Indigo Read Free Page B

famous cities of the dead, with fancy aboveground mausoleums and crypts. You didn’t have reputable people talking about seeing ghosts at every other hotel in the French Quarter. You didn’t have labyrinthine mazes of back streets and alleyways. New Orleans was unpredictable, messy, and exciting.
    Was it because New Orleans had so many mysteries? Ties to American voodoo? A link to the macabre?
    Well, New Orleans felt different than Chicago. It felt more . Real. Not real. Crazy. Not crazy. Such a thin, thin line.
    Sometimes when I would lie awake at night, watching the pear tree branch sway in the wind from my bedroom window, feeling the Gulf breeze on my skin, I felt so close, so very close to something. I felt open. That was the only way I could put it. Open .
    I had never felt that way in Chicago. Well, maybe when I had played a certain piece of music and interpreted it in just the right way, I felt it. But it was rare. Here, though, I often felt open . Like I was very close to something. Had it right on the tip of my tongue. But what was it?

The telephone woke me late that night, but I didn’t answer it. Instead I tiptoed to my doorway and listened to my mother’s end of the conversation. The concern in her voice freaked me a little, but I reminded myself that she was a minister. She often got phone calls in the middle of the night. I stood in the doorway, watching the concern in the knit of my mother’s brow.
    “Oh, honey,” Mom said to the person on the other end of the phone. Something in her voice struck me as more personal this time.
    I waited until she hung up, then walked across the hall to her room. “Who is it?” I asked.
    “Mia-Joy’s grandmother.”
    “Granny Lucy?” I whispered.
    She nodded, and my stomach dropped. I reminded myself that Granny Lucy was ninety years old. She wasactually Mia-Joy’s great-grandmother. She’d had a stroke last fall, and she had not been in the best health for months now. But Granny Lucy had just been in the kitchen with me today. With Mia-Joy and her mom. Today. You’re scratching your palm , chérie.
    Mom sat on her bed, already pulling on a pair of jeans. Her paperback was open on the quilt, a box of Triscuits and spray cheese on her nightstand, her bedroom TV muted on the home and garden channel. Mom always was a night owl, like me. Sophie had been too.
    Mom sighed. “Sarah doesn’t know where Mia-Joy is. And they really think this might be it for Granny Lucy.” She shook her head.
    I averted my eyes. It was Saturday night. I knew Mia-Joy was at the cemetary.
    “You’re going to Sarah’s?” I asked.
    Mom sat for a moment like she was in a trance, thinking. “I am,” she said. She got up, quickly changed into a clean shirt. “You don’t mind, do you, honey?”
    I shook my head, watching her find her purse, locate one shoe under her bed, all the while trying to decide. Should I tell her where Mia-Joy is?
    Mia-Joy will get in trouble. But she’ll be so sad if she doesn’t get to say goodbye. But she’s prepared for this. She’s known goodbye was coming. But I could give her this last chance .
    I followed Mom downstairs and latched the dead bolt behind her, then sat down at the kitchen table, still waffling.
    I got up and took my phone off the counter. I thought briefly of my other teenage life in Chicago, before everything, when I had carried my cell everywhere, texted constantly, a state of never-ending interaction.
    I called Mia-Joy. This in itself was something I rarely did, but it seemed safer than going to get her myself.
    “This is Mia-Joy. Leave me a message.”
    “Call me if you get this,” I said, my voice shaking. I hung up, put the phone back on the counter. I stared at it, willing her to call me right back. I waited, listening to my own shallow breaths. It didn’t buzz.
    If I went for Mia-Joy, would it somehow circle back and harm her? Or someone else, because I got too involved?
    Then something hit me. Granny Lucy had been there