Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
“Yeah? You and your sister close?” Edgar asked.
“No. Not anymore.”
The admission sent a pang of loss through Jamie. The pain had been sharp once, but it had dulled over time.
“How come?”
Jamie sighed. Ever since Emma had announced her engagement, the wedding had been a constant presence in Jamie’s life. At first, they’d thought it might be fun to pick out expensive shit that someone else was paying for with Emma, but it quickly became clear that this was not going to be a sibling-bonding opportunity. To the contrary, the family text thread had been activated, and Jamie was getting two or three texts a day that seemed to presume their familiarity with things like the distinction between nylon and silk organza but never asked how their day was going.
Jamie even tried responding off thread to Emma a couple of times: to connect over something their parents had said that was just so their parents or to tell her that they’d driven past the art museum and caught a glimpse of the gardens and thought of her. But those texts had received nothing but likes, so Jamie had stopped and gone back to watching the texts about flowers keep rolling in.
“She’s on track to be exactly what my parents wanted us to be. She’s going to graduate law school, clerk for a judge, and become a politician like my mother. Which is great, if that’s what she actually wants to do. But it’s hard to tell. My folks…there are things that are acceptable to them and things that aren’t. Emma’s choices are acceptable.”
“Let me guess,” Edgar said. “They think your choices aren’t?”
“Yup. They’d never come out and say it—far too Southern, of course. But let’s just say that when I dropped out of college, my mother cried, and my father said I had ruined my life.” They snorted. “As you might imagine, building haunted houses wasn’t on my parents’ list of acceptable professions for their child to have.”
“But you love it, right?” Edgar asked.
“I really do. I guess I just wish they could be happy for me. That they could see it’s a real art. Not that they’ve ever come to any of the haunts I’ve worked on.”
They said it lightly, but it stung. Jamie knew that if they had been an architect or a speechwriter, an astronaut or a neurosurgeon, their parents would have attended every opening, promotion, and blastoff. They would have bragged casually about them to people who didn’t care because they were so brimming over with pride that it spilled into every conversation. They would have asked a hundred annoying questions because they wanted to be able to picture precisely how their Jamie had the world by the throat.
Jamie swallowed hard. A lizard skittered across the highway. Warm fingers closed around Jamie’s where they rested on the gearshift. The gesture offered sympathy and comfort, but the touch of Edgar’s skin made Jamie break out in goose bumps. They were very glad they had decided to give this another try.
***
Jamie parked the truck on the gravel turnoff outside the address Marty had texted them. It was a post-Katrina-built cottage perched on pilings covered in flaking white paint.
The man who answered the doorbell was white, with deeply tanned skin and flyaway blond hair. “You Jamie?” he said to Edgar in a Cajun accent.
Edgar pointed at Jamie, while Jamie replied, “That’s me.”
“Marty say you don’t need wiring?”
“No, it’s not going to be lit, just used for atmosphere,” Jamie explained.
“I get it for ya.”
He left the door open but didn’t invite them inside. Jamie shrugged at Edgar.
Edgar surprised him by whispering, “I dare you to go into this guy’s house, hide in his shower, and jump out at him next time he goes in the bathroom.”
Jamie snorted. “I think if I did that, then you’d find my body in the nearest bayou wrapped in a shower curtain. So with great regret, I must forfeit the dare.”
Edgar’s eyebrows waggled in an exaggerated gesture of victory.
The man was back in a few minutes with an armful of dusty white fabric. He peeled back the corner to reveal a twist of aged brass, then thrust the whole bundle into Jamie’s arms. “Me, I’d take off. Storm’s coming.”
He closed the door before Jamie could say thank you.
“Well, that was ominous,” Jamie said.
Edgar pointed at the sky. “I think he meant it literally.”
As they got in the truck, the first drops of rain smacked the roof.
Five minutes later, it was pouring.
11
Edgar
Summer in New Orleans came with two hours of pouring rain every afternoon, but this was no predictable afternoon shower. It was a storm with thunder, lightning, and driving rain that menaced them off the road after ten minutes.
Edgar’s palms prickled with sweat. Rain hit the truck, and thunder cracked, cacophonous.
“Gonna be another three or four hours, looks like,” Jamie said, tapping at their phone. “There’s a motel seven miles from here. We could try and get there, wait it out? I realize it’s rather forward for a second date,” they added jokingly, clearly trying to lighten the mood.