“We scope.”
The wind whips our hair as we step outside into the weather, growing steadily darker and more miserable. The clouds are a solid gray block above us, low hanging, and the ice in the air burns my nostrils on the inhale. Wednesday’s warm snap has definitely passed. I duck down inside my puffy coat, wishing I hadn’t put on such thin armor; wishing I had a tissue; wishing, most of all, that I could be the kind of detective unfazed by problems so petty as cold legs and a runny nose.
We book it to the grimy car across the lot. Jessa tucks her fingers into her jacket sleeve and reaches to wipe the frost off the passenger side window.
“Wait,” I say. “There might be an alarm.”
“Please, it’s a Saturn SL.” She clears the glass. “I see a cat bobblehead on the dashboard,” she says through chattering teeth. “Does that help?”
“Yes, immensely.” I peek in through the driver side window. Empty except for a coffee thermos in the cup holder and a few Petco bags full of cleaning supplies on the gray cloth seats. I don’t know what I expected to find.
Jessa tugs on the driver side door handle.
“Whoa, felon.”
“Oh, it’s locked anyway. So now what?”
“We wait for someone to come out, I guess?”
We retreat to the Civic and I turn the key so heat leaks out of the vents. While we wait I sneak a look at Jessa, gorgeously flushed in the cold. Her abbreviated prep time hasn’t done her any harm. What would I do with all that beauty if it were mine? What would I worry about if I had perfect skin and expertly shaped nails and a miniature nose and a perfect house and a brilliant mother and a normal father whose only shortcoming was sinking a little too deeply into his boring work stories at the dinner table?
I know Jessa must have her own problems, the most often spoken of being true love. She loves Jeremy, then she loves Levi Cantu, then she loves Mike Wazchowitz, then she’s letting Jeremy unhook her bra in his dorm room at BU and loving him more than anything. Maybe that’s what comes of having the perfect life. You’ve got nothing to do with your time but love everybody just that much.
When I think of it that way, it sounds like a problem I don’t ever want.
An hour later the side exit of St. Augustine swings open and a squat woman wobbles out onto the grassy moat around the school, then into the parking lot, her head so far down in the wind that she’s practically tipped forward.
“Hey, hey!” Jessa, preoccupied with Fruit Ninja after growing bored by our stakeout, has looked up from her phone and elbows me unnecessarily.
“Yeah, I see her.” I shoulder open my door and without a moment’s hesitation call out, “Hi, excuse me, are you Lillian Eugene, by any chance?”
The woman slows, than continues forward. Close up, I can see she’s a small woman, the pom-pom perched on her winter hat no higher than my chin, swaddled in a bulky winter jacket that gives her the figure of the Michelin Man. A scarf is wrapped around the lower half of her face, but her eyes peek out, gray like sky overcast by filmy clouds. They wince suspiciously. “Are you a student?” she mumbles through her scarf. “No students allowed in the lot on Sundays.”
“I’m, um . . .” I feel the panic swell up inside me, until I remember that I’m Miles Faye, and I’m bulletproof. “Do you know a Sidonie Faye?”
The scarf drops, revealing the hard line of her puckered lips. She swipes a stray hair out of her face gracelessly. “Do you?”
I swallow. “I wish.”
EIGHT
Two blocks from St. Augustine, my second cousin lives in a faded brick apartment building gridded with rust-stained balconies. On the inside it’s clean enough, though there are no elevators, the hallways are cold and dim, and a damp locker-room smell seeps up from the tangerine carpet. Lillian Eugene leads the way up five flights of stairs to apartment 54B. Settling her bag on one hip, she jiggles her key in the lock, opens the door a sliver, and sticks a boot inside before threading the rest of her body through. “Come quick, before the babies escape.”
Jessa and I slip into the front hallway, where we’re pinned by the yellow moon eyes of five gigantic gray cats.
“Did my babies miss me? Did they miss me very much?” Lillian coos as the cats rub their faces on her snow boots and melt between her legs. “Was Mama gone forever and ever? Did you miss Mama? You did?” Somehow she makes it to the closet without trampling a tail or a paw.
I’ve forgotten Jessa until she leans in and whispers, “What’s that word that means a vision?”
“What?” I whisper back.
“Like, say I just had a vision of tomorrow’s front page headline, ‘Teenage Girls Fed Poisoned Butterscotches in Worcester Apartment, Beautiful Faces Eaten by Cats.’ What would you call that?”