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A few seconds later, she’s shaking her head and dials again.
Waits.
“C’mon, Luc!” One hand gripping the steering wheel, she breathes deeply. In and out. “Can’t get ahold of him.” Handing off the phone to me shows neither of the two calls she made went through. “I don’t even know where I’m going to stay tonight.” After another few seconds of quiet, she huffs and looks up to the rearview mirror, toward Justin. “You wanna stay with Tante Nia?”
“Yeah!” Justin hops up and down on the seat, wriggling his little legs.
“She’s one of the girls from the club. I can stay at her place for a while.” She fires up the sedan, which lets out a disturbing chug, but one rev of the engine, and it roars to life. “You okay meeting up at the carnival? I know it’s not ideal, Cely, but Luc’s right. They’ll have masks. No one will see you.”
I don’t have a choice, really. After one drive from Luc’s house to town, I can’t say I’d know how the hell to get back, and finding Thierry’s boathouse in the bayou would be pretty much impossible.
As she reverses the car out of the driveway, I try Luc’s number one more time. It rings and rings with no answer. “I guess we’ll have to meet up at the carnival.”
Once on the road, I twist around to face Justin, who stares out the passenger window, seemingly less troubled already. “This … tataille. Has he visited you before, Justin?”
The boy nods, and a quick glance shows Brie staring back at him through the rearview mirror. “Justin, why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“I did. I tol’ you it was da tataille, but you said he wasn’ real.”
She snaps her gaze forward, a look of chagrin blushing her cheeks when she glances at me. “I thought …. I didn’t know he was talkin’ ‘bout an actual person.”
Though I feel for my friend’s embarrassment, I can easily relate to Justin’s frustration. Even if my boogeyman wasn’t real, it was based on trauma that no one bothered to investigate, or believe, either.
“Does he ever talk to you?” I ask him.
“Yes.” Fingers fidgeting in his lap, he lowers his gaze, as though he doesn’t want to tell me.
“What does he say?”
Instead of answering, he shakes his head.
“Is it something bad?”
He nods, sending a chill across the back of my neck. Getting him to talk is going to be tricky, but at this point, I need to know.
“You know, I see him, too.”
Eyes wide, he stares back at me in disbelief. “You do?”
“Yes. Can you tell me what he said?”
With an emphatic shake of his head, he leans back, staring out the window, only shooting me the occasional glance from the corner of his eye.
“If I tell you something he says to me? Will you tell me something he says to you?”
Brows coming together with worry, he pushes his glasses up onto his nose. “But he said he would huwt momma.”
Curling tendrils of shock slither over me, and when I look over at Brie, her knuckles are white against the steering wheel. “Justin. He say he knows where your momma is?”
Justin nods.
“Where? Where’d he say she is?” The panic in Brie’s voice is only going to make this kid clam up. Particularly when she follows it up with a string of “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!”
“Justin …” I force calm into my voice. “We want to help your momma. She might be in trouble. Did he say where she is?”
He shakes his head.
“Justin, please!” Brie’s frantic plea jerks the car, and I snap around to see her steering back into the right lane. “Don’t keep any secrets, you hear me? You cannot lie about this.”
