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“I shouldn’t call her that. It makes her mad.”
“Dave, do you have a medical problem you’re not telling me about?”
“No, I’m fine. Did Alafair go somewhere tonight?”
“She’s asleep. She went to sleep before you did. You don’t remember?”
“I had a dream, that’s all.”
“About what?”
“You and she were on a dock. Tripod was there. I was watching you from across the water. You were saying something to me, but I couldn’t hear you.”
“Come back to bed.”
“I think I’ll sit here for a while. I’ll be along directly.”
“I’ll sit with you.”
“Molly—”
“Tell me.”
“Sometimes we have to adjust and go on.”
“What are you saying?”
Nothing is forever.
“The bridge is making all kinds of noise. It must be broken. Speak up,” she said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
She felt my forehead, then my cheek. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”
“I’m not drunk anymore. That’s all that counts. I’m going to check on Alf.”
“You can’t leave me with this kind of uncertainty. You tell me what it is.”
You know, I thought. You know, you know, you know.
Through the oaks I could see the clouds lighting and flashing and disappearing into blackness again. In the illumination through the windows, Molly’s face had the hollow-eyed starkness of someone staring down a long corridor in which all the side exits were chain-locked. I looked in on Alafair then closed the door so she couldn’t hear our voices. “Don’t pay attention to me,” I said to Molly. “Guys like us always do okay. We’re believers. We’ve never been afraid.”
Molly stood on the tops of my feet with her slippers and put her arms around my middle and pressed her head against my chest, as though the beating of my heart were a stay against all the nameless forces churning around us.
TUESDAY MORNING ALAFAIR called me at the office. “I think I got a breakthrough on the seven arpents of land Bernadette Latiolais owned in Jeff Davis Parish,” she said.
“What are you doing, Alf?”
“Don’t call me that name.”
“What are you doing?” I repeated.
“Jewel Laveau told you Bernadette Latiolais was giving her land to a conservation group of some kind. I talked with a lawyer in New Orleans who does work for the Nature Conservancy. He said Bernadette Latiolais was going to have a covenant built into her deed so that the land could never be used for industrial purposes and would remain a wildlife habitat.”
“You found this on your own?”
“Yeah, after I made a few calls. Why?”
