"I'm also a little worried about New Orleans," he admitted hesitantly.
You in New Orleans."
"Why's that?" Knowing why. She got defensive and angry when this stuff got stirred up.
"I've been there. Great town – 'The Big Easy.' Fun party town. Rich and colorful history, a great mix of cultural traditions. But it's got some places you should probably avoid. More than most cities, Cree."
He wasn't talking about bad neighborhoods. New Orleans was well known among legitimate parapsychologists and sensationalist amateurs alike as a place where some particularly grisly things had taken place. The horror of LaLaurie House, where Madame LaLaurie tortured and butchered dozens of her slaves in an attic room, was only one of many examples.
"I'm fine. I'm strong now, Ed," Cree said. Then it caught up with her and she bristled at his concern. "I think I can probably handle it."
Now he coughed, cleared his throat, feeling awkward. "Of course! It's just – you've been a little, you know, susceptible recently, more than usual… Shit, Cree, I can't always figure out how I'm supposed to – "
"Yeah."
She said it gruffly, and they both fell silent. On one level, she was doing great. But, yes, she had been more "susceptible" recently. Why? Maybe something to do with Mike, this time of year, she wasn't sure. And yes, she could imagine that it would be tough for Ed, tiptoeing around her vulnerability, trying to protect her without treating her like an invalid. Still, it pissed her off. Not at Ed, he was doing his best. At herself. At the complexities of life. At the reminder that she was fragile, thirty-eight and single, a perpetual widow with a lot of unresolved crap. Why did she get so tough on Ed when he brought it up? Maybe because neither he nor Joyce fully understood that, yes, she had to be careful, but she also had to resist, had to fight back. You had to push the boundaries and hope you got tougher as time went on.
"Where'd you go, Cree?"
"I'm here."
Which was so obviously not true that he had no choice but to roll with it. "Right," he said, with more resignation than sarcasm.
Cree had drifted back toward his office, and though she was out of range of the videophone camera she could see his earnest face in the monitor. He looked downcast and worried. He clicked a ballpoint pen in and out, inspecting the tip, then looked hopefully up at his own monitor. Still not seeing Cree, he looked away and rubbed his forehead again.
"You take care of yourself, though, okay?" Edgar had pivoted his chair, and there was something touching about seeing him in profile. Like watching him talking to himself. "You'll keep in close touch with Joyce and me, right? Call in the cavalry if you need us?"
"Yeah," Cree said again.
And then she hurried over to the videophone, wanting to make things better between them, but by the time she got there he'd hung up, and now it was her turn to look at the bland gray-blue of an empty screen.
3
Deirdre didn't answer when Cree tried to return her call, so after leaving a message she decided to stop over there on her way home. A dose of normalcy seemed in order, and anyway she was feeling something like a nutritional deficit after going four days without seeing the twins.
Her sister had married a carpenter who when he wasn't renovating other people's homes had gradually restored their own, a fine Craftsman-style house in the heart of the Queen Anne district. Between Don's carpentering and Deirdre's teaching, they did well, and their place was something of a testament to building on what you've got, sticking with it, in both marriage and domicile. The house was pleasingly proportioned, with ivory clapboards and goldenrod trim, fronted by a small yard exploding with rhododendrons and California lilacs: a place loved and loved in.
Cree went up the walk between mounds of blossoms to the front porch. No one answered when she rang the bell, but she could hear muffled music through the door. She banged on the glass for a while and was glad to see feet and then legs and then all of Zoe skipping down the stairs, a slender girl with chin-length yellow hair that clashed with her Sonics jersey.
"Hi, Aunt Cree."
"Hi, Niece Zoe."
Following Zoe into the living room, she wondered how those straight hips managed to hold up low-riding bell bottoms at all. She tossed her purse onto the couch and then threw herself after it, immediately feeling better.
"Come here," Cree said. "Gimme some girl bones, kid." She made a grab and managed to snag Zoe, who didn't resist much as Cree pulled her onto her lap and hugged her. Both girls had started to shoot up and were skinny as witches' brooms, all angles and ticklish skin. Now Zoe's butt bones dug painfully into Cree's thigh, sharp as two elbows. Cree inhaled the sweet smell of her as she rocked her back and forth.
"So where's your mom?"
"She went to Larry's Market to get some fish and stuff. We're being responsible."
They probably were, Cree agreed. Ten years old, it was at least a possibility. "And where's your sister?"
"HYACINTH!" Zoe exploded like a trench mortar. "She's upstairs. HY!" Zoe leaned away so she could finger one of Cree's earrings, inspecting it with a critical expression. "She's got her music on.
HYA-CINTH! YOUR AUNT HAS COME TO SEE YOU!"
Cree's ears rang. "You know, I never really noticed it before, but you got quite the voice on you," she said. "Especially from this close."
"I get plenty of practice, believe me." Zoe tossed her head contemptuously toward the stairs. An indictment of her sister.
They were supposedly identical twins, and were both blonde, skinny, moon-faced, verbal, and vivid. But they were not at all alike. Hyacinth seemed to Cree like a cheerful garden of pansies, cosmos, and marigolds on a breezy day, her moods varying but only the way the flowers sometimes toss their heads in the wind and sometimes go still, come vibrantly alight in the sun and then dim as clouds passed over. Zoe was more like fireworks, intense and intermittent, searing colors bursting aloft, etching the sky with brilliant trails and flashes and as quickly fading into utter darkness.
Hyacinth came into the living room, barefooted and wearing a yellow dress. She frowned at Zoe. "I'm not deaf," she said primly. "I just wanted to hear the end of that song. Hi, Aunt Cree."
"She actually likes Britney Spears," Zoe said, appalled.
"I do not! Just that one song."
Cree gathered Hyacinth onto her lap, holding the two of them like a big, loose armful of reeds and twigs, awkward and pokey. Too big to fit, now. For a moment they jostled and squirmed, and then Zoe broke loose and went to sit on a chair nearby.
"So, have you been finding any ghosts recently?" Zoe asked.
Cree thought for a moment. She had never tried to conceal what she did from the twins, but she made it a policy not to get too deep with them. You could gloss over it somewhat, but in the end you were dealing with death, and what happened after death, and the often sad and scary compulsions and fixations that lived on, and living people's fear.
The girls didn't need all that.
"Well, actually, I wanted to ask you two for some advice. On one of my cases." Cree decided that if she didn't mention names, telling them wouldn't really constitute a breach of confidentiality. "A very nice old woman came into my office today with a most unusual request."
That got their interest: They both loved a challenge, a problem to solve. Hyacinth slid off Cree's lap and sat sideways on the couch so she could see Cree better. She bent her long stems under her and tugged her skirt hem over her knees. "What was it?" she asked.
"She wanted me to make contact with a loved one who had died? And before I could tell her what we really do, she showed me his picture. And it was a dog."