She swallowed and I could almost hear her lining up the words so that they were organized before they came out. “Thank you. That would be nice.”
She smiled and we both smiled back, all of us seemingly relieved that she’d managed at least one coherent sentence. JJ began to bounce up and down and vocalize his impatience at being kept still for too long. Jayne rubbed his head, then reciprocated with Sarah so she wouldn’t feel left out.
“Do you run?” she asked Thomas before turning abruptly and pushing the stroller into the street, then jogging away from us with a wave.
Thomas raised an eyebrow. “I think she meant to ask me if I was a runner while at the same time explaining that she needed to run. An economy of words. Very impressive.”
“I’ve had some very coherent conversations with her, so I think it’s just you,” I said.
“Great. Well, hopefully, after we’ve spent some time together, she’ll relax a little.” He stared after her for a moment. “I know we’ve never met before—I’m positive—but I can’t help thinking I should know her. Maybe she looks like a celebrity, and that’s why she seems familiar, you know?”
“Like one of those women on The Biggest Loser?”
He gave me an odd look. “I don’t think so. It’ll come to me—it always does. I’ll let you know.”
“Is there anything else? I really need to get to work.” I didn’t tell him that I had just enough extra minutes to stop by Ruth’s Bakery and get my doughnuts and coffee with lots of cream. I happened to know that Ruth was taking a few days off to visit her sister in Charlotte, and a cousin would be in charge and so had planned my day accordingly.
“Yeah,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling something out. “Veronica came to see me yesterday and gave me this to give to you.” Holding out his hand, he let the broken chain with the Greek letter pendant dangle from his fingers. “She told me that your mother had called her to tell her that you would help solve her sister’s murder. She understands that you have other things going on in your life right now and she said she could wait. She’s waited twenty years already, so a little longer won’t matter. But she wanted you to have this just in case you forgot.”
Like I could. The memory of my mother speaking in the otherworldly voice was enough to scar me for life. I held out my hand and felt the cool metal fall into my palm. “Okay. I don’t know when I’ll be ready, but I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you. I know it’s a big thing to ask. And just to clarify, it was Veronica who suggested she go speak with Ginette—she’d heard about her from a friend, and trusted her because she knew you and had read about you recently in the paper when that whole business of who really owned your house came out a year or so ago. I’d never go behind your back. I need you to trust me on that just in case you do decide to work with me on future cold cases.”
“I know. I’ll keep you posted,” I said.
We said good-bye and I made my way to the converted carriage house we used as a garage. I sat in my car for a long moment, feeling the weight of the necklace and broken chain in my hand until on a whim I decided to wrap it around my rearview mirror. The memory of Adrienne’s reflection and the grief in Veronica’s voice wasn’t something I could easily forget.
I watched as Jayne jogged by on the opposite side of the street, heading toward the river with the stroller, her ponytail swinging, her posterior not even shaking in its Lycra prison. She looked as though she belonged in this neighborhood with those children and that house. With a handsome husband who looked just like Jack.
I forced my thoughts away from that train wreck and turned the key in the ignition, something Nola had said niggling at my brain. I was sliding into my parking spot behind Henderson House Realty when I finally remembered what it was. She’d said something about feeling as if a curtain had fallen down inside her brain, blocking the place where her creativity existed. I knew what she’d meant. Because that was exactly what I’d felt the first time I stepped into the Pinckney mansion on South Battery Street.
My father was in the garden at my Tradd Street house when I came home later that afternoon. The twins were parked in their double stroller, watching him trim the remaining Louisa rosebushes by the fountain, their attention alternating between the snapping of his pruning shears and the splash of water from the peeing statue.
A small Jetta sedan with a Citadel bumper sticker was parked at the curb in front of the house. “Anybody I know?” I asked, indicating the car as I covered the children’s faces with kisses and sat on the bench in front of them. They both bounced up and down, so I unbuckled them and put one of them on each knee, jostling them gently as I’d seen Jayne do.
“Oh, yes,” my dad said, lowering his shears. “It’s that Cooper Ravenel—Alston’s older brother. Seems he’s come to ask for Jack’s permission to take Nola to a Citadel dance.”