“I never do. My facts are two-factor authentication, baby.”
"You ready to record, or you need a minute?" she asked. “We can hash it all out.”
That’s why she was my best friend. She had never once, since I met her, made me feel like I had to pretend I was fine in front of her. Or tell her if I didn’t want to. She always let me get there on my own time.
"I need several minutes. But we don't have several minutes, so let's just do it and I'll fake competence."
"That's your whole brand, Harper. I don't know why you're stressed."
“I did have a server ask me for my number last night before the whole dead hostess thing and you’ll be happy to know I gave it to him.” I sipped my coffee and stood back up.
Maggie looked delighted. “I’m so proud of you! Has he texted you?”
“He did, to tell me Evelyn was dead. Come to think of it, I didn’t actually answer him.” I winced. “Guess I should do that.”
“I guess so,” she said dryly.
We entered the studio. Maggie pulled her headphones up, and I did the same, and there was a small, familiar ritual to it—the click of her interface powering on, the soft hiss of the mic gain. She counted down on her fingers instead of saying it out loud because she liked the drama of a silent countdown.
Three, two, one, and then her voice dropped into the warm, slightly theatrical register she used for the show, half genuine curiosity and half campfire storyteller, and I felt myself sliding into the version of me that went with it.
"Welcome back to Gumbo and Gris Gris: Murder in the Crescent City, the podcast where two lifelong New Orleans girls talk about the crimes that make this city equal parts beautiful and terrifying. I'm Maggie."
"And I'm Harper.”
“Today is Saturday,” Maggie said. “And this is a special episode for unexpected reasons.”
“Normally around now I'd tell you what case we're covering this week, some cold file from 1987 or a lurid little scandal from the French Quarter's less glamorous decades, but this week is going to look a little different."
"Because you were there," Maggie said. "Harper was a guest at the Magnolia Heritage Gala at Belle Rêve Manor just last night, when socialite Evelyn Carrington collapsed and died in front of nearly two hundred people."
We did the recap the way we always did, trading lines back and forth, me giving the facts as I'd lived them and Maggie asking the questions a listener would ask. We did the whole “allegedly” and made sure we weren’t disparaging anyone or the organization.
I kept it careful. I didn't mention the straw, or the mechanism, or the four millimeters Hollis had described over breakfast with his mouth full of eggs. That part wasn't mine to give away, not yet, not until it was public record, and Hollis would have my head if I turned his coroner's briefing into content before he'd cleared it.
But I talked about the toast. The magnolias. The way Evelyn had lifted that heirloom cup like she was about to say something we'd all remember, and then hadn't gotten the chance to.
"There's something about it," I said. "that's sitting with me different than the other stuff we cover."
"How so?"
I thought about how to say it without it sounding like I was fishing for sympathy on a podcast that people listened to on their commutes. "Most of what we do is history. Old cases. People who are already gone, cities that have already grieved and moved on and turned the story into something they tell tourists on ghost walks. There's a distance to it. This isn't that. This is a woman I stood three feet away from. And it's a house. Or rather, it was."
"Belle Rêve."
"Belle Rêve. Which is the kind of place that gets held up as this shining example of what preservation is supposed to look like. Evelyn built her entire identity around being the person who wouldn't let the truth get sanded down for convenience. And now she's dead in the middle of the thing she cared about most. It feels so odd."
Maggie was quiet for a second, letting our exchange breathe the way she always did, a trick she was better at than I was. "You've been weird about houses since Aunt Odette passed. You know that, right?"
And here I thought she’d about to say something brilliant.
“I have not been weird about houses. Just my house.”
“You cried when Ralph fixed your air conditioning.”
“Who wouldn’t cry when their air conditioning is fixed? New Orleans in August is like being cremated.”
"Uh-huh." She didn't push it further on mic, because she was a good enough host to know when to let a thread hang instead of yanking it. But I felt a heaviness sitting in my chest the way it had been sitting there since I'd watched Evelyn go down with a mint sprig clinging to her lip.
