenced the precious gems like pros. Then John, the most analytical in the group, decided the risks were too great for the return they were getting — even the best-laid plans could go wrong because of the elements of chance and surprise — and so they began committing more sophisticated white-collar crimes, using their education to foster connections.